Interview 丨 Jia Pingwa: In my life, the most hard work is the role of writer

"Wasteland" is a turning point for my creation

Zhang Ying: For decades, "Wasteland" has been linked to your name, including its later republishment, which has also caused a storm.

Jia Pingwa: "Waste Capital" was republished, and the publishing house planned to be listed together with Mo Yan's "Fat Buttocks with Abundant Milk", and the book samples were all out.

At that time, Xie Youshun asked me for a manuscript, and I just wrote a preface for the new edition of "Waste Capital" and gave it to him. The article was published in the Southern Metropolis Daily, attracted the attention of the media, and was hyped everywhere, which became an event.

Zhang Ying: In the current open environment, writing "sex" in the novel is not a problem.

Jia Pingwa: For writers, what to write or not to write is determined by the story and theme of the novel, and it is the need to shape the characters. "Waste Capital" is written about an old story, since it is daily life, eating, drinking, and sleeping are written, eating a meal during the day, drinking a little tea can write a few pages, and at night, a word is not written, which involves sex, Zhuang Zhidi in order to liberate himself, he wants to find a woman.

In the process of writing sex, only a little more is written, and the unswritten part is replaced by a box. The manuscript was given to the publisher, and they deleted another part, and I don't remember how many words were deleted in parentheses in the book. Unexpectedly, I was careful when writing, and still stepped on a mine.

In 1994 and 1995, whoever mentioned "Waste Capital" could not do it, and if he mentioned it, he had to write a check. The Shaanxi newspaper, the review newspaper that mentioned my name, I don't know how many times it was written, and there was criticism everywhere. Others say I'm a "rogue writer" and I can't twist it no matter how hard I try. I'm not someone who is particularly interested in sex, just because of the need to write.

Zhang Ying: At that time, some people also affirmed "Abolished Capital". Ji Xianlin said: "Twenty years later, "Wasteland" will shine brightly. Ma Yuan gave a high evaluation: "This is a great book, there are probably very few novels that will be read again and again in our time a hundred years later, "Waste Capital" is one of them, it writes through the boredom of the literati class, it is an encyclopedia that interprets boredom." ”

Jia Pingwa: Through this work, I want to write about the pessimism, disappointment, and despair of the intellectuals at that time, a state of confusion among intellectuals after losing their ideals and beliefs, and a state of distress among people in that period.

For me, there were three major influences on my life: one was to go to college and change my destiny; one was to create and write "Waste Capital"; and the other was my divorce from my ex-wife.

At that time, the pressure was very great, my mental burden was very heavy, my brain was often blank, I didn't know what to do all day, my wife was separated, my father died, my family was broken, I was seriously ill, and I also suffered from hepatitis B.

Now the situation is much better, there is no need to write, you can continue to create.

Zhang Ying: "Wasteland" was not well received in China, but won such a high honor in France?

Jia Pingwa: "Waste Capital" won two awards in France. One is the Fermina Literary Prize (Female Jury Prize), one of the three major literary awards in France; the other is the French Literary and Artistic Honor Award (equivalent to the French government giving us a title).

The first prize, they called me, said my work was shortlisted, asked me to go to France for the award ceremony, I did not go. This literary award is not like some domestic awards that are evaluated before you can receive it. They draw lottery on the spot, and no one knows who the winner is beforehand.

According to Chinese's concept, so far away to go, did not comment on how faceless? I didn't go. One day I was playing mahjong, and the French translator called, and Mu Tao got up to answer the phone, and told me in a moment, congratulations, "Waste Capital" won the female judge award. The French ambassador came to Xi'an to present me with this award in person.

The second prize, France sent me a letter before SARS, and no one around knew French, so I put it aside. Two months later, my mother was hospitalized in the hospital, and when I went to visit, I asked the doctor if there were anyone in the hospital who knew French. The doctor said he had a friend who knew French. I took the letter to the hospital and gave it to him. Two months after the letter was released, his friend who knew French went abroad.

After receiving congratulatory letters from the French Minister of Culture and the French Ambassador to China, I learned that I had won the Honorary Prize of French Literature and Art.

Zhang Ying: Some commentators believe that "Wasteland" is the best reading in the 90s, and it profoundly writes the true mental state of the cultural people of that era in the situation of not being able to go up to the world and not to the ground.

