Creation talks about | Zeng Jian: Everyone has a "Taiping Bridge" in their hearts

Creative talk

Zeng Jian, a native of Hong'an, Hubei Province, has been in the army for twenty-six years, master of arts, and a contracted writer of the Liaoning Writers Association. He is the author of novels such as "Guns and Roses", "Growing toward the Sun", novel collections "Outpost on the Ice Row", "Jade Dragon Lake", etc., and his works have been selected for various annual anthologies of novels and won many literary awards inside and outside the military. He currently lives in Shenyang.

Everyone has a "Taiping Bridge" in their hearts

——Creation of "Taiping Bridge"

Zeng Jian

I am passionate about writing about my hometown of Hong'an, Hubei.

I have lived in that village called "Zhulin Bay" for eighteen years, and I am familiar with the life there, familiar with the grass and trees there. Nostalgia, infiltrating my heart, those details of life, have long been integrated into my bones, flowing in my blood, writing, full of emotions, flowing naturally like water, I just need to open the floodgates of memory. Of course, these memories are not records, they come from the depths of the soul, they add to my imagination, my expectations, my good wishes. They are more real than the life I've been through. This truth is the truth in the sense of literary narrative, the truth of the mind.

The "Taiping Uncle" in "Taiping Bridge" is a character in my memory. I don't have an uncle, he's my distant uncle. Of course, in reality, he is not called "Taiping", he has another name. "Taiping" is the symbolic meaning I give to the work, and so is "Taiping Bridge". Everyone has a "Taiping Bridge" in their hearts. When he encounters difficulties, bumps, and even disasters, he wants a bridge that will "get through" him. When he crossed this bridge, he was at peace, at peace. The "Taiping" mentioned here is actually a beautiful hope in a person's heart, and he carries this beautiful hope and moves forward step by step. This is a bridge of the heart and a bridge of the spirit that they have built for themselves in order to complete their self-redemption.

Nietzsche said: "Tragedy is the highest art form. "I didn't deliberately write about a tragedy, I just wrote about such a person in reality. He is a tragic figure, but I don't have "one sadness to the end". Most of the sad things that happened to him in the work are true, and in reality he did not live a peaceful life, but he hoped that after he died, he would cross this "Taiping Bridge" and be at peace "over there". At the end of the novel, according to the last words of "Uncle Taiping", I let his coffin pass over the "Taiping Bridge", but his last wish was fulfilled. I don't know if the ending will allow the reader to see the flowers blooming in winter, but this is one of my wishes.

Many writers and critics advocate writing to give readers a sense of strangeness, and I am more concerned about the resonance and resonance that the works can bring to the hearts of readers. The life of "Uncle Taiping" has its own unique features, but it is by no means a special case, and in our countryside, there are many people like him. I remember that after the publication of the novel "Growing toward the Sun", a reader left a message on the public account of the October Literary and Art Publishing House, saying: "The character of deaf two made me cry." This relative, we also have in the village. We have it in every village around us. "When I see the above text, I am not discouraged because I have not provided the reader with a stranger, but on the contrary, I am pleased to write about a man who is universal in the countryside and whose spiritual qualities are extremely noble. At that moment, I felt that my writing was meaningful, at least for some readers.

Writing about childhood and hometown is, to a large extent, writing about yourself, writing about the hometown where you live. This hometown is not only my hometown in the geographical sense, but also the hometown in the literary sense. I just try to place my childhood and hometown in a dimension where my soul can inhabit and be soothed. The "I" in my work is both me and not just me; I write about myself in my hometown and others in my hometown. Whether it is writing about yourself or others, it is not easy to write well, you have to use your heart, use your brain, and spend your heart, especially a writer like me who lacks talent. Fortunately, my pursuit is not high, and it is easy to satisfy. Whenever I look back at my work, I occasionally marvel at what I've done: it wasn't written so badly! This kind of self-evaluation has led to a wave of self-touching emotions, which is my motivation and courage to continue to move forward.

Literature is becoming more and more marginalized, I do not use a novel to reflect the intentions and ambitions of the whole era of society, I just want to present a real person in life, present his life, the true face of his life, his emotions, such as "Uncle Taiping", is it also colorful in the world he cannot see?

