Based on the stills of the film "The First Burning Incense" (2021) adapted from Zhang Ailing's novel of the same name, Peng Yuyan plays the male protagonist Qiao Qiqiao. (Infographic/Figure)
"Love is an invisible flame, love is an unscented trauma." This is a sentence from the medieval Portuguese poet Louis de Cammons, and it is also a love sentence spoken by the male protagonist Giorgijo and the heroine Ge Weilong when they first met in the movie "The First Incense". Just two sentences of dialogue bring out the mixed-race background of Georgie Joe, and also lay the groundwork for the direction of the relationship between the two people.
This passage is not in Zhang Ailing's original novel, only written that Georgie Qiao said: "I want to translate it into English and say it to you, but I am afraid that I do not have the guts." Zhang Ailing has always been good at leaving blank space and giving readers unlimited imagination, but as a movie, the plot must be full, which challenges the writer Wang Anyi as a screenwriter, who told the Southern Weekend reporter that most of the work she did was to "fill in the pit" and present the vague part of Zhang Ailing's text.
"Film is the art of the director, and the screenwriter is to complete the director's vision." In the interview, Wang Anyi admitted that writing movies is far from being addictive to writing novels, but he is very satisfied with Xu Anhua's stage play "The Golden Lock", which he rehearsed his own script, so "I must do whatever she asks me to do", so he took over the task of writing the script of the "First Burning Incense" movie script.
This is not the first time that Wang Anyi has adapted Zhang Ailing, she has previously adapted the stage plays "The Golden Lock" and "Color, Ring". Although often compared with Zhang Ailing, Wang Anyi believes that the biggest difficulty in adapting Zhang Ailing is precisely because he cannot get close to Zhang Ailing's era, and their views on the world are also very different.
Zhang Ailing's outlook on life is known for its desolation, her life is often "all the way down", "The First Burning Incense" is Zhang Ailing's first novel published in the true sense, but it has been regarded as her masterpiece, from Shanghai to escape the war to Hong Kong, the young girl Ge Weilong had to turn to her aunt Mrs. Liang in order to be able to continue studying, after a series of changes, she fell into the "fall" of unable to extricate herself under the tearing of desire and the drag of fate.
In the original work, although Ge Weilong deserves sympathy, she is definitely not completely ignorant and innocent, and she has always been unusually sober about her relationship with Georgie. The film version of "The First Incense" simplifies Ge Weilong's character and highlights her sacrificial side for love. Wang Anyi told Southern Weekend reporters that the movie "First Burning Incense" is a pure love film, and Xu Anhua hopes to "love once" through this movie.
The film's English title is "Love after Love," which someone translates to "love after love," and derek Wolcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, has a poem of the same name about how to get out of pain in a lost love. The story of the film is intertextual, telling the story of the state of continuing to love after being disappointed in love.
"The First Incense" has experienced some turmoil and controversy from casting, filming to finalization, but since its launch at the Venice International Film Festival in 2020, the film has been highly anticipated by fans and book fans. The filmmaker's current promotional materials focus on "love first" and promote the film with the theme of "giving love without a anniversary", which simplifies the space for the film to be discussed.
In fact, whether it is the connotation of Zhang Ailing's original work or the film text, far from only one dimension of love, but also the questioning of marriage, the exploration of the national identity of the Hong Kong colonial period, and the writing of women's desires.
The creation of the movie "First Incense" respects the original work, and most of the plot and even the dialogue are no different from the original work, but it still cannot meet all the expectations of the audience for the adaptation of Zhang Ailing's works. Netizens generally complain that there is a large gap between the role candidate and the text description. However, Wang Anyi believes that several protagonists have surprising places, especially the actor Peng Yuyan's qiaoqi qiao may become a remembered image in the future (editor's note, Qiaoqi is the Chinese translation of the male protagonist's English name, and Qiao is his surname, which is set back according to English customs).
On October 22, 2021, the movie "First Burning Incense" will be released in Chinese mainland theaters. On the eve of the release, Southern Weekend reporters were invited to watch the film in advance and interviewed Wang Anyi by phone.
<h3>Because of "The Golden Lock", Xu Anhua felt that "I can fill these pits"</h3>
Southern Weekend: The movie "The First Incense" that you wrote as a screenwriter is about to be released, and you should have seen the finished film in advance.
Wang Anyi: I only saw the finished film in Shanghai not long ago. I don't think it's possible to demand that the presentation and imagination of the film be exactly the same, not to mention that the film is ultimately the director's creation. But this work has fulfilled the requirements of director Xu Anhua to some extent, and judging from the ideas she put forward when she came to me at that time, the finished film should be said to be basically completed.
