On his fiftieth birthday, Feng Jicai painted a large tree, which was in the golden autumn, and the leaves were brilliant and colorful in the sunlight. On his sixtieth birthday, Feng Jicai painted a ship with sails in the mighty river, and at that time he was devoting himself to the protection of folk cultural heritage to give himself faith and encouragement. March 11, 2022, is the 80th birthday of Mr. Feng Jicai. On this special day, what kind of magnificent picture will he paint?
Feng Jicai was born in Tianjin in 1942. He has been fond of Danqing since he was a child, and at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he began to learn painting with Yan Liufu and Hui Xiaoyi. After graduating from high school, he applied for the Central Academy of Fine Arts, but fell behind due to his family origin. He also went to work in the Tianjin Calligraphy and Painting Society, specializing in the production of ancient paintings. In the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of "secret" reading made him feel the urge to write. In 1977, he was "seconded" by the Humanities Society to revise the novel "Yihe Fist" in the society, thus "switching" from painting to literature.
Famous writer Feng Jicai
The 1980s was a bumper harvest period for his literary creation, and masterpieces such as "Carved Pipes", "The Wrong Way to Lay Flowers", "Tall Woman and Her Short Husband", "Divine Whip", and "Three Inch Golden Lotus" came out one after another, and Feng Ji became famous in the literary world in one fell swoop. Snowflakes of readership letters flew from all over the country to his tiny study. In the 1990s, he once published a picture album and held a painting exhibition, splashing ink and splashing it vigorously. Later, by chance, he devoted himself to the rescue protection of cultural heritage, "like plunging from the earth and mountains into the vast sea," and all purely personal artistic undertakings, such as writing and painting, were abandoned.
In recent years, due to his growing age, Feng Ji has returned to the study studio from the fields and mountains. He parted from literature for 20 years, raised his pen again, and the accumulation of many years burst out, like the moon rising from the mountain pass, like a big river rushing. "Strangers of the World", "Telescopes", "Artists"... One after another, with wonderful and condensed language, portrayed as a god, with all kinds of examination of life, all kinds of compassion, all kinds of understanding, all kinds of amazement, showing the writer's extraordinary creativity and inexhaustible love for life and literature.
"I'm actually back in a kind of aesthetically created joy." Feng Jicai said.
In early 2022, two of his new works, the collection of short and medium stories, Danube Gorge, and the collection of essays, Studio One Hole in the Sky, were published by Writers Press. The former includes five novels such as "Danube Canyon", "Dry Well", "Lame Cat", "Wooden Buddha", and "I Am Jason", which have both realistic brushwork and imagination and fantasy, which can be seen as a bold and new self-transcendence of Feng Jicai in the style of novels. The latter is a companion piece to the essay collection "A World in the Study", which is his reflection on his decades of artistic career and life trajectory, and to make a text "inquiry and record" with "half of his literary self" and "the other half of his painting self".
In his home, there was a corridor between the study and the studio. The corridors are verdant with flowers and trees, green vines, and vivid sunlight. And the owner here, with the impulse to write, enters the study, and the idea of painting enters the studio, and the words and Danqing stir each other, like a kind of "sweet round trip". Feng Jicai said: "This feeling is sometimes very happy, very happy. ”
Q&A
Have a noodle with your mom on your birthday
Q: You once wrote, "I like to live a little deeper at every important point in my life, to make a mark on my memory, and to make life a little more vertical." Your 80th birthday is an important milestone, how do you plan to spend it?
Feng Jicai: This is one of my ideas, I think everyone's life will have some nodes, such as important birthdays, such as wedding anniversaries. A young person, admitted to college or college graduation work, such a few days, I hope to live a little deeper.
I think sometimes people try to leave some memories for the future. What would I like to do on a day like this? For example, this year I am 80 years old, I don't want to be like the average person to celebrate the 80th birthday, many people to give him a birthday, put on a Tang costume, put a birthday star in the back, and then put two fruit baskets in front of him, put some flowers. Everyone bowed to him and bowed to him.