Jia Pingwa: There are still people who oppose "Abolished Capital", which is much less than it was then. There is no way, a certain leader said a word, and the book could not be published.

The focus is mainly on sex, and it's easy to knock you down; others say that the style is too gray, and now no one says sex, more than it works too much.

Zhang Ying: Because of this book, you became a best-selling author, because of this book, many critics think that you have fallen, what do you think?

Jia Pingwa: It has brought me the most disasters, and because of it, it has expanded my readership. I want to be a best-selling author, and people who like my work say it's too good to be true, and people who don't like it are a mess. As I got older, I was much more at peace, and saying good or bad things would not affect my writing.

Zhang Ying: It is said that there are 20 million pirated copies of "Waste Capital", how much royalties did you take at that time?

Jia Pingwa: The publication and publication of "Waste Capital" only gave me 40,000 yuan in fees. After that, I didn't get a penny.

Zhang Ying: How did you go to Jiangsu and Zhejiang to collect wind and investigate?

Jia Pingwa: After a few years, the relevant departments felt that I could still be saved, and at the suggestion of the China Writers Association, they wanted me to write about the reform situation in China, and asked me to go to the south to see, and I chose Huaxi Village.

After I had a certain understanding of the place, I proposed to go around and walk around. I have never been to Zhejiang or Jiangsu, and I want to know more about the politics, economy and culture here. I walked through most of the places and the harvest was particularly great.

I wrote "Huaxi Village Diary" and published a book.

"Gao Laozhuang" and "I Am a Farmer"

Zhang Ying: Why did you write "Gao Laozhuang"? In "Gao Laozhuang", what explorations did you do in art?

Jia Pingwo: I can't say for sure. As I mentioned in the epilogue to this work, the book that had the greatest influence on me was Ulysses, and although I could not understand his national and ethnic background, I could recount the story in a different way than the realist technique I was accustomed to, and it wrote out all the subconscious and perceived things. There is a county in Shaanxi, people are short, I want to do field research, but did not go to Cheng. According to one source, people in the nineties had ten times less semen than people in the fifties, and the human race degenerated, which led to an interest in writing this work.

Zhang Ying: What position does "Gao Laozhuang" occupy in your writing?

Jia Pingwa: I didn't think about it. I write with peace of mind, and what others say is good and bad will definitely be affected, and it will not have a long-term impact on me. I write and have fun in the process. Even if others make a mess of me, I still have to write and spit it out. Whether "Gao Laozhuang" surpassed the previous work, I don't think. People should have a little bit of responsibility, and they don't have to be inferior. I received an essay about Zhuangzi in the editorial office, but I didn't post it. Zhuangzi itself is a big character, and the realm is broad and natural. I don't want to fight with each other, anything that lives until it is essential to become a big instrument, such as learning this and that, either becoming a "totem", such as a dragon and a phoenix, or becoming a gecko, a cockroach or a four-way difference. The same is true in literature, if it is comprehensively developed, it will either become a dragon, a phoenix, or a gecko, which will never be bigger than a pig. If you are a pig, grow good meat, no one can lack you, according to the original face, good development.

Zhang Ying: In your novels, you can often see some magical phenomena. Do you believe in the existence and peculiar function of mysterious things?

Jia Pingwa: I lived in the countryside for a long time and received an education there. In my hometown, there are many things that the gods are nagging about. The strange events written in "Gao Lao zhuang" have prototypes in reality, and I did not write them at all. There are many strange things in this place in Shaanxi, and I have seen more than ten "gods" with people, which have strange functions and are very powerful, but it is true that each person has a skill of each person, which is strange.

Some people say that my language is Ancient Chinese, I didn't learn Ancient Chinese well in college, I was always busy criticizing Lin Pingkong, and I didn't have time to learn after work. I have studied the excavation of shaanxi folk language and borrow it when writing. How to describe contemporary urban life in folk language? I have done some exploration, such as using traditional Chinese ink painting methods to depict modern urban architecture is not very good. If you don't change, you can't see it. Cities are different from villages, and I've been experimenting with new languages to describe contemporary cities.

Zhang Ailing gave me a lot of inspiration, although she inherited the language tradition of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in her creation, she constantly joined the feeling of modern women and did not feel old. A lot of my creative experience is borrowed from fine art painting. Zhang Yimou expresses the spiritual temperament of people in daily life in a new way in the film, which is very different from his previous creative methods.

