———— remember Yang Tingyu
On April 7, 2017, Yang Tingyu, a famous contemporary novelist and playwright, died in Changchun at the age of 67 due to ineffective medical treatment. At that time, he was an honorary member of the Whole Committee of the Chinese Writers Association and the honorary chairman of the Jilin Writers Association. He is at the peak of creation suddenly passed away, as an old friend I was shocked, originally wanted to write an article to express regret and nostalgia, but has not been able to calm the mind, for a long time did not start writing, but dragged on until now.
As early as the mid-1980s, I met Yang Tingyu. At that time, he was a drama critic, and his plays "Flower Sister-in-law" and "Red Apricot Out of the Wall" were successively moved to the stage by the Changchun Critics Troupe. In 1987, after the Changchun Critics Troupe was upgraded to changchun commentaries theater, he performed his new work "Beauty God". "Red Apricot Out of the Wall" and "Beauty God" I have seen, the former starring Wang Manling, Zhou Liansheng, the latter starring Zheng Guifang, 3 are well-loved by the audience performance artists. At that time, the media focused on the actors, and Wang Manling won the "Plum Blossom Award" for successfully starring in the heroine of "Red Apricot Out of the Wall", and various newspapers rushed to report it; but Yang Tingyu, as a screenwriter, was ignored. This was a common phenomenon at the time, and people took it for granted.
I really came into contact with Yang Tingyu after he became the director of the Changchun Art Research Institute. At that time, the Art Research Institute was working in the Red Star Theater, which was in the same building as the Changchun Commentary Theater, and every time I went to the Commentary Theater, I would stay in Yang Tingyu's office for a while. He is more than one meter and seventy meters tall, which is of medium stature among northeasterners, although he is not big, but he looks very strong. His face was dark and yellow, and he spoke with a rural accent, not like a writer, but like a grassroots cadre in the countryside.
After a long time of interaction, I have a general understanding of Yang Tingyu's past.
In March 1951, Yang Tingyu was born in Xinkaihe Village, Wanbao Town, Nong'an County, dozens of miles away from Changchun. His father has a deep foundation in ancient Chinese, and he is familiar with the past and the present. Under the guidance of his father, about 10 years old, he began to contact classical literature, many words do not know, just read and read again. This was his first literary enlightenment. When he was fifteen or sixteen years old, he studied at the No. 3 Middle School in Nong'an County, and he began to read classical masterpieces, "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" several times. Some popular novels, such as "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness", "Jingzhong Say Yue", and "Golden Gun Yang Jiajun", he also liked it. At the same time, he also read the works of foreign masters, such as the poetry of Pushkin in Russia, the novels of Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Sholokhov and Ostrovsky, and the novels of Hugo, Zola and Balzac of France and the English writer Dickens and the American writer Hemingway.
In 1970, Yang Tingyu officially began his literary career, and his first published work was the short story "Moving Forward Side by Side" based on his own experience of rural life, which was published in the second issue of Jilin Literature and Art (Changchun is its predecessor, now known as "Writer"). Since then, new novels have been published one after another, and since then, he has decided to make literary creation his ideal.
In 1972, Yang Tingyu was transferred to the creative group of the Nong'an County Cultural Bureau and began to write a script and participate in provincial and municipal literary and art performances at all levels. In 1977, he was admitted to the Department of Drama and Literature of the Central Academy of Drama. After systematic study, his literary and artistic vision was unprecedentedly broadened, and he had the honor to listen to special lectures by Cao Yu, Feng Mu, Zhang Geng, Guo Hancheng and other theater masters.
After graduating from the Central Academy of Drama in 1980, Yang Tingyu returned to work in the creative studio of the Changchun Municipal Bureau of Culture. In the years that followed, he wrote several major plays and became a well-known playwright inside and outside the province. Shortly after I came into contact with him, he told me that now that the theater was in a slump, it was difficult to get a rehearsal opportunity to write a script, and even if there was a small audience, he turned to writing novels. In early 1987, he gave me a large hebei publication specializing in novels, which included his novel "Here Is Not a Virgin's Land." Unfortunately, this publication has his signature, because I have moved many times and can no longer find it! In 1990, his second novel, "Women Are Not the Moon", was published by Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House, and after receiving the sample book, he signed it and gave it to me. I also give back to Yang Tingyu my new book "A Preliminary Study of New Literature in Northeast China", a collection of essays on modern literature in Northeast China. He liked it very much, saying that the works of the older generation of writers in the northeast, such as Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong, Duanmu Hongliang, and Luo Binji, had a great influence on his creation. He knew that this kind of academic book was difficult to distribute, and offered to buy dozens of copies and distribute them to the relevant personnel.
In 1990, Yang Tingyu began to get involved in the field of television dramas, "Women Are Not the Moon" and "The Chief of a Village" were successively broadcast on a set of gold channels on CCTV during the Spring Festival of 1992, and the mountain village girl buckled herself with tears of sympathy to countless people. Zhao Benshan's first film and television drama role is the novella "The Chief of a Village" created by Yang Tingyu for the Chinese TELEVISION drama production center, in which the protagonist Hao Yunlai is played by Zhao Benshan. After that, Yang Tingyu's name began to be familiar to the general audience.
After being transferred to Shenzhen in December 1993, I heard that after becoming famous, Yang Tingyu rose step by step, first serving as vice chairman of the Changchun Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, chairman of the Writers Association, and editor-in-chief of the magazine "Spring Wind", and later in the province as the secretary and vice chairman of the party group of the Provincial Federation of Literary and Literary Associations (Provincial Writers Association), the chairman of the Provincial Writers Association, a member of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Plenary Committees of the China Writers Association, and a member of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth CPPCC Committees and Standing Committee members of Jilin Province. In those years, I would go back to Changchun every two or three years to visit my relatives and gather with old classmates and colleagues. Someone asked me, Yang Tingyu is now the leader of the Provincial Literary Association and the Writers Association, have you not looked at it? I have always kept my distance from high-ranking officials so as not to be suspected of clinging to them. Although Yang Tingyu's reputation has always been very good in the literary and art circles, he is a simple and loyal friend, and I am not willing to occupy his time.
Later, it was learned that Yang Tingyu's film and television creations achieved good results, such as "Dreaming of Waking Up Five Willows", "Asking the Long Sky", "Heaven and Earth People", "Not Abandoning rivers", "Century Bells", "Three Consecutive Plackets", etc., all broadcast on CCTV channels. He has successively won the National TELEVISION Drama "Feitian Award", the "Golden Eagle Award" of China Popular Television, the "Five One Project Award" of the Central Propaganda Department's literary and artistic works, and the "Changbaishan Literary and Art Award" of the Jilin Provincial Government.
However, in the mid-1990s, he quietly left the film and television circle to devote himself to the creation of novels. In 2000, "Don't Waste the Rivers" was published by the Jilin People's Publishing House, "Dangerous City" was published by the Writers Publishing House, in 2007, "Flower Castle" was published by the People's Literature, and in 2011, "Dignity" was published by the Times Literature and Art Publishing House. According to media reports, his multi-volume collection of long-form masterpieces about the entire history of northeast China has completed two volumes, namely "The End of the Wind Rising Qingping" and "The Banner of the Changing King of the City". He plans to write four volumes, as well as "DrunkenLy Picking a Lamp and Looking at the Sword" and "The Hero Of the Waves", which completes about 1.6 million words, which is the literary journey that he values the most, focuses on, and pins on his literary dreams.
Just when Yang Tingyu was forging ahead with his pen, he fell on the road of literature, which could not but make people strangle! I suspect that the reason for his early death, in addition to illness, desperate writing must be an important factor.