It is not so much that Yang Benfen is a writer, but that she is a recorder who loves life.
Ben-Fen Yang is 81 years old this year. In the square, like her peers, she walked, chatted, and walked her dog. Back at home, she takes care of her wife and takes care of her life seriously. Feeling that she had a surplus of time, she took out her iPad, tucked herself into a chair, fell silent, and wrote something. In the past, she used to tell her family that her most enviable profession was writing. In 2020, her debut novel "Autumn Garden" was published, and she became the kind of person she once envied.
Written | Liu Xu
She quietly wrote about the ups and downs of a woman's life in the torrent of the times. The protagonist of the book, Qiu Yuan, is based on her mother. Yang Benfen salvaged countless fragments from memory, including happiness and joy, as well as struggle and pain, all of which were truthfully recorded by her in words. And the story about ordinary people that was finally spliced together was also seen by more people because of its simplicity and sincerity.
《Autumn Garden》
By Yang Benfen
Le Fu Culture | Beijing United Publishing Company, 2020-6
On Douban, "Autumn Garden" has nearly 20,000 people who have commented on it, with a rating of 8.9 points. Reprints, best-selling, media interviews, and the things that professional writers are accustomed to have also entered the trajectory of Yang Benfen's life at the age of 80. Before that, she never expected to step into the literary field in her later years. Nor did she expect that the little things in her personal history would resonate with so many people.
Late genius
After retirement, Yang Benfen often used reading to pass the time, and when she looked through the books, she secretly thought to herself: "I think I can also write something." So she took the pile of old manuscript paper as an object and poured out her truest thoughts on it. She has no professional training, so she doesn't have any baggage when she writes: "I told myself that I could write it chronologically from beginning to end." ”
This is how her first writing began, with no utilitarian purpose at all, but purely by an impulse, expressing it frankly. The thicker the manuscript paper is, the more the manuscript is written, and the manuscript weighs eight pounds. At that time, she was almost old.
Works by Ben fen Yang.
Zhang Hong, the second daughter who is engaged in publishing work, was surprised to see her mother's works at home. On the yellowed manuscript paper, there are both stories that Zhang Hong has heard and some content that even she feels fresh. While encouraging her mother to write, Zhang Hong helped her mother upload these words to the Tianya community. In the post, many netizens left praise for the text. Seeing those messages, Yang Benfen was extremely moved. Sometimes at 3 a.m., she would get up from bed and look through the latest reviews.
But during that time, Yang Benfen was very distressed, she would not use the computer, she could only watch what others said on the screen, but could not respond. She didn't want to always bother her daughter, so after moving to Nanchang, the first thing she did was learn to "play the computer". In two or three months, she can easily translate her ideas into words and post them online. Since then, she has been unable to receive it, and the tablet that does not leave her hand has become another storage place for her memories.
Yang Benfen said: "I want to present these details, I think it is useless to just build an empty shelf. So when it was published online, she wrote about her father's experience in great detail, and some of the content seemed too difficult and even a little sensitive now. Because of this, some publishers have stopped talking to her.
Until 2019, The publisher of Lefu Culture, Tu Tu, saw these words. He read only one chapter and decided that the book must be published—even if the editor did not approve of it. In the Douban book review written by Tu Tu, he lamented the weight of fate in the book and the gentle indifference of the author's writing. He wrote: "It [The Autumn Garden] is a memory, it is reconciliation, it is a record of history, it is a woman's confession, but first of all, it is writing. It is a writer with enough genius, who has accumulated his life, began writing at the age of 70, and was not published until the age of 80, his debut novel. ”
After the book was published, Yang Benfen's life did not change much. Until one day, when she was walking downstairs, a lady called her "Teacher Yang" behind her back. In the process of small talk, the lady told Yang Benfen that after reading her book, she was deeply moved. At that moment, Yang Benfen realized that the stories of ordinary people she wrote could still bring some power to these ordinary individuals at present.
