Among the 40 points of additional questions in the liberal arts section of the Jiangsu College Entrance Examination, at least 8 points are related to Dream of Red Mansions. If you memorize them, you will earn them. Therefore, liberal arts students in Jiangsu recite the characters and plot details in Dream of Red Mansions as if they were reciting political answer templates. I still have in my cabinet the "lite version of Dream of Red Mansions" carefully compiled by the Chinese teacher - that is, deleting the parts that are unlikely to be tested in the exam, leaving the key content to memorize as much as possible; You have to believe in the brain capacity of liberal arts students. In their minds, they not only have sketches of each character's appearance, but also intricate diagrams of their relationships, including who lives in which house and whose maid's name is. The compulsion to memorize Dream of Red Mansions several times turned everyone into a strong antipathy. I still remember that this time last year, it was the end of the college entrance examination. Everyone happily threw away the pile of tattered materials (I didn't throw it away, I kept it to pass on to harm my cousin). The meaning behind it was not only to celebrate getting out of the bitter sea of college entrance examination, but also to swim ashore from the bitter sea of Dream of Red Mansions. When I think about the rest of my life, there is no compilation of Dream of Red Mansions exercises to disturb me, and there is no love triangle of Dai, Yu, Bao and Baochai to bother me, I feel so refreshed and comfortable all over!
I can actually understand putting Dream of Red Mansions within the scope of the college entrance examination. Apart from the factors of instruction from leaders, Dream of Red Mansions is a novel with exquisite language, rich connotation and all-inclusiveness. It is like a mirror in which all things in life can be reflected in the future. Its enlightenment and influence on life continue throughout life. However, large masterpieces are difficult to chew. Who would be willing to open their mouths to chew on such meatless bones now? Even if there is, its quantity and perseverance are not enough to support the full play of the Dream of Red Mansions, nor are they enough to fully display the beauty and connotation of the Dream of Red Mansions. As Wang Meng said: "Many people find it too strenuous to hold such a thick book every day. When they take out their mobile phones, pictures, colors, friends, and jokes all come out!" The consequences are obvious and devastating. "Literature creates another world through thinking, imagination, language, reading subjects, and cooperation in obtaining reading information. There are 1,000 Hamlets for 1,000 readers. If you don't even have this tiring energy, you will feel tired even reading the wonderful words." , then our spiritual life will be finished, and we will all become lazy, fools, and idiots. If our spiritual nourishment comes from Weibo with more than 100 words, how low will our IQ be!" In order to prevent the flowers of the motherland and the future pillars from becoming lazy fools and idiots, they are He was ordered to gnaw on this hard bone. Anyway, he was young, had good teeth, and it tasted delicious. One bone was not enough, so he had to add a few more to go with it ("Border Town", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", etc.). If he was tired of eating Chinese bones, he wanted to get some foreign bones to change his taste ("Eugenie Grandet" was also a regular guest on college entrance examination questions). After this feast of bones, someone has chewed the bones, but my teeth are sore. Even if I see any delicious bones in the future, I am afraid I will avoid them.
Stuffy classrooms, squeaking ceiling fans, reading loudly "'The jade belt hangs in the forest, the golden hairpin is buried in the snow'" means that Daiyu will have a tragic ending in the future, and being buried in the snow embodies Xue Baochai's "cold"". Even if you have a dry throat, you are not allowed to drink water because it is a "waste of time". It is hard to imagine how many people mentioned Dream of Red Mansions. The first image that comes to mind when they are young is not the burst of inspiration for poems among young boys and girls in the Poetry Society, it is not the reading of The West Chamber with Bao and Dai under the dancing sunset in the spring, it is not the sorrow and regret of the Xiaoxiang concubine when she finally shouted "Baoyu! Hello!", and it is not the snowy sky when Baoyu wears an orangutan felt cloak and kneels to Jia Zhengchang. Dream of Red Mansions is very beautiful, but the first impression it leaves on most people is not beautiful.
