On the vast land of northern Xinjiang, the snow is white, everything is desolate, and a group of statues dressed in black and with solemn looks stand here silently, as if they have gone through thousands of years. Recently, a video taken by the famous writer Liu Liangcheng was widely circulated among friends and readers. These statues, known by Liu Liangcheng as "Manggus", are from the epic "Jianger", and are also the fierce enemies of the demons that countless warriors fought to defend their homeland. "Bemba" is set against the backdrop of the Mongolian heroic epic "Jianger", and where the epic stops, "Bemba" begins to tell.
"Bemba"
By Liu Liangcheng
Yilin Publishing House
At the beginning of the new year of 2022, this work was launched by Yilin Publishing House, and the "Works of Liu Liangcheng" (exclusive collector's edition) led by it was also released as a whole, and this edition included all of Liu Liangcheng's important works for the first time, fully presenting his creative and spiritual world.
"Liu Liangcheng's Works" (Exclusive Collector's Edition), "Bemba", "One Man's Village", "Chiseling The Void", "Virtual Soil", "Carrying Words", "In Xinjiang", "Talking about The Things on earth to Heaven", by Liu Liangcheng, Yilin Publishing House
Liu Liangcheng emotionally wrote in the new edition of the "Afterword", "The seven-volume version of 'Liu Liangcheng's Works' published by the Translation Forest Society, except for the new long "Bemba", the rest are revised and reprinted. With this revision, I also had the opportunity to read through the old works. Life is scattered throughout a lifetime. If it weren't for these words, I really wouldn't know that I would have imagined the world like this at that time. If I hadn't written it at that time, or if I hadn't written it again, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to become my own reader. ”
At the beginning of his life, standing at a new starting point, Liu Liangcheng launched the half-life works with the heart of a child, and fulfilled his desire for his creation that "the final display is a face of time".
"Bemba":
At the end of the epic, another world is broken
Gain the power of long-lost innocence
More than a decade ago, Liu Liangcheng traveled to Xinjiang and Buxel Mongol Autonomous County, the hometown of hero Jiang Geer.
Located on the northwestern edge of the Junggar Basin, "sheep roads are everywhere in the valley and grassland, that is, sheep have walked for thousands of years, deeply embedded in the earth", he was deeply shocked, ran all over the grasslands and mountains, and met many herders.
Since then, Liu Liangcheng has begun to read "Jianger", and he has never forgotten this grassland, "In those ancient nights, on the vast grassland, a group of people sat around, listening to these raps, and heard the moon setting stars and the east whitening, all without tiredness."
He was touched by the hope and strength brought to the tribe by the innocence of epic poetry, and the brilliant imagination of time in human childhood, and since then he has had a thought, "write a naïve novel", which for more than ten years has gradually expanded from birth to expansion, and finally becomes a long novel "Bemba".
"Bemba" is Liu Liangcheng's latest novel after being nominated for the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award, and won the 2021 Huadi Literature List annual long work. It unfolds against the backdrop of "Jianger" and recreates reality in order to trace the lost human childhood.
Writing this work, Liu Liangcheng seems to have returned to his childhood. He said, "'Bemba' is the most enjoyable novel I have ever written, the epic of my childhood that I have written for myself, and the most naïve in my writing history." The protagonists of the story are several children, and the protagonists of the story are all of us. Moving houses, hide-and-seek, dreaming, children turn the cruel war life into a fun game. In the course of the game, run to the gathering of twenty-five years old, from all over the world, one by one. The bemba world, the infinitely elongated shadow of the real world, is another kind of life that we live in the distance.
The writer who loves Nabokov was touched after walking around and watching: "I can only say that Liu Liangcheng's first new book of the first year, "Bemba", is what I want to recommend to all literary young people after reading it." For adults, this book can also be read as a children's book; even in the sequence of world literature, it is no less than a book. ”
Other readers say that Bemba has the carnival of the giants, the innocence of Don Quixote, and the lightness of Calvino.
Time:
The eternal motif of Liu Liangcheng's writing
In "Bemba", Liu Liangcheng stands at the end of the epic to restart time, reorganizing the mountains and rivers where the imagination of the ancients stopped, and achieving this novel full of imagination and naïve language, shaping a country of Bemba that does not age and does not die, and everyone lives at the age of twenty-five.
What is the significance of this treatment, Liu Liangcheng said, "I want to write about time as an essence, not a means, and write about the face of time in "Bemba". ”
Many writers often devote their energy to telling a good story, but Liu Liangcheng does the opposite, although he has a story, he is more concerned about the core of the package in the story.
In Bemba, this kernel is time. Liu Liangcheng believes that in fact, the predecessors are imagining time, they are in that era, surrounded by powerful Manggusi (enemies), people are afraid of aging, once they age, they will be bullied and conquered by others, so they naively imagined a "everyone lives at the age of twenty-five" Bemba country, not aging or dying, are young people, strong enough to resist all foreign enemies.
"If time doesn't go forward, they have enough time to eat, drink, and fight, and if they lose one battle, they can fight the next." "Bemba" then goes on to think about the concept of time: What is time for us? What kind of situation can we imagine about time?
Writer Bi Feiyu sighed: "We can't write such works, we are a category, and he (Liu Liangcheng) is a category." ”
Not only "Bemba", in fact, the motif of most of Liu Liangcheng's works is time, he transcends the surface of the story and writes the essence of time with a posture of flying off the ground. He once said: "I hope that my words will eventually show a face of time." The village is the expression of this face of time. It's slow and long, and it's the way it looks like time I know. ”
Whether it is "A Man's Village" written in the early years of working in Urumqi, or the later novels "Virtual Earth", "Chiseled Void", and "Carrying Words", they are closely related to time, and "Bemba" can be described as a fantasy novel that travels arbitrarily through time.
