Cover news reporter Zhang Jie
As a writer, Feng Jicai is different in that he has a particularly strong creative force and vitality. If many writers only have one or two carriages, Feng Ji has four carriages at the same time: painting, writing, cultural heritage protection and education. March 11, 2022, is Feng Ji's 80th birthday. He still maintains admirable vibrancy.
▲ Feng Jicai
On March 4, 2022, the cover news reporter interviewed Feng Jicai, who said that he still had a lot of things to do, "Now there is no shortage of anything, it is a lack of time." ”
Before becoming a writer, he was a painter. Of course, after becoming a writer, he never gave up painting. For example, he has "disappeared" in the literary circle for more than 20 years, devoted himself to the protection of urban history and culture and the rescue of folk culture, presided over the rescue project of Chinese folk cultural heritage, and is committed to promoting the protection of traditional villages. It wasn't until 2014, when there was less time to go down to the field and more time in the study, that the novel was picked up again. In 2018, Feng Jicai, who resumed literary writing, won the Lu Xun Literature Award for his short story collection "The Strange Man of the Ordinary World". Now 80 years old, he published a collection of novels "Danube Valley", keenly writing about the love and pain of young people in the current society, and at the same time spending a lot of energy on the education of cultural heritage protection. As the dean of the Feng Jicai Institute of Literature and Art at Tianjin University, he is working closely with Zhang Luo to integrate intangible cultural heritage into the higher education system, recruit intangible cultural heritage professionals, and carry out scientific and sustainable protection of traditional cultural heritage.
As a writer, Feng Jicai may not be the author with the highest royalties and the best-selling books, and he is not currently famous because a work has been adapted into a popular film and television drama. But what Feng Jicai did was not necessarily something that any other writer could easily do.
The vitality of literature is inseparable from the vitality of life. We believe that this enthusiasm for life and concern for society have made Feng Ji a very rare and unique person in the current literary circle.
Eightieth birthday, hope to live a little deeper
March 11, 2022, the ninth day of the second lunar month. It was Feng Jicai's 80th birthday. Generally for people who have an 80th birthday, there will be many people to wish him a birthday, put on a Tang costume, and then put a fruit basket and flowers in front of the back, and then everyone will give him a birthday. Feng Jicai said that he did not want to live like this, "I have two ideas, one is to eat bowl noodles with my mother, and the two of them will eat bowl noodles together." My mother is 105 years old. It's so rare that an 80-year-old can still see my own mom. There was also an idea to do an event in our academy. This activity is not to give me a birthday, but to talk about my birthday and do a little research. Some writers are born from their hometown, and when they grow up, they fly away, like birds, and then they get to break into society, and they will have a lot of life experience. I am not like this, from the birth to the present nearly 80 years, I am basically all in Tianjin, all on a piece of land. I would like to provoke a discussion, through my relationship with Tianjin's land, to discuss what kind of relationship intellectuals should have with his homeland? I think this discussion should make sense. ”
In the early 1980s, an era of reform and opening up had just entered. From a relatively difficult era, Feng Jicai was full of creative passion. The body really couldn't bear it, and suddenly became seriously ill. When you are seriously ill. The writer Mr. Yan Wenjing, who was the president of the People's Literature Publishing House, wrote a letter to Feng Jicai, and wrote a sentence in it, which impressed Feng Jicai, "He means that you must try to live longer." Only when you live a long time will your understanding of life be deeper. Because at different ages, the understanding of life, fate, people, and many things is different, only you live long, you see all aspects of life. It may be richer, or it may be deeper. ”
Writing about the value of personal vulnerability and true love, painting allows him to "see" the faces of his characters
Before becoming a writer, Feng Ji had painted for 15 years. Of course, I'm still painting, but not much. Now, painting is a more personal thing for him, more of a spiritual personal feeling of spiritual life, a kind of rehearsal, a kind of expression. Literature bears more social responsibility, thinking about life, and understanding life with readers.
Feng Jicai himself realized that literature influenced his paintings, such as the pursuit of literature, the pursuit of poetry, and the pursuit of artistic conception in painting, which is also the tradition of Chinese painting, especially the tradition of literati painting. Painting, in turn, influenced his literary writing. Because painting has something in common with literature, it is necessary to produce a visual image and evoke an image imagination of the reader. In addition, it is necessary to create a visible space for the reader, a visible character, a visible scene, and the more vivid and concise the better. Therefore, Feng Jicai said that when he was writing, he could see his characters, "For example, there are many details in the face that I can see." Seeing this character is not the same as not seeing it. ”
Many people are not unfamiliar with the name Feng Jicai. His "Pearl Bird" and "Mountain Picker" are all famous articles that have entered the primary school Chinese textbook. In a short space, writing an intriguing weather is Feng Jicai's best play. In 2022, a number of his short stories, Danube Canyon, were published by Writers Press. The first of these is the novel of the same name, Danube Gorge. In this novel, the protagonists are a pair of young people in love, because of the changes in life, and the misunderstandings brought about, and let each other become strangers fate story. The themes of human fragility, human finitude, and what love is, have been pondered for a long time. As a post-40s generation, Feng Jicai's observation of the people's hearts in the current society is very sharp and trendy, and the use of language in the text is also very fresh, and he does not appear old because he is old.