Sontag said: "Good novels are secreted. "Then, let more details of my hometown life enter my body, in my blood, waiting for them to ferment and secrete." I'm not in a hurry and I'm not ambitious. I write slowly, slowly. I don't want to live too tired. I want to make writing a joyful thing. Writing makes my life peaceful and my heart is like water.

Tai Ping Bridge

One

One autumn noon, my mother asked me to bring Uncle Taiping in. The mother said "lead" instead of "pick up", and Uncle Taiping was blind. Uncle Taiping made a living as a storyteller.

My mother told me to go early, saying that it was too late, afraid that I would not take it away. Every time Uncle Taiping went to a temple, he had to go to three or five days. In a good year, a small man will leave him for ten days and a half months to finish the whole book.

I like Uncle Taiping, as soon as he came, the whole Zhulin Bay was bustling.

Uncle Taiping is not my uncle.

I was six years old. The first time I went to Waiyuan alone in my life was to go to my grandfather's house, and I had been with my mother and brothers before, and I was familiar with the road. Grandpa's family is in Wangjiatian.

There are ponds on the road, there are rivers, there are bridges, there are mountains and trees, there are deep thatched grasses, I go alone, a little afraid. Mother said, go, don't play with water, even a small water, don't go down. I headed for the door. My mother caught up with me and said, don't be afraid, pass by the cemetery, if you are afraid, spit into the palms of your hands, rub your palms hot with both hands, and then wipe your hair from front to back with your hands, wipe them seven times, and don't dare to touch you. My mother didn't say that, and I forgot to cross the cemetery on the road. My scalp tightened a little, like a rubber band. I stood there motionless. Mother said, go ahead. Her tone was so firm.

Mother and father had to work in the fields, and the brothers went to school. If you bring a three-year-old brother, you can also strengthen your courage. The eldest brother is not available, the younger brother is still in the cradle, and when the younger brother cries, he wants to shake the cradle. Uncle Taiping, only I can go.

I stepped onto the Stone Arch Bridge and crossed the Stone Bridge River. There was silence in the field. After passing through the field, it is a mountain road. The road stretches forward among the pine trees. Every mountain has a cemetery, and those graves are very close to the road, just a mile or two away. There was a flutter above my head, and I broke out in a cold sweat, and it was a spotted dove that flew away. After dozens of steps, a furry thing popped out of the grave, and my heart suddenly popped up, almost jumping out of my throat. It's a hare. I think of the lone heroes in the movie, and I don't let myself be afraid.

Walk through a paddy field. The rice was cut, and only the stubble in the field was left, pointing to the sky. Past that paddy field, there was dryland, and there were thatched grasses on the edges of the ground, which made the road look like a deep ditch. The thatch curves above my head, and I walk on the road like I'm walking in a spooky hole.

The back mountain of Wang Jiatian appeared in front of me, and I only had to walk through a field to reach the foot of that mountain. At the foot of the mountain there is a pond with lotuses, lotus flowers have been given away, lotus leaves are luxuriant, decorating the pond, but also bring me fear. I suspect that behind the lotus leaf, there is a woman's soul hidden.

A year ago, a woman drowned in this pond, the woman of Wang Jiatian Wang Fulai. The woman Wang Fulai married had been married for three years, and her stomach had not moved, which made Wang Fulai unable to raise her head in the mound. That day, he worked for half a day, and when he came home, the woman's meal was not ready. He was hungry, scolded women, and beat women. The woman ran out, and he left her alone. He was never used to women. He said, run, the woman will do three tricks: one cry, two troubles, three run to the mother's house. He thought his woman had gone to her mother's house, and who knew she had jumped into the water. It's this pond.

I walked on the pond, and my heart was empty.

I call Wang Fulai also called uncle, the uncle who turned several corners. After the death of Wang Fulai's woman, he was mentally stimulated, crazy for a while, did not cook, did not wash his face, did not work on the ground, and his amazing act was to grab cow dung on the ground and stuff it into his mouth. But my second brother said that he was pretending, that he had forced the woman to death, afraid that his two brothers-in-law would pick him up. His two brothers-in-law said that whichever hand he had moved their sister, they were going to chop off which of his hands. When they found out that he had grabbed cow dung to eat with the hand that beat his sister, they decided to leave that hand to him.