Tao Yuanming's leisurely ran and Miyazaki's time and space
A poetic dwelling between ideal and reality
In fact, Liu Liangcheng initially embarked on the road of writing as an amateur literary youth. After graduating from secondary school, he worked as an agricultural machinery manager, wrote poetry at the age of twenty, wrote the essay "A Man's Village" in Urumqi in his thirties, and returned to the countryside from the city after the age of fifty, built a college, and appointed himself dean. He farms, plants flowers, raises dogs, feeds chickens, and still writes.
On social platforms, he calls himself "Liu Liangcheng Village", while in the city's schools, bookstores and podiums, he is known as "Writer Liu Liangcheng". It can be said that Liu Liangcheng is a real pastoral writer, but also a spiritual guardian under the clamor of materialism.
In 2014, he single-handedly created Xinjiang's first artist village, Rapeseed Valley, and devoted himself to building Mulei Academy, practicing and cultivating and reading the lifestyle, which can be called "contemporary Tao Yuanming", poetically inhabiting between ideal and reality.
In his eyes, all things have a spirit, he will smile at a flower, watch the wind blow the shadow obliquely, measure how far a wind is, and heal the body and mind of modern people with Miyazaki-like time and space.
Li Juan, a writer in Xinjiang, once said, "Liu Liangcheng stood in the center of the village, did not squint, and slowly wrote all the warm and down-to-earth things: a village where people and animals coexist, the details of a soft and joyful life, an ancient and solemn order, and a fair and beautiful destiny." ”
This is a moving footnote to Liu Liangcheng's work.
Exclusive Collector's Edition launched as a whole
It includes all of Liu Liangcheng's important works
This set of collector's editions of "Liu Liangcheng's Works" led by "Bemba" was exclusively launched by Yilin Publishing House. Including the novels "Bemba", "Virtual Earth", "Chiseling The Void", "Carrying Words", the essay collection "A Man's Village", "In Xinjiang", the interview essay collection "Talking about the Things on earth to the sky" seven kinds, including all of Liu Liangcheng's important works, completely presenting liu Liangcheng's creative panorama and spiritual world, leisure, childlike heart, perseverance, and sincerity, it is the book of Liu Liangcheng's soul.
According to reports, the exclusive collector's edition was launched in advance with four kinds, including "Bemba", "One Man's Village", "Virtual Soil" and "Chiseled Void".
"One Man's Village" is Liu Liangcheng's masterpiece, the book of life that has touched countless people, 78 Yuan Qi essays, such as the wind blowing the soul. This book is highly regarded by middle school students, more than 50 articles have been selected for middle school Chinese textbooks and test questions, and in "The Cold Wind Blows Through", "The snow that falls in a person's life, we can't see it all." Everyone spends the winter alone in their own lives", which has profoundly influenced generations of students. The new edition of "One Man's Village" is also the first revision by the author in more than 20 years, and more than 62 places in the original manuscript have been revised.
"Virtual Land" is Liu Liangcheng's first novel, a prequel to "One Man's Village". This is a book of childhood, we all have a child in the "Virtual Land" in our hearts, we go to middle age, to old age, and he went back to his childhood alone, farther and farther away from us. Liu Liangcheng said, "This is the most difficult and most emotional book I have written, and I can hardly complete it."
"Chiseling the Void" is Liu Liangcheng's first realistic novel and Asia Weekly's top ten novels of the year. "Chiseled Void" describes the hundred years of loneliness of a village, telling the story of two cave diggers who have no shadow in the ground, and the life that people are busy and always waiting for. "In your lifetime, you will see many things disappear, and only what you hope will not come."
Critic Wang Chunlin said: Liu Liangcheng is an excellent novelist who has been seriously obscured by the reputation of prose. From "Virtual Soil" and "Chiseled Void" to "Carrying Words" and "Bemba", all his novels can be said to have a unique appearance, both with real realistic care and unexpected extraordinary artistic imagination.
According to Yilin Publishing House, in addition to the above four works, the new editions of "In Xinjiang", "Carrying Words", and "Talking about Things on earth to the sky" will also be listed one after another. When handing over this set of works as a whole to the Translation Forest Agency, Liu Liangcheng systematically sorted out the ideas of the portfolio, personally revised and corrected more than 300 places in the old version. At the same time, write a new afterword to fully explain the direction and content of each revision. "The republishment modifies some of the content. Individual writings were omitted from One Man's Village. "Virtual Soil" deleted 10,000 words, and the structure was also fine-tuned. "In Xinjiang" has nothing to change. "Chiseled Void" has changed a lot. Enhanced story fluidity..."
It is worth mentioning that Liu Liangcheng's set of books was designed by Zhu Yingchun, the winner of "The World's Most Beautiful Book". In April last year, Liu Liangcheng went to Nanjing and paid a special visit to Zhu Yingchun's bookstore studio, the two saw each other as they were, and after returning to Xinjiang, Liu Liangcheng wrote an essay for this trip, named "Worm Wen, Worm Singing, Worm Heart", which was a good story for a while.
As the author of "Bug Poems" and "Bugs Next to Bugs", Zhu Yingchun prefers a worm and a grass, pays attention to natural creatures, and is highly consistent with Liu Liangcheng's aesthetic taste, and the word "Bemba" on the cover of "Bemba" crawls out for bugs, full of spirituality, and returns to innocence. This set of works is brightly colored, which appropriately presents Liu Liangcheng's literary world of animism.