She is the "big sister of onion oil cake" on the side of Huangyan Street, she is the "migrant girl" who has picked up dung and carried the coffin to take care of the family, and she is also a "strange person" who wants to write a book in the eyes of others. She said: "I want to write stories about little people, express my thoughts about life from books, and I don't care what people say. "She is the grassroots writer of Zhejiang- Zhao Lin.
In 2011, since the first work "Life and Death Test" won the national prose "Elite Award", writing has taken root in Zhao Lin's heart. After the autobiographical novel "Ant Colony" gained attention, Zhao Lin's 260,000-word novel "The Invisible Top" became the key recommended book of the "National Reading Month" in his jurisdiction. The micro-film "Believe in Dreams" based on her won the "Golden Begonia Award" at the 2nd Asian Micro Film Arts Festival.
Recently, another novel by Zhejiang grassroots writer Zhao Lin is coming to an end, and her story has once again attracted attention. On April 7, Zhao Lin told the upstream news (newspaper mailbox: [email protected]) reporter: "Whether there is a writer's name is not very concerned, and does not pay much attention to the appearance of ink, that is, I think others can do it, I can also do well, I just want to write the story I want to write." ”
▲ By selling onion oil cakes, Zhao Lin takes care of the livelihood of the family, and everyone calls her "big sister of onion oil cakes". Image source/ Sun Honghong, Beiyang Town, Huangyan District
The "big sister of the shallot oil cake" on the street
A tricycle, a gas canister, a frying pan, every day at four o'clock in the morning out of the stall, Zhejiang Province, Taizhou City, Huangyan District, Xinqian Street street rich green onion cake, aroused the surrounding residents in the stomach of the "hungry worms", stall owner Zhao Lin became everyone's mouth "onion oil cake big sister".
Speaking of Zhao Lin's encounter, most of the people who knew her story sighed.
Zhao Lin, 56, was born into a rural family in Lu'an City, Anhui Province. At the age of 15, Zhao Lin suffered from kidney disease, because her family was poor, she could only carry the disease, due to taking a lot of hormone drugs, her figure became bloated, and because of illness, she lost the opportunity to continue school.
Like all young people, Zhao Lin longed to get out of the village where he could circle with his eyes closed, and wanted to go to the big city to find a new life. The little sister told her that there were many opportunities to earn money in Shanghai, and she secretly ran to Shanghai with grain on her back. This year, Zhao Lin was 21 years old.
"It was like an ant seeing sugar and was drawn to it all at once." Zhao Lin said that later, her autobiographical novel was named "Ant Colony", which was to think of the desperate state of mind at that time.
Zhao Lin, who became a "Shanghai drifter", had an easy time in Shanghai: she couldn't find a job, she ran out of food, she picked up rotten apples to fill her hunger, and stayed on the streets at night being chased by crazy people. It wasn't until a month later that she finally found a job polishing in the factory, working fifteen or six hours a day, with dust every day.
Soon, Zhao Lin resigned, and the first break ended in failure.
When he borrowed money from his fellow villagers to return home, Zhao Lin's whole body collapsed. In the days that followed, Zhao Lin began to farm at home, get married and have children. "That marriage hurt me a lot." Zhao Lin said that her first husband was grumpy and she was often scolded. In 1990, she left the 200 yuan savings saved in those years to her husband, divorced, and lived with her daughter.
In order to give his daughter a better life, Zhao Lin once again left home to go out of town. This time she chose the Huangyan District of Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province. In 1994, Zhao Lin remarried in Huangyan. The hardships of life were not alleviated by remarriage, she had picked up scraps, picked up dung, and worn men's clothes to carry coffins. "Nobody wants to do these things, so it's good to make money."
The next year, Zhao Lin had a son, and she didn't want her hands to always get dirty, so she began to sell flatbread on the street. "People around me say that my cake is delicious, but there is no secret, it is simple and real." Later, people around her simply called her "Big Sister of Onion Oil Cake". "After not allowing random stalls a few years ago, I stopped working, and I worked for more than 20 years and had some savings." Zhao Lin said that after this breakout, she had taken root in Taizhou.
