"Ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, literature and art have all followed such a law: it rises with the times, changes by taking advantage of the situation, moves with the times, and resonates with the same frequency as the times."
The result of the writer's lazy footwork and brain power is taken for granted
I've always lived in the metropolis of Shanghai, and to be honest, I've also joined the "chorus" about the countryside, which always has two partic themes, one is "elegy" and the other is "pastoral". The theme of "Elegy" is "The Loss of the Countryside", lamenting the decline and even disappearance of the countryside; the theme word of "Pastoral Song" is "Pastoral Nostalgia", singing the scene of cattle and sheep returning home under the sunset in the countryside in the past. I walked through the crowded streets of the city and the skyscrapers lined up one after another, rubbing shoulders with the people around me who were walking on and behind my back, and then, on the balcony of my home full of air-conditioning and anti-theft windows, I began to sing such country elegy and country pastoral songs, and the song sheet I opened, that is, the country writing, set the tone.
But in fact, this is a cloud of people.
We joined the chorus on the one hand because we heard a lot of news that the countryside was engulfed in the process of modernization and urbanization, and on the other hand, because we saw a large number of migrant workers pouring into the city, and this kind of hearing is indeed easy to bring us in the city into an emotional imagination, when the actual and the virtual are superimposed, it is even more expanding the imagination - the farmland shrinks, the old house is destroyed, or the whole village is simply erased on the map, and the farmers there naturally have to change their way of life. In particular, young adults simply choose to leave and go to the city. This kind of imagination that is not unfounded has profoundly affected literary writing, so the anxiety and regret about the demise of the countryside in the process of modernization and urbanization, and the remembrance and remembrance of past rural scenes have been the mainstream of rural literary writing for a long time, and literary works based on this tone are still produced in large quantities. For example, although I have no practical experience of rural life, and I do not have a deep understanding of the past, present and future of the countryside, when it comes to rural writing, I also join this "chorus".
It is true that such a tone of rural writing has been excellent, and through the revelation of the physical and mental impact and shocks of rural peasants in the period of social transformation and the transformation of the times, it is sobering to reflect on various new social contradictions and new social problems arising in the process of modernization and urbanization. However, there are also quite a few literary works, there is no real understanding and understanding of today's countryside, as soon as they dabble in rural themes, they will take the most talked about social phenomena such as "hollow villages", "empty nest villages", left-behind children, lonely old people, village tyrants, environmental destruction, etc. as themes, with unreliable emotional imagination, applying the so-called "literary motif", "Western-style template", and even more so the earlier "village chief widow big yellow dog" set, resulting in rural writing seemingly lively but homogeneous, cottageization", shallow and monotonous; and when history "turns the page", it is still repeating such rural writing, which is obviously sluggish and outdated.
I think this is exactly the result of the writer's detachment from reality, the failure to go deep into the countryside to conduct research, the laziness of his feet and brain, and the result of taking it for granted. All in all, it's a lot of people.
Entering the countryside in the track ahead provides the greatest possibility for writing in the new countryside
Only after I had the opportunity to really sink my heart and conduct interviews and conduct fieldwork in the countryside for several years did I realize how shallow my previous understanding of the countryside was, and the perception conveyed to me by everyone and to society through my own writing was crude, narrow and even ridiculous.
In the clouds of people, a basic fact is obscured: although the times are changing and society is changing, the countryside is still there, but the original and deep-rooted concepts of the countryside in our minds have changed, and the natural and humanistic features of the countryside have changed, but China's rural areas have not disappeared, still run on the vast land, even if there are many peasants flocking to the cities, the countryside is still their base camp, and the huge army returning home during the Spring Festival every year is a proof; and what is even more obscured is that it is even more obscured Today's peasants, whether they are in the city or stick to the village, are participating in poverty alleviation in their own way and building a new rural form and model of civilized governance, including nature and society.
I deeply feel that if we are not immersed in the scene, if we do not mingle with the peasants and communicate with each other, it is impossible to perceive and feel their inner world, and it is difficult to know what they are really thinking, doing, yearning for, and pursuing. This kind of rural writing, which is divorced from the reality of the countryside and far from the hostages of the peasants, really does not have much cognitive significance and value. After several years of deep roots in the countryside of the coastal area, I have gained a new vision, and the new stories, new characters, new themes, and new topics brought about by historical development have given new possibilities and inevitability to rural writing.
The pursuit of peasants at the spiritual level after poverty alleviation; the rediscovery of rural masters; the establishment and identity of new farmers; the transformation of rural forms; the reconstruction of rural sage traditions; the transformation of rural clan relations; the renewal of rural life content; the trend of returning to the countryside and starting a business again; the family consensus and synergy formed by the left-behind and the outgoing in the process of poverty alleviation; the self-resolution of resistance and demand contradictions in the process of modernization and urbanization; the imbalance of development within the shaded rural developed areas; the back and opposite directions of the countryside and the city... These new themes, new contents, and even new problems can at least get rid of the narrowness and singleness of rural writing at present, and at least allow readers to have a multi-faceted, multi-angle, and multi-faceted understanding and understanding of today's rural China, so as to expand the breadth of rural writing, promote the depth of rural writing, and create a new height of rural writing.
