Duty Boss: Liu Xinying
I have admired Chi Zijian for a long time, since her "Arctic Village Fairy Tale", I have paid attention to her words, her movements, her awards... In my heart, there are two goddesses in the Heilongjiang literary circle - Xiao Hong and Chi Zijian, they are writers of two eras, not only the pride of Heilongjiang, but also female writers with wide influence in the country, in the era of the intersection of the two centuries, they all have their own place in the history of world literature. However, due to their different living backgrounds and literary talents, they are destined to have very different personalities and writing styles.
Chi Zijian was born in the Arctic Village of Mohe, Heilongjiang, where there are vast forests, strange Northern Lights and white snow, as well as grandmothers and relatives who watched her grow up, as well as fathers and villagers who have no quarrels with the world and work hard. Chi Zijian was born on the occasion of the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Folklore says that children born on this day are "down against the lanterns". "Greeting the lamp" became Chi Zijian's milk name. And her many fans like to call themselves "lamp fans" because of this.
Chi Zijian said that Mohe is the starting point of her literary career, and the memories of Mohe are profound and warm, and in her pen, the hometown people are simple, kind, industrious, and care for each other. A writer once said in a literary lecture that not long ago he had been to Chi Zijian's hometown of Arctic Village, and what jumped into his mind at that time were two key words, one was "simple" and the other was "tranquility". One review article said, "The forests, rivers, breezes and bright moons of her hometown give her endless inspiration." The woodcut rooms, white nights, and auroras of her childhood have penetrated deeply into her soul and injected endless imagination into her creations ("Chi Zijian From the Arctic Village"). ”
Of course, more than that, Chi Zijian's wise talent and delicate observation of the things around her, the sensitivity that is different from ordinary people, and the way of thinking about life and life make her stories as fascinating and intoxicating as myths. This spirituality from the earth, the sky, family affection and life, as if it were a clear stream, has been flowing in her soul, not only becoming an inexhaustible source of her literary creation, but also creating her self-confidence and vitality. Even when she reaches middle age, we can still see the innocent and pure childlike heart in her splendid articles.
As we all know, chi zijian today is already a dazzling star in the contemporary Chinese literary world. She is the only writer who has won the Lu Xun Literature Award three times, the Bingxin Prose Award twice, the Zhuang Chongwen Literature Award once, the Australian Suspense Sentence Literature Award once, and the Mao Dun Literature Award once. During this period, he also won dozens of national prose awards, short and medium story awards, long fiction awards and so on. A large number of works have been translated into English, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian and other languages, and introduced overseas. So some people called her the contemporary Xiao Hong. Chi Zijian said modestly, "Xiao Hong is the pride of the black land in northeast China and a monument in the history of modern Chinese literature." Her life experience and her literary achievements are insurmountable and cannot be copied. I like Xiao Hong, I like the vast sadness in her works. ”
Friends who are familiar with her said that in life we can never see that Chi Zijian is a well-known writer, and what appears in front of us is a beautiful, natural, confident Peugeot woman, especially her laughter is crisp and infectious, instantly winning the other party's favor and trust. At the same time, she has a significant northeastern female characteristics, frank, bold, enthusiastic, jealous as a vendetta, outspoken, and full of compassion. Her enthusiasm makes you irresistible, her rejection makes you acceptable, and selfless resentment. I think that's the mind of a writer. And this kind of mind is particularly valuable when placed on the body of a female writer.
In Chi Zijian's pen, whether it is people or animals, they are so cute and kind. Even though life is hard and hard, the core of the story is still warm, upward, and, unquestionably, Chi Zijian's writing is full of rich imagination, in her view, it is "imagination that inserts the wings of fantasy into her words, allowing her to gallop above the sky of literature." ”
She wrote in "Spring Is a Little Bit Melted" that "... In the morning, I was greeted by a cold night and a cold moon, and the frost flowers condensed on the glass window. Presumably, the frost flowers also know that the festival has changed, and the frost flowers on this day are not like the past, they are always in the form of trees. The frost flowers of Lichun are clustered, which is a bit of a garden weather. You can see trumpet-shaped lilies, heavy-petaled roses and single-petaled cornflowers. Do not think that such a flower must be silvery-white, and once the sun rises from the mountains, the glass window printed with frost flowers, like a magic mirror, emits a strange brilliance. The rising sun first cast a touch of red to it, and then, the red turned orange, and the frost flowers seemed to be soaked with honey, making people suspect that the bees had taken a fancy to this frost flower and sprinkled their hard brewing here. Later, the sun rose high, the orange turned to goose yellow, and the color of the frost flowers faded and faded layer by layer, becoming snow white, and they were not far from the time of withering..."
Yes, children of the Northeast, whose childhood did not have the memory of window flowers? With his delicate female observation, Chi Zijian brings the reader into a magical world of ice and snow, and the beautiful window flowers are also flexible. It is not difficult for us to find that her ability to control words is so skilled, natural, wonderful, and so easy, peaceful, and ordinary.
Reading her "My TenderNess for the Night" reminds me of Gu Cheng's poem, "The night gives me black eyes, but I use it to find the light." Her feelings in the dark night of her hometown are different from those of the poet, and the darkness of the night is "virgin-like fresh, clean darkness" in her eyes. She used such a pair of pure eyes to find a clean night, "Only this clean night will usher in a refreshing dawn." Reading such a text, like drinking a sweet spring, instantly opens the obstacle in your heart. This is the charm of literature, but also the charm of Chi Zijian,
In Lu Xun's former residence, Lu Zhen, Chi Zijian fantasized about paddling in the night, and even mischievously thought, "If you can't steal someone else's beans and cook them on the boat, steal a ray of moonlight as a headband and let it tie my long hair that flutters with the wind." Oh, what a drunken thing to say!
