Han Shaogong
NanXiang
I still hope that literature will be close to the scene, close to the soul, and become the spiritual response of the times. There are of course many ways to respond to this
Nan Xiang: Dear readers and friends, good evening, I am very happy to meet you at the Shenzhen 8 p.m. Friday Book Friends Association, today we invited the writer Han Shaogong teacher. Today we want to share a new book by Teacher Han, "Life Suddenly". Mr. Han Shaogong has successively served as the chairman of the Hainan Provincial Writers Association and the chairman of the Hainan Provincial Federation of Literature and Literature. His major works include short stories such as "Looking West to the Thatched Meadow" and "Returning Home", novellas such as "Daddy and Daddy", "Reporting the Government", etc., novels such as "Maqiao Dictionary", "Day and Night Book", "Revision Process", etc., long essays such as "Hints" and "Afterwords of the Revolution", and the long essay "Shannan and Shuibei", which are translated as "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" and "The Record of Trepidation". He has won the National Outstanding Short Story Award, the Lu Xun Literature Award, the French Knight Medal of Literature and Art, the Chinese Literature and Media Award, the Newman Chinese Literature Award, etc., and more than 40 foreign translations have been published abroad.
Before, I actually wondered why you are so popular with readers. First, you are a writer with a high degree of recognition among contemporary Chinese writers, any of your works hide the author's name, readers read a fragment, they know it is yours; second, the aesthetic consciousness is very strong, Teacher Han's language, whether fictional or non-fiction, has its own unique aesthetic pursuit; third, the sense of innovation is very prominent, every book you write does not want to overlap with your own, each book is not the same; fourth, strong speculation, writers generally use image thinking, but your logical thinking ability, The critical power is very prominent, especially in recent essays and essays, and the sharp edge can be seen everywhere.
The book "Life Suddenly" is divided into three parts, one part is to read the earth, you write to Europe, Japan, and different feelings in different countries; the second part is to read the times, this part I read very slowly, there are many elements of the present, rich and complex, for all the phenomena, insights, and benefits that we express affirmation, cheering, optimism, insights, and benefits, you have to ask, express hesitation, doubt and even questioning; the last part is to read yourself, you take out a lot of diaries, diaries may be the most able to see a person's past, Unfortunately, these diaries are incomplete and have not been preserved for several years. It is these diaries that allow us to see that you are well prepared for writing at the beginning of your writing. I would like to ask you to talk about some of your feelings first.
Han Shaogong: Thank you Teacher Nanxiang, and thank you to all the friends who have come here. In this day and age, reading seems to be a difficult thing, and many of our institutions, such as governments, universities, and enterprises, often spend money and spend manpower to mobilize and hold activities such as reading weeks and reading months. This in itself is strange. In the past, we said that books are people's spiritual food, is there a meal week and a meal month? It can be seen that people have "anorexia", often just brushing vibrato, brushing paragraphs, and watching TV series at night. It's all culture, of course. The question is not whether you read the screen or the print media, the question is why we read books. Modern people actually have a lot of problems and anxieties, housing price problems, children's problems, international problems, and so on. But how can we find a solution to these problems? Can reading help?
I remember in the 1980s, when literature was particularly desirable and in a high-light position. The Chinese Writers Association held a meeting in Beijing, and many people from outside came, and when they inquired about it, they were all from the Drama Association, the Music Association, and the American Artists Association, and many people came to listen to the meeting, because literature was full of influence and inspiration, full of spiritual energy. But 40 years later, literature is no longer what it used to be, and sometimes publishers send me boxes of books, pick and choose, and can pick out one or two valuable books, most of which are bubbles, and they are arrogant and empty. After reading a dozen pages, my mind is still empty. On the Internet, "Wenqing", "literary and artistic style" and even "Chinese" have become negative words, referring to those who are unreliable and upside down. I also graduated from Chinese department, which made me feel ashamed. What is our literature doing?