Suddenly I remembered that a politics teacher in high school said that last summer vacation, he canceled all his daughter’s summer homework and took her to read through Dream of Red Mansions. I have no intention of commenting on whether it is appropriate or effective for a primary school student to read Dream of Red Mansions. I am just very envious. Her first impression of Dream of Red Mansions was that she slowly read this thick book with her father during the summer vacation when "the green trees are dense and the summer is long". Even though she would most likely still have to join in the bone-gnawing feast in the future, at least she had a good taste of it before munching on it.
To be honest, I really like Dream of Red Mansions from the bottom of my heart. I remember that after the high school entrance examination, there were no mobile phones to disrupt my life, and the computer and television were limited to one hour a day. My biggest pastime was reading the Dream of Red Mansions I picked up from the top of the bookcase. I read about Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden and making a fool of herself but reaping a lot of rewards. I felt a little contemptuous at the same time. Shiyou snorted with envy. When he read about Daiyu finding faults and playing petty with Baoyu, he would pat his chest and sigh that he didn't have such "pretentious" friends around him. When he saw Zijuan lying on the couch outside the room alone before Daiyu died, her tears wet the cushions, she would temporarily After closing the book, the tears that were about to overflow were calmed down. After reading the end, Lan Gui and Qifang's hope was rekindled, because she is a person who expects everything to have a happy ending. She would secretly take a long breath and sigh, so what if there is a happy ending, Daiyu and Baoyu will never come back... However, despite the love and support from a few years ago, whenever I was forced to shout at the top of my voice in morning or evening reading classes, "The moon is rare, the colorful clouds are easy to disperse. The heart is higher than the sky, the body is low, the romantic and clever are the people's resentment," I still instinctively resist opening the volumes of the Dream of Red Mansions exercises. Dream of Red Mansions is indeed the content of the assessment, but inexplicably, candidates cannot read Dream of Red Mansions because it is too time-consuming. Instead, there is the so-called "lite version of Dream of Red Mansions". It is simplified, but is it really refined? While gnawing on the bones, do you really feel the taste? The standard answer is always five points, one point and one point. If you can memorize it, you will get it. If you can't memorize it, you won't have it. Your own opinions can always only shrink behind the standard answers and be timid.
When I first chose the course "Dream of Red Mansions and Life", there was something in my heart that was at work: "I have memorized so many carefully compiled exercises. Raising an army for a thousand days, using it for two hours." Excluding the college entrance examination, who would have thought that my high school experience could still help me in college? When I saw the Dream of Red Mansions text test in the course syllabus, I was really secretly happy. As soon as I closed my eyes, the character judgments and classic lines that I had memorized back then would still come to mind. Maybe this is called "confidence". However, not only was the Dream of Red Mansions text test canceled, the entire Dream of Red Mansions and Life course was completely different from what I had imagined. The Yimo class is recognized as the hard core. Without the blessing of the Dream of Red Mansions that I am "familiar with", I would never have dared to challenge myself as a freshman. However, my ego was still severely challenged.
When I submitted a short paper before class for the first time, I quietly huddled behind the screen and watched the writing of other students. I secretly prepared to summarize a rough routine and follow this line of thinking to process six short papers in the future. However, each of our essays has different attitudes and opinions, and there is no fixed routine at all. How to start, how to discuss, and how to end all depends on your own mood, the connotation of your thoughts, and all according to your own wishes. To be honest, I was a little confused this time. During the long three years of high school, I read Dream of Red Mansions according to a fixed pattern and answered relevant questions according to a fixed template. Now that the supporting bones are suddenly pulled away, it really makes me restless. The ensuing class discussion refreshed my impression. It turned out that discussions can be so unconstrained and wanton, and can be completely free and not follow the so-called rules and routines at all. After the shock, I slowly began to accept this setting, began to throw away the accumulation of three years of high school, and began to return to the long summer vacation after the high school entrance examination.
