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Chen Geng, champion of China Poetry Conference: Fourteen appearances of engineering doctors

February 21, 2019 07:59 | Source: Beijing News
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Chen Geng was at the Chinese Poetry Conference. Picture provided by program group

On the evening of February 14, Chen Geng stood in front of the contestants in the final of the fourth season "China Poetry Conference". He had two braided braids and a blue ROC suit. His expression was calm. Now it was time to fight for the championship.

"Please listen to the question and name a plant according to the following clues." The host read the question: "First, Liu Yuxi said it was' windy and snowy at night '."

As soon as he finished speaking, Chen Geng raised his right hand and pressed the answering machine: "Willow tree."

When applause broke out, Chen Geng won the championship.

In the past four years, this engineering girl who is a doctoral student and a robot researcher at Peking University has participated in poetry conferences four times in a row, and has stood on the main stage fourteen times, finally winning the championship in the fourth quarter.

Some people lament that "God rewards diligence", and others praise that "it really deserves its name". But for Chen Geng, the way of poetry is just beginning.

"Chen Geng, OK"

Chen Geng's hometown is located in the village of Xianyang. The red brick house, the farmhouse's earthen kang, and the straight cement road are at the door. Large tracts of wheat fields are spread on both sides of the road. At night, the moonlight is sprinkled through the winter and spring mists, and the pastry smell and barking sound of the first month of the Northern Kingdom have not disappeared.

Chen Geng is back. The family gathered in a room of more than ten square meters in the old house of Xianyang. Uncle and aunt were carrying fruits, and younger brothers and sisters were holding snacks. The program was recorded as early as December last year. The family couldn't help asking Chen Geng how the war was going. The other party just laughed and refused to "spoiler".

That night, everyone only knew that Chen Geng would come on the stage, but did not know the result of the game. Chen Geng thought, "I hope they can enjoy watching the game."

Books brought back by Chen Geng during his holiday. Photographed by Wang Shuangxing, a reporter of Beijing News

The TV is set at the foot of the wall, the screen is small, the peony shaped stage lights are on, and the program begins. Chen Geng was the third to enter the arena, standing in the middle of the stage, competing with the other three players for the qualification of the challenge. At the Four Seasons Poetry Conference, outstanding performers can take the stage to attack and challenge. It is Chen Geng's fourteenth time to compete for the championship in the final.

Outside the screen, Chen Geng sits on the chair at the door of the old house, which is different from that on the stage. She did not make up, but wore a gray black checked down jacket with long hair tied behind her head. She looked like a "girl next door".

At first, the family members ate melon seeds and happily discussed the age of the guests and the makeup of the contestants. From time to time, they said, "This baby is powerful and can win the championship." "Oh, this question is difficult.".

Gradually, the competition became more and more fierce. Chen Geng on the stage was closer to the top of the pyramid. His family put snacks back on the table and watched TV closely.

In the decisive part, the champion Sun Xiaojing took the stage and stood beside Chen Geng. The cup of the championship was placed between them. Dong Qing, the host, said with a smile, "It's close at hand

Chen Geng's mother grumbled, "It's not that easy." His father touched his forehead and said, "I'm nervous." Chen Geng hugged the computer to do his own thing, squinted and smiled for a while, but did not speak.

The championship competition is not long. Chen Geng won the championship with a score of 5:2 in less than ten minutes.

"The championship of the fourth season" China Poetry Conference "has been produced, and she is Chen Geng." Dong Qing announced the results of the competition, and Chen Geng smiled and bowed in the direction of his left hand.

It was not until several guests on TV came on stage together to give awards to the champion that Chen Geng outside the TV went to the suitcase in the next room to take out the trophy and show it to his family. Grandma's eyes were a little wet. Uncle smiled: "It's low-key enough."

The crystal trophy is very big, printed with the words "China Poetry Conference", passed around in the family's hands, and finally fell into Chen Geng's father's hands. He held the trophy in front of his chest and asked his wife to take photos.