Wang Fulai was fine later, but after all, he was a person who had eaten cow dung, and the Wang Family Tian people hated him and did not let him visit the door. He went into someone else's house, and they went out, and in a fit of rage, he abandoned all the people. He moved to the southeast corner of the village, adjacent to Wang Liuxiu's land boundary. He built a hut on the slope and lived in it. He said that quanxi didn't have a good thing, that his woman was a good woman, and that he wanted to be with his woman. His woman was in the pool. His woman was in the grave. His woman's grave is on the slope by the pond near the forest. Because his woman died in the wild, the people in the valley would not let her enter the ancestral grave, so he buried her on the slope by the pond. He said that if he guarded her, she would not be a lone ghost.

The people in the circle sneered at his practice: if he was so infatuated, the woman would not die!

Wang Fulai is a famous slacker, but he still does something every day. Suddenly, one day, Wang Jiatian's people saw that a piece of land had been carved out of the southeast corner of the back mountain, and a kiln had been dug. The wasteland in that wasteland was all used by him. He made bricks and tiles and burned bricks and tiles himself. For a year, he built two red brick houses there, plus a cottage. He wanted to build a green brick house, but the bricks were not burned well, and he became a red-faced black heart.

The people all hated him, and wished he was farther away, and the land he occupied was easily granted to him.

I listened to what my second brother said about Wang Fulai. The second brother said that Wang Fulai was a capable person and could achieve great things in the future. If you think about it, how fierce it is to be able to stuff cow dung into your own mouth. The second brother was told as a joke, and the tone was also disgusted. When I went to Wang Jiatian with my mother or brother, I often met Wang Fulai. Even though he was the one who had eaten cow dung, we still called him uncle, and he responded to us with a smile. Sometimes we were allowed to come into the house and sit down and take a sip of tea. Whoever dared to take his tea bowl and remembered the way he swallowed cow dung, his liver had to spit out.

I hated him, but at the moment, I was so eager for him to appear. I was afraid that the woman he was hiding behind those lotus leaves. The breeze is gentle, and the lotus leaves make a crackling sound, like a woman stroking the skirt behind the lotus leaves.

Uncle Fu Lai! I shouted. No echo.

The woman's lonely grave was on the east side of Wang Fulai's house. If it weren't for the lonely grave, and no one knew that a woman had drowned in this pond, it would have been a good place to be.

At the moment of passing the lonely grave, a wave of fear struck. I remembered my mother's words, spitting into the palms of my hands, and wiping the hair from my forehead and the back of my head. I did, the taut scalp loosened and the fear lessened, but it remained.

I walked past the lonely grave, into the woods, and left the whole mountain behind. Downhill is Wangjiatian, and the houses are built on the mountain, one by one.

Grandpa's house was in the front row, next to the pond. Behind uncle Taiping's house, the two families are separated by a deep laneway, less than ten steps wide. I walked over, and a chill penetrated my spine.

Uncle Taiping sat in the shadows. At this time, there should be a western sun, but his door was blocked by my grandfather's house, and there was no sunlight. In front of his house, I could see my grandfather's back door, but it was not open for many years. The old man said that a house with a back door is a house of a rich man. Whether Grandpa had any money, I couldn't see. He slept more than he did when he was awake, and I came to pick up Uncle Taiping and didn't want to see him. My grandmother died at an early age, and I didn't even meet her. After grandpa's two daughters got married, he lived alone and made a mess of his life. Everyone is looking forward to eating and drinking at Grandpa's house, we are pitiful, to Grandpa's house, the pot is cold and the stove is cold. In the spring, the second brother took me to my grandfather's house. We sat in grandpa's house, Uncle Taiping's mother washed vegetables in the pond in front of the door, greeted us, Grandpa heard her voice, scolded, old woman, how did you worry about me when you were young, now hate me, don't send me food and drink. I don't understand my grandfather's words, Uncle Taiping's mother said, your father is confused, blindly scolding people, he is going to die.

Grandpa had to stand up for ten years before he died.

/ End of Trial /