Editor's note: Literature belongs to youth. Every era has its own literary recorder. Although we no longer use the intergenerational labels of "post-80s" and "post-90s" to define and describe those young people, they are still writing, narrating this era in their own world. "Youth Says" tries to fully document these young writers, and the future of literature belongs to them.
In the space where reality and fiction intertwine, on the soil where humor and absurdity dance together, naked humanity is generally within reach of the open land. For the post-90s writer Zheng Zaihuan, relying on the memory of his hometown and growth is an indispensable source of his creation, those who are willful in their sloppy youth, the lives that grow freely on the rough land, interpret a vivid story with their own strong and mysterious interpretation, and construct a psychedelic and real "cruel literature of the combination of urban and rural areas".
Zheng Zaihuan, a young writer, was born in 1990 in Zhumadian, Henan. He is the author of "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection", "Killing the Enemy All Night Tonight", "Reunion Is Always Before Separation" and other works
In 2017, Zheng Zaihuan published his first collection of novels, Zhumadian Sad Stories, and since then entered the literary world as a "wild" writer. As a person who dropped out of school to work at the age of 16 and began to create literature, his writing is full of vitality because of his extensive sense of low-level life. Four years later, his Story of Zhumadian continues. Recently, Zheng Zaihuan's new book "Killing enemies all night tonight" was officially published by the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House. Zheng Zaihuan said that this is a "Yuan Qi" work, and at first he wanted to name it "Teenagers Don't Die".
"Zhumadian Sad Story Collection"
The book consists of 15 short stories, divided into two series: "Once Upon a Time Teenager" and "U-Shaped Story". "Once Upon a Time" is a chronicle of the past of the youth, and the author uses humorous writing to review the living environment and growth experience of the 90s generation. Whether left or left, the memory of the hometown flows in everyone's blood. The "U-shaped story" focuses on exploring the form and purpose of the novel itself, and is more gameplay under the changeable theme and structure. Small town, youth, love, dreams, music, literature, all kinds of elements echo each other, shuttle and jump.
Zheng Zaihuan is a "wall-breaker" between urban and rural areas, based on his careful observation of contemporary population mobility, he broke the traditional narrative inertia of rural literature, and he came up with something fresh, so that readers can gain a further understanding of the rural world. In his writing, those children who came to the city from the countryside, they lived in the city, went to the factory to work, sold sewing machines, did film and television, participated in online literature competitions, and returned to the countryside after development, and still wanted to rent a Mercedes-Benz car to support the façade of the New Year, reflecting the impact of convenient transportation and the development of the de-borderized Internet in the general environment, the change in the lifestyle of the new generation of rural people and the contradiction between sticking to traditional concepts.
Zheng Zaihuan is also a person who is good at telling stories, and this ability may be closely related to the nourishment of folk language, and he calls himself "Shao Shuo", which means nagging and talking. He hoped that his language would bring pure pleasure and be comfortable to read. In addition, he is also good at talking about the tearful life as joy, and learning to reconcile with suffering in order to live better. The warmth and goodness between the lines are the meaning and cultural value of the people behind these rural stories.
Regarding the truth and fiction of the content, Zheng Zaihuan believes that compared with the truth of the story, the "truth of feelings" is the meaning that his novel really wants to convey. "There are some novels that are very vivid, like the novels that I used my life experience before, and it is naturally very vivid to write about the countryside, because I have a lot of feelings, and I especially want to share this feeling with you." On the occasion of the publication of the new book, The Paper interviewed the writer Zheng Zaihuan and listened to him talk about his true feelings in the writing process.
【Interview】
The Paper: "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection" received a good response after publication, and "Killing enemies all night tonight" was also created in the same period of time, and it has only been released until now.
Zheng Zaihuan: This is a very long story, and the "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection" was reprinted two months after its publication, and as a fledgling person, it can be said that he was flattered at that time. Some senior editors approached me and said they wanted to take the other manuscripts out together. I put together another 250,000 words, and I was so confident that I was going to bombard the contemporary literary scene with this thick book (laughs).
But in the middle, the editor who gave me the "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection" left his job, abandoned our "slow-selling book writers" and ran for a better future, and the editor who succeeded him since then also left. I "survived" three editors and a publisher, causing "Kill The Enemy All Night" to come out in the fall/winter of 2021. This ordeal is not enough for outsiders, but the impact on me is quite large, from the previous youth and vigor to now very "well-behaved", haha.
"Kill the Enemy All Night"
The Paper: Your new works "Reunion Is Always Before Separation" and "Killing enemies all night" came out at about the same time, is there any difference in your feelings in writing between the two books?
