Jiang Xiaobin, a reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network
Feng Ji had just passed his 80th birthday.
The average person has an eightieth birthday, puts on a Tang costume, puts a birthday star in the back, puts a fruit basket of flowers in front, and many people come to wish for a birthday... But Feng Ji didn't want to live too often, he wanted to add something.
First, eat noodles with your 105-year-old mother. "My mother gave birth to me when she was 25 years old and is still in good health. It's rare that an 80-year-old can still see my mom. ”
Second, to do an activity in the college, not to celebrate a birthday, but to do a little research. "From birth to now, I have basically lived in Tianjin. I want to discuss what kind of relationship and emotion intellectuals have with their homeland and the people in their homeland—which is meaningful to writers and to literature. ”
Along with Feng Ji's 80-year-old life, there are two new books - "A Hole in the Studio" and "Danube Canyon", the former is a collection of essays, and the latter is the collection of five short stories.
In an exclusive interview with a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Network, Feng Jicai said: "Although I am 80 years old, my psychological age and physical feelings are still between 50-60 years old, and I still have sensitivity and imagination, and creation is my inner need." ”
On October 12, 2021, Feng Jicai just finished writing "Danube Canyon".
China Youth Daily: Do you have the habit of painting on important days in your life, will you paint this year?
Feng Jicai: Everyone's life will have some nodes, and sometimes people's efforts are to leave some memories for the future. When I was 50 years old, I painted a large piece of tree, it was already autumn, but the leaves were shining in the sun. At that time, I felt that my life had entered a golden age, like that tree. When I was 60 years old, I painted a painting of "Pride Remains", in which a boat sails in the middle of the river. At that time, I began to do folk cultural heritage rescue, and I needed such a force. I haven't painted it yet this year because I don't know what kind of emotions there will be.
On wedding anniversaries, such as silver weddings, gold weddings, emerald weddings, I would draw, and the two of us would draw a pair of birds together. This was first in the 1960s and 1970s, when we drew a pair of birds in a snowstorm together. Later, we kept painting birds, and the scenery was constantly changing, but the two birds were always there.
China Youth Daily: "A World in the Study Room" and "A Cave in the Studio", are you the happiest works you have written?
Feng Jicai: Readers may have experienced that I am very happy. It's very relaxing when I write, because I write about the things I get along with day and night, and I know the stories in each thing. Just like the Song people write notes, white drawings, write out the situation in ordinary life. There may be something sad, but it doesn't make me cry. When people reach the age of seventy or eighty, they feel the bits and pieces of the past, mood and sorrow, and will become another kind of poetry in the article.
China Youth Daily: What does painting and writing mean to you?
Feng Jicai: I was first a painter, I painted for 15 years, of course, I am still painting, but not much. Painting is more personal to me, it is a personal feeling of the heart, a kind of rehearsal, a kind of expression. Literature has more of a reflection on life and a responsibility for society.
Literature has influenced my paintings, such as the pursuit of literature and poetry in painting, which is also the tradition of Chinese painting, especially literati painting. Painting also influences my literature, because what it has in common with literature is that it is necessary to produce visual images, to create a visible space, characters, scenes for the reader, and the more vivid and concise the better.
I don't need to allocate time for these two things. When I have the impulse to create literature, I go to the study to write; with the desire to express it with painting, I go to the studio. My study and studio, at both ends of a porch at home, were a sweet round trip and very happy.
Feng Jicai's studio
China Youth Daily: What do you think is the shortcomings of your studio?
Feng Jicai: Very good, there is no shortage of anything. In my teacher's studio, there are nan wood bookshelves, emitting a unique fragrance, hanging shaft paintings, arranged with green plants, very beautiful; now the studio is more like a workshop. In the book, I wrote about the studios of two painters, one is Wu Guanzhong, which is very small and only a dozen square meters, and the other is Han Meilin, which is very large, and the common point is that it is all paintings, and the studio is a place to work.
China Youth Daily: In order to rescue folk cultural heritage, you once sold paintings to raise funds.
Feng Jicai: First of all, selling paintings cannot save folk culture. Such a big China, so many cultural heritage, with the money I sold, what role can it play? One function may be to arouse people's thinking about the problem. At that time, when the paintings were sold, there was a feeling of "four walls of family". Later I said something that there was a little bit of tragedy in what I liked to do. I gave my heart to the earth.
China Youth Daily: So now you are back to literature?
Feng Jicai: In the sense of writing, I have been away from literature for 20 years, but I will not leave literature. When doing folk cultural heritage rescue, I often have literary impulses and imaginations. The most imaginative time in literature is when it is running on the earth. Especially sitting in the car at night, listening to music, for several hours, the literary imagination suddenly came out.
But at that time I couldn't write, I didn't have time. Sometimes when I see a new book from my contemporaries or young people, I feel a little bitter and feel that I can't do what I love. But there is only "one point" because I know that what I do is too important to do.
Since I am tied to the protection of cultural heritage in my life, I will never let go of the shackles, but I do not have the physical strength to continue. If I had to go back to my 60s and have the strength, I'd still have to put down the novel. There are still a lot of problems with cultural heritage, new dilemmas are constantly emerging, and too many things have not been done.
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network: The five novels in "Danube Gorge" introduce factors such as fantasy, fantasy, and adventure in real reality, "also true and illusory", which is a style that you have not had before. How do you maintain this creative passion?
Feng Jicai: Enthusiasm for literature is nature, and people who engage in literature must express themselves in words when they have enthusiasm for life. For example, when I wrote "Wooden Buddha", I changed my perspective, not writing about things with people, but writing about people with things, taking the self-description of wood Buddha as the narrative perspective.
Now I'm a little different from before. In the past, I wanted to know life with readers, but now I think literature has a very important mission, that is, to leave an aesthetic image and thinking about the times. A good artist should influence the spirit of an era, especially the spirit of aesthetics.
Someone asked me, what are the writing plans? I don't have any plans, writing is a happy creation, the accumulation of life in the past 20 years is too much, I can't stop writing one by one.
China Youth Daily: Your creation has changed, so what is unchanged?
Feng Jicai: I insist on writing literature as a work of art, and the so-called work of art has aesthetic value. I also insist on the language of the novelist— no matter how passionate it is when it is written, the language of the novel should ultimately be refined. This is also the tradition of Chinese literature, in the history of Chinese literature, the first to mature is poetry, then prose, and the biggest influence of poetry on literature is language. When I wrote "The Strange Man of the World", I wrote very quickly, but I changed it a lot, the language was not good, and I did not dare to let go.
China Youth Daily: Your ancestral home is Ningbo, Zhejiang, what kind of people are your parents, and what influence do they have on you?
Feng Jicai: My mother is from Jining, Shandong, and the characteristics of this place are both civilized and martial. Wen, the hometown of Confucius and Mencius, Wu, has shui po Liangshan, and is the place where Wu Song Lu Zhi was deeply active. My father is from Ningbo, and my family has been a literati since the Tang Dynasty. The masculinity of Shandong people and the delicacy of Zhejiang people have both influenced me. Influence is not a matter of a few words, but a spirit engraved in the bones.
When I was 50 years old, I went to Ningbo to hold a painting exhibition, and I respected my hometown, which is the birthplace of my life. My first time selling paintings was also in Ningbo. At that time, there was no money to repair He Zhizhang's ancestral hall, so I selected 5 of my favorite paintings in the exhibition and sold them, and now the ancestral hall has become a very important cultural tourist attraction in the local area.
I do a lot of things like this, it doesn't have any ideas, it doesn't have any utilitarianism, it's just out of love.
Source: China Youth Daily client