In the annual list of books in the "Reading" column of the artnet news Chinese network just released in January this year, poet and scholar Nishikawa's "Northern Song Dynasty: Landscape Painting Utopia" was listed. When Nishikawa learned that he was "exploring flowers on the list", he once sent a message to Zhou Wanjing, the director of the "Reading" column and an art critic, feeling that he was not a professional art critic or art history researcher, and it would be more appropriate to move some of them.
Behind Nishikawa's humility, it is also clear that some people may not understand: Why did a famous poet write a book about Song painting? What does he want to gain by revisiting the Northern Song Dynasty? And what was his path to revisiting the ancients? As a junior, Zhou Wanjing asked Nishikawa not only the reason for his "visit to ancient times", but also how the younger generation should deal with themselves and how to deal with the daily wonders of contemporary China.
As Nishikawa put it, contemporary Chinese culture is a cultural spectacle. "As a writer, as an artist, if you don't use it, you waste it; if you don't use it as a critic, you're ignoring the times." Today, movable type Jun shares with book lovers the opening dialogue between poet Nishikawa and art critic Zhou Wanjing, "2022, How We Read Classics".
Zhou Wanjing and Nishikawa's online new year conversation
How to read the classics
▍Zhou Wanjing: As a contemporary person, how do you think you should read classical?
▍Nishikawa: Our concern for classical culture is actually a concern for contemporary culture. I see a lot of people talking about ancient Chinese things, and living in contemporary China by following the example of what they understand about ancient China, and have formed a set of sayings. I think there are a lot of problems in this. For some time now, I have personally felt that sometimes you have to look far back in order to clarify some contemporary things.
A few years ago, I felt this way when I was writing "The Reading of Tang Poems". And I have found that when we discuss contemporary Issues in China, our basic consciousness is actually shaped by the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially by the Qing Dynasty. In other words, we will consciously or unconsciously use the views of the Qing and Ming dynasties, which allows our "contemporary" to be pushed forward to the Qing dynasty or even the Ming Dynasty. This also causes, for example, that our current understanding of the Song Dynasty is likely to be closer to the Understanding of the Song Dynasty by the Ming and Qing Dynasties. There are many problems in this, which lead us to be unclear when we talk about many issues today, and the mode of looking at the problems can be summarized as follows: We discussed the problem of a Song Dynasty with the prejudice of the Qing Dynasty in the socialist stage.
▍ Zhou Wanjing: Some time ago in the Forbidden City, I also saw the pink glazed porcelain of the Qing Dynasty, and that amphora was not an aesthetic hobby of the Song Dynasty people at first glance.
▍Nishikawa: Yes, especially the porcelain of the Qianlong Dynasty in the Qing Dynasty, it is particularly different from the porcelain of the previous dynasties. The Manchu entry also brought the aesthetic of the Manchus, which was particularly interesting. Once you get into the historical details, you will find that many historical details mean a lot. I have seen sculptures in the Dunhuang Grottoes several times, and some of the sculptures in the caves were made up by the Qing Dynasty, and the faces of the Qing Dynasty people were small noses and small eyes, which was quite different from the style of medieval sculptures. I have an anonymous land and water painting here, which is used by folk people when they do dojos. The lower part of it may have been painted by the Ming Dynasty, but the top is broken and was repainted by the Qing Dynasty. This face made up by the Qing Dynasty is completely different from the one painted by the Ming Dynasty. These are obviously two kinds of fun, two feelings. I want to use it as an analogy, that is, you can't simply look at the people of the previous dynasties from the perspective of the Qing Dynasty, otherwise there will be deviations, that is, the Emergence of the Qing Dynasty Song Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty Tang Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty Han Dynasty, which will prevent us from discussing the cultural situation and cultural possibilities in China at present.
▍Zhou Wanjing: We must have our own path when revisiting ancient classics or paintings, and we must also take care of today's times and social situations, so how is this "revisit" possible?
