Qianjiang Evening News hourly news reporter Zhang Jinhua
Xu Zechen close-up.
"Because of the epidemic, I can't go anywhere this year, just in Beijing for the New Year." My parents are still in their hometown. My mother spends part of her time in Beijing every year, and I was going to go back for the New Year, because my father didn't want to come, and I felt that it was better to be at home, the old man liked to live with a yard, the sky was big, you could grow vegetables, you could visit the door. Life upstairs is too humiliating. But this year my mother can't go back to her hometown, she can only celebrate the New Year in Beijing, and my father is alone in his hometown, so he spends the New Year with my sister. I sent some New Year goods from Beijing to my dad and my sister from my hometown. ”
After living in Beijing for many years, Xu Zechen slowly entered the year of confusion from a struggling young man, and also completed the life process of studying, working, settling down, and having children from his hometown of Jiangsu to Beijing. To borrow Balzac's words, "all but Paris are provinces", so geographically, is the capital no longer an "object" for Xu Zechen?
Xu Zechen said: "I am ashamed that in terms of identity, I have not been able to solve the problem of being a Beijinger. I couldn't properly embed myself in the city, and of course, I couldn't allow myself to return to my hometown properly. If I say 'drifting', then I am indeed 'drifting', everywhere is 'drifting', there is nothing to send, only to cling to it. In fact, I can't tell which is the subject and which is the object in Beijing and my hometown, they are the most important references for me to observe and think about the world. Now I can hardly imagine how I would know and express the world without the two frames of reference of Beijing and my hometown. ”
In the impression of readers, in Xu Zechen's novels, several short stories in "If the Snow Closes the Door" are set in their hometowns, such as "Flower Street", and "Remembering Qin'e", the story takes place in Hailing, and the latest collection "Qingcheng" also has the appearance of "Hailing", "Hailing" in Xu Zechen's novel, is it a code name for the hometown of The East China Sea?
His most iconic short story, "If the Snow Closes the Door," shuttling between his hometown and Beijing, is a bit like a "watershed" in Xu Zechen's novel scene, and from then on, his characters "have to go to Beijing."
In Xu Zechen's novel creation, what is the position of his hometown, in addition to the novel "Northbound" that won the Mao Award, the hometown also appears in his novels in various ways from time to time, so will he still write novels dedicated to his hometown?
When I talked about my hometown, Xu Zechen said, "My hometown is Donghai, Jiangsu, and the East China Sea used to be called Hailing, and I like this name very much, so I often use it in novels." I have also written some novels about Flower Street, and many people have speculated whether my hometown is in Flower Street. In fact, Flower Street and Hailing are just a name, and for me, the stories that happened in these two places are the birth of my memories of my hometown. The great significance of hometown to a writer's writing has been demonstrated by many people, and there is no need to repeat it. It is one of the most stable references. In this sense, whether I write about Hailing or Huajie in the novel, my hometown has always been there, including stories that take place in Beijing and abroad. So all novels are ultimately dedicated to the homeland. The earliest novel of characters shuttling between their hometown and Beijing should be the novella "Ah, Beijing", which opened a series of character novels that followed "on the road". "If the Snow Closes the Door" is one of the articles in this series.
