Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment edit

  This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 22 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lingsha999. Peer reviewers: Emmazjia, Jiayi Li, Yuxiang4.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:12, 18 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Details of rescue edit

According to a Chinese documentary I saw recently:

  • Her fiance left her in the Russian built hotel and never saw her again.
  • The hotel owner refused to let her leave due to a 600 yuan debt. She was moved from a second floor room to a mouldy first floor room and heavily restricted her food allowance.
  • The hotel was near the redlight district and the hotel owner intended to sell her to a brothel.
  • She wrote a metaphorical poem about her plight and enclosed a note when she sent it to a local newspaper literary supplement. She wrote a second letter, more explicit, asking why the editor had not helped her.
  • The literary supplement editor formed a little group to discuss what to do, including the near penniless "Xiao Jun" who was not using that penname at the time.
  • The owner delayed selling her since the newspaper became involved and he didn't want bad press or reputation from the then powerful newspaper.
  • Xiao Jun took books to her and was about to leave when she invited him to stay for a chat. She was heavily pregnant at the time, in a ragged dress with unkempt hair which had started to turn white. He had not cared about her plight very much before he arrived but when he stayed he saw a poem and fell in love. (In paraphrase, "This time last year I was eating green apricots in Beijing. Now my life is as sour as green apricots.") He gave her "fifty cents" all the money he had on him and told her to buy food.
  • When the Songhua river breached its dikes after four weeks of rain the centre of Harbin flooded, including the ground floor of the hotel. Xiao Jun decided to swim to her carrying bread and sausages.
  • The hotel owner and employees fled in the flood that displaced 240 000 of the 320 000 residents of Harbin.
  • She refused to get on the boat with one of Xiao Jun's friends, instead waiting for him. She eventually got on a boat carrying wood and made her way to the house of the literary supplement editor where she found Xiao Jun who had made it to the hotel only after she had left.
  • A few weeks later she gave birth to a child whom she gave to a doorman and never succeeded in finding the child later.

This contradicts the article as it currently stands on the basis that she still had an undischarged debt of 600 yuan. The documentary implies that she never paid this off and only avoided the whorehouse by the fortunes of weather and the hotel owner fleeing. Xiao Jun was not "the editor" but only "an editor" of the literary supplement. The documentary title in English contained the words Hotel and Rescue but I don't recall it fully so I don't feel like adding it to the article page improperly referenced.

Waerloeg (talk) 22:59, 27 January 2012 (UTC)Reply


  • I have added a section on Xiao Hong's childhood. I have kept the original text on Xiao Hong's childhood and added the section that I wrote.
  • I think this little article, Forever Longing and Pursuing(永远的憧憬和追求 Yong Yuan De Chong Jing He Zhui Qiu), is a good description of Xiao Hong's childhood. Knowing one's childhood will help one to understand Xiao Hong's literary works in the future.
  • The influence of her grandfather and father was completely different, and this difference brought different ideas to Xiao Hong's childhood.
  • Obviously, her grandfather's influence was more meaningful to Xiao Hong.
  • At the same time, I will add Xiao Hong's emotions in the future. I think several men had a great influence on Xiao Hong, and these influences will be shown in Xiao Hong's style of works.

--Lingsha999 (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2020 (UTC)User:Lingsha999/Xiao HongReply