Southern Weekend: Your cooperation with Xu Anhua started from the stage play of Zhang Ailing's "The Golden Lock", and you also got acquainted, from "The Golden Lock" to "The First Incense", how did you help Xu Anhua complete the idea?
Wang Anyi: To make a long story short, the script for "The Golden Lock" was originally written for the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center in 2004, and then I was told that Xu Anhua had seen the play. Almost five years later, The Jiao Yuan Troupe in Hong Kong approached Hui Anhua to direct a stage play, and she picked my script. During the whole rehearsal process, Xu Anhua only called me once, there was no intersection in between, and when we premiered in Hong Kong, we met and were interviewed together, which was my first contact with her.
Xu Anhua never told me that she especially liked the script of "The Golden Lock", and I learned later that she quite liked this book, and one of the scenes was added to the original novel, a scene between Cao Qiqiao's daughter Chang'an and her boyfriend Tong Shifang. I think she came to me probably because of this scene.
Around January 2018, I accepted the invitation to stay at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong to stay in Hong Kong for half a year, and on the day I arrived, just after I dropped off my luggage, Xu Anhua's assistant came to a phone call from Shanghai, saying that Director Xu wanted to talk to me when he came to Shanghai. I said it was a coincidence that I had just arrived in Hong Kong and would be living there for half a year. Later, Xu Anhua texted me, saying that she would come back the next day and was very anxious. On the third day, she was already sitting downstairs from our quarters.
I was still guessing if she wanted to buy the rights to my novel, but as soon as she sat down, she didn't say anything about the retreat, and directly said that she wanted to ask me to be the screenwriter of "First Incense". I was quite surprised that she said this, I wrote a (movie) script of "Wind and Moon", adding some details to the story that Ye Zhaoyan and Chen Kaige had already formed, and after me, I also went through the work of a screenwriter. I actually didn't write a movie in its entirety, so Xu Anhua asked me to write a script, and I was still under pressure, but I didn't want to reject her. I am very satisfied with her "Golden Lock" stage play, she asked me to do anything, I have to do, I owe her a favor, I want to pay her back.
I was writing the novel "The Record of the Examiners" at the time, and it was already in the final stage. I had planned to go to Hong Kong to teach and write a novel, and I said you'd have to wait for me and think about the next step when I finished writing the novel. You know, it's hard to go in and come out when I'm writing, and I'm not very sure about writing movies.
But Xu Anhua's heart has been decided, and she is very sure that I will write it, and she said that what this movie has to do is to fill in the pits. Zhang Ailing always has a lot of very hidden clues when she writes things, and will hide key things, such as Ge Weilong and Qiao Qiqiao's marriage, a sentence in the novel, saying that she is "busy getting money and getting people" too. But it's very abstract to write, and we're going to fill in and flesh out the story. She thought I could fill these holes because she believed in me in the scene in "The Golden Lock".
At first, I didn't know that the project actually had a lot of twists and turns, and the copyright period was probably only two or three years left. If I had known at the time, I am afraid it would have been even more tense, especially since the expiration of the copyright was a lot of pressure. I didn't think about it so much, and I felt that the whole film crew was waiting for my script, and they would be very troublesome if the script didn't come out.
I am most satisfied with myself is that I did not delay them, in the six months of the school, Xu Anhua came several times, each time to talk about some of her ideas, I also want to give her a my idea, and finally talked about a little more specific, such as the layout of the space, but it has not yet been written. I was back in Shanghai at the end of June or early July of that year, and the novel had already been submitted, and when I got home, I took a break and began to write the script of the film, and I delivered it in August.
I actually sat down and wrote in less than a month, and before that, my discussion with Xu Anhua was detailed enough, so it was very fast to write on paper. When I wrote it, I realized that I personally had such a time period of time with Zhang Ailing, and I simply did not have the ability to recreate the dialogue of the characters. I basically used the original words in the original book and derived it a little bit.
Xu Anhua showed me a lot of movies, told me how she wanted to feel, and also told me about the actors she wanted to choose, and she felt that I wanted to have a figurative concept. In fact, I don't know who Peng Yuyan and Ma Sichun are, she brought me a lot of movies, and I watched them in the dormitory of Hong Kong Chinese University. She wanted me to understand the old Hong Kong, I watched "Su Si Huang's World" and "Flower Street Times"; she wanted me to know the status of the male and female protagonists, I watched Peng Yuyan and Ma Sichun's films respectively. Xu Anhua also specially recommended "Dangerous Relationship" to show me, which is a classical style movie, which is not the same as "First Incense" in terms of theme, but she let me know that the style of this movie should be gorgeous, even a little unreal. "The First Incense" did it, and it was really a very gorgeous and erotic movie.
