Liu Xu
Listen to Zheng Zaihuan tell a different life after the 90s.
On the last day of 2021, when people were waiting for the New Year's Eve in a commercial street or square, writer Zheng Zaihuan and a few good friends entered the basil theater in the hutong. In this hidden place, he wants to have his own book launch.
This is a routine process for book sales. In the past, most of these activities were mainly writers' conversations, serious, serious, and sometimes even embarrassing. Zheng Zaihuan is somewhat resistant to this fixed form, and he feels that it is far more meaningful to let people feel the charm of the text than the deconstructed content, because "few people can understand one life principle after another in an hour or two of conversation."
Zheng Zaihuan's new work "Kill the Enemy All Night Tonight". /Weibo @ Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
So at that night's event, Zheng Zaihuan did not talk about anything vacuous with his friends from the literary circle. They just took turns reading the clips from the new book "Killing enemies all night", and after reading it, they chatted with the audience about everyone's unique all-night story.
One of the girls' sharing made Zheng Zaihuan remember it vividly. The girl said that she once took a train across the Chinese New Year's Eve to Zhengzhou to meet a loved one, but the person did not go out to see her. In the early hours of that morning, hungry, she ate the quiche she bought from near the station and bought a ticket back to Beijing. She knew that when she arrived, she would be greeted by the next morning light.
If it is in fiction, the story is undoubtedly cheesy, but when a real person tells it face to face, the texture of the story becomes different. In Zheng Zaihuan's view, this is the charm of language in the context of reality. Behind this, there is interaction and empathy, and these are exactly what literature pursues.
On December 11, 2021, writer Zheng Zaihuan and director Wang Hongwei, October Magazine deputy editor Ji Yaya, and one-way space editorial director Rodani luo danny began a conversation about his new book "Kill the Enemy All Night Tonight". /Weibo @ One Way Street Library
In addition to communicating with readers, Zheng Zaihuan's novels also connect with those friends around him. They rehearsed together every day before the New Year's Eve show, saying, "Everybody lives a collective life, and it's a wonderful thing to be able to play with people I admire." ”
And these friends also made Zheng Zaihuan, who likes rock music, realize his dream of forming a band and being the lead singer, at least that night, he was very happy. He has loved music since he was a child, hummed Jay Chou, listened to Daolang for a long time, and imitated Xu Wei. During the period when he did not understand, he would often cut out the second half of the tape and record the songs he sang. He felt that at that time, 80% of young people like him liked literature and art, and the popular culture at that time also provided good nourishment. He said: "In fact, 'entertainment to death' is also very good, but the premise is high-quality content. ”
"If you don't write well, the novel is not interesting"
Zheng Zaihuan is 32 years old this year, and his career is relatively long compared to that of writers of the same age. At the age of 16, he had already begun to write novels. Most of the two books that followed at the end of last year were completed by him at the age of twenty-three or fourteen.
In the years he wrote these stories, he lived a closed life in Beijing. He stayed in the rental house, the bed was full of books, the way to kill time, in addition to reading like hunger, is to watch 4 movies a day, and when he fell asleep, it was already four or five o'clock in the morning. In Zheng Zaihuan's heart, there was only one thought - to write a long novel. He felt at the time that a long work could be counted as a book, and the publication of a long novel could have a chance to become famous.
Writer Zheng Zaihuan. /Courtesy of the interviewee
But after two years of persistence, he found that what he wrote was nowhere to be published, and it was even more impossible to publish a book. In his tormented days, he adjusted his mood by writing short stories. Gradually, he found that it seemed that this form of novel was also very attractive.
The first one he wrote was called "There Are Ghosts in This World." During that time, people were paying attention to the social news of Foxconn employees jumping off the building, and Zheng Zaihuan also saw a brief report related to this in the newspaper. The report writes that three teenagers met to commit suicide, and in the end, two people died, and one survived.
