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墨書 Inktalez
The elementary school years I experienced were marked by a severe lack of reading materials. The vast Cultural Revolution that lasted a decade had effectively blocked access to most cultural works. At that time, both families and schools had just begun to embrace the ideology of being "red and specialized," and the general attitude towards elementary students reading extracurricular books was one of opposition. Therefore, engaging in extracurricular reading came with certain risks.
I was an exception. Perhaps my mother had not been successfully brainwashed by the political movements of the time and still held onto a traditional educational philosophy; perhaps my father had received basic teacher training before the Cultural Revolution began and still valued the "reading education" from the Republic of China era; or perhaps my own insatiable thirst for knowledge could not be satisfied by the simplistic textbooks alone. In any case, from the very first day of elementary school, I found myself drawn to extracurricular reading materials:
I have two fixed extracurricular reading materials that belong to me: "Children's Era" and "Annual Literature." These publications were specially subscribed for me by my father, who served as the principal of a junior high school in another county. In my memory, these two readings did not appear simultaneously. During the first and second grades, I was accompanied by "Children's Era," which featured more illustrations than text, fully considering children's cognitive levels and reading interests. By the third grade, "Juvenile Literature" began to make its appearance. The illustrations became very few, with only an occasional picture or decorative element, while the text content gradually increased, covering various genres such as fairy tales, essays, poetry, and occasionally some novels.
In fact, I cannot remember much of the specific content of these two readings, but they opened a window to words and imagination for me, leading me into a world I had never experienced before. Shortly after receiving "Children's Era," I encountered a captivating story: on the ancient island of Greenland, there was a strong and powerful child whose father had gone out to sea fishing and never returned. He secretly prepared a boat and some supplies for sailing without telling his mother and set off alone on a journey to find his father. Along the way, he faced many setbacks but ultimately learned a great deal, even though he never found his father.
The story ends with a scene where the sea surrounding the island has frozen over, and the child must go up a mountain to search. However, boulders keep rolling down from the mountain, and he can only push one after another, endlessly moving forward without ever turning back to take the direct path home that is now frozen. My father advised me to learn from the perseverance he displayed during his junior high school years, but what truly captivated me were the magnificent images of the islands and the sea, along with the rare richness of colors at that time, combined with the child's subconscious quest for his father (or rather, the roots of life).
While reading "Juvenile Literature," I found myself in a bit of a humorous situation: by then, junior high schools had already introduced an English curriculum, and rural children learning English often liked to use Chinese characters that sounded similar to the English words. We kids also heard phrases like "浸死一个卖布的 (This is my book)" from older students in junior high. Life was immediately reflected in our books; one issue of "Juvenile Literature" featured an article about a child who annotated a series of English words with Chinese pronunciations—about twenty in total. The last few included "巴腿 (but), 饭吃得太饱 (vegetables), 哎 (I), 哟 (you), 胃痛死 (windows), 活该 (ok)!"
This story quickly spread among my classmates through my recounting, and I proudly shared it with my father when he finally returned home. Coincidentally, he was suffering from stomach pain at that moment, which led my mother to give me quite a scolding.
Outside of juvenile literature, my dad also got me a book called "Little Wisdom: A Fantasy Journey into the Future". This is a science fiction novel that has more of an educational effect on children, with some fantasy elements in it. Many of the futuristic ideas presented in this book have gradually become reality not long after.
Of course, for most students, extracurricular reading materials are known as "picture books" or "comics". These small-format picture books have one scene per page and a few dozen words to explain. The stories on each page are connected, making it easy to follow along. We prefer calling them "picture books", firstly because the characters in between are really small, and secondly because they seem specifically designed for us kids.
Back then, there were more picture books published, with a wide range of content and genres, mostly historical stories and war stories, all for just a few cents per book. Kids loved them! At home, although these books cost only a few cents each, my family didn't support me in buying them, so I had to borrow from classmates. Luckily, I was very keen on reading, and as soon as a classmate got a new picture book, I could finish reading it within three to five minutes after borrowing it for a short while, which satisfied everyone's appetite for reading.
In addition to the reading materials that were more aligned with children's interests, perhaps due to my fast reading speed, or perhaps because there were too few books available for children, or maybe it was simply fate, I began to delve into some other leisurely reads.
The first book that caught my eye was a set of red volumes titled "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" in my grandfather's room. Its presence in my life felt like an inevitable coincidence, as there were hardly any other books I could read at the time. My grandfather, being a grassroots cadre, had this collection on display. What truly drew me in were the annotations within; they contained explanations and origins of various idioms, as well as detailed accounts of battles and their outcomes. Influenced by this book, I developed a peculiar reading habit of enjoying the annotations more than the main text itself, finding joy in digging deeper into the meanings.
Next came the collection of books from Dr. Liu's family. By then, he had built his house diagonally behind ours, and his home was filled with a wide variety of books. The Liu family had been both doctors and scholars for generations, and even during oppressive times, they managed to preserve such a collection. In contrast, most families in the countryside had only a few "children's books" along with a set of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong."
The books of the Liu family were mostly inherited from their ancestors, including classics like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," "Water Margin," "Journey to the West," and "Dream of the Red Chamber." They had nearly all of the Twenty-Two Histories and many traditional Chinese medicine texts. Most of these books were printed in traditional characters, likely from the Republic of China period. Fortunately, I had learned to use a dictionary by then, so I gradually devoured most of them.
I skimmed through them without seeking deep understanding; even the difficult texts like the various philosophical works and "Book of Han" could be consumed in a haphazard manner. Yet, I found myself unable to immerse in "Dream of the Red Chamber," which encapsulated the essence of Chinese classics. Later on, the mud-brick house of the Liu family unexpectedly collapsed at some point, turning into a pile of rubble that slowly transformed into fertile soil for growing vegetables. Their collection of books faded away in the flow of time, leaving no trace behind.
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