"Gao Laozhuang" Some people think of the Eight Precepts of the Pig as soon as they mention it, but I don't want to write about a village, I am interested in how traditional Chinese culture disappeared, how the personality spirit shrank, and how sex shrank. People have a high-old Zhuang complex after middle age. "Gao Laozhuang" is a symbol, Zilu left in order to change the race, for a new life, but when he returned to his hometown, the old culture, the old environment, the old crowd made him return to the old problems, such as conservative, selfish, dirty, nest fighting and unhygienic.

Zhang Ying: There are many rural descriptions in "Gao Laozhuang", but in your works in recent periods, there are often more Buddhas, ghosts, and gods, is it intentionally pursued?

Jia Pingwa: It is my creative perspective that is closer to the original taste of life. I do not advocate deliberately pursuing anything, nor do I advocate deliberately constructing anything, many legends and stories, I have been familiar with since I was a child. Although there are more buildings in the countryside now, between people, between families and families, between townships and townships, just like the description in "Gao Laozhuang", people's thinking has become a stereotype, even if they come into contact with new things, they unconsciously return to the original way of life, that is, people in the city must "follow the customs of the countryside". I pay attention to the natural flow of the original ecology and reflect the true nature of life, if I intend to write, it becomes a man-made carving of the dragon and painting the phoenix? I love geckos are geckos, ugly looks but real. Literature should restore life to its original face.

Zhang Ying: When reading "Gao Laozhuang", a large number of local languages were used, which made people feel a sense of being vulgar.

Jia Pingwa: I like to reduce idioms and nouns to their original appearance, or take them apart and use them, so that the language has tension. Many people say that my writing is half ancient and half white, and "Gao Laozhuang" is no exception, which is taken from the spoken language of my hometown, that is, the folk local language, for example, "hold the baby up," xi'an countryside says "bring the baby on", "the words are finished", "the country speaks" is finished", and so on, which is a typical regional language. The question for writers is what language to use and how to express them. Wang Shuo's novel language is very distinctive. When language is regional, it has a unique personality.

Zhang Ying: The names of the people in "Gao Laozhuang" are all related to animals, is it given some kind of symbol?

Jia Pingwo: Yes. Everyone lives on the earth with certain animal characteristics, and if you look closely at the people around you, they all look more or less like some kind of animal, or the people in "Gao Laozhuang" are allegories.

Zhang Ying: A person who has fled from the countryside has lived in the city for decades, why do you still say "I am a farmer", and you can't be a city person in your lifetime?

Jia Pingwa: If the university does not recruit workers, peasants, and soldiers, I will stay in the countryside for the rest of my life. I went to college from the countryside and went to the city, my father taught in Xi'an before liberation, and when Xi'an was liberated, his old family called him back because he was worried about fighting, stayed in his hometown to teach, and did not return to Xi'an.

I think how happy I would be to be able to go to college and stay in the city to work. After really entering the city, there are still troubles and pains in work and life, the former is physical labor, the latter is spiritual and spiritual. The impact of the growth environment on people is lifelong, and you can't change where you go, such as thrift, thrift, thrift, and many other basic things that are deeply rooted in your blood. For example, loving and sympathizing with people, others looking for your help and not helping you will blame themselves, these can not be changed in a lifetime.

Zhang Ying: "I Am a Farmer" was launched after "Gao Laozhuang", can you talk about the creative process?

Jia Pingwa: "I Am a Farmer" is a product of the writing of "Gao Laozhuang". After writing "Gao Laozhuang", I was very tired, I didn't want to write anything, I thought my experience was easy to write, I didn't expect that there was no passion, and it was very difficult to write.

"I Am a Farmer" writes about my real life before the age of 20 and is my autobiography of adolescence. The difficult life of adolescence was painful, poor, monotonous, and of course beautiful and happy, and I walked into the city with a desire for happiness and bid a happy farewell to the countryside where I was born and raised. I thought at the time that I could stay in the city and that suffering should leave me. Until now, I still haven't gotten rid of it, and I can't do without it for the rest of my life.

I've shown many people that I've counted my fate, and I can't figure it out for myself. Writing this book, I was happy and sad, as if I had lived again, reviewing my fantasies of that year.

