Jimu news reporter Xu Ying
Correspondent Shang Xiaoyi
Feng Jicai
Dialogue background: The 80-year-old Feng Jicai is still creative, his two new books were published in the Writers Publishing House not long ago - the new work "Studio a Hole in the Sky", with his studio as the starting point, the 80 years of life perception into it, reading is meaningful; the new work "Danube Canyon" is his latest collection of short stories, a total of 5 novels, the style is urban strange stories, there are love, fantasy, and invisible people... In early March, Feng Jicai was interviewed by a reporter from Jimu News.
Profile: Feng Jicai, born in Tianjin in 1942, is a famous writer, painter and cultural scholar. He has published nearly 100 kinds of works, including the representative works "Divine Whip", "Three Inch Golden Lotus", "Ordinary Stranger" and so on. He has published a variety of large-scale painting albums and held solo exhibitions at home and abroad, and has been called "the representative of modern literati painting" by critics. In recent years, he has devoted himself to the protection of urban history and culture and the rescue of folk culture, advocated and presided over the rescue project of Chinese folk cultural heritage, and committed to promoting the protection of traditional villages, which has had a wide impact on contemporary Chinese society.
Celebrate your 80th birthday
I wanted to have a meal with my mother and the two of them
Reporter: You once wrote that "I like to live a little deeper at every important node in life, carve a mark in memory, and let life have a little more vertical things", March this year is your 80th birthday, how do you plan to live at this important node?
Feng Jicai: I hope that on special days, I can do something that I can stay. I'm 80 years old, and I don't want to put on a Tang costume like everyone else and wait for everyone to celebrate my birthday, and there is a birthday star behind me, next to a fruit basket and flowers. My mother is 105 years old and healthy. I said yes to my mother, and at noon on my birthday, my mother and I, just the two of us, ate noodles together.
Reporter: I heard that every wedding anniversary, you still paint a picture with your wife?
Feng Jicai: On the 55th anniversary of my marriage to my lover, every wedding anniversary, we both paint a picture - a pair of birds. As early as the 1960s and 1970s, we drew a pair of birds together, birds in the snow and wind. Later, we have been painting birds, but the scenery is constantly changing, sometimes very brilliant, which is directly related to our feelings about the times and life.
Every year for my birthday, I also paint a picture of myself. At the age of 50, I painted a large tree. The scene is autumn, and every leaf in the sun is shining. At that time, I felt that I had entered a glorious period in my life, so I painted the feeling of the golden age. When I was 60 years old, I painted a painting called "The Pride Remains", in which a boat sails in a big river. At that time, I began to do folk cultural heritage rescue, and I needed such a force.
Danube Gorge
People have to live long
The understanding of life is deeper
Reporter: What do you think of age? What is it like to be 80?
Feng Jicai: In the early 1980s, entering the era of reform and opening up, I was full of creative passion, writing hundreds of thousands of words a year, and then I couldn't bear a serious illness. A very famous writer of my previous generation was Yan Wenjing, who was the president of the People's Literature Publishing House. He wrote me a letter with a sentence on it: "Feng Jicai, you must live a long time." Only by living a long time will your understanding of people and life be deeper."
I've been working all the way from the age of 60 to 70 and have always been energetic and energetic. Including the rescue of cultural heritage, it is also a kind of mobilization of my vitality, so it has always felt good. But at the age of 80, I gradually felt that my physical strength was a little worse, and I was easily tired, but I still had the strength to do things. The whole life feels a little like a big river stirring, and it turns out that people have been flowing in the water, rolling in the waves, and sometimes making waves. At the age of 80, people begin to sink, not to the side, but to sink down from the middle of the water, which is the feeling of still water flowing deeply.
"A Cave in the Studio"
The status of the creation
Painting and writing nourish each other
Reporter: After reading your two books, I feel that your painting and writing are mutually nourishing.
Feng Jicai: I was first a painter and painted for 15 years. I'm still painting, but not much. Painting is more personal to me, it is the rehearsal and expression of personal spiritual feelings, and literature bears more social responsibilities and thinks about life. Literature has influenced my paintings, paintings have also influenced my literature, and I like to create visible spaces, visible characters, and visible scenes for the reader.
Reporter: Can you talk about the background and inspiration for the creation of the five short stories in "Danube Canyon"?
Feng Jicai: The background of a writer's creation is not necessarily the background of life, but also the background of emotions and mood. The most difficult thing for writers to grasp is their emotions and state of mind, which changes with harvest, with their own situation, and may change with the times. Each novel in this collection is different and the sources of inspiration are different. I especially like the state of Lu Xun's novels, not much, but each one is different. For example, "Diary of a Madman" is an absurd story, while "Wounded Death" and "Blessing" are realism, and the taste of these two tragedies is different. My personal feeling is that a novel has a specific content, which is connected to the method of the novel, and one method produces a completely different content.
Reporter: Although your novel seeks change, it is not the kind of deliberate change.
Feng Jicai: Sometimes a new method is something I didn't expect in the past, not that I want to innovate, but that it is a new thing that can bring me a lot of pleasure. For example, in "Lame Cat", the protagonist suddenly becomes an invisible person, and he sees the world different from others. He walked down the road and came a batch of cars, and when he felt that the cars were going to hit him or roll over him, there was a special kind of happiness, and finally he simply lay on the ground. When the cars rolled over his face one by one, he didn't feel anything, he was amazed.
Rain bamboo
Do what you want to do
For life is not endless
Reporter: It feels like the 5 novels in "Danube Canyon" have added fantasy elements.
Feng Jicai: Originally, when I wrote "The Strange Man of the Ordinary World", some people wanted me to write a little modern theme, but I felt that it was difficult to write modern characters in the way "The Strange Man of the Ordinary World" was written, because that novel was a cultural novel, and the cultural novel had to have a time or historical background. Later, I thought in my head, simply write "strange worldly people" backwards, so there are 5 parts of "Danube Canyon", all of which are ordinary laymen in this strange world. As for whether a group of such novels will be formed, it is not good to say now, so it is a matter of walking and seeing.
Reporter: Why have you suddenly become more creative in recent years?
Feng Jicai: In those years, I spent too much time on the rescue of cultural heritage, I lost literature, and at the same time, the accumulation of literature is increasing, there are too many things to write, and I always feel that there is not enough time. When I feel that life is not endless and infinite, I have a sense of urgency in life, to keep time for myself, to do what I want to do, without regrets.