▍ Nishikawa: Most people today encounter the problem of "discussing the Song Dynasty through the eyes of the Qing Dynasty". I'm talking about most of the ordinary people of our time. Confusion abounds in our consciousness and is not limited to discussing history. Our environment itself is a hodgepodge. Let me give you another example: one year, I went to the new campus of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, and there was a Xi Street outside their school entrance. The impression of this bustling street is strange and exciting. It can be said that it is a Chinese, Latin American-style, socialist Indian town! You can tell that the builders wanted to build it into a very fashionable town, but as it turned out, it looked weird. There are two cafes on one of its streets, one with a normal foreign language name and the other called "Asura Cafe". As long as you observe Chinese culture, you just have to observe it, and when you fix your eyes on it, you will think it is fantastic. This is a particularly special cultural wonder in contemporary China. As a writer, as an artist, if you don't use it, you waste it; if you don't use it as a critic, you are ignoring this era.
Zhou Wanjing: So how to use these "wonders"?
▍ Nishikawa: At least observe it. It's a oxymoron (oxymoron) for me. In the past, we usually chose to forget this contradictory rhetoric, which did not constitute our way of thinking, literary or artistic way of language, and cultural consciousness. However, it is time to use it. The so-called cultural creativity comes from here, and the artist should be able to grasp it in his living life and use it fully.
The cultural psychology behind online communication
▍Zhou Wanjing: Since the epidemic, how have your international projects (poetry creation, criticism writing, or cultural exchanges, etc.) affected? In your opinion, can online communication replace the "presence" of offline entities?
▍Nishikawa: Since 2020, the international activities I have participated in have become online. After becoming online, I found one thing particularly interesting: not long after the outbreak of the epidemic in the world, I participated in an online Indian international poetry festival - at that time, the technology was not very good, the organizers had little experience, the poets would drop the line, the signal was not good, and as a result, everyone's recitation became bumpy for technical reasons. In the end, you see that the audience on the side of the computer screen is getting smaller and smaller, and they are all offline, and finally it becomes the poets who attend the meeting read poems to themselves.
I found that there is another problem with online activities. Some of my friends and students were curious about foreign literary festivals, so I recommended them an online international literary event I was involved in and told them how to get it online. But I found that after the event began, no Chinese went online – Chinese didn't actually participate in real international exchanges, and didn't participate unless he was the protagonist himself.
Zhou Wanjing: He wants to "speak up."
Nishikawa: Yes, he doesn't make listeners. This also shows the cultural mentality of Chinese: he wants to participate in international cultural activities, but I told him that the website is not, in fact, he is not coming. In later individual activities, occasionally individual Chinese launched, but when it came to the discussion session, the silence of the Chinese audience was even more striking. With online communication, this cultural mentality of our Chinese is clearly reflected. Is this related to the language we use?
▍Zhou Wanjing: Speaking of this, I remember that I will have to take online classes at the beginning of next semester. Without the physical "presence", I was a little worried about not being able to "catch" students online.
▍ Nishikawa: Then you don't "catch". Students who don't listen, no matter how you persuade him, he won't listen. But such students are interesting. When I was studying at Peking University, there was such a classmate who didn't come to class for a semester — I remember it was a world history class — and then when it came to the final cram class of this semester, he walked to the door of the classroom, hesitated, and said, "I haven't come for a semester, isn't it good that the last lesson of this tuition has come?" It's a bit late! So he turned his head and went back to his dorm. He looked for clues from his middle school history textbook, and he passed it.
▍Zhou Wanjing: What if this student does not come to the exam and does not turn in his homework? Such a student is certainly not the kind of "big god" you said is hidden in the folk.
▍Nishikawa: As for homework, if students don't hand it in, they still have to let them do it. But this brings us to another issue: scoring. You see that Hu Shi judged the homework that year, and the homework was uniformly scored 60 points. As a result, once a student came to him and said to Hu Shi, "Sir, you see, I still answer better than them." Hu Shi looked at it and said, "It's better." So I changed the paper score to 61 points! This is what Hu Shi did. I usually pass a student unless he doesn't write anything. But in my class, 70 or 80 is common, and it is not easy to get 90.
How to deal with the "wonders" of contemporary life
▍ Zhou Wanjing: Looking back on 2021, we can't go abroad, but I know that you have visited many cities in China. On the question of "wonders" that we just discussed, do you think the fantasy wonders produced between different cities are the same? Do these "wonders" already have a tendency to homogenize?
