In the open classroom, meet the writer
The dialogue and collision of ideas between the writer and the student
The first one
Cheng Yongxin's "If Only the First Sight" × Fudan MFA × creative writing at East China Normal University
Time: 2022.2.25 (Friday) 14:00-16:00
Location: 677 Julu Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai, 2nd Floor, Writers Bookstore
Wonderful Trial Reading: Cheng Yongxin's Novel Collection "If Only the First Sight"
In this collection of novels with different themes, Cheng Yongxin wrote about us as well as them, and at the same time let us and them shine in the book.
- Yu Hua
The ship, which was built in the eighties, is now setting sail. We saw the ship speeding across the dark ocean, and also through time, leaving a silver splash of water. We hear some kind of wave-like sound, sometimes surging and sometimes quiet, telling the story of time and the story of adventure.
--Su Tong
As the editor-in-chief of Harvest Literary Magazine, Cheng Yongxin has been the closest witness to the scene of Chinese literature for decades. This book is the collection of his newly completed novels.
The novel of the same title, "If Only the First Sight", starts from individual experience and is deeply marked with the soul of the 1980s and 1990s with cruelty, passion and freedom; "The Shape of the Wind" tells the story of a college student knocking on the iron door of an old mansion in a hot afternoon, and Su Tong said that the image of the narrator "reminds people of Cheng Yongxin himself in his youth". History and martial arts explore the relationship between ideas, dreams and human nature, while Mahjong World is about friendship, love and a life of chaos. "My Chiang Mai, My Teresa Teresa" uses sentimental emotions and moderation to write about Teresa's relationship with an era.
The five novels have different themes, which is the author's long-term understanding and practice of literary work.
Catalogue of "If Only the First Sight"
If only the first sight 001
Wind shape 063
Mount Qingcheng 133
Mahjong World 219
My Chiang Mai, my Teresa Teng 267
Postscript 337
Appendix 343
Novella of the same name " If only the first sight "
Wonderful Trial Reading(1)
That night, Moriko sent his little sister Xiaoyi home, and David accompanied me to the bus stop in the city center to watch me jump on the last train. Back in Pudong it was late at night, and on the wide road stood rows of street lamps, large areas of small insects flew under the shadow of huang Chengcheng lights, and the tall poles of a person on the side of the road stretched out into the distance in turn, and the sparse leaves swayed in the warm breeze.
I opened the door and entered the room where I was living, turned on the light, the room was empty, I had nothing to do, my heart was surging but there was nothing to lean on, and I was always shaking black hair and puffed silk pants in lake green.
Just like this, I spent a few boring days, I went to work at the publishing house every day from nine to five, and my heart gradually became calmer. It was just after 12 o'clock that night when the telephone on the edge of the tatami meter rang. I was writing a small article for the evening newspaper, and I hurriedly pounced on the telephone, and the manuscript paper flew and scattered on the ground.
Hey, a thin and light voice like a cat came from the telephone: It's me, Teacher Liu. Then there was a crisp laugh like a muted voice.
It was the voice of the queen I had been waiting for for a long time.
You, how did you get on the phone? My words blurted out, appearing very abrupt and unreasonable.
Good food is not afraid of late! Another low laugh.
I didn't know how to answer the phone, and was about to wait for her to explain, but she stopped and did not continue speaking, and there was a slight crackling sound in the microphone.
Did you go to the show today? I was speechless and felt bored.
That can't be called a show. Her voice seemed to flow from the tip of her tongue.
What should that be called? I asked woodenly.
That's called self-reliance, supporting yourself. She said it word for word, feeling as if she were engaged in writing.
Oh, and feed yourself. I repeated it mechanically. I almost wanted to ask her how much money she could make in a night, the words had reached the throat, or I thought this topic was a bit vulgar, forced to hold back, after all, did not ask the question of the mentally handicapped.
There was a slight rushing sound in the microphone again.
After a while, I heard her say on the other end of the phone and put it on the bedside table!
Who are you talking to? I asked.
She told me in a voice too small to be small: It's my father, who brought me Chinese medicine.
medicinal herb? Are you sick? I asked eagerly.
I'm a patient. She laughed as she spoke.
What disease have you got? Is it convenient to tell me? I tensed up.
The queen laughed out loud, and the crisp laughter traveled through the silence, deep and long.
Speaking of no disease, from childhood poor physique, my father's ancestors were a family of Traditional Chinese medicine, and in his eyes everyone was a patient. Growing up, I drank more Herbs than drinks.
The queen's voice grew louder, and I was wondering, and she said that the two old men were sleeping. It means that it is now possible to talk normally.
If it weren't for the medicine for me, they would have gone to sleep a long time ago. She added.
I was a little sleepy and yawned, but the queen seemed to be getting better and better, and she returned to the state of a cat, her voice was lazy, and a crisp Shanghainese language drifted in the vast night sea.
Why don't you talk? Your voice on the phone is magnetic and nice. She said.
In fact, her voice is particularly sexy on the phone, but I can't lift my spirits at all, and I almost want to say that I have to go to work tomorrow.
You talk, you talk, I like to hear people talk late at night. You are like my mental massager, I wish I could say this forever, live in sleep forever. Her tone seemed to be dreaming, as if it were a whisper, or an inner monologue.
I wanted to tell her that the psychiatric massager was about to run out of battery, but I couldn't open my mouth, because I had to admit that this state of dialogue had fascinated me so much that I couldn't stop like I had been poured with ecstasy soup. I was fascinated by her voice, like a cat's cry in the wilderness, and like the teeth and teeth of the initial human race through time and space.