Zheng Zaihuan used this as a prototype to write this novel. Writing about the survivor, he wrote: "After Li Qing was discharged from the hospital, he received attention from all sides, and reporters blocked his rental house and repeatedly asked him the same questions. He only used the phrase 'live too tired' to perfunctory them. They called him a psychiatrist, and in the face of the kind-eyed old man, he could only say that he 'liked to live'. Zheng Zaihuan said: "When I write a novel, I don't want to tell the story into a kind of social investigation, what I want to pursue is to make a thing interesting, rich and flexible, if it is too vulgar, or I write it myself, the novel is not interesting." ”
Zheng Zaihuan's work "Reunion is Always Before Separation".
By the time he was 24 years old, Zheng felt that he could not stay in Beijing. That summer, he thought about whether to simply return to his hometown to become a farmer, "living with his neighbors, and greeting each other when he goes out." But when he actually returned to his homeland, he found that he could no longer adapt to that environment. He said: "When I went back, I couldn't see young people, and I could only chat with the big moms and old ladies every day, and every time I talked about the same thing." "Mosquito bites, life is monotonous, stayed for 5 days, he resolutely decided to return to Beijing.
This time back in Beijing, he wrote a novel called "Zhumadian Girl". This short story also seems to be a re-examination of his own identity. He wrote: "Many times I arrived here, got on the train and left in a hurry. As a Zhumadian person, I was just a passer-by at Zhumadian. After writing this, he found a job in a film and television company. Commuting and staying up late became the two main things in his life. Squeezed by reality, the novel becomes a dream of near and far.
"Really good text is tied to life"
For Zheng Zaihuan today, Beijing is a place where his physical and spiritual life is held. But more than a decade ago, the city meant nothing more than a part-time destination. Unlike the post-90s generation that grew up in a good situation in the media, Zheng Zaihuan's life experience is full of twists and turns.
His birth mother died early and he was brought up by his grandmother. Because his stepmother was reluctant to support him, he did not receive a school education after finishing the first grade of junior high school. Part-time work became the only way for him to earn a living and escape. His first job was to follow relatives to the town of Baigou in Baoding to produce bags. Every morning from six o'clock to eleven or twelve o'clock in the evening, he spent it in the sewing machine. At that time, most of the people around him were similar to him—young, fifteen or sixteen years old, slightly older, and only in their early twenties. When it is rare to rest, a group of people are mixed up, and the last net is over.
Really good texts are tied to life. /Figure pexels
Zheng Zaihuan felt that the time was long, and this was not a solution. Therefore, he went to Yuyao, Ningbo and other places to find a new way out. But the work is not the head, the colleagues around me have changed batch after batch, and they still have no common language with him. After work, he sometimes went online with his colleagues, played mahjong, and sometimes read books to pass the time.
At that time, the works of Han Han and Guo Jingming were popular, and after he read them, he felt that what they wrote seemed to be completely different from the world in which he lived. He began to try to write the stories of the people around him, and the out-of-school teenagers who wandered the streets, the children who stayed at home and did nothing, and the middle-aged people who collapsed became the objects of his writing. After writing it, he found that the happiness seemed to be a little more.
In 2009, a friend he knew opened a Taobao shop in Beijing, which was large and busy, and in urgent need of manpower. So the friend contacted him. In this way, Zheng Zaihuan worked as a Taobao customer service at the foot of the West Mountain in Haidian. But after a few days of drying, he gave up, partly because he was slow to type and often made mistakes; on the other hand, because in Beijing in the early spring, the wind was blowing so strongly that every day when he sat at his desk, he could feel the wind under his feet. There were no acquaintances in life, and the cold of the climate made him feel desolate.
The standard image of literary youth. /Figure pexels
It was also in this year that his life ushered in a first-line turnaround, and he happened to see the news of the novel essay contest, with a first prize of 300,000 yuan. He typed on his mobile phone and threw out a fantasy novel and a wandering adventure novel, and finally the wandering adventure novel won the prize with a prize of 8,000 yuan. While writing the novel, he met his first literary friend, Wei Sixiao. In Zheng Zaihuan's memory, Wei Sixiao wears a hairband, and the home is filled with niche publications, the standard image of literary and artistic youth.