During the second discussion, I submitted a short paper. To a certain extent, I still felt that going beyond the previously observed rules was something I shouldn't do, so I carefully added a sentence before the small paper: "It's very poorly written. I hope you won't scold me." However, I unexpectedly received encouragement from the teaching assistant and discussion from my classmates. It might be an exaggeration to say that I was ecstatic, but I was cautious and actually snickered behind the screen for a long time after seeing these content comments. In the ensuing discussion, I finally no longer felt timid. I finally dared to type a long string of words and send it out, and I also dared to put forward my own ideas in a timely manner. When I saw that the direction of the discussion was following the word "spring" I proposed, my inner thoughts were actually a bit complicated. I suddenly realized that "real discussion" was what it was, I was secretly happy that my ideas were seen, and I was nervous and uneasy from where I didn't know... It is not an exaggeration to say that it was a mixture of emotions.
I finally regained the state of mind I had during that summer vacation, purely immersing myself in Dream of Red Mansions without any other distractions. I can write whatever I think about, and I can come up with some weird metaphors, such as my "211 Students in 1985 University" or "Atypical Fishing for Girls". Although there are suspicions of clickbait, I am happy and smooth in the writing process. If you have no ideas for the time being, then take a sneak peek at your classmates' speeches and occasionally add a few sentences; if you are not very interested in the discussion topic this time, you can choose not to write. Although I am already a college student, I finally feel like I was fifteen again, and I have regained the shock and freedom I felt when I first read Red Mansion.
The so-called classroom gains, in addition to digging into the Red Mansions in writing again and again, and colliding with ideas in discussions with classmates, for me, the most significant thing is that this course helped me peel off the "accumulation" of three years of high school, and let me get rid of the so-called "confidence" brought by the refined exercises of Dream of Red Mansions. I faced the book Dream of Red Mansions, which is a difficult bone, with a brand-new body and mind. I used to think that regardless of following the teacher's instructions, chewing hard was the best way to get rid of this bone. However, now I really enjoy it and chew as much as I want. Even though the bone is still hard, it actually tastes a different flavor. Only then did I realize that how to chew hard bones is definitely not like what I did in high school.
Although it was a mistake, I am still extremely glad that I chose this course. It's a pity that I couldn't meet you all this year due to the epidemic, but you still have your image in my heart. I still remember the beginning of the course. Although the opposite was just a human-controlled so-called "robot" spreading illegal advertisements everywhere, the teaching assistant still gave a serious warning, "Please leave the group voluntarily." It always gave people a cute and serious feeling. Every time the other teaching assistant patiently and carefully reminded me, coupled with the encouragement that was like a spring breeze in the elearning, it made me think, "How can I be encouraged by such encouragement?" Every classroom introduction by the teacher, every little "digression" that keeps up with current affairs, every "fashionable phrase" that keeps up with the trend, all make me sigh that it is not just young students who surf the Internet 24 hours a day; every other student like me, everyone expresses their thoughts kindly and actively, and everyone plays their own important role in the course. Everyone is telling me how important it is to have your own ideas and truly immerse yourself in a book.
This year, I gnawed on this hard bone again, and ate it heartily. So, how should we encourage everyone to chew on this difficult bone? Is it really necessary to use coercive means such as the college entrance examination to force students? Is it possible to adopt a softer and more flexible approach? If the format of Fudan's "Dream of Red Mansions and Life" course is also introduced into middle school classes, three years would be enough to read several tomes. Is it a more reasonable way to stew the hard bones until they are tender and then eat them carefully?
In fact, I have been writing this course summary since the beginning of June. Sure enough, the summary requirements are still familiar: "Everything is free." It’s hard to define which aspects this summary covers, but these are indeed some of my inner thoughts. Today I will boldly speak out my inner thoughts and share my true feelings as an ordinary student.
Machine-translated from the Chinese original 红楼梦这根骨头应该怎样啃？ (published 2022-11-13). WeChat original ↗