Zhang Ying: In this book, you tell the story of your life experience in the countryside, with an absolutely equal vision and writing: "I have read many novels about Zhiqing, and the children in the city have left their family affection, left the comfortable place, and suffered a lot in the countryside. But I also thought: They should not go to the countryside, should we be born in the countryside? The same porcelain pieces, some pasted on the stove, some pasted on the toilet, the stove on the holding to the toilet, the stove on the sky, who can hear the sobbing in the toilet? I was very touched to see it, does this include your critical attitude towards the position and angle of "Zhiqing Literature" works?

Jia Pingwa: I just feel wronged, back to Dihua, I have become a veritable farmer, and among the farmers, I belong to the intellectual youth. Zhiqing literature became popular in the Chinese literary circles, but I have not written a single word of Zhiqing literature.

Zhiqing refers to those children who originally lived in the city and lived a relatively wealthy life, and suddenly came to the countryside to become farmers with gongs and drums. My family was originally in the countryside, and I was originally a farmer. Returning to their hometowns is not a lost son, the government and the people do not care, and literature does not care.

Zhang Ying: The reality is like this, just like the current peasants come to the city, they are intentionally or unintentionally despised by the urban people, they do the most tiring and hardest and most dangerous work, the relaxed urban people do not let them do it, they have many restrictions on finding a job, and they bring about public security problems.

We always say that people are equal to each other, but in many aspects, such as work and employment, the peasants are dwarfs and are ignored. The book embodies your thinking, but there are no answers.

Jia Pingwa: I write out my own ideas, let everyone pay attention to and think, and my purpose will be achieved. Solving these big problems and phenomena is the government's business.

I know the countryside, farmers and land in the northwest very well. The land feeds us, and the peasants are kind and industrious. The countryside is the most backward place, and the peasants are the poorest people. China's reform began in the countryside, and after the implementation of the land contract responsibility system, earth-shaking changes have taken place in the rural areas. You can feel the exuberant vitality, I wrote "Waxing Moon, New Moon", "Chicken Nest Depression People's Home", "Little Moon Before Ben" and "Impetuous", that is really written with the joy and mood of life.

In the countryside at that time, the peasants' enthusiasm for planting land was very high, their spirit was particularly sufficient, and there was a scene of labor, and all the land that could be planted was planted with grain.

Now the young laborers and young people have gone to the city to work, and the rest of the village are old, weak, sick and disabled, and the land is deserted, full of weeds half a person tall, without a little anger. At present, the problem of eating and surviving is basically solved, it should be said that it is better than before, but it is still nervous to spend money, and there is always idle money in hand.

When some peasants were communalized, their families had more labor, more rations, and the annual work dividends could be saved, when the children went to school cheaply and lived better than they do now. Now people with ability have gone to the city to work and do small businesses, people without ability and no background have stayed in the countryside to cultivate land, and life is very tight, medical expenses, electricity bills, money to buy fertilizer, etc., messy expenses. Those who stay at home to farm are not as good as those who go to the city to work. There is a serious polarization, some are particularly rich and some are particularly poor. Such a status quo is more difficult to write, and people who write badly will say that you are gray and dark, and the tone is not high.

"Remembering the Wolf" is the story of finding man's own nature

Zhang Ying: The structure and writing method of the novel "Remembering the Wolf" is much more concise than that of "Gao Laozhuang", and the content and ideas expressed are still thick. How is it different from "Gao Lao Zhuang"?

Jia Pingwo: Of course there are changes. Since "Waste Capital", I have always wanted to write more pure novels, I hope that there are more metaphysical in novels, but I have not solved them well in creation. I hope "Missing wolf" can get over this hurdle. "Remembering the Wolf" is a more fictional work, but written in a specific, more realistic way and material, purely a retrospective novel, using a lot of realistic materials, many things, characters in reality have archetypes.

Zhang Ying: In "Remembering the Wolf", you wrote many times that people become wolves, wolves become people, can you understand it in this way, the wildness and animality of wolves have always been hidden in everyone's body, and when human reason is dominated by wildness and animalism, people become wolves. This mutual shift is very interesting.

