“Shuxiang Jian Tou” Employee Reading Sharing Event - Company Award-Winning Works Exhibition: “My Story with Books”

Story with Books

Eighth Engineering Project Department Guan Yunjin

First Encounter

At the age of two, she received her first book, a book called "Radiology." Her father was originally a radiologist, so there were many books related to radiology in her home. Her mother said that as soon as she learned to walk, she loved to browse books at home and was interested in them. Her focused yet puzzled expression was adorable. Even Barbie dolls and toy cars would be forgotten when she was reading. Her father was also a book lover; two bookshelves in their home were filled with his books, ranging from pathology and physiology to anatomy, from Jin Yong's novels to Shennong's herbal classics. He treasured his books and was afraid of damaging them.

So, when she started learning Pinyin at the age of three, her father bought her her first book - "Three Hundred Tang Poems." Having her own book made her incredibly happy. She would read it every day and pester her parents to teach her. The first poem she memorized was "Mǐn Nóng" (悯农). She could recite it after only two repetitions. Later, she learned "Jiāng Xuě" (江雪). She said she clearly remembered the illustration for this poem: a fisherman in a straw raincoat fishing in the river amidst heavy snow. It was a scene she had never seen before, and she loved it. At the age of three, she could understand the stories in those poems.

Her mother only finished junior high school and couldn't continue her education, so she would buy books to read herself: wuxia novels, Reader's Digest, essays, and more. Although her education level was not high, she was very intelligent, with beautiful handwriting and a vast knowledge of poems and verses. Because their family was poor when she was young and couldn't afford beautiful picture books, her parents taught her to read, recognize characters, and memorize poems. She said that when she was a child, her mother's most frequent praise was that she was clever and well-behaved, saying that she must have been a poetry lover in her previous life, otherwise how could she have memorized over a hundred poems and verses by the age of seven? Reciting poems was her talent show; she would perform one during every festival. She could be found in the school's reading corner and heard in the village committee's reading corner.

Mutual Understanding

From elementary school onwards, their family's financial situation improved. In the six years before elementary school, her parents bought her many books. Initially, she liked stories and read many story collections, such as "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales," "One Thousand and One Nights," and children's versions of the four great classical novels. Later, she became more fond of poetry and read many poetry collections, such as "Li Qingzhao's Ci Poems," "Su Shi's Ci Poems," and poems from the Three Kingdoms, Two Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties periods. Of course, there were also many books on astronomy and geography, such as "Geography of China" and "Ocean Life Collection." She had so many books that storage boxes were insufficient, so she switched to storage cabinets. Later, there were so many books that they dedicated a room and added a row of shelves to store them. The left side belonged to her father, the middle to her mother, and the right to her. In this era of minimalism, the three of them were unwilling to discard their books, even the 1957 edition of the Xinhua Dictionary was still well-preserved.

From the age of fifteen, she particularly favored essays and poems, from "The Classic of Poetry," "Chu Ci," and "Han Yuefu" to "New Moon Collection" and "The Gardener," from "The Analects" of the Spring and Autumn period to "Yueyang Tower Inscription" and "Lushan Ballad" of the Tang Dynasty, to "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" of the Qing Dynasty, as well as modern works such as "From the Hundred-Herb Garden to the Three-Flavor Study," "Kite," and "How Many Flowers Fall in Dreams." She loved them all, reading them repeatedly. She said that during her holidays, she looked forward to finishing her summer homework quickly so she could curl up on the small sofa in her room with a book. At her most enthusiastic, she would read under a desk lamp hidden under the covers all night. Her father found out and scolded her, but he still bought her many books and took her to Xinhua Bookstore to buy books in bulk. As she got older, she began to read books with deeper meanings, such as "Six Records of a Floating Life," "To Live," "I and the Earth Altar," "A True Story of Ah Q," and "Us Three." "When I first read them, I may not have understood the meaning and language. Reading them again now gives me a different feeling. This is probably why I love reading." This is her exact words. Each stage of reading brings different insights, and this is the most fascinating aspect of books.

Falling in Love

She is a book lover; she loves reading, writing, and recording. We guess that she developed the habit of reading and recording from a young age. She would copy down good sentences she encountered while reading into a notebook or memo. When we looked through them, we were surprised and amazed by those beautiful sentences and paragraphs. She said she felt the same way; repeatedly encountering beautiful sentences and paragraphs would make her marvel at the charm of words and books. Perhaps because of the accumulation and extensive reading, her writing also increased, and her expression became more mature. We asked her what kind of relationship she had with books. She said: "I often wonder what kind of relationship I have with books. Recently, when I was reviewing some good sentences, I found the answer. A young literary writer expressed my feelings:"

“I thought I had seen romance,

like the lyrics copied during a secret crush,

the unopened love poems in the desk,

and the ring he put on my ring finger at the wedding,

but here,

romance can be more extravagant,

extravagant to the point that the sea breeze turns the pages for me,

the book says the eighteen-year-old boy who went out to travel,

passed by Xiangchun Street,

extravagant to the point that the cliff tells me stories,

stories about "Ah Q" and "The World,"

and about "the swordsman" and the wilderness,

we will discuss, the waves pretending to be thousands of piles of snow,

we will record, the moon on the sea is the moon in the sky,

you guess how these days filled with romance

will affect a young man,

it's probably to let him understand,

that fate can also be used to describe

meeting a book.”

I think my encounter with books is just like this, romantic and full of surprises. We've considered many kinds of relationships, but never expected one to be romantic and full of surprises. There are many kinds of romantic relationships in this world, but this is the first time I've heard a relationship with books described as romantic. It's unexpected, yet it makes perfect sense.