Miner poet Chen Nianxi returned to his hometown of Luanzhuang, Danfeng County, Shaanxi Province, a few days ago, and in the past 2021, his non-fiction story collection "Dust" was on fire, and his rough and real brushstrokes quietly told the themes of life about family affection, love, death, and desire, which entered the hearts of countless readers and resonated with them. A few days ago, Chen Nianxi accepted an exclusive interview with reporters by telephone.
The new book presents its own path in life
Chen Nianxi's hometown of Xiahe Village is a small village located in the middle of the mountainside, when zhuangzi once had more than 50 people, now there are less than 20 people, houses scattered, fruit trees, mountains and forests to draw the boundaries of each family, but also isolated from the outside world.
Back in his hometown where he was born and raised in Si, Chen Nianxi felt very down-to-earth, "I don't sleep so late outside, and I don't have to turn the volume of my phone to a low level." However, the difficult reality of life he faced has never changed, he said, his mother has been suffering from esophageal cancer for 10 years and is now in a serious condition, reaching the countdown to life.
During this time in the countryside, Chen Nianxi's latest book of essays, "A Place of Frost White", has just been bound in the printing house and will soon meet with readers. At the same time, his latest collection of poems, "The Poetry of Chen Nianxi", should also enter the final stage of revision, but because of his mother's illness, he is not in the mood to edit at the moment.
Regarding "A Land of Frost and White", Chen Nianxi said that this is not a propositional composition, but he has accumulated over the years, and his writing is mixed and free. "This book is different from "Living is Shouting at the Sky" and "Dust", it is related to my growth, my living environment, from which I can fully see my life course, see my hometown and the things I go everywhere."
In "A Land of Frost White", Chen Nianxi wrote about his small hair, and this article is called "It's Snowing". When they were young, the two of them read together, because they were far from school, and when the weather was cold, they carried a brazier to school. Later, Fa Xiao went to the iron mine in Shanxi during the heavy snow, but only stayed in Shanxi for 8 days before he had an accident. Chen Nianxi wrote about the communication of friends in the mine, but also about lovers and children. He also wrote about the old Huang he met in his life, who started from scratch and had a successful career, but also experienced failures. Of course, he will not forget to write the story of his first love.
In this new book, Chen Nianxi gave his wife a certain amount of ink, talking about her, he did not hide his love at all, she was hard-working, cleaned up the home, never lagged behind the times, WeChat vibrato played well. They have known each other since childhood, after graduating from high school, Chen Nianxi herded cattle in the village, and his future wife also herded cattle here, "I think that when the cattle grazed on the mountain, I read a lot of books in the mountains, and Marx's "Capital" was read in that period. Chen Nianxi said.
Writing "Dust" often shed tears of pain
In the past 2021, Chen Nianxi's "Dust" is on fire, a book that records the life and death stories of a group of simple laborers. These protagonists are demolition workers, stone masons, country carpenters, farmers, peasant women, small workshop owners, etc. Yu Minhong, Liu and other celebrities recommend books through short videos, and more than a dozen good book lists in China have their presence.
2021 is a year of transformation for Chen Nianxi, and he published a collection of essays for the first time, one is "Living is Shouting in the Sky" and the other is "Dust". Chen Nianxi told reporters that as of now, the sales of "Living is Shouting to the Sky" have reached 40,000 or 50,000 copies, while "Dust" has reached 80,000 copies, and the royalty income he has obtained from these two books has reached more than 300,000 yuan.
In 2018, when Chen Nianxi was working in Guizhou, the surging news mirror column asked him to write, and I wrote a 6,000-word "The Last Decade of a Rural Carpenter", which was the first essay he wrote, and it became a hit. "I have written a lot of poems about my father, but it is difficult to understand my father through poetry, and this article gives the reader a comprehensive understanding of my father, while also presenting life in a place." Chen Nianxi said that because of this test, he felt the great power of non-fiction writing, and also aroused the potential of his non-fiction writing.
In fact, Chen Nianxi had only been away from the mine for 3 years at that time, and all the life in the mine was vividly remembered, and every detail and every character recalled very clearly. Writing out the details, he endured the pain of memories and often washed his face with tears. He recalled that the demolition workers had a cold and did not dare to take leave, to eat more than a dozen cold medicines and to go to work, to return to the dormitory, to eat a mouthful of food, to sleep for two days and two nights, and to struggle to go to work. "Those of us who bear the expectations of a family, no matter how hard life is, no one gives up on ourselves." He said that "Dust" is written about pain, but is full of silent power.
"Thank you for writing about our lives." After the advent of "Dust", Chen Nianxi received many readers' messages, and those underground workers, engineers, and technicians thanked him.
When recalling the writing of this book, Chen Nianxi expressed his full recognition of himself. "'Dust' is presented from the inside to the outside, and many works are presented from the outside to the inside with the eyes of intellectuals." In Chen Nianxi's view, "Dust" breaks the monopoly of intellectual writing to some extent, and many intellectuals will also write to the bottom, but the angle from which they stand is written from a high place or from a sociological perspective. And he has been rolling in the mine for more than ten years, which is exactly the experience that intellectuals cannot have, "although they can also write some details, but they can't do everything like "Dust", so that what is written is still separated from the reader." ”
I will also continue to write small stories of small people at the bottom
"There are too many factors that determine fate, some are visible, some are invisible, and often the invisible is sharper than the visible." Chen Nianxi's words are condensed from a real, bumpy life, and these words will continue to be born.
Chen Nianxi was originally known as a mining poet. In 1991, at The Qinghua Pavilion in Yan'an, Chen Nianxi and his co-workers were responsible for digging the rock formations and drilling a hole 7 meters high and 7 meters wide. That winter was particularly cold, and the minimum temperature was even as low as minus 25 degrees, because the clothes were always wet because of the need to use water to reduce dust, and the clothes on the body were frozen from the mine to the dormitory.
It was in this difficult environment that Chen Nianxi began to take the steps of a miner's poet, and the first poem he wrote was "Coal". At the end of 2013, Chen Nianxi received a call from his brother at a silver mine in Neixiang, Henan Province: His mother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, advanced stage. He stayed up all night and wrote the widely circulated "Exploding Chronicle": "I am passing middle age at a depth of five thousand meters / I blow up the rock formations again and again / To reassemble my whole life / My tiny relatives are far away at the foot of Shang Mountain / They are sick and covered with dust / How much my middle age is cut / How much can their old age be extended." ”
In his 16-year career as a demolition worker, Chen Nianxi exchanged his life for hard-earned money, and also let him get the "verdict" of pneumoconiosis. He said that when he first learned of the diagnosis, he was desperate, after all, this is a disease that cannot be cured by any medical means. But as time went on, he also slowly looked down a lot, "It is a chronic disease, how far away from death is unknown, but no matter what, we have to go forward." ”
"I'm not qualified to lie flat, I have to carry the responsibility of life forward and write." Chen Nianxi said that he only wrote a scale and a half claw, and only wrote a few leaves. He also continues to write small people and small stories at the bottom, and write about the details of life.
"I may not be able to write about particularly large themes, but the fate of small people can also reflect the times, and it is also a scale and a half claw of the times." Chen Nianxi said that he should continue to write small cross-sections, and when countless works are combined, they can present the richness of people and the times.