The 80 year old grandfather sat near the TV and didn't speak until his granddaughter won the championship. Then he slowly took off his glasses and said with satisfaction, "Chen Geng, it's OK."

Left bank and right bank

Chen Geng first appeared on the stage of the Poetry Conference in February 2016, the first season of the Chinese Poetry Conference. Her identity is a doctoral student in the Department of Mechanics of Peking University who studies intelligent robots.

In her self introduction before the competition, she said: "I love my robot career, which is my rational and realistic left bank; I also love my poetic world, which is my soft and emotional right bank."

On February 13, the ninth day of the Lunar New Year, Chen Geng was sitting on the kang in the old house and writing words. The computer contains information and data about robot research, as well as reading notes and essays related to classical poetry.

There are a stack of books at the end of the kang, such as One Day of Floating Life, Interpretation of the Doctrine of the Mean, and 24 Poems Guide. She borrowed these from the Peking University Library, packed them in a suitcase, and pulled them all the way from North China to Guanzhong.

His parents live in residential buildings in the city, but every winter and summer, Chen Geng returns to his hometown in Xianyang and lives in the village with his grandparents. She likes the countryside. There are stars, birds and land; I also like the slow and leisurely rhythm in the village, like the clouds passing by occasionally in the sunny winter sky. They are leisurely and suitable for reading poetry.

Chen Geng was born in Xianyang in 1992. Like many families in Xianyang, the Chen family also attaches importance to education and advocates reading. In the room on the west side of his hometown, there are still two old bookshelves filled with old books, textbooks and magazines, which were used by Chen Geng's father and uncle and saved by his grandfather. When Chen was younger, he ran to the shelf without books, read popular novels in the 1980s, read stories in old textbooks, and read magazines such as Zhiyin and Storytelling Club. His obsession with words took root at that time.

However, when dividing liberal arts and science in middle school, Chen chose science. She comes from an ordinary family. She thinks that science means that she can have a skill and a broader employment range.

After the college entrance examination, Chen Geng was admitted to Tongji University and majored in automation. There are many rivers, vast grasslands, and peacocks and swans, which soon awakened Chen Geng's literary and artistic talents. She took vocal music classes, film appreciation classes, and also liked Zhang Zao's modern poetry. Looking back a few years later, she would also sigh: "At present, I think of those beautiful first encounters in life, many of them are in Tongji."

The enlightenment of classical poetry began at the age of 21. In that year, Chen Geng recommended PKU Zhibo, majoring in general mechanics and mechanics foundation, and his research direction was controller design of intelligent rehabilitation robot. Most of the time every day is spent in the laboratory, reading literature, making models, deducing formulas, and processing data.

"At that time, there was a temporary fault in life, and the time of being alone became longer. When the outside world was completely unfamiliar, people might be easier to look at themselves," Chen said. She fell in love with Yanyuan. The library has long corridors and large French windows. The pine forest has wisteria that Zongpu likes. The Langrun Garden has seasonal lotus planted by Ji Xianlin. She seldom goes shopping, never pursues dramas, and spends all her spare time reading.

During the "book shortage", I accidentally read Jiang Xun's Poems of the Tang Dynasty. "I found that poetry is not as obscure as originally thought, but it is linked with life and has a lot of fun." So I was led into the door, and then draw inferences from one instance, understand by analogy, and read more and more.

Shortly after the first season of the program was broadcast, CCTV invited Chen Geng to review the poetry conference. In front of the camera, she said: "We need a little useless things and fun in addition to the things we need everyday, so life is interesting. We watch the sunset, appreciate the autumn river, see flowers, listen to the rain, smell fragrance, drink wine to quench our thirst, and eat snacks to satisfy ourselves. Poetry is that we don't ask for thirst quenching wine, and we don't ask for full snacks. "

On that day, she quoted Tao Hongjing's poem to express her feelings: ask me what I have, only white clouds in the mountains. I can only be happy with myself, but I can't afford to present it to you.

