A solemn tribute to the land of my hometown
——Feel the social changes in "Notes on Xihaigu"
Chen Yucheng (Deputy General Manager of Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, Responsible Editor of Xihaigu Notes)
Xihaigu, located in the southern mountains of Ningxia, is named after the three counties of Xiji, Haiyuan and Guyuan in history. As an administrative division, it has only existed for two years in history, and nearly 70 years have passed since then, but the spirit and civilization derived from the long history of "Xihaigu" have never been annihilated.
Thousands of hills and valleys, steep slopes, is the creation of the heavens and the earth with knives and axes. The dry sky and the earth are dry and the suffering is the lingering regional cultural label of this land. If there is one word to describe Xihaigu, it is "poverty".
The writer Ji Dongliang was born in Zidi, and he is determined to establish a legend of the vicissitudes and great changes in his hometown in the past 2,000 years, to mourn the land and people's hearts that have withered in the past 100 years, and to pay solemn respect to the earth-shaking earth of the great cause of poverty alleviation in the past 40 years. Thus, there was this long reportage "Notes of Xihaigu".
Ningxia Guyuan City Pengyang County Qingyun Bay dryland terraced park. Xinhua News Agency
This is not the first time that Ji Dongliang has written about the affairs of his hometown at close range, but it is the most complete record of the history of his hometown and the most emotional nostalgia. How is Xihaigu poor, and why is it poor? Located in the collision and fusion zone of ancient Chinese farming culture and nomadic culture, endless personnel changes, rises and falls of prosperity and decline have been repeated here. Behind the sadness, is the local bad natural ecology, closed geographical pattern, coupled with the war brought about by the plague of soldiers and bandits, under the continuous social turmoil, the contradiction between man and land continues to intensify, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, it is "red land thousands of miles, ten rooms and nine empty", Zuo Zongtang lamented in the emperor's compromise that Xihaigu "bitter armor is in the world". In Xihaigu, which is known as the "Martian landform", "looking around at the yellow sand, not producing five grains", poverty is deeply carved into the texture of Xihaigu, implanted in people's memories, and the narrative of suffering has thus become the lingering motif of "Xihaigu literature". The author explores the hook between the Fang Zhi Desert Monuments, drapes sand and gold, and writes down the history of Xihaigu 2,000 years ago; records the suffering with a compassionate heart, but there is no decadence; unveils the root cause of poverty for a thousand years, showing the indomitable spiritual will of the Xihaigu people and the respect for a great civilization; at the same time, with the memory of his life when he was a teenager, he reproduced the survival picture of the ordinary Xihaigu people in an era of clothing and eating. The people of Xihaigu are not poor, "Cao (we) Xihaigu is a big place."
The real twist of fortune in Xihaigu began in 1982. This year, the state launched the implementation of the "Three Wests" agricultural construction poverty alleviation project, which set a precedent for China's regional overall planned, organized and large-scale "development-oriented" poverty alleviation. In 1996, the central authorities made a strategic plan to promote counterpart cooperation between the east and the west. In April 1997, the important strategic decision of "Fujian-Nanjing Counterpart Poverty Alleviation Cooperation" was made, which transformed Ningxia from then on. After experiencing endless poverty and suffering, Xihai has changed the world in the past 40 years. Ji Dongliang is a native of "The Son of Xihai Gu" and a witness and witness to this period of history. For the history and reality of this place, the customs and people here are already familiar with the heart. However, in this writing, he did not simply rely on his life experience and memory reserves, but still chose to go into the farmhouse and the ridge. Since 2018, he has gone deep into Xiji, Haiyuan, Wonju, Longde, Pengyang, Jingyuan, Tongxin, Yanchi, Hongsibao and other counties, townships and villages, concentrated on interviews and research 40 times, and stored a large number of detailed data and data. Because it is rooted in the deep Xihai solid land, deep into the most grass-roots social organization, and captures the most subtle social cells, it is possible to maintain the breath and vitality of the earth, the thickness and improvement of poetry in the works.