Wang Anyi (right) and Hui Anhua (left) in Hong Kong. (Photo/Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
<h3>"Their lives dictate their course"</h3>
Southern Weekend: In the course of your discussion, do you feel that there is a discrepancy between your understanding of the text of Zhang Ailing's original work with Xu Anhua?
Wang Anyi: There is still a little bit of entry and exit, but I have to obey her, the film is the director's creation, I am writing the text for her, this is very clear in my mind. I hadn't paid special attention to the novel "The First Incense" before, nor did I think it was Zhang Ailing's best work. But Director Xu told me what she wanted to do, she said: "I just want to make a love film, I have reached this age, I have never loved well, you want me to love once." 」 ”
However, what I saw in this story was not love, all I saw was the exchange of interests, calculations, and mutual framing, and the people inside were particularly bad, and she replied to me: "It doesn't matter, bad is bad." ”
Southern Weekend: After watching it, I also feel that the film emphasizes too much on the part of "pure love", simplifying the subtle and complex things of human nature in Zhang Ailing's original work, especially the complexity of the heroine Ge Weilong. She seems more simple than in the novel.
Wang Anyi: This may have something to do with the actor's performance, in fact, Xu Dao still hopes to be able to let love slowly surface in a complex human life. For example, Ge Weilong and Ge Qiqiqiao did not have any true love at the beginning. Zhang Ailing is like this, and so is "Love in the Fallen City", the male and female protagonists initially did not have true love, until finally slowly gave birth to some sincerity. The same is true of Georgie, he can't change his disposition, such a person can never be loyal. But he also had a little sincerity towards Ge Weilong. He knew where Ge Weilong's money came from, and he knew that he ate soft rice, but he didn't want Ge Weilong to think that she was like the prostitutes in Temple Street. Georgie Jo's nature can't be changed, and Ge Weilong can't completely subdue him, but in any case, the two of them are unique, a particularity in the universality of each other's lives. At this point, I also gave Georgie a chance for him to express. For example, my aunt asked him how he and Ge Weilong were? He would shy away from the question, saying that Veron had her good.
Southern Weekend: Speaking of which, the casting of this film has been very controversial from the beginning of its release, what do you think. Have you talked to actors about scripts?
Wang Anyi: No, I have not had contact with any actors, nor have I had any conversation, I only communicate with Xu Dao alone, Xu Dao trusts me very much, we are all realistic, we all emphasize narrative, we are very compatible with each other. There are no obscure parts of Xu Anhua's films, in my opinion, this is the ethics of the writer, and you must tell others what you think.
Peng Yuyan's performance was unexpected, because in the movies I watched before, he was completely different. For example, in Xu Anhua's last film "When is the Bright Moon" and Jiang Wen's "Evil Does Not Pressure the Righteous", in addition to his appearance is somewhat like mixed blood, the other is not like Qiao Qiqiao, I was quite skeptical at first. Later, when I saw him in "First Incense", I was surprised and thought he was doing very well.
Some people think that Peng Yuyan's image is too healthy and therefore does not conform to the appearance of Georgie Joe, which is a big misunderstanding, the novel has always been written about Ge Qi as a sports person, such as he ran to Ge Weilong's balcony at night, climbed up from a field, it can be seen that he is a person who likes sports. Later, his sister also said that he was a person with excessive hormone secretion, which showed that he was energetic. This misreading comes from Chinese understanding of love, and feels that an amorous person should be a white-faced student.
I began to doubt Peng Yuyan whether he had such a deep feeling, he behaved well, played the frivolous side of Georgie, and also played his particularly affectionate side. He created a very scarce image on the Chinese screen, and I think this character will be remembered later.
As for Ge Weilong, Director Xu's choice of Ma Sichun must have his own reason. I found that she acted too simple, in fact, Ge Weilong is a very sophisticated person. As soon as the movie opens, Ge Weilong's letter to her aunt can be seen that this girl has a plan for her life, but she can't imagine that things are beyond her plan.