My mother is 105 years old and healthy. I only went to see her today. I was born when she was 25, and I can still see my mom when I'm 80, which I find rare. I told my mother that on my birthday, at noon on March 11th, I would eat a meal of noodles with my mother, and I thought this noodle was particularly meaningful. That way I'll have a lot of touches. Maybe in the future I'll write some prose about how I feel when I eat noodles.
There is also an idea, I want to do an activity in my college, this activity is not to give me a birthday, but to talk about my birthday, to do a little research. Writers are different, some writers were born from their hometowns, and when they grew up, they flew away, like birds, and went to society, with a lot of life experience.
I don't. In the nearly 80 years since I was born, I have basically been in Tianjin, all on a piece of land. I don't feel the same way as the land. Some writers' writings are particularly entangled with the relationship between the land. I want to have a discussion, through my relationship with the land of Tianjin, to discuss the relationship between an intellectual and the land, what kind of relationship does he have with his homeland, the people in his homeland? What kind of emotion is this emotion of his? I think such a discussion is probably meaningful to literature and to writers.
Q: In the past, on many important days in life, you would draw and take souvenirs. What kind of painting are you going to paint for yourself this year?
Feng Jicai: I remember on my 50th birthday, I painted a large piece of tree, it was already autumn, but the leaves were shining in the sun. I wanted to paint the glory days of my life, and I entered such a period. I have also painted a picture of how life enters the "Golden Age", the age of harvest.
When I was 60 years old, I painted a painting called "Pride Remains" I painted the middle of a big river, a boat was sailing, and at that time I just started to do folk cultural heritage rescue, I needed such a force. I'm about to turn 80 this year, and I don't yet know what kind of emotions I'll have on my birthday.
I paint on every wedding anniversary. For example, the silver wedding, the gold wedding, the emerald wedding last year, and the 55th anniversary of my marriage with my lover. Anyway, every time at this time, we would both draw a picture together, a pair of birds.
The earliest time was in the sixties and seventies, the hardest time, because my lover also painted, we painted a pair of birds together in the snow and wind. I still have that painting. Later, we have been painting birds, the scenery is constantly changing, and sometimes the scenery becomes very brilliant, which has a lot to do with the times and our feelings about the life of the times.
Q: At the age of 80, you can still have many new life insights, is it because you have a personal spirit of exploration, or because society is changing too fast?
Feng Jicai: In the early 1980s, from a closed and relatively difficult era to the era of reform and opening up, I was full of creative passion at that time, writing hundreds of thousands of words a year. I couldn't bear it, and suddenly I fell seriously ill.
When I was seriously ill, there was a very famous writer in my previous generation named Mr. Yan Wenjing, who was the president of the People's Literature Publishing House at that time, and he wrote me a letter with a sentence in it, saying that Feng Ji must live long, and only if you live long, your understanding of people and life will be deeper. Because at different ages, the understanding of life, fate, people, and many things is different, only if you live a long time, you look at all aspects of life, including the fate of your contemporaries, you have also experienced with him, and your own fate experience is too much, so that your feelings about life and life are different, it may be richer, it may be more profound.
Q: Your ancestral home is Cicheng, Ningbo, Zhejiang, born in Tianjin in 1942, living in Dali Road, British Concession as a child, with six brothers and sisters. From a family perspective, what teachings do you think your parents taught you for life?
Feng Jicai: My mother is from Jining, Shandong, and this place in Jining is the hometown of Mencius and Confucius in terms of literature and literature; on the side of Wu, Shuipo Liangshan is in my mother's hometown, and Wusong Lu Zhishen was active in my mother's hometown. My father's family has been in Ningbo since the Tang Dynasty, and has been a literati or an official for generations, and there are still many family relics.
