Distant writer's dream
Wen Meng
Typing this title on the computer, the wife and daughter make a "snort" sound almost at the same time, and then express that you are also considered a writer? How many great works have you ever written? How many books have you published? Tofu block things have indeed been issued a lot, tofu workshops can, sitting at home can be, clouds. I dare not type again. When asked about the Literary Association, the Literary Association said that you are a member of the Chinese Writers Association and said that the writers were not excessive.
Finally, steady, first called so.
I was born in a remote rural area called Ash Bay. There are mountains in the village, and the mountains are not high, let alone show. There is no river in the village, not even a stream that can flow for a long time. There is still water in the village, it is water in paddy fields, water in wells, water falling from the sky. If there is no rain for ten days and a half months, everyone will wither like crops, and they will have to carry water from other villages - such a place will not be patronized even if the absurd Mr. Feng Shui will not patronize, people may be excellent but the land is not smart, such a place is very difficult to feed people, and what talent can be talked about. Therefore, my simple homeland does not give me or my brothers and my countrymen any hint of success.
Speaking of hints, we have to say something that may be criticized.
If you don't see my grandfather working in the village wearing straw shoes and dirt and mud, just looking at his long beard like snow and the beautiful brush writing under his hands, you definitely think that this old man would be a scholar or at least a private school.
When his father became a family, his grandfather gave his grandson who had no shadow eight names: "Mingfa Bandai is fierce and strong." If you don't see any central meaning and value orientation, it's loud. Everyone laughed at him, you feed your current few mouths is not bad, or eight? Still all boy names?
My mother really gave birth to eight, I don't know if the name is too yang, or fate is destined to have no daughter, my sister in front of me and my brother and my sister in the back have all died, leaving six boys with brushes. Later, I wrote an article to take the pen name Wen Meng, the middle of the "Xian" character generations omitted, some people said that I am crazy, Wen Meng Wen Meng article how fierce, did not consider more, the name ranked on my head ...
One winter, the village was covered in snow, and the whole family gathered around the fire to roast the fire. Grandpa said I'll come and see your future. Grandpa turned out the shenggeng of our six brothers, pinched his finger A B propylene ding penta heptythene geng hard to chant for half a day, speaking of me, Grandpa smiled, our Wen family is worthy of this "Wen" word is still counting the old five, don't look at him now stuttering, the old five lives with Wenchang Miao pen shenghua fame spread far and wide... The brothers laughed at me and said you... You give up (write) an essay... Article to... Show us, the whole family laughed together. The mother laughed at Grandpa's old confusion, saying that a group of children dug up the ground in this palm-sized place all day long to pick up soil and graze cattle and grass, did not have enough to eat, wear and did not warm, and still wrote articles and returned to their hometowns as officials?
Grandpa said to believe in himself and believe in the future.
It was getting snowing heavily outside, and my mother told everyone to eat, saying that the coming year would be a bumper harvest year. That snowy night, my mother, who had never been miserly, actually cooked a large table of good dishes.
On September 1, 1975, the fourth brother took me to study at the village farming school in our village, and in the primary school on the mountain beam, my reading results were not well-known, but my naughtiness was well-known. There are two scenes about me in that school that teachers and classmates still talk about, that is, I was invited by the teacher to stand in front of the blackboard almost every day to serve as a "teaching assistant" for the teacher, and my father would be called to the teacher's office almost every three or two days to receive the "paper". If I could show my grandfather's prophesied writing talent at that time, it was that my review book was guaranteed to be written a lot, that it was no problem to bind a few books, and that every review guarantee and other written things were published in a wide range, and many heavyweight reviews and guarantees were on the bulletin board of the village office, and the whole village read it.
But at that time, I was naughty and naughty, and my grades were not bad, which is probably why the teacher did not abandon me and did not give up strict supervision. I like to read extracurricular books, Grandpa took out a large bundle of books from the book box, I don't read, there are no illustrations on the books, the words are still vertical. I read my brothers' chinese textbooks and history textbooks, the only two vernacular documents in the family, one was "Dedicate Everything to the Party", and the other was the collection of novels "Dragon Leaping tiger leap" that my cousin-in-law who was a soldier brought back from the army reflecting the life of the army. Grandpa sighed at his precious book, saying that if the books of the ancients were not read, they would suffer losses.