Zheng Zaihuan: "Kill the Enemy All Night Tonight" is a work I wrote between the ages of 20 and 24, which can be said to be a "Yuan Qi" work, and this novel actually wanted to be named "Teenagers Don't Die" at the beginning. At that time, I was a person who was not "polluted", did not go to work, did not have any social activities, and wrote novels at home. Young and vigorous, there are many lofty ideals, but when it comes to writing things, I still hope that when you see it, it is interesting and comfortable, like Liu Zhenyun often said, bring you a pleasure, first of all, a pleasure, not a bitter vendetta, especially serious. But at the same time, those three years were a period of suffering, until the age of 24. The short story of the same name in "Kill the Enemy All Night" is written about the night of my teenage Internet café life, going online all night to fight monsters on the screen. It still carries a little of the vitality of youth, but in fact, it is already a feeling of remembrance, it is not the declaration of the teenager not dying at that time, not the teenager never dies, and may now be "dead" almost. "Reunion is always before separation" is a work of a teenager turning into a middle-aged person, and you can see a little more experience of the so-called world.
The Paper: There are many themes about the countryside in literary works, some are full of suffering, and some are poetic villages with beautiful imaginations. The countryside you write about is very special, of course, you can see that people's survival is not easy, but you can feel a kind of wanton and cheerful. At the same time, under the popularity of the Internet, the countryside has already undergone tremendous changes, which is also reflected in your novels. What characteristics of the countryside do you think you write about?
Zheng Zaihuan: In fact, I am particularly afraid of being classified as "vernacular novels", of course, many readers will also mention the word vernacular in their comments on me now, but they are using it according to the inertia of literary propaganda, they are not really using the word "vernacular" to summarize my novel, most of them will say that this is "cruel literature of the urban-rural junction" or the like.
I lived in the countryside for 16 years, and after the age of 16, I went to a small city, and then from a small town to a big city. I am 32 years old this year, and I can say that my life is half in the countryside and half in the city. Why was it called a local writer before, I think this is a product of a closed environment, at that time the popular experience of going to the countryside, even if it is not a person in the countryside, you have to pretend to be close to your peasant friends, and in the closed environment, you can only care about the chicken, duck, fish and dog in the countryside.
This is definitely not the case in the countryside now, and it is not like this when I was a child, including the newer generation now. I now go back to see my cousins and cousins, who are fifteen or sixteen years old and play vibrato every day, and they live in buildings, and they don't have much separation from the city. What contemporary urban young people are playing, they are also playing. Even if they play more crazy, you see vibrato, fast hand are the main force in the countryside playing, they also do not have the baggage of cultural people, people fried fritters also have to shoot you to see, and then everyone likes, saying that this fritter is fried well, fried well, it is not closed, constitutes a circulating thing. So my novel you can say it's not well written, but you can't say it's well written. I only have this one appeal, that is, "right".
Zheng zai Huan's wheat field
The Paper: Does this "right" mean the truth?
Zheng Zaihuan: It is a sense of reality, so to speak. Not the truth of the bridge, not the truth of the plot, but the truth of the feeling, like the novel I used my life experience before, it is naturally very vivid to write about the countryside, because I have a lot of feelings, and I especially want to share this feeling with you. So when it is written out, everyone will feel how this feeling is so in place, so subtle, you have not even experienced this feeling, but you can still feel this wonderful place when you watch it, which is a great pleasure in writing novels, that is, writing feelings.
I've always thought I'm a very fashionable person, and of course it seems a bit rustic to say the word "fashion" now. First of all, you have to feel something from the heart, it is not earthy, and now many urban theme works are also quite earthy, of course, on the other hand, your technique and the sense of language you provide to everyone. In the past, when you asked me why I wrote, I might have said that I was going to introduce some of the so-called nature of the world to everyone, but now I only have a "fashion" or only the word "game" left.
One of the biggest things that changed me recently was a reunion between me and Fa Xiao. The two of us have been going our separate ways since we were teenagers, he has been working in the south, I have been working in the north, and we have not met between us. He's now a petty boss, buys a BMW, and tells me we're going to Tibet to play. As a result, we didn't go to Cheng, and were trapped in Yunnan for a week, but we were very happy.
He was going to talk about how to make money as a businessman, and after I expressed a few times that I was not very good at getting into your money-making field, he didn't say it anymore. Of course, I can't talk to him about literature, and I can't talk about it, he will say Huan Huan, your "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection" is not well written, I said why? He said you don't mean to talk about things. Because there are many things he can see the shadow. We both talked nonsense, and in this language I got a very great pleasure, and that pleasure was particularly pure, not the same as the happiness we usually get when we talk about meaningful things.
This also verifies my understanding of language and writing after resuming writing in 2019, and it is the initial beauty of language that attracts me, rather than pointing to stories, meanings, and social depth, which are all added values of literature, and if they point to those, they will not be beautiful, pure, and have impurities. Let the language flow, it will be very light, so the theme, the story, the truth, these laws can first give way to the language. I still feel smooth and funny re-reading my previous novels, albeit childishly. This feeling seems to me to be a part of my greater emphasis at the moment.