Both cultures in my family influenced me, both from my parents. One is the things of Kong Meng, especially the people of Shandong, who value righteousness, especially righteousness, and are thick, loyal, and simple. In addition, a kind of masculinity in Shandong culture is also brought from the mother's system. Zhejiang people are different. Ningbo is the hometown of Yue opera, the people in that place are more delicate, more affectionate, and the culture of filial piety is very developed. Therefore, Comrade Deng Xiaoping said, "Ningbo helps love Ningbo," and this place in Ningbo, because of the culture of filial piety, attaches importance to its hometown and loves its hometown, which also deeply affects me. The influence of parents is not a matter of a few words, the real influence on you is in the bones, in the spirit.
So when I was 50 years old, I held a painting exhibition in my hometown called "Respect for the Hometown Painting Exhibition". My first exhibition went to my hometown, and I respected my hometown, my hometown, which was the birthplace of my life. As a result, I have a close relationship with my hometown, and I have done a lot of things for my hometown.
I knew that He Zhizhang's ancestral hall was going to be demolished, and when it was demolished, it was given to Wenlian, and Wenlian had no money to repair it. The first time I sold paintings was in my hometown of Ningbo, I selected 5 of my favorite paintings in the exhibition, and after selling these 5 paintings, I donated the money to the government to repair the ancestral hall of He Zhizhang, or I demolished it. After repairing it, it was given to the Ningbo Literary Association, and now it is still under the management of the Ningbo Literary Association, but it has become a very important cultural and tourism attraction in Ningbo.
I've done a lot of things like this. There is no utilitarianism, no idea, it is because of love, it is because it is the thing of my hometown, and I feel that it is very kind.
We pursue our own spiritual source, and we can find our own source. So until today, when I'm 80 years old, why should I study the relationship between an intellectual and the land? Because I have been in this place of Tianjin for 80 years, I have done a lot of protection of the old streets of Tianjin' old town, and I have a deep relationship with this land.
A sweet back and forth between literature and painting
Q: As an amphibious writer in the field of literature and painting, you once said that "writing for me is more of a way of responsibility to society, painting for me, more expression and expression of personal hearts," can you talk about how your painting and writing affect each other?
Feng Jicai: I was first a painter. I've been painting for 15 years, and of course I'm still painting, but not much. I feel that painting is more personal to me, more of a personal feeling of spiritual life, a kind of rehearsal, a kind of expression.
Literature bears more social responsibilities, expounds the thinking of life, and understands life with readers, which is my literary pursuit. Literature has influenced my 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.
Then painting also affects my literature, because painting has something in common with literature, which must produce a visual image, and evoke an image imagination of the reader. In addition, we must create a visible space for readers, visible characters, and a visible scene, and the more vivid and concise the better. So when I'm writing a novel, I can see my characters, and I even see the details of a lot of character faces, but I don't necessarily have to write them down. This is important to me because I saw it and wrote this character again, which is different from what I didn't see.
Q: How do you allocate your time on the two things of writing and painting, and what do these two things mean to you at different stages of your life?
Feng Jicai: I don't need to allocate time. When I have literary ideas, when I have literary impulses, I must go to my study, and I bury my head in writing.
And when I had a feeling that I thought I could express with a painting, I went into the studio. So my studio and my study are at opposite ends of a porch in my house. I live in a duplex house, and the upper floor is where I write and where I paint. Sometimes I come up, and if there is an impulse to create literature for the sake of literary imagination, I go to the study. But sometimes writing and writing will produce the feeling of painting, a desire to express it artistically, and I will go into the studio again. It's a sweet round trip, and this feeling is sometimes very happy, very happy.
"Studio a Hole in the Sky" is a photo taken after the completion of the manuscript
Q: Are "One World in the Study Room" and "Studio One Cave Sky" the most relaxed and joyful works you have written? It's like talking to an old friend yourself, completely in a relaxed state.
Feng Jicai: "A World in the Study Room" and "A Cave in the Studio" are two books, although they are written around me, and I get along with it every day, but I know the story in each thing, I know its memory, I know what is worth writing, it is meaningful, and it cannot be ignored.
So writing these things is like the Song people writing notes, it is indeed very relaxed, a kind of prose essay writing, but I also pay more attention to language, using some white, very simple, not carved, not deliberate language to write, but also write the meaning of ordinary life.