The 19-year-old Zheng Zaihuan didn't know what literature was, he just vaguely felt that he might be able to take the road of writing. In the course of the chat, Wei Sixiao mentioned many examples of famous writers. Zheng Zaihuan was a little dismissive at that time, he thought to himself, read books and read books, why do you still chase stars? But later, when he read those masterpieces, he also understood.
However, in literature, Zheng Zaihuan has always been like this, he never wants to be a bitter and bitter literary youth full of ideals and ambitions, he only hopes that he can write something interesting, as for the noble and noble pursuits, it is best to be dissolved in the story.
Soon, he used the bonus as the starting capital for his own writing, bought a computer, and with a "reckless energy", devoted himself to writing novels. He was extra confident, and several people around him were encouraging him, which made him feel that as long as he could put what he wanted to write on paper, he would be able to achieve something.
The 19-year-old Zheng Zaihuan didn't know what literature was, he just vaguely felt that he might be able to take the road of writing. /Figure pexels
It backfired. Forced by his livelihood, he had to participate in some purposeful writing, and even when he was strapped for money, for more than 7,000 yuan, he also thought about saving a book with a few friends. He said: "Looking back now, the value of those words is just a tool to make money and survive." In his mind, the really good text is bound to life. When he reads those stories again, he often goes back to a series of experiences that others regard as setbacks and ups and downs. He felt that it didn't seem to be so bitter, and occasionally something beautiful happened.
Only by leaving your hometown can you reinvent yourself
In 2017, Zheng Zaihuan's "Zhumadian Sad Stories" was published. Many people have known Zheng Zaihuan through this book. The media, readers, and book editors have also labeled him one by one, and the most representative of them are all related to the small town of Zhumadian.
Zheng Zaihuan said: "I have clarified countless times, I have never thought of making myself a literary hometown for a quarter of an hour, it is already a 'global village', limiting people to the same region, in the field of art is a very lazy thing." In his view, this is a kind of cultural hegemony, as if finding a literary backer for himself, thus gaining exclusive interpretation rights.
Zheng Zaihuan's work "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection".
Throughout the history of literature, many writers have been framed by such discursive patterns. For example, when Faulkner is mentioned, it is bound to be said that of Joknappathafa; when it comes to Marquez, the small town of Macondo will certainly not be absent... People often forget that the places where these writers have written are not only their hometowns.
In Zheng Zaihuan's eyes, hometown is a place where a person comes from, he said: "When we are not yet able to change our lives, our behavior patterns will be affected by family and hometown." Not long ago, he was chatting with a friend, and he said that he didn't like to eat noodles made by his grandmother because the noodles that his grandmother gave him rarely soup, "like a noodle lump." But what he loves to eat is noodle soup, the kind of noodles that are bleached with sesame oil and vegetable leaves at the same time. My friend asked him: Have you ever wondered why this is? He suddenly realized that his grandmother had experienced three years of difficult times in her hometown, and "in her concept, noodle soup is a deceptive thing, and solid is good."
Zheng Zaihuan said that this is the portrayal of a person in his hometown, but after leaving there, the brand on our bodies is not so heavy. "Whether it's fiction or life, I want to be an 'earthling', bigger and more open, because only by getting rid of those innate things can we reshape ourselves." This should be one's ideal. ”
In Zheng Zaihuan's eyes, hometown is a place where a person comes from. /Figure unsplash
As for why he is still willing to write about his hometown, Zheng Zaihuan's answer is that "the life experience in his teenage years is very stimulating to people." He said: "People who are not deeply involved in the world are sensitive, and everything they come into contact with is brand new, although the whole is not alarming, even a little boring, but in it, you will find that the out-of-the-box expressions and reckless actions of youth are pure, poetic, and worth sharing." ”
When he came to Beijing, he felt that everyone was quite civilized, and he was in love, stopping at etiquette: "There are not many things that can be seen clearly that can stab me, and if I am in the middle, I may want to uncover it, but if I wander outside, I can only look at it from a distance, which may also be the reason why my city has so little writing." My city life is not transparent enough. ”