Cover news reporter Zhang Jie
In June 2020, Yang Benfen, an 80-year-old retired worker in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, published his first novel in his life, "Autumn Garden", which tells the story of his mother's "Autumn Garden" full of hardships but also a tenacious and beautiful life, with good sales and word of mouth. Some readers commented that "'Autumn Garden' is like 'Alive' from a female perspective." In August 2021, Yang Benfen continued to write "Autumn Garden", which was published under the name of "Driftwood". In February 2022, her third book, "My Fragrance", was once again planned and published by Lefu Culture.
"I Am Fragrant" is a light and small book, the style is also light and concise, like a whisper to tell the heavy content - decades of bumpy experiences, lonely married life, some people say that her book is "a green bitter melon in the autumn garden".
Yang Benfen aliased himself as "Huicai" and her husband as "Dr. Lui". Huicai and Dr. Lui are good people, but due to Dr. Lui's personality, growth and other reasons, Huicai, as a woman who loves to read and has culture, has felt a lot of personal loneliness, confusion and incomprehension in decades of married life, and has the ability to issue her own shouts and questions.
Huicai and Dr. Lui once raised a black rabbit for their child to play with. Huicai locks the rabbit on the outdoor balcony, and the rabbit is stolen. She heard the movement of stealing the rabbit, hid behind the door and shivered, shouting in her mouth: "Don't steal my rabbit!" Dr. Zhang returned from the countryside and questioned her over and over again: "Are you a good person or a bad person?" How can good people be afraid of thieves? She replied, "I'm a good person, but I'm afraid of thieves." A thief is a bad person, and I am a good man, a woman, and I will be killed by him. ”
Another time, Hui Cai went to Dr. Lui's hometown, and Dr. Lui's father caught a chicken and sent her. Yang Benfen locked the chicken in the chicken coop behind the door, and as a result, when he sent Dr. Lu out, Hui Cai forgot to lock the door, and someone came in and stole the chicken. Dr. Lui therefore did not pay attention to her for three months, nor did he say why. "Then I grabbed him and I said how long do you hate me?" The two chickens were stolen, and I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't find it again. More than ten years later, Hui cai learned that Dr. Lui thought she had secretly sold the chicken and sent the money back to her home.
Huicai repeatedly expressed to Dr. Lui directly that he also needed to be considerate and cared for, but Dr. Lui was indifferent, always "escaping" (silence, helplessness about the grief of his lover, running away from home) and "fighting" (escalating conflicts, spilling anger on Huicai's mother and brother). In Huicai's words, Dr. Lui is essentially an honest person, who can be friendly to others, generous, does not smoke, does not drink, is not ambiguous, but is to his wife, in many key moments, behaving very cold and even very cold, so that Huicai has chilled many times.
In addition to the pain, Huicai also tried to forgive, to understand, to forgive again and again. Dr. Lui has had tragic upbringings, such as being abandoned by his biological parents, committing suicide by his adoptive parents, being in poor health, and having suffered from tuberculosis at work. A person who has not been loved in his adolescence, a person who has been hurt and not healed, it is really difficult for him to have the ability to love.
Although Huicai also had a state of wanting to commit suicide, running away, and despair, in the end she chose to forgive and let go. She just regretted, "He's a good person, and I'm a good person, but the two of us who are good people just haven't been happy." ”
A woman writing about her marriage may be a little taboo for some people, but Yang Benfen is very frank: "I want to write about a woman's emotional life, her confusion, her unwillingness." Now fast forward to the loess, there is nothing that cannot be said. ”
Yang Benfen's daughter Zhang Hong, also a writer, wrote about her mother in the epilogue of Driftwood: "I think that if the mother spends most of her life 'alive', writing in her later years means self-help. This is a journey back to man's subjective consciousness, to be aware of life and no longer to be muddy. ”
Born in 1940 in Xiangyin, Hunan Province, Yang Benfen was admitted to an industrial school at the age of 17, and then entered a school in Jiangxi, and before graduating, he went to the countryside to work as a farmer. Decades later, he struggled to make ends meet. Yang Benfen began to write in the year of Hua Jia. From "Autumn Garden" and "Driftwood" to "I Am Fragrant", these three books are also known as the "See women" trio, forming a precious civilian history song.
There are many people who suffer in this world, and there are many people who have a tortuous and bitter fate, and some even have the ability to write their own stories, such as some family long autobiographies and memoirs of suffering experiences. However, the lack of artistic journal records, only to attract people with content, even if it is to earn people's tears, is not the same thing as literary works expressed in a decent art form. The reason why Yang Benfen wrote the story of herself and her family stood out was that her expression had enough writing skills and literary quality. Her expression is not crying or self-pity, but speaking softly. She has the ability to tell the story of her own life in the form of a good novel.
Writing it down is already a cure, and it can be expressed in the form of excellent literature, and it has a huge release and healing effect. With the brilliance of literature, it is not a unilateral emotional accusation, nor a heart-rending cry. Because it is deep, because it is calm, because it is light, and it is more powerful.
Yang Benfen is not a professional writer, and she has been engaged in transportation for most of her life, a profession that is far away from literature and art. But she relied on the education of her growing family, the love of literary reading, and enough natural ability to write enough artistic works.
Even though there are many excellent writers, through research, understanding and other links and superb skills, they do express the voices of ordinary people, ordinary people, and suffering people, but they are always separated by a layer. If an ordinary person, an ordinary person, and a suffering person has mastered the art of writing and become a writer himself, then his works will undoubtedly have more moving power.
(The pictures in this article are provided by the publisher Lefu Culture)