Q: The way the 5 novels in "Danube Canyon" is written is a new literary experiment for you. What makes you always have a passion for writing and dare to innovate?
Feng Jicai: I think the love of literature and art is a kind of nature. When he has a passion for life, he must express it in words, that is, the nature of a person who engages in literature; he must use pen and ink to express it with color, that is, the nature of a person who is engaged in painting.
In the collection "Danube Gorge", only "Danube Gorge" is written in a realistic way, and some of the others are more absurd, and some are more like a fable. The reason for the different ways of writing has a lot to do with my writing of "Artists". Because after "Artists" was written, there was a big problem, that is, I couldn't get out of this novel. Although I still want to write other long stories, occasionally impulsively, and I have imagination, I can't get out of that novel, from the inner atmosphere of the characters and the realm of the novel, because I have drilled too deeply into the artistic people of our generation, our spiritual experience, our spiritual experience.
So I had to think of a way. What to do? I'm going to let go of my thoughts.
The first was to write the Wooden Buddha. I consciously change my perspective, use things to write about people, personify things, and become a person with spirit, thinking, and soul to write. After I wrote it, I delved into a special category of life. Because I like to collect, collecting must understand the collecting world and understand the industry. I was familiar with this line of antiques. When I entered the novel, especially when I entered this unique imagination, I unconsciously withdrew from The Artists little by little, which was a particularly good feeling.
After I quit, I felt particularly free, as if I had arrived in a space I had never been to before, and even the feeling of the air was different.
When the novel "Wooden Buddha" was finished, I felt free. Because I had a lot of ideas popping up in my head, a lot of life material, it became a different form, there were different stories that came out of my head. At that time, his thinking was particularly active, and he wrote several articles in one sitting, including "The Lame Cat".
Basically, these novels were written in this way. After the completion of the article "Danube Gorge", I was a bit unable to come out. But I think it's been good lately, because I've recently put all my fiction writing down. I'm doing a discipline-building thing, a purely disciplinary theoretical cultural thing. I had to get me out completely, into a state of complete freedom, before I could write the next one.
On October 12, 2021, I just finished writing the short story collection "Danube Gorge"
Q: The novel "Danube Gorge" involves many propositions in modern society, such as the fragility of love, human choice, human finitude, etc., which is very relevant to the current era. I wonder what the inspiration for this novel is, and whether the characters and stories in it are real prototypes?
Feng Jicai: When an actual writer writes a novel, it does not necessarily come from a plot or from an archetype, but often from feelings and feelings about life.
Like me, an 80-year-old person, it should be said that I have come over in life, and I often feel a word you just said, vulnerability. The fragility of man, the fragility of fate, the fragility of the individual.
Individuals are often unknown about their future and often feel helpless and helpless. You can't choose life, although sometimes you can choose life, and when you choose, those proverbs that have been valuable and meaningful throughout the ages, some positive thinking of predecessors, can play a role. But sometimes you can't play your choice, you can't choose, you are passive, and then you feel your vulnerability.
I often feel the yin and yang of life, and the yin and yang of people in their destiny. I especially wanted to write this thing into a novel. After reading this novel, you will think that if the plot was not like this at that time, there were many links in the middle, if not, if anyone knew the truth of this matter first, or who did not know the truth, this novel may be another story entirely. But in the yin and yang, all my protagonists, they are innocent. None of them can change the course of such a story.
But there is one thing behind this story that is precious, and that is love, true love. These things are still the most valuable in their hearts, and they are still a starting point for their treatment of life. But they know what true love is and what one should hold on to.
For a lifetime, we will not be tied to the protection of cultural heritage
Q: From "The Strange Man" to last year's "The Artists" to this year's "Danube Gorge", have your focus in recent years shifted from the protection of literary and cultural heritage to literature?