This character is really interesting, especially in a scene where she gives up going back to Shanghai and comes back from the docks to talk to her aunt about how I can raise Georgie if she doesn't want to get married for financial reasons. It is also this scene that Ge Weilong pointed out to her aunt that the way the other party showed love was ridiculous. This is a sign of the growth of this role, and it is also a climax of the whole film, Ma Sichun's performance is also getting better, and I think the actor should also be very happy. At this point, the growth of this character is still very clear, and it is also a reason that attracted me to write.
The aunt played by Yu Feihong seems to be fuller than the novel, and Zhang Ailing's pen is always more vitriolic, so it is difficult to visualize the aunt. She is different from the bad women in "Dangerous Relationships", and her aunt realizes that she is old and fading, so she will invite some young girls to her salon to attract men, and she is quite in crisis.
Situ Xie, played by Fan Wei, is also impressive, they have a scene of eating oysters at the Peace Hotel, Fan Wei acted very well, and everyone was very happy to see it. I didn't know much about him before, but I later learned that I used to act in sketches, but I didn't have the habit of sketches. In the original work, it is said that this character is a Shantou native and Fan Wei is a northerner, but in this movie, everyone can't speak dialects and speak Mandarin. In fact, Xu Dao's original idea was that everyone said their own words, and the language was a hodgepodge, and there were also Shanghainese, Shantou dialects, English, and Portuguese, but it was difficult to achieve.
Xu Anhua feels that the people in the novel are complex, and the previous history has been arranged for the aunt and others, which of course does not mean that the behavior of the characters is excusable, this is a more traditional moral concept, they have nothing to forgive, they are such people, have their own choices, have their own values, and their lives determine their direction.
<h3>"Xu Anhua asked me to add a snake." </h3>
Southern Weekend: This is the third time you have adapted Zhang Ailing's novel, the first two times are the stage drama "Golden Lock" and "Color, Ring", both say that the adaptation of Zhang Ailing's novel is difficult, in addition to dealing with the pickiness of fans, her text itself is relatively obscure, where do you think the biggest difficulty of adaptation is?
Wang Anyi: There are too many hidden things that are difficult to adapt Zhang Ailing, and I need to speculate, especially in the era. I grew up under the influence of left-wing ideas, and it is still a little difficult to understand her. But Zhang Ailing's work is very well structured, and she never writes a story with a beginning and an end. This is really a rare place for novelists, especially the authors of the "May Fourth" era, who often pay less attention to the plot and pay more attention to enlightenment ideas.
Southern Weekend: You just said that many of the dialogues in the script of "The First Burning Incense" are the original text of the novel. The language of Zhang Ailing's novel is relatively written, will you worry that the audience feels estranged?
Wang Anyi: How to say it, the performance of "The Golden Lock" on the stage should be said to be relatively complete, and the audience's reaction to it is also in line with our expectations. As a movie, such a dialogue may be exaggerated. But I thought at the beginning that this movie must be a somewhat "contrived" movie.
I haven't met the audience now, I haven't seen their reactions, but when I watched the film, I didn't think there was anything wrong with the language, as long as the language was complete, you could enter, afraid that I was afraid that there were only four different. This is what we call context, and if we can create a context, re-creation is accessible.
Xu Anhua and I are basically in agreement in these aspects, and when the first draft came out, she affirmed it. Later, there were some additions and adjustments, such as Xu Anhua asked me to add a snake later, that is, the snake you saw in the movie. This story is said to be known to everyone in Hong Kong, and it is about the family of the tycoon Ho Tung. Xu Anhua showed me a lot of photos of the He Dong family, saying that he had snakes in his home, and the first thing she asked me to add after reading my first draft was a snake.
It is fun to make a movie, everyone will add their own experience, Xu Anhua will emphasize the story of the He Dong family, and also require that the big house of Georgie Joe's family should appear in the movie. I knew from the time I wrote "Wind Moon" that the director sometimes wanted to use some of his film techniques to express it, and the screenwriter had to provide him with conditions.
Southern Weekend: I also heard that in order to understand the old style of Hong Kong, you and director Hui Anhua collected style together.
Wang Anyi: Yes, I didn't know that time was so tight, Xu Dao was quite leisurely, she repeatedly said that we were not filming, we were just playing, let you know about Hong Kong, she took me to Sheung Wan and took away a lot of places. My biggest gain was to go to the Temple of the People. Director Xu constantly asked me to increase my understanding of this land, and later there was a detail in the film, there was a lamp on the road in front of my aunt's house, and the lamp was lit when the guests came. This is a staircase in some of the empty mansions that we saw in the mid-levels of Hong Kong, and if there are lights on them, they should be lit one by one.