Maybe my idea is not anachronistic, but I still hope that literature will be close to the scene, close to the soul, and become the spiritual response of the times. Of course, there are many ways to respond to this, for example, I have written many novels and will write them later. At present, modern people are not a shortage of information, but a surplus of information, which is too large, too chaotic, too complicated, and needs the ability to clean, screen, organize, and digest. Then, when doing this kind of thing, prose essay writing may be more convenient and efficient. Of course, I don't want to do general academic writing, such as when I encounter quotations, I will try to be short, and I will not bother the reader with esoteric theories. But I'm particularly concerned about the context of a lot of ideas, like who said that? What is it for? Under what circumstances was it said? In this way, I can't restore the scene and details of history in a way that is not as emotional as possible, so the writing returns to literature, and the style is "not classless" and "not three or four".
Nanxiang: I remember asking you to give a lecture seven or eight years ago, and it took a long time to realize it, because you said that you wanted to leave more time for yourself to walk, think, and write. The part about the earth in the book "Life Suddenly" writes that you go to South America and see regional differences, cultural differences, and language differences. What impressed you the most in South America? Are there any cultural contrasts?
Han Shaogong: South America is a geographical concept, Latin America is a cultural concept, and the latter is more extensive than the former. Latin culture comes from Europe, and in the Americas has formed a cultural extension and cultural variant of Europe, so the story must start with "Latin Europe". This is a point of knowledge that many textbooks lack. The German scholar Weber divided Europe into two, one is Protestant Europe, England, Germany, Switzerland and the whole of Northern Europe belong to this part, and the other is southern Catholic Europe, that is, what I call "Latin Europe", including Italy, Portugal, Spain, France and most of it. In Weber's eyes, Protestant Europe created capitalism, and its original tradition was core to "rationalization," a fanatical love of labor, thrift, and so on. What about the south side? It is almost some lazy and unscrupulous men and women who are not doing their jobs, and they are the wasters and scum that Weber despises the most. Later, europeans came to the Americas, most of the Protestant population went to North America, and most of the Latin people went to South America, which was generally the case, although each side had some "enclaves" of each other's blood or culture, and there was a bit of a canine tooth interlacing.
At present, the gap between the north and south of the Americas is very large, and the total industrial research and development revenue of the entire Latin America is only 1/200 of that of the United States. Of course, there are also cultural differences, religious differences, differences in skin color and race, and so on. Understanding all this, understanding the various causes behind all this, is a very important lesson for us to understand capitalism and the world. Otherwise, many friends only have a general "Europe", "West", "foreign" in their mouths, and only a few moral labels are pasted everywhere. Don't look at Chinese travel and shop for goods all over the world, Chinese's understanding of the world is far from over. The physicist Hawking said: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge." ”
NanXiang: Northern Europe, Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe are known. But you divide it from a cultural and religious background, and it is Protestants who develop North America, Protestants mainly in the United States and Canada, and the rest in the south, forming a huge economic difference. Was it Weber's Protestant ethic, diligence, self-denial, and frugality that gave them a sense of output and prosperity? This includes advocating for charity. Central and South America seems to be a mess, and the slums of Mexico and Brazil are stunning, and there seems to be no solution to this.
Han Shaogong: The vast ocean of slums is really shocking, of course, it is a serious consequence of policy failure, in their own words, "this generation of people can't do it", almost all of them are lords who eat, drink and have fun. After paying their wages, those who can wake up from their drunkenness and go to work on time the next day are the best employees. Those who are less than half an hour late for an appointment are already the best customers. They hate poverty to the bone, but once they default on the economy and do business, they say with great vigour, "You Chinese why are you slaves to money?" There is a lot of literature in "magic realism" there, and there must be a reason for it. Their romance was almost rambling, often relying on military regimes to gain a little organization and execution. But their music, art, dance, football, graffiti, etc., are all strange and fascinating, and there are many beautiful women and handsome men, especially cute. So, do they need to develop their economies? How can they achieve economic development? These soul questions are also examination questions for Chinese, which can both enlighten us and warn us.
Nan Xiang: Many of you have written travel notes, and the travel notes you wrote earlier have incorporated a lot of thinking, not simply travel notes. Let's compare another country, you wrote the story of a Japanese friend Kato, and thus wrote some views and impressions of Japan. What do you think of such a country and its culture?
Han Shaogong: People are always diverse, and it is difficult to have a typical one that can be used to represent the entire nation. In this article, I wrote "Kato" is not a real name, but the story is completely true. Kato's maternal grandfather, a county magistrate serving as a puppet manchukuo, was shot dead by the Red Army, but his family remained "pro-Chinese," including a translation of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Many Japanese stories seem as complicated as Chinese stories.
