In the 3,700-meter-high Ganzi Tagong Grassland, monk Jigami and her friends spent 19 months building a library with snow-capped mountains in 2018. The library was named Nalangma, which means "forest" in Tibetan.
When children are on holiday, the library is particularly lively. Ram, a 19-year-old girl, is a regular visitor here. Her favorite book is Notre Dame de Paris, and her favorite protagonist is Quasimodo. "He is a relative and a social outcast, but he is pure at heart. I think inner beauty is really beautiful. It gave me some confidence in myself as well. Ram also loves to write, writing novels about her loved ones and family, but she sometimes feels lost and wonders if writing can really help her mother, who works day and night.
The film crew of the documentary "But There Are Books" came to the Naranma Library in the summer of 2020 to record the story of Jigme and Ram. Soon after, Ram was admitted to the Tibetan Language and Literature major of Southwest University for Nationalities as he wished, and the director team was particularly happy. The film crew made a special trip to Ram's school the following year, and she became more cheerful and confident, hoping to find a school closer to her mother as a teacher in the future, and do some tibetan literature translation work in her spare time.
In Ram, Luo Yingluan sees the "meaning of reading" detached from abstract concepts, falling into the soil to grow concrete fruits, and a confused girl staggers along the road paved with books, and uses this to see a little light. "Her love of 'Notre Dame de Paris' reminded me of my initial interest in books. We always start from the concept and talk about the meaning of reading. Here in Ram, you will feel the guidance of books to people spiritually and spiritually, and see the healing and encouragement of people when reading is put into practice. ”
A few days ago, the second season of "But there are books" was launched on the B station, continuing the style of the first season and continuing to focus on people and things related to books. The first and second seasons of this series both received ratings of more than 9 points from Douban. Some of the more obscure books, such as "The Lonely Game", "Zheng Tianting's Diary of the Southwest United University" and "Autumn Garden", have all sold up after the documentary was broadcast.
A documentary does not carry the mission of change or enlightenment, but recording these people and things that are still holding on can bring a slight emotional touch to today's audience.
In the episode "The Word Ferryman", which tells the translator, the translator Bao Huiyi quoted the poet Elizabeth Bishop's "selfless and useless concentration" to describe the inalienable happiness that "concentration" brought to her. In Luo Yingluan's view, this sentence can be used to describe many people in the documentary: "They stand on the opposite side of the traffic and KPIs pursued in this era, and they are doing one thing very slowly, and they are doing some non-utilitarian things." They have a lot of things that modern people lack. She hopes that after watching the documentary, the audience can rethink these questions and get those lost things back.
"Hopefully they'll sell a few more books"
But There Are Books, the title of "But There Are Books" is inspired by a short poem of the same name by the poet Chesław Milosz: "Despite the fires on the horizon, castles bursting in the air, tribes on expeditions, planets in motion, 'We live forever'." The first season went live in late 2019.
Luo Yingluan told First Finance and Economics that the epidemic has had a great impact on the filming work, and foreign translators who originally hoped to shoot and translate Chinese works, such as Liu Yukun, the translator of "The Three-Body Problem", and Chen Anna, the translator of Mo Yan's works, failed to make the trip. Last year, The death of Hu Xudong, a poet whom Luo Yingluan liked, also made her feel particularly sorry.
In the director's note, Luo Yingluan wrote: The sudden epidemic, the death of the poet he liked, too much sorrow and confusion. But it also made it clearer why this documentary was made. "I want to record and preserve the stories of our beloved editors, translators, and creators, and I hope that they will sell a few more books; on the other hand, in the real world that is as ever-changing as a marquee, their calm and focused figures, as well as their books and works, have given me great strength, and I hope that you can also get comfort and strength from them." 」
After half a year of preparations, in June 2020, starting from the incident in which the publisher Zhang Lixian moved the warehouse of "Reading Library" to Nantong, the filming of the second season was carried out. In this season, in addition to continuing the story of the editors and translators of the first season, many new characters have also been added, such as publishers, cartoonists, librarians, etc.