When I asked young rural readers with university degrees in the countryside for their views on the current literary works on rural themes, their questions left me speechless: Why can urban people improve their living conditions, but the countryside can only guard the decadent walls, and cannot have new buildings and new houses that bring convenience to life? Why can the face of the city change with each passing day, but the face of the countryside cannot be greatly changed? Modern agriculture is the trend of historical development, why does the new way of work have no sense of beauty, and we must also advocate old cattle ploughing the field? They even think that some literary works are "pseudo-rural writing", such as writing about the tranquility and tranquility of the countryside in the past, mostly out of their own imagination and illusion; for example, writing about the impact of the modernization process on the countryside, one-sidedly emphasizing the resistance and discomfort of the villagers, without writing about their own strong requirements for modernization and the urgency of integrating into it; for example, writing about left-behind children, only seeing the negative aspects of their "stay", not seeing the positive aspects of their "keeping", only writing about loss and pain, not writing about and comforting, It is not written about the defects and completions of the childhood of left-behind children in the historical context. In their eyes, many works are either hypocritical or self-made.
Obviously, their questioning and questioning do not recognize and distrust our rural writing today, which also shows the strangeness and estrangement between the writers and them. It was precisely by sinking into the countryside, observing and experiencing the real life of local farmers on the ground, and not being in the clouds, that my personal rural writing had a new look.
In Ninghai County, Zhejiang Province, I ran through every township and town, and stayed in several villages to investigate the implementation of the "Thirty-six Articles of the List of Small and Micro Powers in Rural Areas" issued in early 2014 that is consistent with the "Township Rules and Regulations" of villagers' autonomy, and I was completely shocked, because my understanding of the countryside is still listening to the ignorance, backwardness, low quality, villagers' numbness, and village cadres' wanton behavior in external dissemination. We should build a new grass-roots political civilization ecology, implement democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management, and democratic supervision, and realize the fundamental transformation from "being the master of the people" to "being the master of the people." Their efforts are so earnest, their spirits are so high, they dare to try, they pay the price for it, but they are tenacious, they want a truly clear world, and I am touched by it.
In fact, the pursuit of the peasants in Ninghai is not the pursuit of the whole Chinese people, and a particularly important measure of the people's yearning for a better life is human dignity, materially not bent over poverty and poverty, and spiritually not unable to raise their heads for the lack of ownership status. It is almost a fantasy that such a reform of democratic politics, which concerns the whole country, is consciously and voluntarily undertaken by the peasants in the ninghai countryside, but I have really seen that through the long reportage "List of Powers: Thirty-six Articles", I have recorded what I have seen and heard in Ninghai, and with real and vivid examples, reflecting the major institutional innovations carried out by the peasants in the rural areas of Ninghai, as well as the most sincere, deepest, and most arduous pursuit and struggle of contemporary Chinese peasants under this measure. It provides a new era experience and ideal sample for grassroots democratic political reform with Chinese characteristics.
Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 2018 edition
To have new discoveries, new explorations, and new thinking is what I put forward for my own creation, so that I can write about what others have not written and what others have not written. In The List of Powers: Thirty-Six Articles, I have written in great detail a meeting of villagers' representatives, which I believe has never appeared in previous literary works. The villagers' representative meeting was carried out in full accordance with the provisions of the "Rules of Procedure for the Ninghai County Villagers' Representative Meeting (Trial)", including pre-meeting announcements, in-session rules of procedure, and post-meeting publicity, and the rules of procedure of the meeting incorporated a reasonable part of the "Robert's Rules of Procedure": the villagers' representatives who requested to speak should raise their hands to the presiding officer of the meeting, and each villager representative could speak twice on this topic, the first time was not more than 10 minutes, the second time was not more than 5 minutes, and the speech must face the presiding officer of the meeting. There can be no suspicion of the motives of others or verbal attacks; the positive and negative parties alternately speak one by one, and no villager representative can make a second statement on a topic until the representative of the villager who wants to make the first statement; the presiding officer of the meeting shall not express or guide the topic under discussion; after the speech is completed, a vote is taken and recorded. The meeting I personally witnessed was conducted in an orderly and efficient manner, and it also fully embodied the spirit of modern democracy. I am particularly encouraged by the skillful use of the rules of procedure by the villagers, because I see in them the self-defeating criticism of the quality of Chinese peasants. Such peasants are remarkable, and they are not the representatives of the image of today's China.
It can be seen that entering the countryside in the forward track provides the greatest possibility for the writing of new villages.
It is both the newness of the countryside and the newness of writing
The new rural writing has both the foundation of the long years and the call of the times. Ancient and modern Chinese and foreign, rural writing is highly valued, especially in our country, in the future for a long period of history, will also be a country with the most extensive rural area and the largest peasant base, in the final analysis, the countryside is the deepest basic level of the country, the cornerstone of Chinese society, the countryside is the fundamental place related to the overall situation, rural prosperity is the reliable guarantee for the prosperity of the whole country, therefore, rural writing will continue to be concerned by people. People have reason to ask writers to care about the changes of the times, discover the inner texture of the most basic level in China today, write about the appearance and spirit of today's countryside, and write about the situation and struggle of today's peasants.
I think that the new rural writing from a historical perspective must first break through stereotypes and prejudices, take off the colored glasses, and put down the posture of being condescending and self-righteous. In my opinion, a writer should be soberly and fully aware of his ignorance, his own limitations, and we often talk about the countryside as if we know everything, but in fact we know very little, paradoxically. If you don't witness it with your own eyes and don't go deep into it, you will be blinded, you will ignore many extremely important things, and even the spark of even a little hope will be extinguished due to ignorance and incomprehension. The "new" of the new countryside writing is not only the new of the countryside, requiring the performance and telling of the "Chinese story" about the new countryside; it is also the newness of writing, which requires breakthroughs and innovations in writing, then it is even more necessary to go out of the crowd and reflect the fiery real life in today's rural areas with unique discoveries and creative and infectious writing, and show the new spiritual outlook of today's farmers.
The original article is published in the "WeChat public account of the Literary Newspaper"
"Shanghai Writers" WeChat group
Editor-in-chief: Yang Binhua
Editor-in-Chief: Wang Yun
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