He also told the story of a foreigner —
"More than a decade ago, I met a bunch of foreigners from all over the world, who would often sit next to a steaming spicy hot stall and eat and talk. Holding a flatbread in one hand, a plate with spicy skewers rested on the floor, and a bottle of beer at his feet. Those young friends come from different provinces, different occupations, and the purpose of coming to Beijing is different, some are working, some are looking for work, some come to Peking University to listen to lectures and prepare for graduate school, all kinds. More than a decade later, they have almost all left Beijing. Either they can't get along, or they are old and must return to their hometown to start a family, in short, in the western suburbs of Beijing, where I once lived, it is basically impossible to see a familiar face. Over the years, I have written some novels about Beijing intermittently, and many of the characters in the novels are based on them. Some novels are read by them, and many more people don't read them at all. One year, I was out with a collection of novels about Beijing, and I was having dinner with a friend when I received a strange phone call. But as soon as I heard the sound, I knew who it was, a brother who used to live in the western suburbs, who returned to his hometown a few years ago. He said on the phone that he was moving in his hometown, and when he was packing his bags and being soft, he picked up the book I bought the other day, casually opened a novel, and read it. He just stood and finished reading the novel. In the winter, because he was busy cleaning up, he would wear slippers barefoot, and when he read a book, one of the slippers did not know where to kick. The floor was cold, and after reading the second half of the novel, he inserted the bare foot that had lost the slippers into the slippers of the other foot, and read the novel almost independently. What he was going to tell me was not his feet, but his tearful eyes. He saw his past self in the novel, and he cried not because he saw the hardships and difficulties of that time, but because he saw the vast time between the present and that time. The time of Dog Day passed so quickly, he said, compared with when we were in the western suburbs of Beijing, Lao Tzu's motivation has not been completely lost.
"I'm also happy to receive a call from his hometown, and I'm even happier to know that he didn't lose the energy of that time." The common legacy of life in Beijing's western suburbs may be idealism. No matter what the level of the ideal. Collectively, we call it "drive.". I hope to get calls from friends who were lost in the past. ”
So after the hometown gradually withdrew from life, what kind of impact will the place where he lives now have on Xu Zechen's writing?
Xu Zechen said, "In a city like Beijing, as long as you are not willing to close your eyes, plug your ears, and lose understanding, sympathy and love, you will not be far from the bottom of life." Their bodies more epitomize the confusion, difficulties and anxieties at the heart of this era. They aroused a lot of my awareness of the problem, which is the premise of my writing. ”
"In my work, not only women, but even men rarely confront the world. Simple and rough confrontation is the 'lazy' behavior of life, unless the mountains and rivers are exhausted, I will try my best to come up with a way for them. One of the ways I try not to push the characters into desperate situations and keep them dignified is not to be afraid to provide them with daily logic. ”
This is a kind of writing attitude of Xu Zechen, a writer who has gone out of his hometown and come to a broader world.
After staying in the metropolis for a long time, Xu Zechen also yearns for the foreign country, and in his latest published novel collection "Qingcheng", we see the appearance of eagles. In the novel "Qingcheng", there is an eagle, and on the cover of the book, there is also a huge eagle, and we rarely have the opportunity to see an eagle flying high in life. Xu Zechen said that in Beijing, it is difficult to see eagles in other places except in the mountains and zoos.
"I like eagles. Lonely, majestic, fierce, never dragging mud and water but very relaxed, especially like the way the eagle glids, fluttering and lifting, acceleration is also like static, the whole world is as open as a stone. A flying eagle makes you feel that it knows who it is. Just like the three people in "Qingcheng", in fact, they all need to have their own eagles.
As an eagle, it is meant to fly. Skimming over the homeland, skimming over this place, will also skim the sky of the world.
Before the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, Xu Zechen accepted an exclusive interview with the reporter of Qianjiang Evening News, and the following is the dialogue between the reporter of this newspaper and Xu Zechen -
[Their problems and anxieties are related to me]
Qianjiang Evening News: "Qingcheng" is your latest collection of novels, I heard that you have written more short stories recently? As far as you are concerned, what is the rhythm of writing, such as in long and short novels, what kind of rhythm is there?
Xu Zechen: I didn't write much, I wrote 4 short stories in 2020, and I didn't write one in 2021. I love to write short stories, especially after writing a long one, and I will seriously write several short stories. Long and short combination, one piece at a time, I like this rhythm. I haven't written a novella for 12 years, and I still feel that it is fun to write long and short stories.