Later, in the experience of being a human being, when I needed the guidance of my grandfather's precious ancient books, I went back to my hometown, and those ancient books were completely decayed because of the years and the loneliness of my cherished descendants...
Because I did not know how to cherish and did not get nutrition from the sages, I did not have the courage and atmosphere of my humanistic literature, but the original ecological rural life, hard study, and family gratitude gave me a thick accumulation of creative accumulation.
Next door to my house is the village's ancient oil press, and in the call of the sound of wood pressing, there are always people from near and far who come here to squeeze oil during the harvest season of rapeseed and oil tung every year. When the sound of wood squeezing rested, everyone sat down and tasted the village's bud valley wine, telling many, many stories and anecdotes. It was there that my brother and I heard things like "Seven Heroes and Five Righteousness", "Sui and Tang Dynasty Speech", "Saying Yue Biography", etc., and more often heard a lot of folk tales and folk songs. The passion of strength and oil squeezing trumpets, stories and fragrances, give us a bright color of gray childhood.
On the mountain beam in front of my house is a natural earthen dam, and the village has built a village barn house on the side of the dam. The night watch barn house is the lowest work given in the village, and families with few families can't afford to earn the 3 points per night. There are many brothers in my family, and no one will say anything about earning this work. Although there are many people in my family, the brothers should start a family and become a family, the fourth brother is studying in a distant place, and the younger brother is small, so the work in the family should naturally be earned by me. Every night, the village took turns sending an adult to accompany me to guard the barn house. The lonely wind, the lonely moon, the miserable barking of the dogs, I pestered the adults who guarded the house together to tell me stories, and gave me the opportunity to accumulate in life.
What really prompted me to take writing as my own path in life was that I was involuntarily admitted to Wanxian Normal School.
In June 1983, I graduated from junior high school and stepped into a school called Kangjiawan in a remote land on the outskirts of Wanzhou, with a quaint campus, tall Metasequoia trees, and a solemn school motto monument, which gave us the thickness of history and the heaviness of our prospects. Entering the cradle of the future mountain village teachers, we know exactly what life we will be waiting for. Coming out of the mountain village, I long to use my hard reading to integrate into the prosperity and live a new life different from my father's generation, and we have to repeat it.
The seniors told me that learn to write, give yourself a spiritual sky, let the dim mountain village under the kerosene lamp have more of the brightness of the soul, and let the lonely starry sky have more of the ease of dreams.
I didn't think so ethereal, I thought very practically, analyzing and summarizing the life path of my seniors who went out of this school, I deeply know that as a teacher training student, as a school rebel who is not willing to be a mountain village teacher for a lifetime, writing may be an important way to change my destiny.
I wrote the first thing that I considered literary, "Eternal Remembrance," which was an article remembering Chairman Mao. I knew the meaning of the sky was high, I knew the dangers of the common Chinese ideal, but I submitted my first paper to People's Literature, and for a long time after that I went to the communication room almost every day to see if the postman could hand me a letter from Beijing—I didn't even receive a printed rejection letter in my daily disappointment. The seniors told me to give the school magazine of the Wax Torch Literary Club, and the road had to be taken step by step--a week later, my article was actually published in the literary club's board newspaper "Metasequoia", not to discuss whether it was printed in lead or not, which should be my debut work, at least recognized by teachers and classmates as something like literature.
Everyone in my family knows I can write articles. The happiest and proudest person is naturally my grandfather, he said, my prediction is correct, our Wen family finally has a person worthy of this surname. Grandpa told me to take a bench to the courtyard dam to look at the stars, saying that children, a person with ideals should learn to look at the starry sky, how high the sky is, how high the stars are.
I will always remember My Grandfather's words.
On April 1, 1986, the communications room called me to answer the phone, saying that my grandfather had passed away. Rushing home, Grandpa was lying in a new grave on the hillside behind the house. My father called me to his hospital bedside and said Xianmeng, Grandpa has been reading and listening to the articles you wrote until he died, you go and read one to Grandpa!
Kneeling in front of Grandpa's grave, I don't want to show Grandpa my articles, but can I read to Grandpa the things that count as compositions? It wasn't until 10 years later that I wrote "Grandpa Who Built Roads" and published it in "Youth", and I wonder if Grandpa read his voice in the distant kingdom of heaven that he did not hear the late arrival of his descendants?