Jia Pingwo: The meaning of what you said is in it. Existing as a life, man is antagonistic, and if the antagonistic contradiction disappears and he wants to live, he must maintain an antagonistic energy in his blood. Man and animal live in the world, and once the animal disappears, man shrinks, and it is not good, only to turn himself into a wolf. In the novel, I give a lot of symbolic and philosophical thinking, as well as criticism of the troubles of real life and the destruction of the natural environment caused by the endless desires of human beings.

Zhang Ying: There are often some magic strokes in novels, such as you turning the car into a wolf in "my" eyes, and the highly symbolic appearance that huang experts have gone crazy due to the failure of giant panda production, which makes this novel hide a deep social significance, which is directly reminiscent of certain social phenomena.

Jia Pingwa: In my creation, I insist on reflecting the true face of the times. Living on Chinese soil, in the face of the reality of the background, writers can not avoid. My position and my worries are in the work.

Zhang Ying: "Remembering the Wolf" and "Gao Laozhuang" have the same theme, you show endless concerns about racial degradation, ecological environment deterioration, and technological development, in the end, you are still a realistic writer.

Jia Pingwa: I do have an idea about this. I wrote about concerns about the ecological deterioration of the natural environment. I have a great respect for ecologists who live in cities and focus on the natural environment far away from them, which is a rare virtue. I critique reality in fiction, but it's not just that, and how to make the work meaningful on more levels is what I want to achieve the most. I don't have a soft spot for fiction that reflects reality in terms of facts, and I want to jump out and look at these issues when I write.

Zhang Ying: "Remembering the Wolf" emphasizes the side effects of the industrialization process, is industrialization wrong?

Jia Pingwa: Literature will be paranoid about some issues in some aspects, such as there are so many harms, we do not engage in science and technology, industrialization, people all over the world will not agree, do not agree with your point of view. If science and technology continue to develop in this way, what will happen in the future, no one thinks about this problem, the writer will be very contradictory, and he plays a role as a prompt in the process of human development, reminding everyone to pay attention to the harm caused by these side effects.

Zhang Ying: Do you believe in evolution? Will technological development and industrialization make our lives better and better?

Jia Pingwa: Any development will bring side effects, after a period of development, it will not be transferred by people's willpower, and even go against the road and go to the opposite side of things. Man evolved from animals, and in the process of development, he constantly defeated animals, and his opponents became fewer and fewer, almost extinct. Comparing the world's billions of people to the number of animals, we come to this conclusion.

The Bible says that God created all things, that all things are God's people, and now there is only one orphan left, and then God says, I don't care about you.

Zhang Ying: Will people evolve better and better?

Jia Pingwo: People will become more and more ugly, and become less and less human. I am terrified of the destruction of the environment by modern technology, chemical and biochemical pollution, the danger of high-tech weapons, the genetic changes of human races, and the development of cloning technology.

Zhang Ying: You have undergone very big changes in your creative thinking, your novels have become more and more simple, the fascination with technique, structure and language in the early years is now invisible, the vanity of writers is becoming less and less, but the richness, polysolique and symbolism in the novels make it more and more difficult for critics to comment.

Jia Pingwa: After I wrote "Waste Capital", many critics always like to ask which plot is a metaphor for what, which person represents what, saying that it is difficult to comment on my novels as before. The story of "Remembering the Wolf" is very simple, it tells the story of what happens between man and wolf. This theme determines that it is a very simple story.

Zhang Ying: You pursue simple expressions, and the more you write the novel, the more honest you are, is this related to age?

Jia Pingwa: I don't pay attention to external beauty, those are not important. I realized what I felt about how I was comfortable with how I wrote, and that was it.

Zhang Ying: "Remembering the Wolf" is not long, it is very painful to write, does the difficulty refer to the process of data collection or writing?

Jia Pingwa: I didn't do much data collection, and when I wrote about Panda, my friend provided some information. I heard many stories about wolves when I was a child, such as wolves taking away whose children and whose chickens were eaten by wolves. My mother lives with me now, and she has told me a lot about her experiences. Her whole life was associated with wolves, and I finished my novel, and she told me a few stories about wolves, and I said why don't you tell them earlier, the novels are all finished.

Zhang Ying: "Remembering the Wolf" is better than "Gao Laozhuang", and is very honest in the way of telling the story, "Gao Laozhuang" has a lot of dirty and unclean pictures in order to pursue the original ecology, and "Remembering the Wolf" is particularly clean, restoring the poetic feelings in previous works.