Yang Benfen will take a period of time every day to check the messages written by netizens for her. She said: "I am very relieved, and seeing the encouragement, I will feel that all that I have written is quite worth it." But there are also some critical voices in the comments, such as questioning the logical structure of the book and the plot setting. When he saw those harsh words, Yang Benfen didn't care too much: "I can't help myself what they think." I just try to write them out, most of them are sad and can't bring happiness to everyone, I'm sorry. ”
Genius is naturally in the spotlight. Media interviews with Yang Benfen also came with the hot sales of her books. She would hardly refuse. "Young people are interested in a retired old lady, care about my experiences, and are happy to hear my stories, I am still very happy, which also gives my family life a little different air," she said. ”
A recent photo of Ben fen Yang. (Photo/ Courtesy of respondents)
Not long ago, several reporters visited Yang Benfen's home. She showed them old things, told stories of the ages, and had a home-cooked meal together. As they parted, the reporters hugged her one by one and said to her in their ears, "Grandma, I love you so much." Yang Benfen felt that those words were the most beautiful and beautiful words.
The reporter will also give the report a private message to Yang Benfen, and she has read every article. "I can't remember which units it was, but they wrote me really well," she said. "Some media tell The story of Ben-Fen Yang in a non-fiction way, and there are some romanticized places. Yang Benfen remembers that there was an article written by her 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon. But in fact, she is now "amazing to be able to work for 40 minutes straight", the pain in her knees, plus having to take care of her old partner, she has to interrupt her writing frequently and get up to cope with real life.
Ben-Fen Yang (left) and mother (right).
Dewdrops of memory
In July 2021, Yang Benfen had a second work - "Driftwood". The book was seen by her as an addition to Autumn Garden. In his debut work, in order to maintain the compact structure, Yang Benfen deliberately deleted some fragments, including the story of his younger brother Yang Rui, who died 13 months after birth, and the lives of Tian Si and his eldest brother Ziheng, who had less ink.
In the preface, she writes: "Eighty is not a small number for a man, and I have also glimpsed that I am about to die. Fortunately, before saying goodbye, I left a dewdrop memory with "Autumn Garden" and "Driftwood". Yang Benfen said that in fact, the process of recalling the past is very painful. She often wrote that tears flowed uncontrollably. She told herself to be calm and rational, but the picture in her mind was so strong that the people and things that had passed away appeared clearly in front of her eyes.
Driftwood
Le Fu Culture | Beijing United Publishing Company, 2021-7
Yang Benfen did not deliberately render human suffering, but those things that were vividly remembered naturally flowed between words. This also has the advantage that she never worries about the bottleneck of her creation. She is convinced that everything she has experienced in such a long span of time can be restored in words.
Zhang Hong wrote in the epilogue: "I think that if the mother spends most of her life 'alive', writing in her later years means self-help. This is a journey back to man's subjective consciousness, to be aware of life and no longer to be muddy. In essence, in those "muddy" years, Yang Benfen has never given up the search for the meaning of life.
Reading is one of the channels through which Yang Benfen obtains the nutrients of life. She was born in 1940 in Xiangyin, Hunan. Due to her father's poor health, as the eldest daughter in the family, she had to share the family's labor with her mother. It wasn't until she was 11 years old that she had a hard-won opportunity to study.
The thirst for knowledge, coupled with her mother's support, made her more energetic in her studies. When she took the exam at Yueyang Industrial School, there were more than 30 people in her area, but she was admitted. When she was in school, she bought a flashlight and read a book in her dormitory, covered in a quilt. Most of the foreign novels she came into contact with were read at that time.
But when Yang was about to graduate, the school closed. After that, she found a half-work and half-study school, which was not long after, but it was terminated due to the problem of family composition. Later, she got married, went to work for a transportation company, and the money she saved each month was used to buy literary magazines and books such as October and Contemporary. She was really embarrassed, so she simply copied the book directly, copied it, and then read it with great interest.