On May 3, 1986, the old janitor called me to answer the phone, and my father died. The long lamp at grandpa's grave had not yet been extinguished, and the regretful father walked towards qingshan with his eyes open and a yellow coffin. The eldest brother said that his father did not close his eyes until he died, he waited for me to play a song of erhu for him, read an article I wrote, thought of the summer vacation father asked me to carry the erhu on the mountain beam to pull the pride, thought of the father let me write the article pasted in the village office pride, until six years later I transferred from the rural middle school to the city to work, I finally understood my father's intentions, the height of the mountain beam is the height of the child, the height of the child is the height of the father. That year, I published several articles about my father in newspapers and periodicals such as Teacher's Daily and Health Newspaper: "The Sound of the Piano on the Mountain Beam", "Father, The Last Barefoot Doctor in the Mountain Village" and so on. I wrote in my essay "The Sound of the Piano on the Mountain Beam": In fact, the mountain beam in front of the house is quite high, and it is the place where the sun shines first in the village, but there are children standing on the mountain beam, so in the father's heart, the mountain beam is not high...
Dead father, is that what you mean?
I actually published my first article, or to be precise, the first debut work that became lead, or in June 1989, I sent my first junior high school graduates to the middle school entrance examination hall, and I took the prose poem I wrote, "A Pair of Eyes in a Small Town", as if it were a cleaner, and went to the supplement department of Wanxian Daily with great reverence to visit Teacher Xiang Qiuwei, who was then compiling the supplement, and stood in front of Teacher Xiang with a sweat like a primary school student. Xiang was very kind to the teacher, told me to sit down, brought me fruit, brought me a fan, and said are you familiar with the city? Do you love the city? Why not write about your familiar and emotional life? He asked me to leave the article and gave me several books. Unexpectedly, two weeks later, in the "Three Gorges" supplement of Wanxian Daily, my prose poem was published! The article is not long, about three or four hundred words, but in those hundreds of words of articles, I can hardly see the shadow of my original work, and I know the good intentions of this editor I respect, a young writer who has come out of the old district of Chengkou. Just such a bold and inconspicuous article, my school is sensational, my mountain village is sensational, my difficult family is sensational. Because of the inspiration of this debut work, I began to believe that I was sure of myself, and that year I actually published several articles in "Juvenile Literature", "Essays", "Frontier Literature", and "Mountain Flower".
Grandpa may have been too careful to hint at that time to give me the height of dreams, my father let me lift the erhu to the mountain beam to play to give me the height of the spine, did not expect that for me, a child from the countryside, my writing gave me the height and brightness of life, and my small writing achievements changed my life and prospects.
In September 1992, the county education bureau saw my writing skills and transferred me from a remote mountain middle school to the education bureau.
In March 1994, again because of my writing achievements, the Propaganda Department transferred me to the past, specializing in news reporting work, often going deep into the countryside, factories, school interviews, especially the great Three Gorges immigrants gave me rich living materials, gave me the gold mine of creation, gave me the height of literary creation, in addition to news works, publish dozens of works every year, and from time to time also won a lot of literary awards at or above the provincial level, the most fruitful harvest was in 1998, that year won Jiangsu, Sichuan, Jilin, Chongqing and other provincial and municipal literary works newspaper supplement works have 8 first prizes, won 6 various essay awards, joined the Chongqing Writers Association.
In March 2010, my first collection of essays, "The Sound of the Piano on the Mountain Beam", was published and distributed by the Popular Literature and Art Publishing House, and in the following years, my reportage collection "Three Gorges Report", the prose collection "Far Away", "The River of Life" and so on were also published, I know that it is impossible for Luoyang paper to be expensive, but I believe that there are always some stories that will impress you, and there are always some words that will resonate with you, because there is too much gratitude behind these words.
What I should be most grateful for is my mother, who after my father's death, supported the stormy family, sent her brother to college, completed the marriage of all her children, and brought up all her grandchildren. She had no culture, she couldn't read a single word, but she could remember everyone's birthday clearly. Naturally, she couldn't read my articles, but no matter which child's house she was in, she would always carefully collect every newspaper, magazine, and book, and no one was allowed to litter, because she always thought that there were my articles on it.
Fortunately, I did not give up, and my distant dream of being a writer continued...
Maybe one day, I'll actually become a writer, at least a writer who doesn't let my wife and daughter "scoff."
Bless me!
(The author is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and the chairman of the Wanzhou District Writers Association)
Layout appreciation