Text/Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Wu Xiaopan
Photo/Courtesy of respondents
Culturally strong and thought-provoking interviews
After the Guangdong Provincial Conference on Solidly Promoting the Construction of a Culturally Strong Province was held in Guangzhou on February 11, Yangcheng Evening News successively launched a series of planning special issues, using various media means to report online and offline.
The "CulturalLy Strong Province, Deep Interview" series has successively launched exclusive interviews with experts and scholars in various fields such as Li Fengliang, Lin Gang, Lin Lan, Jiang Shuzhuo, Zhang Zhi'an, Xiang Xiaomei, etc., which have received wide attention. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)
Previous experts and scholars are mainly from the province, this issue launched an interview with Zhang Ming, a professor at the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, to talk about the construction of a culturally strong province from a new perspective——
1 From "windy corridors" to "eternal halls"
Yangcheng Evening News: From the macro level of politics, economy and culture, what are the favorable conditions for Guangdong's literary creation?
Zhang Ming: In the power structure of the classical era, the Lingnan Emperor Tiangao was far away, in a barbaric land on the edge. In modern times, especially after the reform and opening up, the central work has shifted to economic construction, and Lingnan has become the center of the economic storm, with an active mechanism, ideological emancipation, and large civil space. The experience of Lingnan culture also presents a diversity relative to mainstream culture, and this diversity of daily life experiences provides help for the practice of literary creation.
Now the GDP of the entire Guangdong Province has been the first in the country for decades, which is the standard of economics and an important material basis, so we expect the GDP of Guangdong literature to reach a higher level in the country.
Yangcheng Evening News: As a writer and critic who has lived and worked in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing for a long time, if you take Beijing and Shanghai as the main reference, what is your observation of the literary ecology of Guangdong?
Zhang Ming: Since the reform and opening up, the entire Pearl River Delta region, including the so-called Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area urban agglomeration, has been a region that has attracted the attention of China and even the world. Its economy has developed rapidly, and the social mechanism is very active, there are many opportunities, and the space for the people is also large, which provides good conditions for the development of cultural industries and tourism industries.
Therefore, in the 80s of the last century, there was a slogan that said: "Southeast, northwest, and middle, get rich to Guangdong." "All kinds of people, whether they are doing business or trading, whether they are doing finance or culture, want to develop their own business, there is no doubt that he prefers the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta.
Literature and art are a special type in culture, and it is difficult to directly generate profits. As a person engaged in literary and artistic creation and research, I am not familiar with the so-called industry, and my interest may not be great. Guangdong people, on the other hand, are very sensitive to the concept of "industry".
For example, the early pop music was produced from Guangdong (Guangzhou) packaging production to enter the national market; but those singers ran to Beijing after they had a market. Since ancient times, Guangdong culture has been the first to gain the trend. Some people say that it is a "through the hall" culture, like a windy corridor, not like a permanent hall.
Yangcheng Evening News: But in recent years, with the development of the economy, Lingnan culture has attracted more and more attention, and it can even be said that it has reached the center stage of the mainstream.
Zhang Ming: The phenomenon of "piercing the hall wind" is precisely a manifestation of the casualness and freedom of culture itself, and it actually provides some other new vitality factors for the big culture. For example, the Lingnan School of painting with a very innovative spirit appeared in Guangdong very early, and in the 1970s, in the era of red light in art creation, Guangdong art showed a strong lyricism, which is directly related to the daily life of Lingnan culture.
The films produced by pearl river film studios are also well-known, and the southern film with Guangdong characteristics has become a very famous brand. Cantonese music such as "Backgammon" is well known to everyone. Not to mention, in modern times, Sun Yat-sen, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and other figures have all been born out of Lingnan culture and have also gone from Guangdong to the whole country.
Yangcheng Evening News: After leaving Guangzhou for more than ten years, do you think that the current Guangdong literature is different from that of that year?
Zhang Ming: Although I left Guangzhou, I have been tracking and reading first-line literary works, and I know Cantonese literature well, and I also know some young writers and critics who have a certain influence in the country. The overall impression is that in recent years, Guangdong literature has a certain radiation power, influence and is also very active by strengthening its external dissemination.
