In May 1992, the author (right) and Wang Yuanhua at a symposium
Shaoxing Road is a small road in the central area of Shanghai, with a total length of less than 500 meters, but the history is nearly 100 years. The buildings on both sides are garden houses, conjoined villas and new-style lanes, which belonged to high-end residential areas before 1949, when most of the owners were high-ranking officials and tycoons, and there were also some literary and artistic people such as Ruan Lingyu who lived here, and the environment was quiet and elegant. After 1949, a number of publishing institutions successively settled on this road, so that this small road in the downtown but without commercial noise added a bookish atmosphere, and gradually formed into a "publishing culture street", which attracted attention and became famous.
In the autumn of 1972, I was transferred from the May Seventh Cadre School to the publishing system, and went to work on Shaoxing Road, successively in the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House and the Shanghai Publishing Association, until I retired in the summer of 2006, and stayed with Shaoxing Road for 34 years.
In the 1980s and 1990s, with the advance of ideological emancipation and the pace of reform and opening up, literature and art in the new period became increasingly prosperous, old writers appeared one after another, new authors continued to appear, and our publishing house received authors from all over the country almost every day, including old writers who re-emerged from the mountains, "May 7 writers" and "zhiqing writers" who became the backbone of creation at that time, and new authors who "showed their sharp corners in the small lotus". They like the elegant and quiet Shaoxing Road, and they love the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, which has a tradition of culture.
Author and Zhao Lihong (right)
The headquarters of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House is located at No. 74 Shaoxing Road, and the entrance is a small green courtyard, facing a three-storey Western-style building with a very personality, the building façade is asymmetrical, the shape is full of changes, light, concise, smooth and full of movement. The interior decoration is exquisite, the design is aesthetically pleasing, the escalator upstairs is S-shaped, and the side is walled with a huge block of stained glass, which is dazzling, and the author who came to visit praised the quietness of the road and the beauty of the building. Once When Wang Meng came, he deliberately ran up and down the whole building, and also went into the literary editing room on the third floor to talk to the editor, saying that he wanted to know how his manuscript was compiled in this beautiful small building.
One of the rooms in the middle of the second floor is the largest, and we use it as a meeting room and a reception room. At the end of the 1980s, under the leadership of the Propaganda Department of the Municipal Party Committee, in order to better absorb the best novellas in the country to appear on the "dock" of Shanghai and give full play to the role of Cultural Communication and Exchange in Shanghai, the "Shanghai Novella Outstanding Works Award" was established, as one of the three major literary and art awards in Shanghai, and its jury was established in this conference room. Members such as Qian Gurong, Jiang Kongyang, Pan Xulan, Xu Junxi, Li Ziyun, Yu Qiuyu, Chen Sihe, Zhang Delin and more than 10 others, director Xu Zhongyu asked the judges to carefully read the entries and not score "impression points". In order to be tested by readers, all the judges decided to publish the discussion records of the winning works in the "Novel Circle". As a result, the selection of this award was praised by the industry as "serious, democratic, open and fair".
In 1993, the author (second from the left) joined Zuo Ni (first from the right), Feng Lingzhi (second from the right), Lu Wenfu (third from right), Gao Xiaosheng (fourth from right), Deng Gang (fifth from right), and Wu Zongpei (first from left).
In this room, more writers and critics participated in the workshop. In the summer of 1984, "Novel Circle" received the novella "Dragon Claw" from The Inner Mongolian writer Feng Lingzhi, and after reading it, I felt that it had distinctive characteristics and profound meaning, and immediately decided to publish it in the headline position, and in the name of the editor, wrote recommended words. After the work was published, we held a seminar, and Qian Gurong, Wang Anyi, Wu Liang, Cheng Depei, Li Guoyi, etc. unanimously gave high praise. Feng Lingzhi, who happened to be passing by Shanghai, also walked into this conference room for the first time, saying that Shaoxing Road in Shanghai was his blessed land. Since then, the influence of "Dragon's Claw" has been increasing day by day, and all domestic novel anthologies and even magazines such as "Xinhua Digest" have selected this work, becoming the most reprinted novel at that time. As a result, Feng Lingzhi has contacted and exchanged with many writers and editors in Shanghai, and has written several excellent novellas for our publishing house. In 2019, the Collected Works of Feng Lingzhi was also published in Shanghai.
Author and Xi Murong
As a reception room, we have received many writers from home and abroad in this house. At the end of the 1990s, Xi Murong specially published her self-selected collection to us. Xi Murong's writing is light and clear, and her name reminds people of the poem "Beaded Curtain Covering the Hibiscus Face", I imagined that she should belong to a delicate woman, however, when I saw her in the reception room, I found that she did not look as imagined, and even a little Xuan Ang. I made the mistake of "looking forward to the righteousness of the text", which made me feel that the sentence "the text is like its person" should be analyzed in detail, and it should not be fully trusted. After the contact was more mature, at a dinner table for her, I told me about this feeling and said that I was going to write it into the article. She smiled and said she would send it to her after publication.