Chen Geng is at the new book signing site. Photograph provided by respondents

Shell picker

"The autumn overcast does not disperse, the frost flies late, leaving the withered lotus to listen to the rain. Hello everyone, I am Chen Geng, and I am back again." In the second season of the Chinese Poetry Conference, Chen Geng, wearing braided braids and Republican costumes, once again stood on the stage.

As the number of appearances increases, Chen Geng's attention is also rising. The number of Weibo fans is increasing and has exceeded 100000 by the fourth quarter; She has her own fan group. Everyone talks about poetry and family affairs on weekdays; Many people sent her private letters, some shared the poems they had read recently, some expressed their love for poems, and some said they had renewed their enthusiasm for poems.

Li Tian (a pseudonym), a girl born after 1990, has watched the poetry conference with her grandparents and parents since the first season. The whole family is Chen Geng's "iron powder". When Chen Geng succeeds in the challenge, everyone is happy; Chen Geng made a mistake and gave points to his opponent. Everyone was worried; Chen changed his hair style or clothes, and everyone discussed in front of the TV; Chen Geng won the championship in the fourth quarter, and everyone recalled her performance on the court excitedly.

Grandma Li Tian was deeply influenced by the poetry conference. Before retirement, the old man was a math teacher who seldom touched Chinese. After seeing her children "chasing stars", she slowly fell in love with classical poetry. Every night, she watched TV with her notebook and copied all the poems mentioned in the program; At that time, she had just learned how to use a smart phone, and she also bought online poetry classes to learn a poem every week. It has been four years now.

Over the years, Chen Geng has also received many paper letters, most of which sent their own poems, hoping that the works would be seen by guests and Dong Qing.

The most impressive one came from a village and was sent to Peking University with a stack of paper in the envelope.

The letter wrote: "I know you in prison... The program is not live broadcast. It has become a habit and a spiritual pillar to stay in front of the TV at 5:00 p.m. every day, and I am more convinced by the charm of poetry... Now I am moving forward from beginning to end. I am once again standing at the crossroads of fate. I can feel my inferiority complex. The only choice is to know your shame and then be brave... You are a pen friend, not because of your beauty, education, or being in a famous school, but because of your presence, like a lamp in the dark. "

Chen Geng never thought that one day he would become the "lamp" in other people's lives. In the past, in her opinion, poetry often became a blank filling question in the college entrance examination or a show off of writing skills, but the letter let her know that someone really believed in the power of poetry; Some people start a new life because of poetry.

Chen Geng recalled this incident and wrote in his book: Suddenly, he felt like a child who ran to the seaside to play. He greedily picked up many beautiful shells. Unexpectedly, after having a good time playing, the laughter spread so far to other people's hearts, making them fascinated by the sea.

She gradually has a sense of mission to spread poetry. "Especially after getting a lot of applause, flowers, praise and support, I feel I should be voted Mutao and rewarded Qiongyao."

Since 2016, Chen Geng has insisted on appearing in the fan group every day to share a poem in the form of voice; In 2017, she published her first book, Plum Blossoms, to interpret traditional poetry in popular language; At the end of 2018, she registered a dithering account to build a scene, read poems, tell poems, and tell stories behind poems in 15 seconds

"I try hard to let everyone know (poetry), first know it, and then come in to have a look. If you don't like it, you can quit; if you like it, you can read more." Chen Geng said, "If a person loves poetry, he will not become bad, will not become a hitchhiker who rapes and robs female passengers, he will have basic human morality. Because poetry is spreading the compassion and kindness of human nature, a person who feels the beauty and kindness of the world, softness and delicacy, will love the world more, and will be less sharp and less violent. "

Grass snake grey line, thousands of miles away

Four times of competition and four times of farewell, Chen Geng said, there is a "feeling of carnival ending", leaving the stage and returning to the ordinary life, people are in a hurry, doing things that have nothing to do with poetry; But the connection created by poetry has made Chen have a new circle of friends and another world.

