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Ye Mi | Chi Zijian | July 23, 2021 in Beijing
I knew Ye Mi's novels before, and then I knew her as a person. Ye Mi is often mistaken for a post-70s writer, because her debut is not too early, but she appeared in the literary world, just like the Taihu Lake she guarded, with its vast aesthetic smoke waves, captured the hearts of many readers. Ye Mi's early works to the literary world were mostly published in "Zhong Shan", and almost every one of them was a golden rose. I remember that the earliest person to recommend her novel to me was Jia Mengwei, he said that Ye Mi's novels must not be read, I read a few of her works, I couldn't help but call Bi Feiyu to communicate, exclaimed that Ye Mi was a literary celestial, at that time Bi Feiyu was still working as an editor in "Rain Flower", but he used the tone of the co-leader, triumphantly said to me, No way, we Jiangsu writers are such cattle, stubble after stubble, are high starting points!
The real contact with Ye Mi was to go to Seoul to participate in the Sino-Korean Literature Forum, and the day before we left, it happened to be the Wenchuan earthquake, so in those few days in Seoul, everyone's focus was on this catastrophe in China, and the mood was very heavy. I remember the day before the end of the meeting, there was a rare half-day free time, I and Ye Mi went to a big shopping mall with us, we walked down in the women's clothing department, layer by layer, and found a lot of beautiful clothes sizes, are S and M, basically there is no size suitable for us, and finally Ye Mi sighed and concluded, the original South Korea is still in feudal society, here to bind women, you say that women like us, in this fucking even have to wear clothes! In the corner of the mall, we two people who were not big enough to stand up and laughed knowingly.
Ye Mi's novels, like hers, are vivid and interesting and Zen-like no matter how they are opened. She is simple and charming, and she is innocent and naïve. What attracted me most about her novels was the "deviant brushwork," as Lu Xun said in his preface to Xiao Hong's The Field of Life and Death. Among contemporary female writers, ye Mi is undoubtedly the most prominent one who has this trait in her bones.
Ye Mi's world is never as clear as the purpose, it is often chaotic, in a state of smoke and rain. Or that her characters are all people who have gone through three lives and three lifetimes. A good man and a good woman who has wandered in the long river of history, also a Taoist monk, is a folk philosopher and a rural intellectual. She is good at writing about human feelings, good at writing desires or distractions, these are the most sensitive nerves of human nature, highlighting the excellent quality of the novel, she grasps the reserved, occasionally excessive and willful, and willful, and does not burn the characters, the emotional temperature is always online. Just as the woman in "Peach Blossom Ferry" falls in love with a monk, that is, looking for otherworldly love, but also consciously looking for the beauty of isolation, it seems that there is no more than missing out on the eternal and beautiful love, Ye Mi in the novel with the flower pier as the base, sad and bold interpretation of all this.
Ye Mi | "Hate Loquat"
Twenty-first Century Press| 2012
"An Eagle Disappeared in the Potala Palace" (Chinese Writers, No. 2, 2007)
Many critics have pointed out that Yemi likes to write about teenagers and temples, which is indeed the cloak of her novels, and she is a writer with a strong sense of destiny. But inside, in "Mingyue Temple" and "An Eagle Disappeared in the Potala Palace", the temple she writes about is not the dojo of the layman, and Ge Baozhen in "An Eagle Disappeared in the Potala Palace", because of eating the meat of the onion oil cake, fate seems to be cursed, this curse is not brought about by faith, but brought to her by laymen, causing her husband's wheel to crush her, and the eagle that disappeared in the Potala Palace is no longer the embodiment of freedom, it is a shackled creature. Ye Mi interprets life, a pen can cross mountains and seas, but in the end it is all to the point, never be a moral judge, which is her cleverness as a novelist. And the teenagers she writes are all teenagers on the road, teenagers who resist, teenagers who want to know the truth of the rising sun and the moon, in other words, Ye Mi, with the help of the protagonist, has been working hard to "get out of the shell", strive to seek transformation, and explore the meaning of survival in all sentient beings.