The Paper: Your countryside is both full of comedic absurdity and modernity, how did you do it?
Zheng Zaihuan: There is no way for the writer to completely strip away his life experience, but he must be able to go back and jump out. What I write about is the present, there will be elements of life in the present, the girls in our village have gone to be anchors, and you can't stay in the original narrative of suffering in the countryside. The appearance of rural people is not the same, I always say that every time I go back to my hometown for 10 days, I can write a book out, because the information is overwhelming, my grandmother can talk to me about half a book by herself, all of which are particularly wonderful, and they are closely related to the trend of the times. Some writers think that writing about current trends is not representative or deep enough, but the depth depends on how you use the material, not the material itself. And the Internet has connected the countryside with the current environment, and you can't help but see this.
Zheng in the woods in front of Grandma Huan's house
The Paper: Rural youth have no less demand for literary and artistic life than urban youth.
Zheng Zaihuan: We used to play Kill Matt, that is also running to "beauty", to let ourselves live in a beautiful atmosphere, playing Kill Matt style is also a choice without other too many tools, which is the same as literary youth wearing cotton long skirts, Converse sneakers, back canvas bags. This is the essence of youth, and the appeal to life is beauty. Now you can see a large number of rural people and small-town youth showing their lives in Douyin and Kuaishou, and I think the vitality of a hundred flowers is more than that of urban youth. Real life, there will be a strong sense of life. Most of my writing still conveys this point, that is, your feelings cannot deceive you, and your senses cannot deceive you.
The Paper: Why do we still feel strange to such a village in literary creation, whether it is a writer or a reader?
Zheng Zaihuan: Yes, this is actually a kind of automatic shielding. First of all, many people from the countryside, he himself will not take the initiative to talk about those trivial things, these things involve the survival of the countryside, the family environment, etc., this is very complicated, he told you that you do not understand. But this group is very large, and when it goes deeper, it involves a lot of places that are slightly painful or slightly uncomfortable. For example, we pay attention to the courier brother, their situation is actually much more complicated than those office fights in the office building, how many contracts he signs for a job, he can't figure out where he is, this identity is lost, how do you talk?
The purpose of my writing is not as noble as the moral burden of iron shoulders, I live for my own fun, but they are all the group around me.
The Paper: Your cruel youth, but with a sense of comedy.
Zheng Zaihuan: As far as our village is concerned, the economic environment improved almost after 2000, but before it was indeed relatively poor, only eating meat every New Year's Festival, and there were no snacks. So the things I wrote about stealing melons and touching dates were, first, children were naughty, and second, they wanted to eat something different. But now you've made my cousins and cousins have no interest in this, and the snacks at home can't be eaten. So because I want to eat something, the desire is very strong, it brings a kind of humor and funny, which is a sense of contrast.
But you can't say that this kind of life is very miserable, we don't feel hard in it, we don't feel absurd, we only feel absurd when we look back.
The Paper: Some time ago, you shared your youth story on an audio program, the title is "The Wanderings of a Child Without a Mother", and you specifically emphasized in your message that "not talking about suffering, just talking about fun things, saying that there is no poison, and all life is daily life". Don't you like labels like "suffering" and "miserable"?
Zheng Zaihuan: Yes, this kind of life also needs to be respected. Because of the barrenness and hardship, many small contradictions are intensified, making people desperate to fight for some small interests, there is no atmosphere of courtesy, but these are created by the environment. When you face the serious life of others, you can't say that people are miserable, which is too much pressure and blow to the person in itself, because people are living there. To say miserable, in fact, is to standardize the score of life, not to reach the pass line you think, that is, to make life monotonous and flat. People are strangely born and grow up in a variety of ways. The reason I'm sensitive to these labels is because growing up with so much of this narrative. When you say I'm pathetic, you deprive me of my rights as an ordinary person and forcibly reduce me to a sympathetic, scrutinized position.
The Paper: So what do you think about your childhood life?
Zheng Zaihuan: I lived with my grandmother before I was 11 years old, and my grandmother was so kind to me and was much more pampered than all of you. Perhaps many people who feel that their living conditions are good have not received this kind of care. I was just unlucky enough to go back to my father's remarried home at the age of 11 and live with my stepmother for a few years, but those years did not constitute a subversion of life, because by then I had already understood things, and I felt like I had suddenly been arrested and imprisoned in the cottage for several years.
The Paper: After the work came out, what kind of feedback did the readers give?
Zheng Zaihuan: At present, the ratings of several books are still good, and I am very satisfied with my works. One thing I was quite touched, in fact, most readers do not trust the current young authors, are with a very critical eye, my book on the Douban comments a lot, every comment I read, many of them will be glad that they inexplicably read this book, thus eliminating some prejudices, I saw this comment when I was very shocked, they also helped me eliminate a lot of prejudices.