At the finals of the fourth season of the Chinese Poetry Conference, Ma Haoran, a high-speed railway worker, sang a song "Wild Goose". The moment of separation was getting closer and closer, and the chubby boy was choking, He said: "When we came here today, we took the last bus, and we will be separated from each other later... Although we come from different industries and places, we are connected because of the poetry, so our complex is constant and constant."

The camera turns to other players, and many people shed tears.

The host Dong Qing said, "The wild geese are migratory birds. We can also regard the poetry conference as a call, just like a season. Every year, there will be such a season. We will come back from all directions to get warm, spend the winter and have the most sincere greetings and blessings."

Before attending the poetry conference, Chen did not join any poetry club. She was busy in the experiment of engineering students, and poetry seemed to be another secret world. Now, the poetry conference has given her a new circle of friends. When she heard an opinion about poetry that she did not agree with, "she would impulsively want to find someone to verify and share her views"; The friends will also share the resources of the course with each other. Before the competition, the players will also communicate all night

Chen Jueru, a contestant of the third season of the China Poetry Conference, watched the fourth season of the competition. She said, "Chen is undoubtedly the most eye-catching. No matter when he speaks, he always keeps his speed, and speaks slowly. He really enjoys poetry and the competition."

During the third season catalogue system, Chen Jueru and Chen Geng became good friends because of their similar age and hobbies. In the year after their separation, the two people kept in touch, talking about the pressure of scientific research, future planning, and their favorite poems. "This is a way for us to stand out from the busy real life and keep our poems far away."

The emotional connection generated by the poetry not only exists among the players, but also ties Chen Geng and the ancients together, obtaining emotional resonance across time and space, returning to the real world, and having a new perspective on love.

Previously, when referring to "favorite poems", Chen Geng would think of "people at the edge of the loessial road are like the moon, and white wrists coagulate frost and snow", and think of "a sad zheng playing a song on the Xiangjiang River, and the sound of the song is full of Xiangbo green". She said that when she was young, she would like those beautiful descriptions, exquisite antithesis, or majestic parallelism. But after reading poems for a long time, I prefer the "distant feeling" more and more.

She mentioned on many occasions that one of her favorite poems is Du Fu's Dream of Li Bai (Second), and Chen Geng waved his arm to describe the artistic conception of it: scratching his head when going out, if you lose your ambition. It was in the prime of his life. The arrogant poet, who went out laughing and could not get on the boat when the emperor called, raised his head to scratch the back of his head like an old man, and his hair was white.

"When you stare at his back, you don't communicate with him, and you don't need him to know. You can feel a very complex and rich meaning of life from it," Chen said.

She remembered a scene from her childhood——

In the summer evening, his father took Chen Geng out for a walk. At that time, there was no decent park in the city, and the construction around Xianyang Lake was not completed. They stopped on the Weihe River Bridge to enjoy the cool. Cars came and went on the road. Under the bridge was the Weishui River. Chen Geng played on the ground, and his father was silent a few meters away.

When a car passed, the bridge floor shook. Chen Geng unconsciously raised his head to look at his father. His back was thin and he squinted, not knowing where he was looking.

Many years later, when Chen Geng saw that "going out to scratch his head, he would lose his life ambition", he suddenly remembered his father who had dropped out of school to work in a textile factory, and thought of the boiling ideal he might have had, as if in an instant, he understood his father.

Once, on the Internet, someone posted a post asking: What's the use of reciting so many poems when I was a child?

Chen even liked the reply from one of his netizens, who wrote that all the ancient poems that he had swallowed and chewed in his childhood had already carried the deep feelings of the author at the moment when he created them, which would lead us to a long life. (Wang Shuangxing)

(Editor in charge: Li Huibo, Tang Shiyao)

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