Guangdong literature has been relatively lively in recent years, it is not a few elite writers fighting alone, but presents a cluster phenomenon. This is mainly manifested in the fact that there are many activities, I am often invited to participate in various activities, including many literary awards such as the Huadi Literature List sponsored by Yangcheng Evening News, and from the perspective of the whole country, there are not many cities with such a lively literary atmosphere as Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Second, many literary groups have emerged in Guangdong, such as the small novel group in Huizhou, the poetry group in Zengcheng, the ecological poetry group in Qingyuan, and many famous writers have also moved to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. From the perspective of the cultural industry, including the creation and reading of online literature, Guangdong literature can be said to have been at the forefront of the country.
2 Guangdong writers can also write very elegantly and exquisitely
Yangcheng Evening News: Mo Yan once said that he imagined Guangzhou by reading Ouyang Shan's "Three Family Lanes".
Zhang Ming: Ouyang Shan was a member of the "Left Alliance" in the early days, and came to Yan'an in the early 1940s, and his status in the literary world was very high. He has been living in Guangzhou since the founding of New China. In 1959, he published the novel "Three Lanes". The novel surpasses the work of many of his contemporaries in artistic achievement. Later Cantonese writers rarely had big works, and the fact that the name was quite large did not mean that the literary achievement was great.
"Three Family Lanes" is just a small alley in Guangzhou, and several young people from three families carry many tragedies and joys of the times. This is the tradition of critical realism of the 19th century, the product of the Tolstoy and Balzac traditions, through the May Fourth New Culture Movement, which blossomed on Chinese writers in the second half of the 20th century.
Yangcheng Evening News: What are the general characteristics of the creation of Guangdong writers?
Zhang Ming: For example, "Sanjia Lane" and "Shrimp Ball Biography" have strong Lingnan characteristics, writing about urban life, the protagonist either wanders in Hong Kong or participates in the revolution in Guangzhou, there are very vivid details of life, describing a rich variety of customs and customs, food, clothing, housing and transportation, portraying a very avant-garde and trendy modern city life.
This unique tradition of Cantonese literature has never been interrupted, and it has never been interrupted until the current Pen of Zhang Xin, Zhang Mei, and the younger generation of writers. This is not only a tradition relative to agricultural life, but also a practical exploration of the literature of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in the early days.
Yangcheng Evening News: Liu Sifen's "White Gate Willow", as a long historical novel that won the Mao Dun Literature Award for the first time in Guangdong, does not seem to have attracted enough attention?
Zhang Ming: It is good in art and exquisite in technology, but it has not had much influence since its publication. The reasons are complex. One reason may be that the work still lacks more effective interpretation, and the gap between the exquisite and elegant life of the ancient scholar and the contemporary life needs to be opened.
Writing about people's hearts and emotions is the eternal theme of literature, but "any history is contemporary history", and the correspondence and dialogue between it and the contemporary need to be further explained.
The literary particularity of "Baimen Liu" and the traditional Lingnan spirit are not necessarily directly related, but a work of Lingnan intellectuals paying tribute to the classical Chinese humanistic tradition, which conveys the spirit of the Jiangnan intellectual group. It can be seen that Guangdong writers can also write very elegantly and exquisitely.
Yangcheng Evening News: What is there to learn from the current Guangdong literary creation?
Zhang Ming: The refinement of the narrative art of "White Door Willow" and the transcendence of spiritual life are worth learning. Especially for young writers in Guangdong today, if there is no study and accumulation of traditional culture, it is certainly not possible to rely only on storytelling in the traditional sense and telling some novel things, to create a classic or spiritually profound work.
Yangcheng Evening News: In recent years, some young writers of Guangdong literature have also begun to rise.
Zhang Ming: At present, there are a number of young writers who have attracted attention, such as Wang William, Chen Chongzheng, Cai Dong, Chen Goodbye, Lin Peiyuan, etc., as well as young critics Li Denan and Tang poets; in the early years, a group of young writers who came out of the front line of work such as Wang October and Zheng Xiaoqiong also appeared. There has never been a shortage of young talents in Guangdong's literary circles, and what is needed is the spirit of perseverance, more attention and cultivation.