▲ Zhao Lin and her debut novel "Ant Colony". Image source/ Sun Honghong, Beiyang Town, Huangyan District
Picking up scraps to find "Jane Eyre" has a "writing dream"
"When I'm not setting up stalls, I collect waste. At one time I received several books, "Jane Eyre" and "Robinson Crusoe", and I started reading them before I was willing to sell them. Sometimes when there is no one at the stall, I am afraid that the dirty hands will stain the books, but I can't help it, and I am not willing to put it down when people come. I can't hear the talk of the charming home. Zhao Lin said that these books have once again ignited her dream of reading, and also ignited the "flame" that she wants to write books.
"I just think they can write such good works, and I want to write stories of people like me." Zhao Lin's literary dream began.
In 2010, Zhao Lin bought a computer for his son. When his son was not in use, Zhao Lin took the time to read novels on the Internet, and the idea of writing books became stronger and stronger. After that, his son helped Zhao Lin apply for a QQ number called "Leisurely Years", and Zhao Lin began to rely on "One Finger Zen" to write down the small things in life and post them in the QQ space.
"One day, a netizen named 'Runwu Silent' clicked into my QQ space. His surname is Cai, and he is a retired veteran cadre of Huangyan. Seeing my life in Huangyan, I added friends and talked to me about literature and writing. Zhao Lin said, "Moisturizing silent" told her that although her words were rough, the narrative was smooth, and the words were simple and appropriate, and she should stick to it.
"Silent" also recommended some classic literary works to Zhao Lin, helped her revise her works, and also introduced her to the fable writer Qiu Laigen. Zhao Lin said that "moisturizing things silently" is like her Bole on the road of literature.
In November 2011, Zhao Lin participated in a national essay competition and won the "Elite Award" of the competition with an article entitled "Test of Life and Death". "Neither my husband nor my son understood my dream of writing, but I wanted to stick with it." Zhao Lin said that she likes the simplicity of "White Deer Plain" and the realistic color of "Quiet Don River".
Reading makes her full of hope for life and writing.
▲ Zhao Lin said that she is grassroots, and she wants to write out the story of grassroots so that everyone around her can see it. Image source/ Sun Honghong, Beiyang Town, Huangyan District
Her story was made into a micro-film
With the success of the first essay, the impulse to write swept through Zhao Lin like a flood that opened the floodgates in 2013. She began to try to write novels, without imagining the imagination, only the material of life that was too simple to be simple.
Just when Zhao Lin was enjoying the pleasure of reading and writing while selling cakes, life once again gave her a heavy blow. Due to long-term exposure to dust in the factory, Zhao Lin's second husband suffered from lung cancer. Zhao Lin earned money while taking care of her sick husband, and her first novel, "Ant Colony", also took shape during this period.
The female protagonist "Zhao Er" with a masculine name in "Ant Colony" is the shadow of Zhao Lin. She said that although she was like a small ant in a vast ant colony, busy and obscure, she still wanted to change her fate with her hands. "Zhao Er"'s struggle with fate is her idea of life, and she also describes the life she desires in the book.
Because there was not much time during the day, Zhao Lin could only take time out of his free time at night to write books. "Even though my husband was lying in a hospital bed, he would ask me where I had written and asked me to include him in a novel." In November 2013, Zhao Lin's "Ant Colony" ended, and her husband left her shortly after.
On the day of the release of "Ant Colony" in 2014, Zhao Lin said at the launch ceremony of Huangyan Book City: "Writing, like religious belief, is the strength of human beings to seek to save themselves. ”
After the completion of "Ant Colony", Zhao Lin successively created a 160,000-word reminiscence novel related to rural life, "Crop Man", a 260,000-word "Invisible Top" and a 130,000-word "Gender Man". She joined the Taizhou Writers Association and the Zhejiang Writers Association in 2015 and 2016. Among them, "Invisible Roof" has also become the key recommended book of the "National Reading Month" in the jurisdiction where Zhao Lin lived that year - the novel is set in the context of pyramid schemes, telling the story of a group of people who mistakenly entered the pyramid schemes and were rescued by the public security and sent them to the car to go home. Who would have thought that as soon as the public security personnel turned around, they immediately turned around and started their old business, and the ending was not reversed but had warning significance.
"I was a grassroots, everything around me was grassroots, and I had the story in my hand. Tell the feelings, write the sadness and joy. Zhao Lin said.
In October 2014, the micro-film "Believe in Dreams" based on her won the "Golden Begonia Award" at the 2nd Asian Micro Film Arts Festival. In 2016, the film won the Outstanding Film Award of the China (Yanting) International Women's Micro Film Annual Exhibition. This year, "Believe in Dreams" won three national awards.
In the film, in a simple house, a middle-aged woman sits in front of a computer, typing carefully on the keyboard. The factory workers pointed out her habit of reading when she was fine, and her husband on the sickbed said that she was "delusional" to write books. Zhao Lin said: "They don't understand what literature means to me, no matter how cruel life is, I must stick to my dreams." ”
The 18-minute micro-film, without gorgeous scenery, without the script of rhetoric, grounded life scenes and Zhao Lin's inner monologue, tells the story of a woman who works hard but wins the sublimation of the spiritual world because of reading.
"In my spare time, I read and write, and only in this way will my heart feel satisfied and peaceful, and completely forget the hardships of life." Zhao Lin said that the story of the micro-film only shows a small part of life, and more realistic suffering relies on reading and writing books to get comfort.
▲ At the launch ceremony of "Ant Colony", Zhao Lin said: Writing, like religious belief, is the strength of human beings to seek to save themselves. "Image source/Sun Honghong, Beiyang Town, Huangyan District
I want to keep the grassroots story going
Zhao Lin in the short film "Believe in Dreams" said that literature is not a means of making a living, literature is like a teapot, brewing a pot of good tea on the table for people to taste. It cannot create wealth, and has little to do with the poor, but the more hopeless people are, the more they need solace, and from these illusory words, they get the comfort of the heart.
Zhao Lin in reality said that although real life is very hard, once it is put into writing, it will gain freedom, you can pinch out various characters, develop in the direction you want, and life will always be full of hope.
"When I first wrote it, it was like a journal, and I got stuck when I wrote it. I would keep reading books, learning the author's portrayal of things and characters, imitating their writing style to enrich my storyline. Looking back at the first book now, in addition to the simple text, there are actually many logical and writing errors. "Zhao Lin said that she does not want to be called a writer, she wants to be like her shallot oil cake, do not appear in the whitewash, as long as it is simple and simple." Grassroots stories must be understood by grassroots, and only close to their lives can they write their stories well. Zhao Lin said.
After not selling scallion oil cakes, Zhao Lin found a job cooking in the factory canteen, and every night she would wear colorful socks, cross Erlang's legs, and sit in front of the computer dreaming of the future.
After publishing a few books, Zhao Lin began to write online, and now she is still a contracted author of Ali Literature. "I can't be like many writers on the platform who have thousands of words a day, ten thousand words, I can only do my best to write the story I want to write." Now I also have a group of readers, which has satisfied me. Zhao Lin said that writing for her, like an ant encountering a road paved with white sugar, will always go on happily, although the effort is always greater than the gain. But no matter what kind of situation you are in, as long as you insist on it, you will always "keep the clouds open and see the moon.".
"The cousin really knows how to cook, I know that the little girl's cousin farms the field and lives heavily, drinks the porridge no matter how hungry, specially beats a few vegetable pot stickers, mixes several wild vegetables in the rice noodles, kneads them into a ball, and then beats them into thin cakes, pastes them to the side of the water pot, slowly roasts them on low heat, and bakes them into a yellow pot sticker." After the interview, Zhao Lin sent an excerpt of the new work to the upstream news reporter, a simple text depiction, so that the country food with full color and fragrance jumped on the paper.
Recalling the 30 years of working and living in Zhejiang, Zhao Lin said that there are dreams, homes, and highlight moments here, and he has also experienced the troughs of life. In these materials given by life, she has achieved her dedication to writing, and she will continue to write.
Upstream journalist Shi Tingting
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