Jia Pingwa: The subject matter determines what kind of materials and writing methods to use. The scenery depiction in "Remembering the Wolf" uses symbolic techniques, not realistic techniques, in order to set off the theme, deliberately exaggerated a lot of places, intentionally pursuing an extreme, to achieve my ideal artistic effect. This is a novel with more symbolic levels, and the scenes, characters, environment, and details must meet the requirements.

Zhang Ying: Many years ago, your group of writers was called the "Root-Seeking School", and your works were called "Root-Seeking Literature". Your real roots begin with your creations in recent years. You are looking for the roots of our nation, thinking about the consciousness of survival, the consciousness of life, and other issues, in the final analysis, people's search for their own spirit. "Remembering the Wolf" is not so much a story of a wolf as a story of finding one's own nature.

Jia Pingwa: Your point of view is more accurate, and Mo Yan writes more male.

"Qin Cavity" is a monument I dedicate to my hometown

Zhang Ying: After the publication and publication of "Qin Cavity", the response in the literary circles was very good. Do you have such expectations?

Jia Pingwo: No, this is not something I can manage. When the work is written, some people say that it is good or bad, and the same as "Waste Capital", how to evaluate it is said by others, I have completed a thing anyway.

Zhang Ying: Why is it named after "Qin Cavity"?

Jia Pingwa: The Qin cavity has a symbolic meaning in this book, writing "Qin people's cavity" (that is, "Shaanxi sound"). The meaning of Qin Lu in the novel goes beyond the opera itself, and the people of Qingfeng Street love it so much, it still fatalistically declines, which is the living environment of some people and the changes in the depths of their lives and souls. In such an era, what do we need in our souls other than material needs and spiritual needs?

Zhang Ying: Do you like to listen to Qin Lu?

Jia Pingwo: Love to listen. Outsiders listened to Qin, as if it were a roar. Qin Lu is very passionate and gentle, and it shows a kind of tragedy and desolation.

I have a lot of friends in Xi'an who sing Qin dialect, and the southern operas such as the Huangmei opera flower drum opera, it is not unsatisfied, it is not energetic. These dramas in the south are like decorations like the embellishments of life, in order to make people more comfortable, and the Qin cavity is to express the inner emotions.

Depressed or happy, I hummed two sentences of Qin Cavity. In the countryside, people older than me can sing Qin opera, some people have not read books, and when they talk about the past history, he knows that he did not learn from books, he heard from Qin opera. Now farmers like to watch TV, at that time they like to watch drama, as soon as a troupe comes, they all love to watch, crowds of people.

Children watch the play, not only to see the play, but also to gather, playing on the edge of the stage all day. I managed to get on the stage, was driven down, climbed up the tree again, climbed to the wheatgrass pile. Which village plays a play, in the afternoon began to occupy the place, call relatives and friends to come to the play, see the actor, see the actor early, feel extremely happy.

Zhang Ying: Why is it said that "Qin Cavity" is a monument dedicated to my hometown?

Jia Pingwa: From a writing point of view, the novels I write are all related to rural life, related to the current reality, and cannot be cut off; from a large point of view, Shangluo is my hometown; from a small place, Dihua Town is my birthplace, and in the novel I often write about the lives and destinies of people in the land of Shangluo, and rarely write about the hometown of Dihua Town. Life in Dihua Town gives me a particularly deep memory of life.

I live in the city, but I have no relationship with my hometown and the countryside. When I go to the countryside to collect wind and experience life, I will run back to my hometown. I am from a peasant background, and I am also familiar with the changes in Dihua Town, and in the state of mind of contradiction and pain, in the face of the changes of the villagers in reality, I often do not know whether to praise, rejoice, curse or regret.

"Qin Cavity" represents the writer's views on social issues and practical issues, on the current situation in China, expresses his feelings and experiences, leaves some imprints on the times, and gives a monument to the fathers and fellow villagers of his hometown of Dihua Town and Dihua Town. Whether it can be a good tree or not, whether it is recognized or not depends on the reader.

Zhang Ying: At that time, there was a legend that you stopped writing novels.