Qianjiang Evening News: After "Going North" won the Mao Dun Literature Award, will someone say that you have "achieved fame" like a group of old writers, but you are "post-75" and are still very young, so it means that after the "Mao Award", there is still a long literary road to go, so do you have pressure now? Have you ever thought about how to seek a breakthrough in the creation of literature?
Xu Zechen: There is no pressure, I write the same if I win or not. What I am writing and will write is basically conceived before the award, whether it is wind and rain or the sun is shining, I will still write according to the mature way of conception. As long as you think about it, no prize will become a stone. I'm always looking for new possibilities in writing, and the search for the possibility of winning or not winning awards has never stopped.
Qianjiang Evening News: Your novels have been paying attention to a certain group of small characters, such as young people struggling in Beijing, what we call "Beijing Drift", very grounded, in the tribulations of life, there is the vitality and joy of youth, so you write the tone of small people is not tragic, and step on the beat of the times, in this field you have a good accumulation of readers, such as "Running into Zhongguancun" and "Jerusalem" and so on have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, these two books have recently been republished, will you continue to dig this "Beijing Drift" theme? Entering the new decade of the 2020 era, what new discoveries have you made compared to the previous 90s that are touching the nerves of your writers?
Xu Zechen: I don't quite agree with this definition of the so-called "Beijing Drift", but let's call it. Should still be written, but not now. I don't do it until there's a new idea. It is true that there have been tremendous changes in the last decade, and the city of Beijing has undergone many changes, but I have not yet been able to form a relatively clear overall understanding of these changes, so in recent years, there have been fewer positive novels written in Beijing. The focus of my writing has shifted to other subjects, but I have always been a focused observer of Beijing. Once the idea is mature, you can always turn around and return to the writing of this subject.
Qianjiang Evening News: I have a curiosity, in terms of life experience in recent years, you may be far from the bottom society?
Xu Zechen: To this day, I still disagree with many of the views of "low-level writing". I also don't think my writing at that time was "bottom writing". Suffering itself has never been the focus of my attention, I am more concerned with people's mental state and their relationship to the world. I write about the marginalized people because I am familiar with them, and their problems and anxieties are related to me. If I happen to meet a group of so-called noble people, if I happen to find that they have questions that interest me and are worth exploring, I will write about them. As far as literature is concerned, I don't think there is a moral superiority in this.
Qianjiang Evening News: Maybe the contact in life is more of an intellectual type, so will the focus of creation shift, and will it write a series of novels of intellectuals? Do you pay attention to the life and mental state of this class?
Xu Zechen: Nowadays in Beijing, I do come into contact with more intellectuals in my daily life, and I hope that I can seriously write about intellectuals in the future. In fact, I wanted to write when I was teaching in college, but I never found the right path. Take your time, you certainly won't give up.
Qianjiang Evening News: Judging from your series of novels, there are always warm things in your novels, whether this is related to your personal personality, we can feel that Xu Zechen is a person, there are a lot of warm things, in addition to the writer's own personality, "warmth" is also your attitude towards the world, right?
Xu Zechen: I am a generous person, at least I hope that I am a generous person, able to be open, tolerant, warm, and flexible to face the world and others, of course, including the world and characters in the novel. I don't believe there's anything in this world that has to be done with a shawl. So why not take a step back and look at the problem?
【From hometown to the world】
Qianjiang Evening News: Before your novel, or write about Beijing, or write about hometown and canals, three of the "Qingcheng" complete your kind of classical imagination of the western region, such a technical treatment, it seems to produce a kind of characters from the present, here and now, thrown into the distance, thrown to foreign lands, to complete the docking of ancient and modern time and space, let our readers have an illusion, we not only live in this moment, live in the present, but also live in the historical context, live in the imagination of the distance, which seems to be related to your blockbuster work "Jerusalem" Is there such a thing as this, so that you become a writer who starts from reality and can leave the real world of chicken feathers, so that the context of the novel is placed above reality?