You know That Anhua Hui grew up in Macau. When she was in Macau, Xu Dao was very dazed, she said that the skyline had changed and became very powerful, but that day we walked to the Macau History Museum near St. Paul's Square, there was the sound of singing music, Xu Dao found some feelings, and some imprints could be seen in the movie.
<h3>"Hong Kong and Shanghai are mutually reinforcing."</h3>
Southern Weekend: You often travel to and from Hong Kong, is this six months in Hong Kong the longest period of time you have lived there? Shanghai and Hong Kong are always regarded by some scholars as "A Tale of Two Cities", and there seems to be some origin in literature, this time in order to write the script, I also did some research, do you have any new discoveries about this?
Wang Anyi: It is the longest. But I come and go to Hong Kong a lot, and I've been resident in several schools. This time, for the sake of writing movies, I went to many places that I am not usually going to, which is more abundant.
It can be said that Hong Kong and Shanghai are indeed a state of mutual life. I remember that before Hong Kong developed and prospered, Shanghainese people looked at Hong Kong as a rural area. Mr. Ye Ming, the director of changing my novel "Passing Away" to the movie "Grandma Zhang Family", told me that a line in the film version of "Sunrise" said that "to make a suit, you have to go to Hong Kong", and the time to make a suit must go to Shanghai. At that time, Hong Kong was still a wild place, and it was not until the late 1940s that Hong Kong gradually prospered.
I still have a strong impression that in the 1960s, the parents of several of our classmates were in Hong Kong, and then these classmates disappeared one after another, that is, they went to Hong Kong. This is similar to the experience of Chen Guanzhong and Wong Kar-wai, who later became famous in Hong Kong, whose parents went to Hong Kong early, and who studied in primary schools in the mainland for a few years, and the relationship between Hong Kong and Shanghai is indeed very close.
Southern Weekend: Some people also say that Zhang Ailing's writing of "The First Incense" is also a kind of self-condition, just like Ge Weilong in the film, who wants to return to Shanghai after being frustrated, and Zhang Ailing's background color is also in Shanghai. What do you think of The relationship between Hong Kong and Shanghai in Zhang Ailing's writings?
Wang Anyi: We have a lot of misconceptions about Zhang Ailing, Zhang Ailing is from Tianjin, her hometown is Hefei, she is not an authentic Shanghainese. For fictional works, it cannot be seen as a place. For Ge Weilong, Shanghai is her home, she is only living in Hong Kong's aunt's house, the novel is also very clear, in Hong Kong is mainly for school, after reading she still has to go back. I just didn't expect that when I entered my aunt's house, it was like entering the jianghu, and I met such a man again.
I was thinking that a girl living in a more strict civic class had never met a man who was so deceitful and disappointing, and she wanted to escape, and escaping was a simple solution. But in the novel, it is written that she later had an illness and did not leave, thinking that this was God leaving her, and she finally stayed in Hong Kong, and life in Hong Kong was more attractive. Then Shanghai is a normal family life for her.
There is a detail that is not bad, and I also emphasize it to Xu Dao. Ge Weilong recalled that he was sick as a child, and after a high fever, he held a glass paperweight. On the later trip to Macau, Ge Weilong was disappointed in Georgie Joe and the marriage, so I let her go back to the boat and shook a ball of ice, and as soon as her hand opened the ice, it melted, this action is probably not very significant, it is from the glass paperweight. It's a symbolic shot of something that looks solid turn into water.
Ma Sichun's play has slowly improved since then. The scene on the Macau boat was also filmed very well, and it had a kind of tiredness and sluggishness after the revelry. The back scenes are very good, aunt, Ge Weilong and Ge Qiqi Qiao three people eat, Situ Xie called Ge Weilong to go out together, Ge QiQiao wanted to keep her and not let her go. Slowly, they really became a family, but it was an eccentric family that formed their mode of getting along and the pattern of feelings, and everyone recognized this relationship.
<h3>"The changes in my writing are different from Zhang Ailing's."</h3>
Southern Weekend: You just mentioned that you didn't pay special attention to the novel "First Burning Incense" at the beginning, and thought that this is not Zhang Ailing's best work. But "The First Incense" is Zhang Ailing's true novel debut, and it has a special place in her creation. Can you talk about your favorite Zhang Ailing's work?
Wang Anyi: She didn't write much of her novels, most of them were written when she was younger. Zhang Ailing's writing is quite neat, probably because her main works are written in a relatively concentrated time, quite dense. A golden age for a writer can be just a few years. I personally think that Zhang Ailing's more complete works are "The Golden Lock" and "Love in the Fallen City". Of course, "The First Incense" is also good through continuous analysis. The Hong Kong and times she wrote about are very special and heterogeneous.