At that time, I only talked about love once, through the introduction of classmates, with a female college student in science and engineering for two years, all the interactions until the last step, very concise and clear. Later, like all the young people in Shanghai at that time, she sought to go abroad, and my contribution was to take out what little savings I had and help my girlfriend pay the registration fee. After a lot of twists and turns, my girlfriend finally went to Australia, we have been relying on international calls to maintain our feelings, international long-distance fees are expensive, and I can't afford to pay for my income at that time, so I often run to the office of my classmates to rub the public phone. Once I had a hard time dialing the phone, and there was a murmur in the microphone, and it was a man's voice. I hung up the phone and never called again.
The end of this love history hurt me a lot, the empty window lasted for more than two years before it gradually recovered, and the pain was still there, until the appearance of the queen that summer.
Putting down the microphone late that night, I forced my eyes open and looked at the alarm clock on the desk, pointing to three o'clock in the morning.
Wonderful Trial Reading(2)
In the blink of an eye, summer is coming, and the French plane trees next to the city road are full of leaves, and stepping on them is like stepping on a yellow carpet. Thorny, flying with the wind, blurring the vision of pedestrians on the road, this is the street scene of the city, accompanying us to grow. At this time, a film and television company came to me and asked me to help them write the script of the documentary on Shanghai architecture, but I didn't think about it, and put forward my conditions: the manuscript fee was given casually, but the accommodation problem must be solved.
The film and television company, located in an industry hotel on a secluded road, lent me a set of private rooms. It was a premeditated disappearance. In the dead of night, I would think from time to time about whether the telephone in my home in Pudong would ring at this moment.
A month later, I finished the outline of the script, and taking advantage of the gap between the discussion and evaluation of the film and television company, I went to Inner Mongolia with my brother.
We flew to Beijing, then took a train to Chifeng, and made a circle in the central and western part of Inner Mongolia, which lasted more than ten days.
Accompanied by a fair-skinned primary school teacher, an authentic Shanghainese who writes poetry in her spare time, and a poet from Inner Mongolia, who is my brother and my brother and the organizer of the event. Originally, there were two female poets from Hangzhou who traveled together, because they missed the time and arrived in Shanghai but did not catch our train, so that the primary school teacher became the only woman on this trip.
Along the way, the master and brother talked and laughed and witty, for example, he said that the missed appointment of two female poets in Hangzhou was a lack of telepathy, and he said that women can be confused, but if they lack telepathy, they will become stupid women. Then he further played, life is composed of accidents again and again, originally a very emotional trip, three men and three women, but optimistic to think, without Hangzhou female poets, maybe this trip is more joyful. When the train roared forward, the master brother suddenly said that a good woman should cling to a "small" word, and the good words that describe women in the past and the present are inseparable from small characters. Who would like a woman with a big brain and big feet? The master's lens shone with wisdom.
The head of the elementary school teacher sitting next to him happened to be very small, so he smiled and leaned forward and backwards, gasping for breath for a while.
The skill of the master brother is that he can pick up any topic and play it at will. The female teacher stared directly at her brother with an adoring gaze, and once the teacher was silent, she would ask a bunch of questions like a student asking questions. The originally boring travel time passed quickly in laughter and laughter.
Arriving at Chifeng in the evening by the train, a very quiet station, looking around at the sparsely populated area.
Picked up was a bearded Mongolian man, Unit, who had grown up together in the steppe with his brother and disciple, and the two families were not far apart, riding horses for about an hour or so. Ult met us and shook hands one by one, and he said that he had arranged the whole trip to Silingrad.
The next morning, Ult took us by car to meet the old man Hazab, Who is the king of the grassland long tune song, Hu Songhua's very famous "Hymn", the front chorus part is derived from the long tune of the old man Hazab.
A row of bungalows stretches across the prairie, and the elderly Hazab trains a group of children to practice long tunes. Hazab's eyebrows are long, kind-eyed, and amiable to introduce us to the past and present lives of the steppe long tune. I thought that the old man must have accepted too many such interviews, and he thought that we were officials from an important department of the state, and I could imagine what kind of preparation Unit had done before to let us enjoy the treatment of vips.
Half an hour later, at the entrance of the Hazab Training School, the old man and a group of children with scabs on their faces said goodbye to us.
In the afternoon we got into a jeep and spent several hours on the prairie to reach Sunit. Sunit's lamb is directly supplied to the heart of the motherland, there is no smell at all, the master brother is born a foodie, his mouth line lies horizontally twice as long as ordinary people, he shakes his head and eats a lot, and even praises the deliciousness of lamb. Horse milk wine is packed in a milky white gourd-shaped horse skin sac. Through unit's careful arrangement, two Mongolian girls entered the yurt, sang and danced, and finally toasted us with a bowl, we could not understand the Mongolian lyrics, and the master and disciple improvised the lyrics for us:
Distant guests please do not go
Affectionate prairie will keep you
The innocent golden cup was filled with wine
Please have a glass of wine
Oh friend, friend
Please taste this wine of innocence, this wine of soul-destroying, this wine of thickness
Spend spring and autumn together on this beautiful grassland
About author:Cheng Yongxin, editor-in-chief, writer of Harvest Literary Magazine. He is the author of the novels "Aunt in the Cheongsam", "The Smell", the novel collection "It Snows Everywhere", and the essay collection "A Literary History of a Man".