Generally speaking, I think Asians are sometimes harsh on Asians, just like the countrymen are easy to look up to the city people, but the countrymen are easy to be harsh on each other and look down on each other. Many Japanese people once regarded Chinese as a barbaric nation and felt that aggression and colonization were justified; on the other hand, many Chinese "little Japan" at every turn, and felt that the yellow face was also a "fake foreign devil", inferior to white Europeans and Americans. This is the problem of Asians, there is a "Eurocentrism" mentality. Japan has many natural weaknesses, such as the inability to dig up any historical relics in Kyushu, Japan, which makes Japan very faceless. Japan also has few resources, no oil, no minerals, and many earthquakes. But the Japanese made industry very strong, so I was curious to know what kind of historical reasons put them into the fast lane of industrialization earlier, so that China and Japan went down different paths of development.
I think that two neighboring countries that are so close to each other still know too little about each other, know too roughly, and know too shallowly. Wherever there are crowds, there are people up and down, and a small number of far-right politicians should not be an obstacle to understanding and communication between the Chinese and Japanese peoples. I was glad that this article was translated into Japanese and published, and I was also very happy to meet a Japanese reader in Taiwan, who said that he was particularly excited after reading this article. I am willing to make a little contribution to the communication between China and Japan.
The historical practice of more than a hundred years has given us reason to further test, doubt, reflect on, and transcend those basic propositions. This is perhaps the best way for us to pay tribute to our predecessors.
Nan Xiang: Teacher Han's thinking tentacles are more, some places are very deep, and some places are also hesitating. For example, you have lived in Hainan for more than 30 years, although you often return to Hunan in the middle. We know that the land of Hainan has its own characteristics, including culture, history, and even revolutionary resources. The Red Detachment of Women is a very important existence. When you write an article, you will first think of your experience of decentralization, and then you will talk about the feelings of going to the homeland of the Red Women's Army, especially the feelings of Qionghai. In 2003, when this article was published in Contemporary, some of the real Girl Scout soldiers were already old, and some people's living conditions were not satisfactory. When you write about seeing these situations in the article, you have an indescribable feeling, and thus think about the multiple connections of many aspects of historical reality. How do you actually feel? How do you evaluate the sacrifices of this generation so far, or even the sacrifices of more than one generation? Including in many of your later essays, you touched on a theme - the meaning of revolution, and I think this is also a question that many of us have been thinking about, how to think about this relationship?
Han Shaogong: I moved to Hainan in 1988, and one of my many experiences is that I have a special admiration for women in Hainan. Is it that most of the men go out to sea to fish and break into Nanyang, anyway, women in Hainan are particularly able to bear hardships and stand hard work, have a good temper, go to the fields to work, go to the sea to fish, open shops to do business, and even form a red detachment of women in that year, charging into the front to carry "half the sky". Of course, their stories are also poignant and heavy, including some Of the Girl Scouts who were later wronged by the onslaught of certain events.
One year, I was exercising in a certain place, and a treasurer came to report on the tax situation, which surprised me and found that the county's personal income tax accounted for 1/4 of the total tax. I asked are there so many rich people here? The other party swallowed and vomited, and later learned that it was just a "tax" on improper industries, and it was not good to call it. And this industry also involves more taxes such as catering, hotels, clothing, beauty, medicine, transportation, etc., which is even more shocking. China's reform and opening up has gone through a process of continuous exploration and touching stones, including trial and error and correction. I am not trying to "pretend to be a virgin", but I cannot stand the "human liberation" of some people based on the oppression and bullying of more people. It was there that I gained a new understanding of China's roads, including China's Red Detachment of Women. Revolution is, of course, violent, destructive, soaring, and stabbing the heavens down, but revolution is the last right of the lowly, and it is the lesser of two evils when there is no possibility of peaceful reform. It is indeed necessary for us to reflect on history, but there is no reason to bring back the causes of the revolution, the injustices and injustices of the world, as a beautiful thing.
