我手寫我口

Write what you think, “想什麼, 寫什麼”

During my middle school years at 建中, 王藍, a Chinese writer, author
of the novel "藍與黑", was once invited to our school to give us a talk
on “writing”. He spoke to more than 3000 students in the school's
大操場 under the bright sun. Honestly, I did not get much of what he
had said except the first sentence in his opening statement. He said
that writing was very easy, you just “write what you think”, or in his
own real words “想什麼, 寫什麼”.

After that talk, I thought it should not be hard to write if we just
write what we think, not what we are told to, or what we need to,
or how we are instructed to, like writing an essay according to
what the teacher would expect, such as "起承轉合"

Then, in the high school, we had this 國文 teacher 王瓊珊, who was
said to be the top one graduate in his class from 師大 Chinese
Literature. He wanted us to write a good essay and recommended
to us a book called “東萊博議”. I bought one copy from 正中書局, but
then noticed the sample writings were too "八股". There were too
many "子曰", "嗚呼" and, of course, "之乎者也". I thought I would
rather write with the new free style that 胡適 had long promoted.

黃遵憲, a writer and poet of 晚清 and 民初 period, had also encouraged
people to “write what you think”. He once wrote a poem, which has
been quite popular:

我手寫我口, 古豈能拘牽.
即今流俗語, 我若登簡編.
五千年後人, 驚為古爛斑.

In "我手寫我口", 口 means heart, mind or thought.
So, I write what I think in my "The Yehtze File”


Yeh Tze