Southern Weekend: You have also analyzed Zhang Ailing's "Nightmare of the Red Chamber" in the book "Novel and Me", and we can see from Zhang Ailing's novel that she was influenced by works such as "Dream of the Red Chamber". At the beginning of "The First Incense", some people compared Ge Weilong's situation with Lin Daiyu's entry into Jia Province.
Wang Anyi: I don't think Ge Weilong and Lin Daiyu are similar, Zhang Ailing has been influenced by many novels, in addition to "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Mandarin Duck Butterfly School" is also very important, the influence of English literature on Zhang Ailing can not be ignored, if you want to emphasize her, I feel that she is also greatly influenced by Jane Austen.
Ge Weilong and Lin Daiyu are completely different, this character has much more initiative than Lin Daiyu. She did not consult her parents when she went to her aunt's house, and she was a very mobile woman. Besides, she is a member of the Shanghai citizen class, and this kind of girl has the possibility of dominating her own destiny. Lin Daiyu's entry into Jia Province was very desolate, completely relying on relatives and there was no way back. Ge Weilong went to find her aunt, and the plan in her heart was very clear, that is, she wanted to complete her studies, her life plan was very complete, but the reality greatly exceeded her plan.
Southern Weekend: Scholars have always liked to compare your work with Zhang Ailing, perhaps because you both write about Shanghai. Wang Dewei also said that "Long Hate Song" can be seen as the later life of Zhang Ailing's characters, but you don't seem to agree with it, can you talk about it specifically, why don't you agree with his statement?
Wang Anyi: I don't disagree, Zhang Ailing and I do have something in common, such as writing about Shanghai, especially the citizens of Shanghai. We are all realistic, with more emphasis on narrative and characters, which is one of the reasons why people compare me with her, and also to lift me up. The difference is probably in the values. She thinks life is going downhill, and I don't seem to feel that way yet. In addition to the part of the citizens, I have written about other aspects after all. It's natural that people think I'm a lot like her, and we all notice some characters outside of enlightenment.
I grew up in a different background than her, and she can be said to be living in the last days. The changes I write about are different from hers, her changes are downhill changes, and my changes are in a new era, which is an important difference. The most difficult thing for me to adapt her things is how to understand her time, and if I don't understand it, I lack details.
Characters and plots, I can speculate from her text, the details are not difficult to do, when I adapted "Color, Ring", I actually used the details of her novel and even prose, this story is really hidden more than Lu. Later, I specifically wrote about which texts were used behind the script, because they were copyrighted.
Southern Weekend: We might as well extend the question to your novel creation, you just said that you don't know much about the era in which Zhang Ailing lived, but your "Long Hate Song" also involves some descriptions of past eras.
Wang Anyi: Of course, imagination is the first important. Imagination has to be based, based on their understanding of the era and the characters, they feel that "Long Hate Song" seems to be written as nostalgic, and indeed the previous part is a life I have never experienced, so there is still some conceptualization in the front.
Southern Weekend: Do you think it's best for writers to write about their own experiences?
Wang Anyi: It is best for a writer like me to be like this, Mo Yan may be particularly talented, I still honestly start from experience. It also raises the question, why should writers write something unfamiliar? Writing always has to have a motivation, if writing something unfamiliar, where does the motivation come from? I actually wrote The Long Hate Song for the third volume, and the first two volumes were written for the third volume.
Southern Weekend: Speaking of personal experience, your father is an overseas Chinese in Singapore, which means that your own family has a lot of roots in immigrant culture, especially with the Nanyang culture and colonial culture involved in "First Incense". Director Xu Anhua is also a descendant of immigrants, and her parents' generation was very turbulent because of the war. Zhang Ailing's experience is more familiar to us, and she has been wandering since she was a child. Your latest novel, A Knife, A Thousand Words, is also an immigrant story. Do you pay special attention to the subject of immigration?
Wang Anyi: Xu Anhua's life is too complicated, and she has made many such stories. I didn't actually do that, I didn't go back to the place where my father was born until I was in my thirties, to go to the graves of my grandfathers and grandmothers, to see my uncles and aunts. Our country and Singapore established diplomatic relations very late, and I didn't think much about where my father used to live, but I grew up under a relatively pure left-wing culture in the interior.