Nan Xiang: After reading the earth is the reading era, this part of the content is richer, I am more impressed, here are three words, one is called "practice blind area", one is called "practice narrow road", and one is called "practice floating". We are now engaged in high-tech all over the world, and we all want to occupy the commanding heights of high technology, but this investment is very large, and not all countries can get it up, such as the high-energy particle collider, which can not move tens of billions of hundreds of billions of investment. In addition, in the era of market economy, many of the things we need most may not be done. Why? Capital is profit-seeking. In this way, there will be a lot of blind spots, there is no money to invest in what needs to be done, and there is no need to engage in it because the profit is large, so the investment is very much. Moreover, our current division of labor is very fine. Including the subject is also the case, I once let Chinese students learn to make couplets, because in my opinion, the couplets contain a lot of language content, but the students told me that I studied modern and contemporary literature, not classical literature, and could not write couplets. Now the literary work award is also, the classification is very fine, reportage is reportage, prose is prose, as if the two are unrelated. This afternoon I participated in a contest where there was a book that was prose, but each essay was preceded by a poem, and the judges objected, saying that it could not be classified under the prose category. Just now you also said a very interesting thing on the way, that is, there was a bookstore that put your novel "Maqiao Dictionary" in the reference book column.
Han Shaogong: Yes, later a reader saw a letter to the bookstore and said that your book was wrong, and the Maqiao Dictionary is a novel. The bookstore was also quite responsible, writing back to readers a month later saying that they had carefully studied the book and thought that there was no mistake.
Nan Xiang: "Life Suddenly" writes about the practice of floating. Not to mention that many people's real hands-on ability is getting weaker and weaker now, that is, the place where the knowledge they need to learn is open to each other, and it is also a separation between each other, and there is "access control" everywhere. I met a university colleague who was the head of the dance department, and she joked with me that the dance department teachers also emphasized the recruitment of doctors, and the doctor of dance science may be able to write papers, but they can't dance. You particularly emphasize the importance of professional access and practical ability, and we know that you have returned to the place where you wrote the Maqiao Dictionary to grow your own vegetables, so how do you see the connection between practice and theory?
Han Shaogong: Human knowledge is increasing, but this usually refers to book knowledge and indirect knowledge, while direct knowledge and practical knowledge are relatively less and less. The so-called "giant baby", "giant" in the diploma, "baby" in practice, to a large extent, is the kind of separation from practice. Less than a hundred years ago, China's army was the army of peasants, and a company commander or battalion commander had to bring a clerical officer who was responsible for reading official documents and maps. By now, our illiteracy rate has fallen below 4 per cent, and the gross enrolment rate in colleges and universities has reached about 50 per cent. That's a good thing. But it also brings a question, we are reading books, reading screens to understand the world, then book knowledge is not particularly reliable? not necessarily. To take a small example: according to statistics, half of the annual medical expenditure in the United States is used for the last 60 days of a patient's life, and many advanced instruments and expensive drugs are spent on vegetative and quasi-vegetative people. There is also a piece spent on therapeutic incompetence, thanks to the top, but many African endemic diseases, as well as thousands of rare diseases around the world, the same disease, the same human life, the same is a valuable entrance to explore the mysteries of the human body, but because it does not have commercial significance, the related purchasing power is weak, it is always abandoned by pharmaceutical manufacturers and research and development institutions, and patients can only wait for death. The logic of the market and capital is that everything is for sale, and there is no point in not selling. Under such circumstances, under the seemingly high-speed progress of knowledge production, are there hidden dangers, blind spots, imbalances, and serious distortions?
From this, we can see that the myth of "scientism" is highly questionable. Science is not omniscient, and mainstream science, constrained by markets and capital, has never even intended to be questioned and questioned. Frankly speaking, articles of my kind are meant to respond to the basic propositions of Enlightenment since May Fourth. For example, at that time, there was a Mr. De, a Mr. Sai, and a Miss Mo, referring to democracy, science, and morality. But the historical practice of more than a hundred years has given us reason to further test, doubt, reflect on, and transcend those basic propositions. This is perhaps the best way for us to pay tribute to our predecessors.
It doesn't matter if I'm right or not. The important thing is that the writer always has to have some dry goods of feelings, knowledge, and thoughts, otherwise why do you let people read it?