▍Nishikawa: Not so far away, as far as Beijing is concerned, fantasy is different. A while ago, I attended the launch of the book "19 Poets in Beijing", and what I said when I came to the stage was that Beijing as I understood it was a plural Beijing, and everyone has a different Beijing. Then among these "Beijings", they are divided into: royal Beijing, Imperial City Root Beijing, Haidian intellectuals Beijing, CBD business district Beijing, Nancheng Tianqiao-style Beijing, and now immigrants Beijing. When we say "Beijing" it is a plural concept with an "s" added, with at least five or six levels of Beijing.
Although this is a geographical space, in terms of time, the Chinese history corresponding to different cities is different time periods. Some places correspond to the history of the Song Dynasty, some correspond to the Republic of China, and some correspond to the late Qing Dynasty. This is actually a feeling I had a few years ago. Once, I was in a small town in Zhejiang, and I was lying on the window sill of the hotel looking down, and there was no light on the street, and a man was riding his car to his home. Because there are no lights, I feel that this city is very different from the bustling big city. You would think that if the city suddenly lost power, it could suddenly change back into a small city in the Southern Song Dynasty. That is to say, these modern things on its surface, as long as the power is cut off, can instantly change back to the appearance of the Southern Song Dynasty. So, I think these cities can have something to do with a certain period of history.
Xichuan, "Northern Song Dynasty: Utopia of Landscape Painting" (Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2022)
▍Zhou Wanjing: Can you talk about your next writing from the book "The Northern Song Dynasty: The Utopia of Landscape Painting" published in 2021? I am particularly interested in the four extras at the end of the article, each of which I feel can be developed separately.
▍Nishikawa: Originally, this "Redundant Saying" was placed in the front, first laying the groundwork, asking questions, and then starting to enter the analysis of history. Then a friend told me that it was too slow to get into the subject. So later I took this part to the back and turned it into "Redundant Words".
In fact, these four "Words" are very important, that is, how we are different from the ancients in looking at paintings, and how we are different from the historical conditions they are in. It is precisely because of these differences that we may be able to see something new.
On the right is Zhang Daqian's splashing landscape, and on the left is the same work made by computer. What will contemporary painting look like in five hundred years, eight hundred years, or a thousand years? Can contemporary painting afford to get old? Some paintings are probably unable to bear to become old. The process of getting older is a real test of an artist's achievements. The value of the artist has to include the weight of "getting old". It is a serious thing to suggest that the scammers of calligraphy and painting can join the art criticism of the achievements of contemporary painting and calligraphy by making them old for contemporary paintings and calligraphy! (From "Words of Repetition (IV)")
"For the control of experience, no one can advance"
▍ Zhou Wanjing: In 2021, the novel "Take Out the Crazy Stone", which you wrote for my friendship, is also about to be published, I'm sorry to make you wait for a long time. If you were to look at this collection of short stories now, how would you feel new?
▍Nishikawa: I look forward to the release of your collection of short stories. I think your short stories are more appealing to me, you know why? Of course, your long stories also have your sense of rhythm, but your short stories have a particularly good sense of rhythm. Your short stories are well written. Especially the one I told you I liked, you wrote a robbery at the end into the short one of the parents, and that one was particularly good.
▍Zhou Wanjing: The one who wrote the mattress?
▍Nishikawa: Yes, it's the mattress article. After your collection of short stories came out, I think someone should recognize it.
▍ Zhou Wanjing: One of the changes in me in 2021 is that I don't care if most people "recognize the goods". I only care about a few people I value. And I care about how I can write better, and I know I have a lot of problems. Let's give you another opinion.
▍Nishikawa: I find that children of your generation now like to pick up long stories at the beginning, which is actually a bit problematic, because literary writing has to deal with experience. For the control of experience, no one can advance. It may be okay to write poetry, but it's hard to write novels. Your short story gives full play to your strengths, and it is neither a story of China nor a story of the United States, but a story on the border. This is one of your strengths and reflects the situation that many young people share today.
▍Zhou Wanjing: Last question, what is the most impressive movie and book you have seen in 2021?
▍ Nishikawa: The movie is Apichatpong's "Memory". The book is Sabransky's Glory and Scandal: A Reflection on German Romanticism. There are others, but let's take these two works.
END
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