Speaking of immigrant culture, we now like to classify all kinds of storylines, people always have to move, and we now call people's movements immigrants. In fact, we can't categorize it this way, and I didn't think about writing about immigrant culture. The reason for the creation of "A Knife, a Thousand Words" is very accidental and difficult to describe. Now the author has a big problem, when you finish writing a book or even not finished, you have to constantly explain the whole idea, in fact, there are not so many ideas, sitting in front of the desk to deal with things are very detailed and technical. We are now too quick to summarize and should slow down a bit.
Back to writing the film script for Xu Anhua, I can still say some things clearly; let me go back to my own creation, I really can't say clearly. Writing a script for a director is relatively easier from a writing point of view, but the difficulty is that on the other hand, the writer does not need to act alone, it is all within the restrictions given to you by others. These restrictions are enough to be observed, and the situation of writing a novel is not the same, that is, a person looking for a way to go between the vast world and the world.
<h3>"Mainland directors and writers seem to have an epic feeling</h3>."
Southern Weekend: You talked about the differences between the creation of novels and screenplays, you are not a professional screenwriter, but you have also been involved in the creation of some films, such as being the screenwriter of "Wind Moon". But you seem to rarely write your own screenplay, even if it's an adaptation of your own novel.
Wang Anyi: I have never been involved in the adaptation of my own novels. Film is really easy to write because it's very technical, like I just said about understanding the original text, understanding the director's intentions, and trying to show the intentions. Overall, it's easier than writing novels on your own. The problem is that people who write novels are certainly not satisfied when they write movie scripts. I will not write a film again in the future, unless there is a situation that is particularly necessary, a situation that is particularly difficult to refuse.
When I wrote "Wind Moon", I had no experience than now, the situation was quite complicated, there was no original text, unlike "The First Incense" there was a novel, when Chen Kaige came to me, there were already many people involved in the screenwriting work, so the story he brought was still very complete. The previous story seems to have been conceived by him and Ye Zhaoyan, and later Ye Zhaoyan wrote this story into a novel "Flower Shadow". I only need to be rich in detail about the story brought by Chen Kaige, but my first draft of Chen Kaige did not understand it, and maybe we expressed it in a different way. Chen Kaige's ideas are very grand, much bigger than Xu Anhuahong, and when xu Anhua arrives, cooperation becomes simple. But when I wrote "First Incense", the investors said that my format was wrong. Fortunately, later said that the format does not matter, you can help me sort it out, I think the script may have its own format.
Southern Weekend: Speaking of the difference between co-directors, do you think this difference has a lot to do with gender? We know you have several close friends of female directors, such as the late director Peng Xiaolian. You're also bound to be asked a lot about the relationship between gender and creativity, what do you think about that?
Wang Anyi: The difference here seems to be a little gender problem, but it is not complete, I am afraid that there is also a problem of the times, and it is also related to chance. Mainland directors and writers seem to have an epic feeling of expressing the big history. Peng Xiaolian also likes historical things, even if it is a small story, she hopes to reflect the big background behind it. Hui Anhua pays more attention to the fate of the characters, in the end, it is a Hong Kong director, which may have some regional, institutional or ideological differences.
I am often asked about gender, earlier to explain some issues, and now the situation is more complicated, I am afraid that a large part of the reason is for the market. Truth be told, promotions can turn into a huge task, so one would want the author's identity to be a little dramatic. It's not just a matter of China, brokers around the world and even authors around the world may have to consider such details, such as what kind of subject matter can attract the attention of others. Now creators are often involuntary.
Southern Weekend: As a novelist, generally speaking, I hope that the director can respect his original work, while as a screenwriter, it may be more important to consider the excitement of the plot and the acceptance of the audience.
Wang Anyi: My novels are rarely favored by directors, but I am relatively relaxed in this regard, and the experience of "Long Hate Song" tells me that since I have handed over the copyright to the film and television industry, I must accept misunderstandings, and this ideological preparation must be there. Novels and movies are so different, although there are novelists like Liu Heng who later specialize in movies, but I may not be able to. Although I also like to watch movies, writing movies does not satisfy me. The novel is the work of words, the art of language, it is mainly narrative, the film is not narrated, the text is mainly in the dialogue, other times to design the scene on the line.
Southern Weekend: In that era, Zhang Ailing was still able to travel between the two ends of literature and film, fully influencing the public, how to view the "activity boundary" of writers?
Wang Anyi: In Zhang Ailing's time, movies were a very popular entertainment, and the public class's love for movies was very strong, and this enthusiasm was maintained in my opinion until about 2000, and movies were indeed a particularly contagious entertainment, and at the same time they could take into account serious ideas, and I guess Zhang Ailing would be quite willing to get involved in movies.