The ups and downs of the years and the impermanence of life will always make a writer feel a different essence of life. Chi Zijian's "You Are my Deepest Miss of Spring" that mourns his lover will be in tears and heartbroken by anyone who reads it. In this article, Chi Zijian wrote about his deep nostalgia for his lover, regret and heart-wrenching pain. In the end, what redeemed her was the rainbow on the Nicaraguan Falls, which she said was the rainbow of consummation that brought her out of her grief, and that moment she knew that her lover had gone to heaven, and that was enough. Since then, she has "safely continued her ordinary and simple life." It was also this novel based on her lover, "All the Nights in the World", that won the Fourth Lu Xun Literature Award. Chi Zijian said in an interview, "Maybe God only gave me four years of happiness, maybe in my later years there was happiness that I didn't know." Let us pray together for this kind woman and wish her to find her own happy "gift" as soon as possible.
After coming out of Mohe, Chi Zijian integrated herself into Harbin, a city with special experiences, and she began to extend her brushstrokes to history and market life, and her creation also showed a new spurt of development, "Puppet Manchukuo", "White Snow Crow", "Goodnight Rose", "Fireworks Roll"... There is no doubt that we can see from these creations that her creative territory has been rapidly spreading and expanding, from rural to urban, which is a challenge, a fresh topic, but also a new and valuable creative resource, and Chi Zijian has successfully excavated these minerals and made one exquisite work of art after another, dedicated to the vast number of readers.
Chi Zijian's works have attracted widespread attention in society. The Aesthetic Culture and Longjiang Literature Research Center of the College of Literature of Harbin Normal University hosted the "Chi Zijian and Acheng Literary Creation Seminar" in Harbin. They believe that "in the 1930s, the northeast writers represented by Xiao Hong, Xiao Jun, Shu Qun, Bai Lang, Luo Binji, Duanmu Hongliang and others laid the impression of the modern northeast by writing literature in the northeast, that is, black land, barbarism, primitiveness, full of suffering, and a spirit of resistance." However, the emergence of writers such as Chi Zijian and Ah Cheng has changed the impression of the Northeast Writers Group to a certain extent. Compared with the ignorance and suffering of ordinary people in Xiao Hong's pen, Chi Zijian pays more attention to the warmth and warmth in the suffering of ordinary people. Ah Cheng's novels' writings on the citizens of Harbin's Five Elements and Eight Works, Three Religions and Nine Streams have also enriched the character galleries of the Northeast Writers Group, especially for the portrayal of those exiles. ”
In our city, because of the writing of writers such as Chi Zijian and Ah Cheng, there are plump city fireworks and passionate wind, frost, rain and snow.
Last autumn, I went to Mohe to interview the fire rescue brigade, the organizers very intimately arranged for us to visit the old site of Chi Zijian's grandmother's home in the Arctic Village, at that time the land was golden, and I couldn't see the "cooking smoke in the twilight", the farmers used gas cans, the old site of the grandmother's house was already a very old earthen house, in order not to disturb the current residents, we stood a few meters away and looked at the grandmother's house, the grandmother's family was the source of Chi Zijian's writing, at the age of 20, she took her hometown Arctic Village as the material, and wrote " The Fairy Tale of the Arctic Village, published in "People's Literature", has since become unobstructed in her writing, she said, when writing this novel, those dreamlike lives, like wild chrysanthemums in the mountains, are in her heart. At that time, she did not feel that she was writing a novel, but combing through the beauty of life.
I paid special attention to the windows of my grandmother's house, and I seemed to see the little Chi Zijian behind the window, lying on the windowsill, looking at the outside world with curious eyes, and the frost flowers that she had written with romantic feelings would soon return. The yard of grandma's house was full of green vegetables and brown rice that she liked to eat, and the big sauce jar in the corner of the wall must have been left by grandma, and purple, pink morning glory flowers crawled all over the wooden fence, enclosing grandma's house into a quiet countryside.
Chi Zijian's grandmother and relatives certainly would not have thought that the little yellow haired girl of that year was already a famous writer today. I'm afraid this is Chi Zijian's greatest reward for his grandmother.
After visiting Chi Zijian's grandmother's house, by chance, I met Teacher Chi Zijian. It was last winter, Teacher Ah Cheng was giving a lecture at the Heilongjiang Literature Museum, I drove to pick him up, he and Chi Zijian and others came face to face, I was surprised to see that she was actually a small and exquisite woman, bright like the little sister next door, her face rippled with a warm smile, two small dimples so cute. I greeted it quickly, and as if we had a sharp mind, we all stretched out our arms and came to a big hug. I had no idea I would meet my goddess idol in such a way. Her voice was so beautiful, mixed with the boldness of a northeastern woman. At this time, she was already the vice chairman of the Heilongjiang CPPCC, but she was so cordial and approachable. Not long before I wrote this article, Chi Zijian was elected vice chairman of the China Writers Association. I am really happy for her, and I am proud that Heilongjiang has such a great female writer.
Chi Zijian said that if she did not become a writer, she would be a very good peasant woman. In fact, she is an ordinary, outstanding, hard-working "peasant woman" in the literary garden, she is not in a hurry to sow seeds and harvest at her own pace.
The original article was published in The Window of the Northeast, Issue 02, 2022