Xu Zechen: "Going to the world" is a theme that runs through my writing to this day, one is my obsession, and the other is that I need a distant place, real or virtual, to form the necessary tension with the present and this. I like a saying: you have to bury your head in the road and look up at the sky. Writing is the same, there must be a level of superiority. People are like this, of course, we live in the moment, live seriously, even so, we must have one eye to look into the distance. Only then can we be "in" and "not in." In my opinion, there is no better state of life than being both "in" and "not in" at the same time.
Qianjiang Evening News: Every big city has a lot of people who rent houses. Just kidding, if someone says that Xu Zechen is the novelist who has been writing the story of the rental house, what do you have to say about it, you have long said goodbye to the days of the rental house in Beijing, settled down, and the son is also growing up slowly, is the theme of "rental house" a rich mine, will it continue to write?
Xu Zechen: "Rental House Story", it sounds quite attractive, like a thriller and suspense novel. I think it's good, I've always wanted to write novels like this. I did not say goodbye to the rental house, and now I still rent it, close to the child's school. If you want to continue to write about rental housing, you don't need to reminisce and fiction, it is live broadcast, and the story here is enough to live broadcast for a while. I will definitely continue to write.
Qianjiang Evening News: I have an impression from your works over the years, is it that a writer gradually pays attention to traditional culture after middle age? For example, the writer Xu Zechen has finally entered the traditional arts of calligraphy, painting and opera from pirated discs and mouth tapes, and integrated into his novels.
Xu Zechen: After entering middle age, I did start to pay attention to traditional culture, but this does not mean that I did not care about pirated discs and mouth tapes. I'm just shifting my center of gravity, not favoring one over the other, and I'm not giving up on one or the other. Over the years, I have become more and more aware of the importance of a person's cultural attributes, which is what Aristotle called "what it is." We are not what is external to us, but what is internal, so what is internal? My understanding is: culture, tradition, long-standing bloodline. Of course, not the ancestors are all good, this needs to be screened, but also needs to be practiced, and practice is often the most effective way to identify. I use writing to identify. I want my novels to be accompanied by a truly valuable culture and history.
Qianjiang Evening News: How do you define a successful writer in your mind? Do writers need to read a lot of books, how much do you personally read, what are your reading habits, can you share it?
Xu Zechen: I think successful writers are the kind of writers who write their own ideal works, or writers who are infinitely close to their ideal works. A really good writer must know what it means to write a masterpiece. I think writers should read a lot of books, and for a writer, reading is far more important than writing. When I was young, I read a lot of books, but I was too busy with work over the years, not only writing less, but also reading less. At the end of each year, the lackluster reading made me panic more than the lack of grain in writing. My reading habits are nothing unique, I can read books when I have time, in the study, in the living room, in the café, in the subway, it doesn't matter. I used to listen to books when I walked, and many books were listened to during a walk.
[The toughest defense in life is often women]
Qianjiang Evening News: I saw your previous novels, the protagonists are basically male, the newly published "Qingcheng", focusing on contemporary women, I think of the critic Zhang Li in the gender survey, there are 15 male writers participated, you are one of them, you said a key point, "She is first of all a 'person' that we can understand and understand to a certain extent, and then a 'woman', "What I want to ask is what kind of connection is between your gender concept and the novel you create, Or how does the gender perspective affect your writing?
Xu Zechen: Writing for more than twenty years, I did not deliberately want to write about men or women, and because I went with the flow, novels with male protagonists accounted for the main body. Therefore, I especially cherish the three novels in "Qingcheng", which are also naturally generated, and are natural secretions of emotion, cognition and inner writing impulses. The treatment of the female figure in the novel, as I answered in the survey, is first human, and then the woman. After solving the problem of "people", I will further explore and present its uniqueness from the perspective of "woman". There is a symbiotic, parallel and interactive relationship between gender and writing, and there is no order.