Feng Jicai: In the sense of writing, I have been separated from literature for 20 years. But I'm not going to leave literature, why? Because I love literature, when I do cultural heritage rescue, I often have literary impulses and literary imaginations, but I can't write because I don't have time.
I once said such an example. The most I imagined in my literature was when I was running on the earth, and it felt very deep from this place to that place, especially when I was sitting in a car. Driving a car at night to listen to music, it takes hours or even longer to walk from this province to that province. When I was running, I suddenly imagined it in literature, and suddenly a detail that I had thought about in the past popped up in my mind, and then I thought of a lot of plots, thinking about it and even very impulsive, but I didn't have time to write.
When the driver master said, Teacher Feng, we have arrived. It's been three hours. The novel is gone, it is interrupted, the power is cut off, and the imagination in the future cannot be connected with it. This was the literary life of my time.
Occasionally, when I watch a writer of my generation or a young person publish a new book, I am also a little bitter, feeling that I can't do what I love. One thing, but that's about it. Because I know that it is too important for me to do the protection of cultural heritage, and I must do it, I cannot choose.
When I now have time to write, these things come pouring in, sometimes several ideas coming at the same time. I'm a little different now than I used to be. In the past, I probably wanted to know life with my readers. Now, I think that writing also has a very important mission, that is, to leave an aesthetic image for literature, your thinking about the times, your understanding of life, including various philosophies, must be reflected through a unique aesthetic image.
So this kind of writing is the joy of creation. I actually came back to a joy of aesthetic creation. So now I can't stop myself, and I'm still writing one by one.
Some reporters asked me what I had plans, but there seemed to be no plans. It came rushing in, because there was too much time to suppress in the past, too much accumulated in 20 years of life, too much to see, too much to know.
But since I have been tied to cultural heritage in my life, I will never let go. If I were to go back to my 60-year-old physical strength now, I would still have to put down the novel or do cultural heritage rescue. I am still anxious about some of the new problems and even dilemmas that are constantly emerging in the field of cultural heritage protection, and there is still a lot that has not been done.
In addition, there is another specific thing, that is, one of our ideas has received the attention and support of the state: to establish the discipline of intangible cultural heritage in colleges and universities, and to cultivate more professionals in the field of cultural heritage protection and inheritance for the country. The establishment of this discipline was approved by the state. This year, we began to recruit the first batch of non-heritage students. We want to recruit students, to establish this discipline, I am afraid that I will go deeper in the protection of cultural heritage.
Q: As a writer and painter, what makes you so active in the protection of cultural heritage?
Feng Jicai: A reporter once asked me, some people encounter the problem of the endangerment of cultural heritage, that is, to appeal for it, to shout, why do you want to devote yourself to it? I think of a saying, when your loved ones and children, a car suddenly knocked him down, do you just shout? You're going to pounce on it, that's my mood.
Tianjin Old Town is a 600-year-old city. The city I live in is a very interesting city, it is the only city in China that has a anniversary of its completion. On December 23, 1404, it was a city with a date of completion, and the fabric of the city was all there. Suddenly in the 90s, a notice was made that the city would be demolished.
There is also an advertisement that says that it will be built like Causeway Bay in Hong Kong, and the advertising slogan says that in the future, you will not think that this place is Tianjin, but think it is Causeway Bay in Hong Kong. I was in a hurry, I couldn't just scream, and I began to do rescue.
At the beginning, I did the rescue of Tianjin Old Street. At that time, an agreement was reached with a competent authority to preserve several historical buildings in the old street. During this period, a French Humanities Foundation invited me to France for an exchange, and I mainly wanted to study what forces, who were and what ideas were at work in the protection of Paris, France. I know writers like Hugo played a big role.
When I went to France to do research, I was suddenly told that this street had been demolished, and the one that had been decided not to be demolished was also demolished. I rushed back from Paris, the next day I went to the old street to see, a look at the old street completely demolished, the historical building is like this, once demolished, there is no way, reconstruction is not history at all. So I was standing on the street and suddenly I was crying. Later, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily wrote an article entitled "Feng Jicai Cries Old Street." I don't know how he could have been there, but because my rescue of the old street had become a focal point, so I would go and there would be some people going. At that time, the word "demolition" was written on the walls everywhere in the city, and after the publication of this article, it had a great impact on the whole country.