Because I appreciate Ye Mi's novels, I remember that in 2011, on the occasion of the centenary of Xiao Hong's birth, when the Heilongjiang Writers Association hosted the first Xiao Hong Literature Award, I was very excited to see Ye Mi's name in many works to be evaluated. I remember that the judges of that year included Famous Critics such as Radar, Ding Fan, Li Jingze, Chen Xiaoming, Yan Jingming, Wang Yao, Hu Ping, Pan Kaixiong, He Shaojun, Zhang Yanling, Zhang Xuexin, and other famous critics, as well as heavyweight writers like Ah Lai and Ge Fei, and we took real-name voting to select, and Shi Tiesheng, Han Shaogong, Wang Anyi, and Ye Mi all won individual awards almost unanimously. I still remember when the award ceremony was held, when Ye Mi flew from Suzhou to Harbin, he brought a basket of fresh white jade loquat. When I was presiding over the seminar on Xiao Hong's works, this basket of loquat was placed on the table, and everyone talked about Xiao Hong while enjoying the loquat, which was equivalent to chewing on the style of a female writer with great talent in the last century in the fruit of a female writer in later generations.
I like Ye Mi's novels, and I like her as a person. We don't meet very often, but there are always long phone conversations two or three times a year. Sometimes when it comes to happiness, she will let out bursts of laughter, which makes me seem to see her always red face. Her laughter was soft and bright, and of course if she expressed something unusually, she would slip out a "fuck" in passing, and when she scolded "fuck", the tone was soft. Ye Mi knows that the young female writers I like are Qiao Ye after the 70s and Ma Jinlian after the 80s, and she also highly recognizes them. So I went to Ningxia on a business trip some time ago, I saw Ma Jinlian in Xiji, I was very excited, and I came back to call Ye Mi and said that I had seen Ma Jinlian, she was a writer who grew up in the land of Xi ji, Ye Mi said on the other end of the phone: "Yes, yes." ”
Ye Mi has her own house on the outskirts of Suzhou, her garden, and her adopted stray cats and dogs. With such a courtyard, there will be nature, there will be worldly feelings, and there will be wind and rain. The short story "Peach Blossom Ferry" begins with the burial of the cat Little Rose, I think it may also be Ye Mi's personal feelings, right? How many of these tender creatures had she buried, and how many of these deaths had slipped from her fingertips? I feel sorry for such a Yemi, but I am also glad that she still questions the life and death of the world in a seemingly static posture in a corner of the countryside, and explores the eye of the storm in the paradise, and those are the shining branches of the tree of literature.
Ye Mi | "Peach Blossom Ferry"
China Yanshi Publishing House | 2014
Including "Peach Blossom Ferry" (People's Literature, No. 4, 2009) and "Mingyue Temple" ("Zhongshan", No. 3, 2003)
In recent years, Ye Mi has developed in writing, not only the emergence of short and medium-length masterpieces, her long "Wind Flow Picture Scroll" has also won industry praise, and she has also tried to write scripts to expand the scope of writing. She is a person who seems to have no score but has a lot of spectrum in her heart, low-key and humble, gentle to people, for example, I read her novella "Who Tells Fairy Tales late at night" last year, I think there is a character who is not sure, the ending is abrupt, some places are also mixed, call her to say feelings, she "Oops Oops" called, said that it was really said by you, I was urged to hand over the manuscript, a rush to end panic, said that I really have to be careful after that. She never narcissistic, knows how to appreciate others, so read her comments on Kim In-soon, saying: "After reading Kim In-soon's novels, without exaggeration, I think I can do without writing", if this word is said from other people, it may make people think that it is just a kind word of peers, but Ye Mi will not be like this, it must be that she is deeply moved, and she has this. Here I would like to say to her, Kim In-soon's novels are good, yours are also very good, each is the best, this is literature. Ye Mi is a person born in 1964, and I think that the writer of this zodiac sign for the dragon will have more room for ascension.