Ningxia Zhongning County Xizan Ecological Goji Berry Manor has a bumper harvest. Xinhua News Agency
The work reproduces the magnificent social changes in xihaigu under the national poverty alleviation strategy, as well as the epitome and spiritual transformation of the times behind the great changes, from rural reform, environmental governance, economic innovation, to tourism services, education poverty alleviation, women's growth and other levels, the details are abundant to the poverty alleviation model of various counties and districts and even various business units, and writes a "history of entrepreneurship" in the new era. Ningxia Xihaigu immigrants of 1.23 million people, is the largest number of concentrated migrants in the western region of New China, the highest degree of organization of the rural population migration. The Yanghuang Irrigation Project has immigrated 1 million people and 2 million mu of irrigation areas, creating four of the best in Asia, turning the once red land into fertile fields, and "dry beaches into golden beaches". The ancient Xihaigu has taken on a new life in the new era, and hidden behind history is such a group of Xihaigu people with their heads held high. In the book "Zhiyuan Mijian", Li Zhiyuan, who lost his legs, has volunteered to plant more than 100,000 trees in 24 years and green 350 acres of barren mountains, just to find the meaning of living, "this life has lived a tree." Bai Chunlan in "A Tree, One Person", in order to dig out the land from the desert, has been adhering to the line of sand control for decades and recreating a green water and green mountains, which has been praised by the United Nations as a model for human conquest of nature. The poverty alleviation secretary in the "Diary of the First Secretary" is the epitome of the generations of Xihaigu poverty alleviation cadres, just like the "I" in "Shangzhuang" guarding the left-behind children in the countryside "empty nest". Xihai Guren said of the cadres stationed in the village: "When I first came down, my face was as white as an egg skin, and now it is also black, red, black and red." "The people are the creators of history and the real heroes." Such a story is dazzling as a star, scattered in the book "Notes of Xihaigu", the author almost does not use any rhetoric, completely adopts the original method, telling these mortal heroes around them, calm and restrained brushstrokes, it is difficult to hide the nobility of the people who shine on them and the light of the spirit of the times.
Notes on Xihaigu by Ji Dongliang, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House
In particular, this book writes down this paragraph of "Mountain Alliance and Sea Oath" under the "Fujian-Nanjing Counterpart Poverty Alleviation Cooperation". For more than 20 years, the "Minning Counterpart Poverty Alleviation Cooperation and Assistance Group" has taken the initiative to shoulder the historical mission of counterpart poverty alleviation in Ningxia, and together with the people of Ningxia, has created the "Minning Model" of counterpart poverty alleviation and cooperation in the east and west. Thousands of Fujian cadres on temporary duty, members of the task force of supporting education and supporting medicine and agriculture, expert academicians, and volunteers of the Western Plan went into the depths of the mountains. "What Ningxia needs, Fujian can do", across the mountains and the sea, this heart does not move. In the "Notes on Xihaigu", we see Lin Yuechan, director of the Fujian Provincial Poverty Alleviation Office, who is affectionately known as "Mother Lin" by the people of Ningxia, who has gone to Ningxia more than 40 times in 10 years and has tied the true feelings to Xihaigu tightly; Lin Zhanxi, the father of the world's fungus grass and professor of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, is only satisfied with "being able to do something beneficial to the people in this life and in this life"... "This is their second hometown, and they have the new identity of 'Minning people'." In Xihaigu, there are more obscure "Minning people". It is their heroic sacrifice and long-term achievements that have turned the flying sand and stones of that year into today's "plugged jiangnan", so that generations of Xihai Gu disciples will go to a broader world and find the confidence to survive and live again. Since then, the "Oath of Mountains and Seas" has taken a new footnote and meaning in the Chinese story.
The author said: "The hometown is used to return. Returning, like leaving, is a passion. However, to write something in the process of returning home, you need to maintain a calm and sober state, so that your narration can be more accurate and your emotions deeper. "It was a real presence in writing, a literary homecoming in the spiritual sense. It is also with this kind of nostalgia that the works faithfully feel and record the thousand-year changes in the land of the hometown, from the social changes in the vast countryside to the changes and growth of people. Picking up the old mountains and rivers from the beginning and singing the song, this is a Chinese epic that belongs exclusively to the land of Xihai, a heroic biography in the great history of the new era.
Guangming Daily (2022.03.19 12th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily