Interview | Sheng Wenqiang: Fishing gear into the novel, because they are more trustworthy than people

Writing note novels based on fishing gear such as mesh pieces, crab cages, and iron hooks, the theme can be described as very cold. Recently, Sheng Wenqiang's novel "Fishing Gear Column Biography" was republished, and we chatted with him about this collection of stories.

"Fishing Gear Column Biography", Sheng Wenqiang/Author, Guangxi Normal University Press, Xinmin Said, February 2022 edition

Sheng Wenqiang, a "post-80s" born in Qingdao, is fascinated by marine culture, and he has walked on the southeast coast of China, collecting marine folk tales, interviewing and sorting out the oral history of fishermen, and publishing a series of books on marine culture research. Written more than a decade ago, Sheng Wenqiang combined fishing gear, legends of the sea gods, wild history, interviews, evidence, etc., combining virtual and real, alternative and interesting. Even after more than a decade, works of such a subject matter are rarely seen.

Sheng Wenqiang

The Paper: "The Legend of Fishing Gear Columns", as the country's first modern note-writing novel with fishing gear and marine culture as the main body, treats the daily utensils as tools as independent living individuals, and even "magnifies" the personification characteristics of the fishing gear body in the name of the historian's "Column Biography". What kind of idea or thinking are you trying to convey at this point?

Sheng Wenqiang: Taking utensils as the protagonist, it was not originally a new thing, but the theme of fishing gear is more special, on the surface it is a fishing tool, involving customs and crafts, as well as a whole set of cultural traditions related to it. Specific to each type of fishing gear itself, it seems to have a personified characteristic, the boat is related to the bearing and responsibility, and the fickle drifting fate; the net is to contain evil intentions and greed, the lack of people's hearts, it is inevitable that the fish will die and the net is broken; the fishing hook is a cunning game of deception and anti-deception, the rope is said to be the art of connecting and sticking, the cage pot is exhausted, and the rake praises the original strength. Fishing gear into the novel, naturally they are close to each other, they are more trustworthy than people. The meshes, crab cages, and iron hooks found on the ship are not carved, which can be described as simple to the extreme. When there is no way to retreat, it shows the beauty of Park Ye's bone. The outside world is changing rapidly, but what remains unchanged is precisely what is difficult to change.

The Paper: "The Legend of Fishing Gear" is very rich in content, with evidence, interviews, wild history, song tips, legends, celebrities and equality, etc., which can be described as all-encompassing, and it seems that it is impossible to simply determine its style with the definition of "prose" and "novel".

Sheng Wenqiang: Today's literature, especially the "periodical style", is repulsive – of course, there are many people who take it seriously. This is a complex issue. The common concepts of "novel" and "prose" are still quantifiable test points in junior high school language textbooks, and if some people really rely on this concept to write, it can only be said that they are too deeply hoodwinked. A real writer will not stick to the genre, such as Zhang Dai of the Ming Dynasty, the richness of the style used, I am afraid that few people have noticed that his "West Lake Dream Search" and "Tao An Dream Memory" are prose, "Fast Garden Daogu", "Ancient and Modern Yi Lie" are Zhiren novels, "Three Immortal Statues" is a map, "Shi Kui Book" is a history book, "Night Sailing Ship" is a class book, "Tao An Dual Story" is a children's reading, and "Four Book Encounters" is an interpretation classic. The text is so diverse, but the spiritual background, knowledge reserve and ink and ink words go hand in hand, which is what I am after.

The Paper: The innovation in form of "The Tale of Fishing Gear" is very distinctive, from the fragments of ancient books at the beginning to the recording of interviews in supplements, the interpretations, illustrations, and even authorship in the text are fictional. You seem to be trying to explore the imaginary limits of what the text itself can reach?

Sheng Wenqiang: The ancient book "The Legend of Guangyu Gear Atlas" mentioned at the beginning of the "Biography of Fishing Gear" is a fictional book, and the characters and stories behind the book are derived from this book, which is equivalent to a wedge. Fiction is made from nothing, but it must be reasonable, and many people believe that it is true, thinking that there is such a magical ancient book, which is to fall into the trap. Fiction is a way to escape from reality, images can also be fictional, and even page numbers can be in the list of fiction, for example, the articles in the table of contents, according to the page numbers to find, but can not find, this is like life full of uncertainty, but also very interesting. It's just that the quality inspection of the publishing house does not allow this, and many boring regulations completely destroy the "interesting".

Illustration in the Tale of Fishing Gear

The Paper: A large number of images appear in the "Fishing Gear Column Biography", including fishing gear portraits, portraits of people, fragments of ancient books, etc., are these images created by yourself? How do you see the relationship between "image" and "text"?

Sheng Wenqiang: Some of them were created by me, some were borrowed from elsewhere, and then modified, the source of these images is extremely suspicious, but you can't find the flaws, and the curiosity is produced in the true and false, than the portrait of how to yu yin, the book claims that this is an image found from the family tree of the He family, it seems that there is really this person, and this person is fictional. In fact, the fiction of the image and the fiction of the text are similar, they must follow a "true", the image should also conform to the situation, in line with a specific style, the line quality, the proportion of the outer frame, the font format, etc. have extremely high requirements, the difficulty faced when drawing, just like a kind of "difficult writing".

The Paper: The knowledge reserve in "The Legend of Fishing Gear" is very amazing, you can see your calligraphy and ancient chinese skills from the fragments of "forged" ancient books, and you can see your painting skills from the pictures of the knots in the text, what role do you think these knowledge reserves have played in your writing?

Sheng Wenqiang: I have always believed that writers must have culture so as not to be shallow. Works like "Dream of the Red Chamber", the author itself has a traditional cultural cultivation, deeply rooted in various fields, but such a writing tradition has long been interrupted, the reality is that many illiterate people in writing - using the rhetoric of middle school students, and then through various means to run awards, but also in their own delusions to become a lifetime of writers. These people can only be seen as examples of human diversity.

The Paper: There are also some fictional recordings of fishermen's interviews in the "Fishing Gear Column", have you actually done similar fieldwork?

Sheng Wenqiang: The interview recording in this book is a kind of parody, the interviewee is the owner of an internet factory, this person has his own complaints and dissatisfaction, but also by some grand narrative influence, negative and optimistic in one, his two-sidedness, quite like many netizens today.

The Paper: Although the "Biography of Fishing Gear Columns" takes the historian's style as the outline of the whole book, the internal expression of the text more reflects the spiritual dilemma of the modern people as a whole. What do you think of the so-called "modernity"?

Sheng Wenqiang: Modernity is a broad concept that can be seen as the living conditions and concepts of modern society. It is difficult for the acquaintance society of the traditional local world to realize the spirit of contract, cognition depends on life experience, such a mind is still living in the agricultural era, it is difficult to enter the modern society, and modernity cannot be talked about. Kafka's experience of the dwarfing of man, the consumption of individuality, this heterogeneous suffering of the industrial age is incomprehensible to the mind of an agrarian age, who cannot perceive this dwarfing, and the wear and tear of individuality, because he himself is short and has no personality to speak of.

The Paper: You mentioned in the afterword to the reprint of The Tale of Fishing Gear that this book was the beginning of your professional writing, so how do you think about this book at this moment many years later? At this moment, many years later, what are the new changes or realizations in your writing path compared to when you first started?

Sheng Wenqiang: This book is the first book I began to choose a special theme, no one has written about the subject, it is possible to be a good theme, the cognition continues to deepen, will see this kind of theme, otherwise it will turn a blind eye. There are many childish aspects of early expression, but that sharpness and sharpness are precious.