In 1979, Feng Jicai won the National Outstanding Short Story Award (the predecessor of the Lu Xun Literature Award). Recalling the feelings at that time, Feng Jicai said: "That was the first time I won the National Outstanding Short Story Award, together with Jia Dashan and other writers, we are all in our 30s, very young, we are very excited, I feel that I have reached a very high new level, I can get more people's attention, especially a sense of achievement." ”
Almost 40 years later, the 76-year-old Feng Ji won the 7th Lu Xun Literature Award (2018). At this time, talking about his feelings, he said that the literary prize actually belongs to young people, and the award at his age is on the one hand an encouragement and comfort for him, making him feel that "this old man is OK, and he can continue to write."
If I go back to 60, I still have to put down my novels and do cultural heritage protection
From 1990 to 2013, Feng Ji devoted himself to the rescue of cultural heritage, racing against time to protect traditional cultural heritage, and paying unimaginable hardships and even tragic labor for this. He has traveled all over the country to conduct carpet cultural surveys and collations and protections of architecture, handicrafts, folklore, folk art and intangible cultural heritage of 56 ethnic groups. As a result, for more than 20 years, Feng Jicai's name has been closely linked to cultural behaviors such as "rescue of Chinese folk cultural heritage".
In the early 1990s, the old city of Tianjin was demolished, and in order to rescue the cultural relics of the old city of Tianjin, Feng Jicai organized cultural experts to rescue and protect, invited more than 100 scholars and photographers to visit, investigate, take photos, and edited and published a large-scale historical and cultural atlas "The Remains of the Old City", thus effectively protecting the cultural relics and buildings of the old city of Tianjin.
Feng Jicai believes that the "bottom of the box" of Chinese folk culture is in ancient villages, which have unique folk customs, unique historical and cultural memories. He worked tirelessly to travel to dozens of villages in 7 provinces, including Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangxi, and conducted a preliminary registration census of ancient villages.
In the 20 years of "parting" from literature, his heart has not really left literature. Sometimes on the way to the expedition, in the car, the heart has flown to the world of the novel, there are always all kinds of spirits out of the cold, but as soon as the car stops, he has to run to the field of folk culture, and the literary inspiration that has just emerged disappears without a trace.
However, Feng Jicai did not regret it, because he always believed that the protection of the culture of the country and the nation was higher than the creation of the individual. "Moreover, invisibly, I have accumulated a lot of understanding of life, culture, history and national spiritual feelings. These invisible accumulations will certainly be integrated into my literature in the future. ”
Although Feng Jicai has now begun to write literature again, he has not relaxed his protection of cultural heritage, "Now I run less outside, just because I don't have enough physical strength." If I were to go back to my 60s now, I would still have to put down my novels or go to the site of protecting cultural heritage. Moreover, new problems are still emerging in the protection of cultural heritage, and there are still a lot of things that have not been done. ”
What makes Feng Jicai feel pleased is that the national level has now approved and supported the establishment of intangible cultural heritage disciplines in colleges and universities, and cultivates more professionals in this field of cultural heritage protection and inheritance. Feng Jicai is also contributing his own strength in the construction of disciplines related to the protection of intangible cultural heritage. "If I say that in the first 20 years, I did cultural heritage protection, mainly rescue protection. All I have to do today is scientific conservation. That is to say, when the cultural heritage is rescued, if there is no follow-up professional talent to continue to do this, we are still not at ease. ”
Although he will be 80 years old in a few days, Feng Ji admitted that his psychological age and physical feelings are still between 50 and 60 years old. Although the thinking is not as agile as when the age of 50 or 60, it is still possible in terms of sensitivity. ”
Perhaps many people will say that a writer is concerned about the protection of cultural heritage, write more articles to call for shouting, why must he devote himself to doing it? Feng Jicai's answer was: "If a car suddenly hits a child, you are around, you can go to the rescue." Will you just shout? My reaction was that I would definitely pounce on it to save the child. That's my mood. ”
(Image courtesy of Writers Press)