Date 101 City
The writer is inextricably linked to the city in which he/she lives. The city nourishes and fulfills the writer's writing, and the writer's life and writing are immersed in the city. In the night of Friday, the "Dating 101 City" column meets you again, let us date different cities in the text of different writers, feel the fireworks of the world, and enter the spiritual home of the writer.
Zhang Jie, a famous contemporary female writer, passed away due to illness on January 21, 2022.
As an important representative writer of Chinese literature in the new era, Zhang Jie joined the Chinese Writers Association in 1979 and wrote the novels "Heavy Wings" and "No Words", the novella "Emerald", the short story collection "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten", the essay collection "The Person Who Hurt Me in the World Has Gone", etc., and won the second and sixth Mao Dun Literature Awards, some of which have been translated into a variety of languages, and won the Italian Knight Medal and germany, Austria, the Netherlands and other multinational literary awards.
"One hundred years of solitude" exists in everyone's heart, and every writer has his own "Macondo" in his heart. For the writer Zhang Jie, Fushun is her "Macondo". This is not only the hometown of her dreams, but also the source of her literary creation.
Back home: "It's like waking up from an old dream that has been done for more than twenty years"
Zhang Jie, whose original name was Dong Dayan, was born in Beijing on April 27, 1937, and his father Dong Qiushui had joined the Northeast Army, served as an instructor at Northeastern University, and later went to Yan'an and other places to help organize literary progressive publications.
The young Zhang Jie once drifted away from her mother and followed her father, but was abandoned by her father.
After that, 12-year-old Zhang Jie returned to her ancestral hometown fushun with her mother, and the mother and daughter relied on each other for decades.
Zhang Jie followed her mother's surname and lived and studied with her mother in Fushun for nearly 10 years, which is the stage of her entry from teenager to adulthood, learning accumulation, character maturity, and literary creation enlightenment.
In 1954, Zhang Jie studied at Fushun No. 2 Middle School and aspired to become a writer when she grew up. Although Zhang Jie's ideal in middle school was to apply for the university Chinese department, when she graduated, she still listened to the recommendation of her teacher and gave up literature to study economics.
Source: Literature Newspaper public number
Zhang Jie has written about her hometown of Fushun in many of her literary works, and written many local folk customs of Fushun. In the second chapter of "No Words", she uses a lot of ink to describe the life, old age, illness and death and impermanence of the world experienced by her grandmother, and records the living conditions and customs of the northeastern people at that time, including the scene of her grandmother's death to do "white things", the scene of her mother's life in Hada, and many details of life such as picking hazelnuts and eating wine.
Fushun is the place where her literary dream began, and it is the source and foundation of her creation.
In 1983, Zhang Jie, who had made a name for herself in the Chinese literary scene, accompanied her mother back to Fushun to visit relatives. Through this experience, Zhang Jie wrote an essay entitled "The Past, It's Already Gone". In the text, she talked about the road to visiting relatives.
"The little trees around the corners, the slopes on the road, the stop signs of the buses, the forks on the side of the road, are no longer standing where they are in the memory. The road is plausible..." But all these changes did not make Zhang Jie feel timid, but "hurried forward", "constantly asked people about the route to East Park or Fushun High School", "with vague memories, I finally touched the place.".
At Fushun No. 2 Middle School, Zhang Jie looked at "the girls' dormitory where she lived (now it has become a reference room); the canteen where she ate (which was also changed into two classrooms, probably without residential students); the ladder classroom, physics laboratory, and chemistry laboratory where she took cartography classes; the tennis court where she played tennis; my classroom; and the staircase where I stood and looked at my college acceptance letter..."
"It's no accident that you became a writer, you read a lot of books and always peeked under your desk in class." "We're most impressed with you." These details that Zhang Jie had long forgotten, the teacher still remembered. Zhang Jie and 3 teachers reminisced about the past, when the teacher asked her, "Are you going to Fushun for business?" Zhang Jie replied: "No, I made a special trip back to Fushun to see my alma mater and see the teacher." This sentence made the teacher extremely moved.
When it comes to the deceased Chinese teacher Huang, Zhang Jie is eclipsed. She wrote in the article: "When I graduated, Teacher Huang deeply regretted that I had not applied for the Chinese Department, and maybe I can now repay his expectations of me a little." These are enough to see Zhang Jie's deep affection for her hometown.
When they were separated, Zhang Jie said: "Thank you, thank you teachers for cultivating me." Then turn around and walk quickly to the car, "In another second, I will not be able to hold on, I do not want to cry", "When will I see them again, see my alma mater again?" I seem to feel more dim than I did before this meeting."
The experience of returning to her hometown made Zhang Jie feel "like a person carrying a sachet into the mountains to make a wish, and like waking up from an old dream that has been done for more than twenty years."
Tie Ning's old friend: such as "lone man" walking the world
"Others are afraid of being forgotten, but Zhang Jie does not want to be remembered." Li Jingze, vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association and a critic, once described "our beloved and revered Zhang Jie" as follows: "The Zhang Jie who holds his chin high to the world, the Zhang Jie who has roses and guns in his eyes, the Zhang Jie who is as humble as a grain of dust ready to forget and be forgotten at any time, the Zhang Jie who stands on the ground and floats in the sky stained by the deep blue, the child who is destined to run and is destined to be lonely..."
Putting down the pen, Zhang Jie, in her later years, picked up the brush, and she explained her experience of learning to paint in this way: "A doctor's accidental suggestion, I began to paint in 2006. Like writing a novel, it is also self-talk (painting), never learned, for the first time I don't even know how to get a paintbrush, only a cavity of love. ”
Zhang Jie's paintings (Source: People's Literature Publishing House public number)
In 2014, she held a solo oil painting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, describing it as a "farewell performance" – "Zhang Jie said goodbye!" Death is not terrible, what is terrible is life without content. She said she had no hobbies and was "boring", couldn't play mahjong, couldn't sing karaoke, didn't like to attend dinner, and only liked to draw.
Source: People's Literature Publishing House public number
At that time, the writer Tie Ning wrote in the article that Zhang Jie's home was full of canvases and paints, and the walls of the room were full of paintings, and Zhang Jie at this time was "free and calm". She said that she was touched by Zhang Jie's paintings and re-recognized her old friend in the canvas, "Zhang Jie is like a 'lone man' walking the world."
Poet Nishikawa commented: "It is not uncommon for writers and poets to draw in circles, because they are amateurs, so I am never demanding. However, after seeing some of Teacher Zhang Jie's paintings, I was quite surprised. Zhang Jie inadvertently said a sentence that has affected him to this day: Don't think that the life of others, the life of a distant place is life, your here and now is life.
Search the city for more than one time——
Excerpt from "The Man Who Hurt Me The Most In the World Went"
I didn't expect these hundreds of thousands of words to be written so hard. At first, every few words I wrote were difficult to sustain myself and had to stop and rest. Of all my texts, these hundred thousand words are probably the ones I pay the most. I finally understood that lovers can be replaced, but mothers are the only ones.
A person's life is actually a process of constantly losing the person he loves, and it is a loss forever. This is the greatest pain that everyone must experience. After such a change, I am no longer me. What the new me will be is hard to predict. Mom, you must not know that you have created another life for me.
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