Recently, Chen Yingsong, winner of the Lu Xun Literature Award, was interviewed by the media and talked about the creation story of his latest novel "Tianlu Bay". Published by Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House in January 2022, Tianluwan is a novel set against the backdrop of 40 years of reform and opening up, writing the long and arduous entrepreneurial history of farmers in the Jianghan Plain who have achieved poverty alleviation through struggle, and reproducing the great process of change in contemporary Chinese villages.
Chen Yingsong's hometown of Gong'an County, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, is known as the "First Grape County in Jiangnan", and the novel "Tianlu Bay" revolves around the grape industry in his hometown, which contains the author's deep feelings for his hometown, land and agriculture.
Writing inspiration comes from home, but also from life
Speaking about the inspiration for the creation of the novel, he said: "The inspiration comes from home, but also from life. The purpose of writing this book is to record the history of reform and opening up in the Jianghan Plain of Hubei Province over the past 40 years, and the history of the development of the grape industry from scratch. ”
Chen Yingsong began to conduct fieldwork in 2019 and began to write in 2020, which lasted two years, and "Tianlu Bay", a novel set in the grape industry and depicting the feelings of two generations of farmers about the land, was finally born. For Jiangnan, grapes are a foreign fruit, it does not belong to this land, and Gong'an County has no history of growing grapes in the past. It wasn't until the 1980s that this law was broken under the exploration of several farmers, and later grapes even became a huge agricultural industry here. In "Tianlu Bay", the introduction, planting, processing and output of grapes all have the special meaning and connotation given to it by the times, and these are derived from Chen Yingsong's deep "nostalgia".
The peasant is the greatest man of our time
"In this novel, I can sum up my mood with these eight words: praise the land, praise the peasants." The countryside in Chen Yingsong's memory was once the kind of farming life that worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, with his face facing the loess soil and his back to the sky, endless labor, picking up dung, digging ditches, hoeing grass, planting seedlings... There is nothing that is not a heavy coolie. But in "Tianlu Bay", the image of backward farmers no longer exists, and readers can see the image of new farmers who dare to explore and innovate. Chen Yingsong said: "For writers, fieldwork is an essential skill, and only when you really go to the field and walk in life can you truly perceive the awe-inspiring qualities of farmers." ”
Compared with other previous works, he admits that "Tianlu Bay" is an "outlier" in all his works. In the past, he wrote the Shennongjia series of novels, wrote about the poor life in the alpine mountains, and wrote about the mysterious and magical critical realism themes. And this novel, which originates from nostalgia, originates from the field, and has a story development spanning thirty or forty years, is completely a pure expression, and it is completely colloquial, life-like, and regionalized in writing. Each of the characters in the book even has an archetype that carries their character traits. Chen Yingsong said: "By writing this work, I want to tell you that the peasants are indeed the greatest people in our time. ”
Writers are born for their hometowns and witness the changes of the times in small places
In the traditional farming era, farmers used their hands as weapons, without advanced technology and without rich knowledge. However, in real life, after the realization of agricultural mechanization, the peasants have completely bid farewell to agricultural life, and learning new knowledge and mastering modern agricultural science and technology are the top priorities in front of them. In "Tianlu Bay", the spiritual world of the farmers in the Jianghan Plain has undergone tremendous changes, and each grape has witnessed the development of modern science and technology, which reflects the promising and promising future of modern agriculture.
"When I was in a city in 2009, I found that almost overnight the countryside had been mechanized, and farmers no longer needed hoes, sickles and cattle, no weeding, no need to plant seedlings and cut grains, and everything was handed over to machinery." The clever, shrewd, and knowledgeable peasants have emerged, and modern, advanced, and fashionable new rural areas have blossomed everywhere. This novel, which uses grapes to string nostalgia, is also a tribute to witnessing the changes of the times in a small place.
Talking about his writing habits, Chen Yingsong said that he mainly lived and wrote in Shennongjia Mountain, because the air was fresh and the environment was quiet. "'Tianlu Bay' is the subject of my first hometown, Shennongjia is my second hometown, the writer is born for the hometown, as a local writer, the symbol of the plain or the water town will surely appear again in future works."
About the Author:
Chen Yingsong, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Wuhan University, has published more than 100 novels such as "Forest Silence", "Returning the Soul", "Hunter Peak", "Harvesting to the Edge of the Sky", "The Soul Is Not Guarded", "The Village of Aphasia", more than 100 novels, essays, poetry collections, etc., 40 volumes of Chen Yingsong's Collected Writings, and 3 volumes of Chen Yingsong Shennongjia Series of Novels. His novels have won the Lu Xun Literature Award, the Chinese Novel Society Award, the Novel Monthly, the Novella Anthology, the Novel Anthology Novel Award, the National Environmental Literature Award, the Shanghai Novella Award, the People's Literature Award, the October Literature Award, the Liang Bin Literature Award, the Beijing Literature Award, the Chinese Achievement Award (Canada), the Zhongshan Literature Award, the China Good Book Award, etc. His works have been translated into English, French, Russian, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Japanese, Korean and other languages and published abroad. Long and novellas have been selected into the "Chinese Novel Ranking" of the Chinese Novel Society 8 times. Former Vice Chairman of Hubei Writers Association and Dean of the College of Literature.
Reporter Zhou Cun Correspondent Fu Lin Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House