After the first episode of "Our Library" went live, many viewers left a message saying that this was their ideal career. The stories of Shen Xieyuan, a 98-year-old edition bibliographer, Gu Xiaojun, administrator of the National Library, and Jigme, the founder of the Nalangma Library, connect the functions and values of the library in the past and present lives. Shen Xieyuan, who has studied a science all his life and is still learning when he is old, said: "A person living in the world cannot always play. Gu Xiaojun read the excerpt of "The Last Lesson", and it was difficult to hide his emotions and tears, he described the library like this: "No matter what identity and status you have, when you enter here, you are equal." Through reading, find the comfort of the heart, this is not the ultimate destination of poetry and distant places. ”
Translators are praised as "Prometheus the Fire Thief." In Zheng Suhang's view, translators are indeed the group of people who do not need to do translation work the most: "They can easily understand the original work, but they still devote time and energy to translating word by word into Chinese, translating into an expression that makes readers more acceptable, and usually the manuscript fee is not much." If they hadn't loved these works, they wouldn't have done such hard work. ”
The audience is touched by the richness and purity of the spiritual world of the characters in the documentary. But the abundance of the spiritual world does not promise a good material life, and most of them live a relatively simple life. Luo Yingluan felt that there was indeed a certain commonality in these people: "The satisfaction of spirit and knowledge brings great happiness to their lives." It is true that their desire for the world is not as strong, that the general material needs are relatively low, and that they have chosen a different path beyond what we define as success. ”
The bittersweet book industry
Books are not a necessary nutrient like air and water. Short videos, social software, film and television dramas, games, the way to provide people with spiritual entertainment is changing rapidly, reading has become a secondary choice, and books have become an "endangered species". This situation has changed slightly today. On last year's Book Day, the 18th National Reading Survey showed that in 2020, the per capita paper book reading volume of adult citizens in mainland China was 4.7, and the per capita e-book reading volume was 3.29, and the paper book reading rate and digital reading contact rate were higher than in 2019, showing an upward trend.
From "Book Fans" to "But There Are Books", since 2018, Luo Yingluan has devoted a large part of her energy to book-related shooting. Over the years, she has witnessed the ups and downs of the industry. After the documentary was broadcast, the audience's love also made Luo Yingluan worry about whether she would tempt young people to enter the publishing industry, but found that there was a discrepancy between reality and ideals. However, she also mentioned to CBN that the book industry is not only miserable as some people lament, and some positive and positive events are also happening.
In Publishers' Days and Nights, the publisher's experience reflects multiple aspects of the industry. Luo Yingluan told First Finance and Economics that Tu Tu, the founder of Lefu Culture, has an optimistic attitude towards the publishing industry, "He feels that the reading situation is getting better and better." In the 1980s, a book could sell for millions of dollars because there were very few types of books at that time. Today there are more and more publishing houses, more and more book varieties, although the sales of each book are not particularly high, but the overall number of reading is increasing. ”
From the experience of veteran publisher Yang Quanqiang, the publishing industry is still a relatively bleak industry. Yang Quanqiang has always felt that the publishing industry is to be brave and not afraid of losing money, but the operating company considers more about the return on input and output, due to the conflict of ideas, he left the "Shanghe Zhuoyuan" created by one hand and created the Xingsi culture. Publishers are also through their own wisdom, to break the dilemma of middlemen channels layer by layer of exploitation, Zhang Lixian created a self-operated and self-selling publishing industry model, overcome many difficulties, "Reading Library" has been published for 16 years. Today he rarely talks about ideals and feelings, "I am a businessman." The common trait of these publishers is to spread what they think is good enough with a ten- or even twenty-year eye, to find the real works of the era, and to resist the deterioration of literature and language.
Zheng Suhang told First Finance and Economics that she also noticed that in recent times, people have paid attention to the current situation of translators' survival and questioned the inequality of payment and return, which she hopes to discuss in the future. However, she also feels that sometimes the focus shifts from the translation itself to personal life experience: "There are too many translators that we can't see, and I hope that people can pay more attention to their translations themselves." Bao Huiyi also mentioned: "There are many lovely translators around who are struggling with their daily lives while loving, and I hope that more tolerance and practical support can give these living 'word ferrymen', rather than just when the translator becomes the key word in the news or falls into tragedy." ”
Luo Yingluan hopes that in this fragmented and fast-paced era, "But There Are Books" can make people who once loved books recall the pleasant feelings of reading books, and take this as an opportunity to regain their interest in reading. Zheng Suhang feels that change is a thing that needs to be done for a long time: "I hope that everyone will see that there are people doing such things and promoting the development of culture; or when reading foreign literature in the future, it is very gratifying to pay a little attention to who translated this work." ”