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Mr. Lu Xun said that since the May Fourth Movement, "the success of prose sketches has been almost above novels, operas and poetry." As early as the late 1970s, the famous scholar Lin Fei began to publish notes introducing 61 modern prose masters in magazines, and in March 1980, it was collected as "Notes on Sixty Modern Essays", published by Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House. For more than 100 years, there have been too many writers, far more than sixty, but there are only a few writers who continue to cultivate and write prose in the prose garden. The late writer Ma Li was one of the most accomplished.
Ma Li, formerly known as Ma Guangli, was born on January 22, 1938 in Ji'an, Jilin Province, at the foot of changbai Mountain, to a family of Hui merchants. After graduating from high school in 1957, he joined the work force and successively worked as a worker, a primary school teacher, an officer of the Propaganda Department of the county party committee, and the deputy director of the Tonghua Regional Drama Creation Studio. In 1957, he published his debut novel "Small Scenery by the Yalu River" in the literary monthly magazine "Changchun" (the predecessor of "Writer"), and since then, his works have been published one after another, and he has become famous inside and outside the province. During the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to seal his pen. After the end of the ten years of turmoil, he entered the Literary Seminar of the Chinese Writers Association in 1981, and in the same year, the Jilin People's Publishing House published his collection of essays, "Three Thousand Miles of Water Strikes". In 1982 he joined the Chinese Writers Association. In August 1983, he was transferred to the provincial capital of Changchun as a professional writer of the Jilin Branch of the China Writers Association. Later, he was elected as a director of the Jilin Writers Association and was rated as the first class of literary creation; he also served as the vice president of the Jilin Provincial Writers' Training College, the deputy director of the Jilin Provincial Ethnic Minority Literary Creation Committee, and the executive director of the Chinese Ethnic Minority Writers Association.
Soon after Ma Li was transferred to the Provincial Writers Association, I got to know him. I have the impression that among the few professional writers in the Provincial Writers Association, most of them write novels and poems, as if only Ma Plough is rewriting prose. Once when we met in the office, he asked me, "Are you a Hui?" "From childhood to adulthood, I have been asked many times because the Sha surname is very common among the Hui people, but it is rare in the Han people. Despite my negative answer, the plow and I felt close. However, because he did not sit in class, I rarely saw him when I went to the Writers' Association. Sometimes seen at a conference, he was always very low-key and never saw him talking about it. He once said that a writer still has to speak with his works. The comrades of the Writers Association told me that the organization of Ma Li was related to the provincial capital, but more time was still at the grass-roots level, and one winter, he visited several villages in the Changbai Mountains, and also went to the Tonghua area sports training class ski team to experience life and accumulate creative materials.
Ma Plough comes from the Changbai Mountains, and his birthplace of Ji'an, across the river from North Korea, is a small border town with a long history and rich cultural heritage. There are the famous Chinese and foreign good Taiwang Monument, the Eastern Pyramid General's Tomb, the ancient tomb murals... It has beautiful scenery and is the warmest place in Jilin Climate, known as "Saiwai Xiaojiangnan". I visited Ji'an in January 1991 and was impressed by the customs and customs there, as well as my understanding of Ma Li's work.
In Ma Plough's pen, there are praises of truth, goodness and beauty, as well as lashing out at false ugliness, and what he praises affectionately is the light of the times. Its artistic style is expressed as idyllic and peaceful, subtle and deep.
The creation of the horse plough has attracted great attention from the critics. The commentaries I have seen include Du Ruo's "Corresponding to the Voice of the People -- The Prose Creation of Ma Li", Fang Qing's "Photography of the Rural Temperament era - On the Prose Creation of Ma Li", and Fu Bailing's "Interpretation of Ma Li". Critics have a high opinion of Ma Li's second collection of works, "West Looking at Bogda", as a collection of novels that focus on reality and face life. Shortly after the publication of "West Looking Bogda", the horse plough signed and sent it to me. After reading it, I seem to feel that although it is a collection of novels, it is still full of prose connotations, especially scene descriptions and discussions. In other words, he was writing a novel in prose.
The essay "Blood-Stained IOU" won the National Ethnic Minority Literature Creation Award, the essay collection "Water Strikes Three Thousand Miles" and the novel collection "West Looking at Bogda" won the first and second ethnic minority literary creation awards in Jilin Province, and the short drama "Winter Marathon" won the first prize of the Golden Tiger Cup short drama sketch of the tv series in the three northeastern provinces.
On January 14, 1993, Ma Plough, who was in his prime of creation, died of illness, 8 days before turning 55 years old.
During his lifetime, Ma Li had little contact with the press and received no coverage after his death. Coming from a small border town, he came quietly and went quietly! I needed to send a few photos to write this article, and I only found one photo of a member of the China Writers Association on the Internet, which was very ineffective. I remembered that my old colleague, novelist and art critic Yu Weifan was the second batch of students of the Jilin Provincial Writers' Training Institute, and Ma Li had taught them a writing class, so he asked him for help through WeChat. Wei Fan said that he also did not have a picture of Ma Li, but Ma Li's eldest daughter was a classmate of his own and could be contacted. Ma Plough's eldest daughter found the photo that day and passed it on. As a result, the reader can see the images of Ma Li's youth and middle age.