Live Q&A
Nan Xiang: I just shared part of "Life Suddenly" with my readers and friends here, sharing reading the earth, reading the times, and reading myself. You can see the problems that Teacher Han is concerned about, high recognition, strong speculation, and outstanding innovative characteristics, I don't know if you have any problems.
Listener: Hello Teacher Han, I would like to ask what impact real experience has had on your creation?
Han Shaogong: Your question is very good. I don't know about other writers, at least in my work, the characters are more or less supported by archetypes, and the more I get to the end, the more I like to use these archetypes, thinking that this kind of writing is easy, effective, and easy to stimulate my emotions. I have a book called "Shannan Shuibei", which writes about the miluo countryside in Hunan, and the local farmers also read it, and can guess who about 70% of the characters are writing.
Listener: I chatted with several young teachers of Shenzhen University a few days ago, and they talked about the topic of university rankings, how do you think about the university ranking phenomenon? Now that some teachers are also complaining that relying too much on ratings deprives them of time to research in scientific research, I would like to ask, how do you think about this?
Nan Xiang: For example, a vicious incident that occurred in a certain university not long ago has many reasons, but is it one of the fuses for the non-ascension of colleges and universities now? It's worth thinking about. For example, subject-based survival, getting a national-level topic can be less class, you can promote the title. I still don't understand why it is so powerful to issue survival and cultural survival. Including the emphasis of the degree, the higher the better, not long ago a middle school in Shenzhen recruitment, the last selection of one or two dozen teachers are all Peking University Tsinghua undergraduate and master's degree background. I think, to some extent, genius is partiality. A big writer may need triathlons, theory, creation, translation, such as Qian Zhongshu, Zhang Ailing's creation, and foreign languages. But Shen Congwen's foreign language was not very good. Now, in terms of thesis and degree, I think it is not a good thing to seek a high level.
Han Shaogong: I am very disgusted with the grading of universities. It is understandable that the state wants to concentrate funds, cultivate some key universities, and cultivate some backbone forces for scientific research as soon as possible. However, the demarcation of three, six, nine, and so on is very harmful, and to a large extent, it is easy to form a hierarchical and monopolistic distribution of knowledge benefits. This is detrimental to the beneficiaries, resulting in some people getting more for nothing, less for more, breeding inertia and corruption, and even more harmful to excluded schools, creating an unequal distribution of resources and opportunities and discouraging more talent.
We can all know from common sense that not all majors are good in a prestigious university, and not all teachers in a good major are good. But at present, things are so absurd that some employers have to worry about "original education", if the undergraduate degree is not noble enough, everything is exempt from talking. This "origin theory" is a bit outrageous, right? I know a senior judge of the Yangtze River Scholars Jury, and he said: Mr. Han, we also know that "the rolling Yangtze River is all water", but we also have difficulties. I have my own professional limitations and don't have much say in matters outside of my major, so I can only look at the material when voting. Some people's materials are good-looking, he has what you want, projects, C journals, academic qualifications, awards... All, what do you do? Even if the judges are not selfish, there is no reason to deny it, right? When I say this story, I mean that the design of the system is very important, and if the system is unreasonable, good people will not be able to do good things. Many of the "inner volumes" phenomenon is caused by institutional shortcomings, and even forces some "good people" to be small-minded, pulling and pulling, rushing to make quick profits, generating a large number of academic bubbles and cultural garbage, wasting money or small things, and delaying one or two generations is a big thing.
Listener: I would like to ask, how was the Maqiao Dictionary conceived? This work is not created according to the traditional novel method, using some dictionaries such as human sociology and language social science to record the history of Maqiao, why is it treated in this way?
Han Shaogong: The first reason is that when I was a young intellectual, I had the accumulation of feelings about different dialects, and my interest in sociolinguistics was somewhat aroused. The second reason, which was the way in which the novel and prose elements were unfolded, was convenient for merging elements of fiction and prose, which coincided with my skepticism about the rigid style of the novel tradition at the time. In my translation of Milan Kundera's novel, there is a chapter called "A Small Dictionary of Misunderstandings", which seems to work well, so I think I can try it myself.
(This article is based on "Literary Review and Prospect" - Han Shaogong's new book "Life Suddenly" sharing meeting record)