On the vast land of northern Xinjiang, the snow is white, everything is desolate, and a group of statues dressed in black and solemn look stand silently here, as if they have gone through thousands of years... This is a video taken by the famous writer Liu Liangcheng, and the statues in the video are called "Manggusi" by Liu Liangcheng, from the epic "Jianger", and are also the fierce enemies of the demons in Liu Liangcheng's new book "Benba" in which countless warriors fight 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.
Recently, this work was launched by Yilin Publishing House, and its "Liu Liangcheng Works" (exclusive collector's edition) was also published as a whole. For the first time, this edition includes all of Liu Liangcheng's important works, completely presenting his creative and spiritual world.
Group photo of Liu Liangcheng's series of works
Liu Liangcheng 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 "Benba", 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. Standing at a new starting point, Liu Liangcheng launched the half-life works with an overall appearance, fulfilling his desire for his creation that "the final display is a face of time".
Bemba: Another world at the end of the epic
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 the nomination of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award, and Liu Liangcheng was also nominated for the "Outstanding Writer of the Year" at the 2021 Southern Literature Festival with this work. The novel is set against the backdrop of "Jianger", creating another way to recreate 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 was deeply touched after walking around and watching: "I can only say that Liu Liangcheng's first new book of the beginning of the year, "Bemba", is what I want to recommend to all literary young people after reading. 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 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 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." ”
The motif of most of Liu Liangcheng's works is time, and 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.
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.
"Liu Liangcheng's Works" (exclusive collector's edition) was 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, and the new edition is the first revision by the author in more than 20 years since its publication, and more than 62 places in the original manuscript have been revised.
In addition to the above four works, the new versions of "In Xinjiang", "Carrying Words", and "Talking about Things on earth to the sky" will also be released 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..." The collector's edition of "Liu Liangcheng's Works" was designed by Zhu Yingchun as a whole.
Nandu reporter Zhu Rongting