Ye Mi's most well-known short story should be "Velvet", which Jiang Wen put on the big screen. Jiang Wen is a talented director, but this "The Sun Also Rises" is filmed too hard, the sense of splicing is too strong, and it is not as deep and powerful as the original novel. "Velvet" writes the story of Yao's sister and her husband Tang Yulin being sent down, having an affair with Li Dongfang, the son of a dead crazy woman, and Tang Yulin finally killing Li Dongfang with a shotgun. This story is not new, but Ye Mi gave the novel a beautiful texture, that is, "velvet", a husband described his woman's skin like velvet, and Li Dongfang, who had an affair with this woman, did not know what velvet was in the countryside of material scarcity, so when he knew that he would undoubtedly die, Li Dongfang longed to recognize velvet, and Tang Yulin also gave him this opportunity, at this time, the velvet was no longer cloth, but a life that crisscrossed the emotional meridians. The novel has a deep exploration at the level of human nature, and writes a new meaning of revenge. Along the lines of "Velvet", some of Ye Mi's works, including the early "Wenjia's Hat", make good use of props, and the traces of dramatization are stronger.
"Beautiful Boy" is Ye Mi's first novel, and the experience of the teenager Li Uneasy seems to be the growth experience of every writer, full of passion to explore the world, and may also return empty-handed. But our sense of "uneasiness" about fate and life is always the driving force for literature. I know that Ye Mi has a lot of literary friends in the literary world, and I may not be the best person to write about her, but I am willing to use simple outline to pay tribute to a writer of the same age, so I paraphrase her "Beautiful Boy" as the title of this small article.
Ye Mi has always been beautiful, and she is there.
Ye Mi | Han Xinzhi | Chi Zijian | the October 2017 Novel Monthly event
Yangzijiang Literary Review, No. 1, 2022| Catalogue
Famous Editor Vision Lin Jianfa
Mo Yan | Brother Jianfa is all right
Jia Ping | Say Lin Jianfa
Yan Lianke | Sister-in-law and construction law
Chen Zhonghui | The meaning of Mo Yan - a tribute to Mr. Lin Jianfa
Chen Sihe | Bile liver to take care of the real brother - Lin Jianfa and his editorial style
Wang Yao | A personal imprint of a magazine
Zhang Xuexin | Brother Jianfa's "Heart"
Xie Youshun | I often think of Teacher Lin Jianfa
Famous triangular prism Yemi
Ye Mi | Look up
Chi Zijian | Miya Yemi
Li Denan | Mental Traces and Psychology in the Transition Period - Ye Mi Theory
Writer wide angle
Zhang Qinghua | The Question of Drama and Lyricism: The Two Dimensions of Fictional Narration
New Horizons in Literary History
Zhang Fugui | The Historical Evolution and Classical Understanding of New Chinese Poetry
Jingwen Dong | Apocalypse from Dust Settled
Chen Jun | On the subject field of chinese contemporary drama acceptance
Young Critics Forum
Fang Wei | The "excess" of language and the "supergram" of transformation anxiety- Reappraisal of "The Happy Life of poor Zhang Damin" also discusses the secularization of the 1990s
Wang Dongdong | The concept of yuan poetry in modern Chinese poetics
Writer's Work Theory
Liu Jun | Darkness, Local History, Realism/Symbolism: On Li Zishu's "Flowing Place"
West crossing | Intellectual Imagination in Gomeck's Poetry - One of Gomeck's Poetic Methodologies
Zang Qing | The Legacy of the Pioneers and the Cultivation of Style: On Bi Feiyu's Novel Creation
Literary scene
Li Jingze, Ah Lai and other | Ecology: Methods as Literature - Selected Speeches of the Forum on Ecological Literature and Natural Poetry
List of "20 Books/Departments of Literature in the Twentieth Decade of the New Century"
Yangtze River Literary Review