As a novelist, Zhang Ailing and screenwriter Zhang Ailing are still very different, I watched her screenwriting film is a pity, Zhang Ailing's narrative text is very good, especially in the exuberant stage of her creation, but good words can not be used in the movie.
In her time, movies were a little older than they are today, especially Hong Kong movies, and there were other routines, which were not quite the same as Hollywood. Zhang Ailing has a certain financial pressure, she needs to write movies to earn money. She also rarely wrote novels later, and although we cannot ask that the golden period of writers is endless, we will feel sorry. Especially their generation of writers, at the intersection of historical turmoil, a person has to deal with many different situations, and writing novels requires leisure.
<h3>"The golden cycle of contemporary Chinese fiction is over</h3>."
Southern Weekend: Speaking of the golden age of writers, in fact, it is more common among contemporary writers, such as most of the writers of your generation who do not write, but you have been creating, what is the motivation that supports you?
Wang Anyi: There is no support, support sounds like too difficult, too hard, in fact, there is still a little fun, fun comes from many aspects, the preference for the narrative, you can also be competent, will make you feel fun, if there is no fun, I will not write. I understand very well why some of the authors who wrote together at that time did not write, especially those who had a particularly high starting point for writing, and really had been in the sea and were unwilling to write worse things.
Writing is certainly hard, but it also depends on what to compare, it is a little harder than writing a movie, but it is much easier than making a movie. I went to visit the class to see Xu Dao working there, it was too hard. When writing the script, I felt that I could write anything, very free, and when I went to the scene to see it, I couldn't do anything, and the restrictions were very large. Director Xu took care of so many things on the spot, and some of them told me that the biggest task in making a movie is to wait, and we will feel that the talents who are okay are waiting, but they are working. So, for a lazy person like me, writing novels is still a better job.
Southern Weekend: In this era when new media is almost pervasive, you are still writing with pen and paper, but some writers are actively using new media expressions, such as Mo Yan's douyin number. Jia Zhangke also made a literary documentary for Yu Hua, Jia Pingwa and others. What do you think of the choice of these writers?
Wang Anyi: Everyone has their own way, I don't like these things, but I can't say that I don't like it is not good, I almost don't have the Internet, I don't have WeChat, I don't like it, I can't figure it out and I think it's quite troublesome. I don't know much about these, I don't want to understand, it will be a little inconvenient, especially when paying, I have to use Alipay, I don't even have that, I still use cash and credit cards, sometimes I have to give cash to the salesman, they go to scan the code.
During the epidemic, I didn't go out much, so I didn't have a travel code, so I only let my family help me get a code with me, and I had to use it to go to school. I didn't mean to keep any distance, I really can't do it, people say why can't you? I also asked him, do you write novels? Why should everyone know this stuff?
Southern Weekend: You are also a professor in the Department of Chinese of Fudan University, teaching creative writing courses, and you must have come into contact with many young students who are interested in writing, and you will also read some novels by young writers in your daily life.
Wang Anyi: In fact, most of the young people I contact are not sure of their career development, and many of them are also for credits. I'm more in contact with undergraduates in Hong Kong, but I enjoy talking to them to enrich my horizons. If you talk about the views of young writers, this question is difficult to answer, and it is easy to attract some unhappy things. In fact, we are all a generation, and now we divide the generations into special pieces. In addition, the golden cycle of contemporary Chinese novels has come to an end, not to say which person is more talented, or which person is not good, this is not a problem of individual authors. Now is probably a period of preparation, and if we wait patiently, we may have better works. The works that came out in the 1980s are still very good today, and in the next 20 years, a lot of good literary works have come out, which has nothing to do with the popular or niche of literature, maybe more readers will promote literature, but these are external factors, and now it is indeed an era of literary decline.
Southern Weekend: So do you think it's the external environment or the creators themselves?
Wang Anyi: All have a relationship, the conditions in the 1980s were rare, in an open era, young people left the dogmatic educational environment, everyone grew up together, accumulated rich experience and feelings, and in the 1990s, everyone promoted a root-seeking movement. Nowadays, this craze has become very thin, and given the emergence of a large number of new media today, the novel is not the only way to express it.
Good creations may blossom in other places, such as some small-scale films, and even some web dramas, and I have watched a lot of good works during the epidemic, and the future direction may be here. We're also going to have some big gains in genre films, where young filmmakers are already making genre films, and genre films need good stories.
Southern Weekend reporter Yu Yaqin