Qianjiang Evening News: The three novels in "Qingcheng", "Xixia" was written at the age of 26, "Juyan" was written at the age of 30, and "Qingcheng" was written at the age of 40, it should be said that your own life from youth to middle age, perhaps the definition of "ideal woman" in your mind is also changing? Are you more sympathetic or understanding of women than you were when you were 26?
Xu Zechen: Yes, I think we are all like this, at different ages, the definition of "ideal woman" will change. The perception of people is related to age and experience. When people reach middle age, I dare not say that I understand women better than when I was younger, but compassion does go deeper, and I will understand a person with the increasingly complex life and emotional background I have experienced. Therefore, Xixia and Qingcheng are two completely different female figures. One lives in the world of the self, one lives in life.
Qianjiang Evening News: Is the name of the character in the novel a mysterious "joint code" for the writer? I heard that when you write, you always have a name first, and then a story? So, is it the character's name that sets the temperament and tone of the novel? Is this more of a sexual spiritual writing?
Xu Zechen: This may be a personal preference. Some writers are accustomed to writing first, you can have no title, and the names of the characters can also be synonymous with ABCD first, and then go back to solve these "small things" after writing them all. But for me these are "big things", the novel has no title, the characters do not have the right names, I can't write it. I will be lost, like a dark night walk, and I need light. The title of the novel and the names of the characters are my lamp, a beam of light. It's both a guide and an atmosphere-setting, and like you say, they foreshadow the temperament and tone of the novel. At least it participates in a holistic construction. If the novel is a building, they are brick by brick, part by part, but not exactly. Or rather, they are a certain part of literature and art as I understand it.
Qianjiang Evening News: I feel that the three chapters in "Qingcheng" are like you are writing about the three stages of a woman's life, that is, half of the life process of life: "Xixia" is a young girl, "Juyong" is a youth, "Qingcheng" is middle-aged, women are coming through this step by step, she will go through a process for the world, for men, for the self, so they appear in a novel, it can be said that it is a very clever layout?
Xu Zechen: This summary is an afterthought, and I did not have this presupposition in the process of writing, but it was the result of going with the flow and coming naturally. But writing does have something mysterious about it, and whether you explicitly realize it or not, writing grows with you. These three novels are my cognition and perception at different stages of life, and naturally carry the characteristics of different stages of life. If you don't lay it out, time and life will lay it out for you.
Qianjiang Evening News: In "Qingcheng", we can't see the fierce confrontation between women and the world and men, no matter where they come from and where they want to go, their foundation is gentle and amiable, and they keep the world warm without being desolate. When writing "Juyong", the last stroke is impressive, Juyong is resolute, so you can feel the cold power in her, in "Juyong" and "Qingcheng", why do you deal with male characters that are weak energy?
Xu Zechen: In my works, not only women, but even men rarely confront the world. Simple and rough confrontation is a "lazy" behavior in life, and unless the mountains and rivers are exhausted, I will try my best to come up with a way for them. I try not to push the character into a desperate situation, in real life, extreme situations are not the norm after all. Characters are not dolls, and one of the ways to keep them dignified is not to be afraid to provide them with everyday logic. Especially for women. They are more mentally resilient, more emotionally generous and more resilient to the world. So why do they have to artificially let them wander into the landless, put to death and come back to life? In "Juyan" and "Qingcheng", male characters are indeed weak energy, because this is the case in life, in the face of difficulties and obstacles, the toughest defense of life is often women.
Writer Profile
Xu Zechen is a writer and deputy editor-in-chief of People's Literature Magazine. He is the author of the novels "Going North", "Jerusalem", "The Royal City Is Like the Sea", the short story collection "Running Through Zhongguancun", "If the Snow Closes the Door", "The Story Collection of the Western Suburbs of Beijing" and so on. He has won many awards such as lao she literature award, Feng Mu literature award, China Good Book Award, Chinese literature and media award and so on. In 2014, the short story "If the Snow Closes the Door" won the 6th Lu Xun Literature Award; in 2019, the novel "Going North" won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award.
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