At the beginning of the new period, there were often foreign writers who came to our publishing house to talk about revising and even writing manuscripts, but at that time, they were shy and could not afford to live in a hotel, which made us feel that it was not enough to receive authors in the living room, and they must also be given a "back compartment" to live in. Therefore, we bought a small vacant lot in Lane 384, Jianguo West Road, which is close to Shaoxing Road, and built a three-story building in the style of a home Shikumen, which was also managed in the form of a home. Daily meals, small pot stir-fry, at your discretion. The service staff cares for the guests like relatives, and the writers feel free, casual, kind and warm here, plus they are all literati who seek the same breath, the old rain and new knowledge, the tea paper, but also a joy in life. As a result, this humble building called the "Creation Room" was loved by writers as a "home". Later, some writers came to Shanghai with complete conditions to stay in high-end hotels, but they were still willing to run to this "home". In the past twenty years, forty or fifty old, middle-aged and young writers have left their mark here.
Author (center) "Reader's Day" at Shanghai Literature, Culture and Music Publishing House in 1995
At the end of 1996, I attended the Fifth Congress of the All-China Writers Association in Beijing, and during the break of the meeting, everyone chatted idly about the "home" of Shanghai, and Lu Guang and other comrades suggested that we might as well ask some writers to write about this "home" and keep it as a souvenir. Subsequently, a number of writers wrote manuscripts. Shu Ting's article, titled "There Is Such a Kind and Warm Place", wrote: "The small guest house in the company creates a family atmosphere: the porridge is hot in the pot, the delicious home-cooked side dishes are placed in the cupboard, and the person who returns late always has a meal for him." Often, I heard the concierge call me: Sister, phone! Ye Wenling called it a "warm caravanserai"; Lu Yanzhou called it "an unforgettable small building"; and Cao Yumo praised it as "giving people a family-like warmth". In 1997, we collected these articles into a book called "The Chronicle of the Little Building", which vividly shows a beautiful feeling between the author and the editor, and reflects a flourishing literary history. Some comrades believe that a commemorative nameplate can be hung in front of this small building.
While we try to treat the author well, we also try to think of the reader. In the 1980s, there was a single channel for book distribution, forming a contradictory situation of "difficult to buy books and difficult to sell books". In order to open up distribution channels, in June 1986, our company established a "Reader's Club" and a book bar on Shaoxing Road to directly supply books to readers. Members have developed rapidly, among which cultural celebrities such as Hua Junwu have also joined the club, mailing the books they need many times, and the "Reader Club" has been praised as "Taofen-style Life Bookstore". At the same time, some reading activities were carried out from time to time, the largest and most influential of which was the "Reader Activity Day" held on Shaoxing Road in the autumn of 1995, with writers Zhao Lihong, Lu Tianming, Xue Haiyang and Xu Lan, Yue opera performance artist Xu Yulan, host Cao Kefan, and Taiwanese artist Ling Feng on Baodao signing for sale of their new works. Different authors have different readerships, and there are many fans around each signing table. Scholar Wang Yuanhua's "Speculative Essays" won the National Book Award, and he was also invited to talk to readers.
Many readers wanted to know the "inside story" of publishing work, and the editors of our company introduced them one by one, and invited them to visit the editorial office of No. 74 and the publishing section and readers' club of No. 7. In the book bar, readers drink tea and coffee, buy discount books, and are very happy. Thousands of readers attended the event that day, and the unique tranquility of Shaoxing Road was broken, bustling and rushing, "the former called, the latter should be", and the bustle was extraordinary. In order to ensure order and safety, we have specially hired public security police to maintain order, which is probably a groundbreaking opportunity for this quiet road.
In October 1986, Xiu Xiaolin, senior editor of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, and writer Deng Gang (first from left) and Liu Zhaolin (first from right) took a group photo in the creative room of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, No. 11, Lane 384, Jianguo West Road
Shaoxing Road publishing institutions, in addition to the few people often mention, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, Baijia Publishing House, Shanghai Audio and Video Publishing House, Zhonghua Bookstore Shanghai Editorial Office, and people's police magazine agency, have all settled here. "People's Police" is the first public security magazine after the founding of New China, has a very good influence, in the 1980s and our company co-founded the public security literary journal "Oriental Sword", they were our door-to-door neighbors on Shaoxing Road at that time, I called it "Ten Steps of Herbs" in an article. The strong aroma of books on Shaoxing Road is formed by the gathering of many "herbs".
Out of the east exit of Shaoxing Road, opposite is Ruijin Hospital, now I go to Ruijin to see a doctor, and sometimes I will go to Shaoxing Road to walk... (Jiang Zengpei)