Q: During your work in the rescue of cultural and folk cultural heritage, you used to sell paintings for money and raise funds, so please talk about the difficulties and achievements. You also said that "the last major thing I have taken on in my life is education", can you talk about it in detail?
Feng Jicai: I can't solve the problem of rescue of folk cultural heritage by selling paintings, and I remember telling this sentence to reporters at that time, and I said that I could not solve the problem of thousands of cultural heritages that are endangered on the earth with the money I sold for paintings.
Now we know that the national 4-level cultural heritage list we have sorted out, including a total of about 100,000 items at the county level, the city level, the provincial level, and the national level, and our traditional villages are now sorted out 6819, and the number of folk cultural heritage is so large, what role can you sell a little painting?
But it plays a role, some people must think, why did Feng Jicai sell his own paintings? Why does he sell paintings? I think it will awaken people's thinking about this problem.
When I sold out of paintings at the Suzhou Museum, I had a feeling of being surrounded by disciples, and those paintings were taken away, and some of my good paintings were gone. At that time I had a sense of tragedy, and then I said a word, I said that there is a little bit of tragedy in what I like to do, man, I always want to do something a little bit of grandeur. In this sense of tragedy, I gave my heart to the earth. It inspired myself.
The other is the issue of education. If the first 20 years I mainly did was the rescue protection of cultural heritage, what I want to do today is scientific protection. When we rescued the cultural heritage, just now I said 100,000 items of intangible cultural heritage, 6819 traditional villages, through the efforts of this generation of 20 years to rescue the cultural heritage, but we do not have the standards for protection, there is no norms, there are no professional talents, we are still not at ease with it.
Therefore, we must open this kind of intangible cultural heritage education in the university, that is to say, this kind of professional education of intangible cultural heritage must enter our higher education system, which is in line with the protection of cultural heritage, so I still insist on doing it.
Q: Your studio is filled with a variety of interesting objects, the oldest of which is a fish-patterned red clay bowl from Hemudu and a pottery pig from Hemudu. How did these antiquities come about? You will also collect some folk art such as clay sculptures, New Year paintings, etc., which do not have as high "value" as cultural relics and calligraphy paintings, but why do you like them?
Feng Jicai: The year before yesterday, I saw a picture album from a collector's hand, and I auctioned these two things from the London auction market, and the price was not expensive. There are not many private collections of things in Hemudu.
Hemudu is one of the earliest villages of China's agricultural civilization, which retains more than 6,000 years of cultural creations of our ancestors, which are representative. I especially like the shape of the pottery pig and the smooth black lines of the fish on the clay bowl.
I think it's good to buy it back and put it in the academy's museum in the future, especially if we have some big cultural sites in the museum, so I bought it back.
I like some exquisite ancient artifacts, but also some folk clay sculptures and New Year paintings. You ask me that these things don't have a high value, and you're right, it's not worth it economically, but it's culturally valuable.
Culture is regional. For example, the regionality of new year paintings, the Yangliu youth paintings in Tianjin, the Peach Blossom Wood New Year paintings in Suzhou, the Yangjiabu New Year paintings in Shandong, and the Mianzhu New Year paintings in Sichuan have their regional characteristics. In fact, elite culture has no local characteristics. For example, Shi Tao's painting, can you say where he painted it? You can't say it. Where is Wu Guanzhong's painting? Can't say it. But the Yangliu Youth Painting is Tianjin at first glance, and the Peach Blossom Wood New Year Painting is Suzhou at a glance. Why? Because local folk things are collectively created, collectively recognized, a regional art, it is the most regional, these things and other things can not be replaced.
In addition, folk things are not very important because of the past history, often some things are produced, and then disappeared, so there are very few things left behind, which should be particularly cherished.
Nandu reporter Huang Qian