3 Humans have a lag in their perception of good things
Yangcheng Evening News: The "Cantonese criticism" initiated by Yangcheng Evening News has aroused great repercussions and shown the spirit of Guangdong critics who dare to advocate, dare to argue, and dare to criticize.
Zhang Ming: Cantonese criticism is the voice of Guangdong in the midst of the public noise, it is a good thing, it can promote the development of literary criticism. In fact, Guangdong's literary criticism has always been not bad, in the early days there were Xiao Yin, Qin Mu and others, in the 90s of the last century, there were Rao Pengzi, Jiang Shuzhuo, Yin Guoming, etc., are all critics with national influence, like Lin Xianzhi is a lone wolf"-style critic who is immersed in a lone wolf, and now the younger generation is also growing, which matches Guangzhou's status as a first-line central city.
Yangcheng Evening News: In such an era of global interconnection, is it possible and necessary to emphasize regional culture in literary creation?
Zhang Ming: Don't deliberately emphasize it. The way Guangdong writers speak cannot be the same as the way Beijing writers speak. Let you express it in the way of a Shanghai writer, and you can't express it. You can only express it in the way of a Cantonese writer.
I stayed in Guangzhou for ten years, the way of thinking and values have been infected with Cantonese style, although there is a strong personal color, but the basic taste and aesthetic have The characteristics of Guangdong. For example, pragmatic style and civilian color, vigorous way of doing things.
After staying in a certain place for a long time, it naturally has the color of that place. A Guangzhou native who has not lived in Shanghai for a long time, how can he write about Shanghai flavor? So much guangzhou eating, drinking and having fun in "Three Family Lane" cannot appear in "Song of Youth".
Yangcheng Evening News: There are many new technological means, including various artificial intelligence robots and the like, do you think literature still relies on the handmade of individuals in such an era? Will it be replaced by robots?
Zhang Ming: Literature is not only the cause of the individual, but also the cause of the soul, it is the part of the spirit, and it is concerned with such big issues as eternal life and immortality. The mind is of course individual, so literature cannot be created by robots or collectives.
Yangcheng Evening News: Is this view relatively conservative?
Zhang Ming: Literature is like the last batch of "craftsmen" of our time. Its characteristic "conservatism" and "loneliness" are its only remaining virtues. It is the last conservative realm of mankind, the conservative realm of the spirit. Because after all, it is still obsessed with "order" rather than "chaos".
Yangcheng Evening News: In the context of the prevalence of new media, what are the standards for good works? Sales, click-through rate?
Zhang Ming: This is an old topic, really old. During Du Fu's lifetime, many of the poems of the Tang Dynasty did not have his name. Human cognition of good things often has a process, with lag.
Maybe in the cultural industry, click rate and click volume are very important, but for literature, if it is also so important, it is not difficult to comment and recommend, it is enough to make a ranking list, and the quantity is high, and the quality is also high, but this is impossible. The writer should not think about this question, and if he thinks about it all day, do not write.
Yangcheng Evening News: At least for online literature, the number of readings and clicks is more important?
Zhang Ming: Not everyone reads online novels, and those who read online novels may be less than one-tenth of the entire population, jin yong may be one percent, and those who read "Dream of the Red Chamber" may be one in a thousand, and those who read "War and Peace" may only be one in ten thousand. Fundamentally, quantity cannot and should not be the measure of literary works.
If clicks can become the standard, there is no need for experts and scholars. A truly conscientious expert, his judgment is accurate, his standards are based on the history of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign literature, and professional and honest, he may know good or bad at a glance, and will not talk nonsense for the sake of profit.
Yangcheng Evening News: What kind of opportunities does the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area bring to Guangdong literature?
Zhang Ming: Literature is an irreplaceable special way of communication between people, in this process, individual feelings are refined, transformed, and condensed into a thing, which is called literature. Literature can play a role in emotional bonding and construction, achieve the role of communication and communication, and then form a literary imagination community.
The construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has brought new opportunities, and we look forward to the energy radiated by it, not only economic and tourism, but also cultural and literary. If we can integrate and upgrade different cultural circles at the height of cultural strategy and produce a general concept of unifying the Greater Bay Area, Guangdong literature will have a very worthy imagination space. (For details of this interview, see page A10 of Yangcheng Evening News on March 6, 2022)
Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie
Edit | Literary
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