What impressed her more was Han Shaogong's Maqiao Dictionary, a fictional work that tells the past of Maqiao Town in Hunan Village in the form of 115 entries. The book has a description of the life of intellectual youth, but also Yang Benfen's familiar Hunan rural background, when she read, she felt particularly intimate. Years later, the story of the old Chinese man she wrote herself left the same impression on the reader.
Horse Bridge Dictionary
Han Shaogong
October Culture | Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, 2017-10
Yang Benfen has many reading plans, she wants to read Barkin's "Torrent Trilogy", want to see Tolstoy's "War and Peace", but due to the growth of age and the decline of her eyesight, it is difficult for her to "nibble" the tome. Recently, she was reading "The Funeral of a Muslim", and she is not afraid to talk about death, she said: "After all, people have a big limit day, and they must think about these questions." ”
The pain of life
"I'm old, and success doesn't do much to me, does it?" In Yang Benfen's heart, it is a pity that people are getting old, but she also said that there are too many regrets, and there are some unsmooth places in school and marriage. At the moment, what makes her most difficult is her knee.
In the past three years, Yang Benfen has undergone many treatments, but the operation and plaster have not improved, and she can only use the usual painkillers to resist the severe pain in the body. For her walking difficulties, leaving home and going to distant places to have more intersection with people is no longer realistic.
Some institutions in Beijing presented her with literary awards, and someone in Hangzhou invited her to give a speech, but she declined. It's not that she doesn't want to go, she says, "It's just that I can't go very far myself." ”
In addition to her body, there is also a trace of unspeakable pain lurking in her heart- her wife. Her husband, surnamed Zhang, was a doctor when he was young, and near the end of his life, his brain has deteriorated, and his memory and self-care ability have declined to varying degrees. Taking care of her husband didn't make her feel too much of a burden, but when she was idle, she remembered the time she spent with her husband, and she still vaguely felt sad. They have been together for 61 years, but her husband seems to have paid little attention to what she thinks and feels.
Yang Benfen did not blame him: "Where are there so many harmonious and perfect marriages under the heavens?" In her opinion, Mr. Zhang is a very good person, and she loves him very much, but the expressions used to the two sides are different. Whenever she thought of something, Yang Benfen wrote it into the document of the iPad, and later was seen by the co-publisher and made a third book for her, "My Ben Fragrance".
"I Am Fragrant"
Beijing United Publishing Company, 2022-2
These texts had previously been serialized in Tianya, and were called "Women's Career" at the time. Publishers feel that most women in China will encounter similar helplessness to Yang Benfen, so these words are worth writing into a book. At first, Yang Benfen was somewhat resistant to the name of the book, she did not want to be too public, her original name was "Confusion", because she had not yet found the accurate answer to the questions mentioned in the book.
After the book entered the publishing process, Yang Benfen had a request, she did not want to do any interviews for the work, she said: "It is a difficult thing to uncover the scars, I don't want to remember it many times, why bother?" Now, she no longer dwells on these things, "My Ben Fragrance" is like a drifting bottle, carrying her heart, drifting to a distant place. For her, it is most comfortable to speak out openly, which means that she can also slightly dilute this life experience in her mind.
In recent days, Yang Benfen is still writing tirelessly, and the words are like a small boat, carrying her to an ideal and hopeful place. When she passed through the fog of suffering, she finally discovered that she could be a recorder who loved life.
Duras leaves the passage that will be passed down to posterity in the opening chapter of Lover:
I was old, and one day, in the hall of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said to me, "I know you and will always remember you." At that time, you were still very young, and everyone said you were beautiful. Now, I'm here to tell you, I think you're more beautiful now than you were when you were younger, when you were a young woman, and I love your battered face now more than you did then. ”
This passage, which is used to summarize Yang Benfen's experience, is most appropriate.
· END ·
Author 丨 Liu Xu
Editor 丨 Xiao Feng
This article was first published in New Weekly Issue 602
Original title:
Writer Yang Benfen: With dew-like memories, stir up the splash of fate