Jia Pingwa: "Qin Cavity" was written for one year and nine months, the first draft was written, unsatisfied, overturned and rewritten, so repeated twice, modified on the basis of the third draft, forming the fourth draft. I don't know a computer, it's a traditional handwriting, the whole book is 500,000 words, and I copied it three times, which is equivalent to writing 1.5 million words. When publishers came to pick up manuscripts, I said that I would probably rarely write long stories in the future.

Zhang Ying: When you talk about "Qin Cavity", your feelings for the countryside, farmers and land are particularly deep.

Jia Pingwa: There are no mineral deposits in my hometown, no industry, and the limited land has not increased after its potential has been exhausted to the extreme. The peasants could no longer hold on to the land, and they fled from the land step by step.

The old street people I am familiar with have moved to the side of the national highway in these years, and there is no strong labor force in the villages and towns... Is this old street going to disappear soon? Is the land going to disappear? Will the countryside disappear? Are acquaintances I know going to disappear? What if it doesn't disappear?

The peasants' departure from the land is a relief for the younger generation, but it is helpless. Many things are clear and relaxed in theory, the reality is heavy and desolate, and the year is good and the month is good and the life is sad. Every major social transformation is related to the fate of mankind, which makes writers have something to write, but many times we are difficult to grasp, more confused, contradictions.

Zhang Ying: This novel is very similar in language to "Tumen", "Gao Laozhuang", and "Remembering the Wolf", but it is very different in spirit, and it is difficult for readers to enter.

Jia Pingwa: The changes are inseparable from its origins, and it is absolutely different from previous works from the narrative point of view and text. "Qin Cavity" is written about a bunch of chickens and dogs, is a restoration of the original ecological work of rural real life, canceling some of the narrative elements usually needed for long novels, this way of writing, writers have to take a certain risk. I dare not say that this is a new kind of text, this kind of grammar I have been experimenting with, "Gao Laozhuang" is like this, "Qin Cavity" is more extreme. In this way, the difficulty of writing has increased, and it is necessary to be familiar with the life written, the details should be real and vivid, the rhythm should be controllable, and it must be easy to read. If you don't get it right, it's a pile of boneless flesh; if you do it well, it can restore life more realistically, so that the work fades away from glitz and fabrication.

Zhang Ying: "Qin Cavity" abandons the story and uses a lot of details, dialogue and scenes to promote the development of the plot, many people complain that there is no pleasure in reading this novel, are you rejecting the reader? Wouldn't it be better for more people to understand you, understand your work, and understand your thinking?

Jia Pingwa: What I am most proud of in the process of writing is "Qin Cavity". I am generally not influenced by others in my writing. It is terrible for a writer to have no reader, and there are such novels and there are such novels, and the readers are difficult to reconcile, and to adapt to the readers, they must also transform the readers. I've always had a lot of readers. How to better combine my own pursuit with the reader's requirements in writing requires me to work hard and experiment again.

As a writer, he wants a lot of people to read works, the more the better, but you can't expect anyone to be a confidant.

Zhang Ying: In the novel, "Qin Cavity" means the real earth, and also represents the situation as an art in today's situation, its tone appears from time to time, and finally, "Qin Cavity" becomes a unique sound like a peasant leaving the land, which is sad.

Jia Pingwa: When I wrote it, I wanted to make this novel more ambiguous, and the fate of Qin Lu was the same as the fate of the land and the fate of the peasants.

Chinese opera, including Peking Opera, is not so hot anymore. Qin Lu was very popular in the 1930s and 40s, 1950s and 1960s, or in the late Qing Dynasty, and the actors were more sought after by the audience than the current singers and movie stars, and now there is no actor who has as many supporters as the singers and movie stars. Now is not the era of opera, helplessly watching it decay. The Qingfeng Street depicted in "Qin Cavity" was like a paradise in the early days of agricultural society, and eventually it was going to disintegrate, and it fell like Qin Cavity, leaving only helpless and sentimental memories.

Zhang Ying: Your novel completely bids farewell to sex and focuses on the spirit. In "Report on the Illness", Hu Fang and Jiang Lan are completely spiritually in love, and when they finally have a chance, they are physically powerless; in "Qin Cavity", Yingsheng becomes a castration at the beginning, and his love for Bai Xue is pinned on the spirit. Is this written in order to avoid criticism of sexual depictions like "Wasteland", or is it a rebellion against past writing?

Jia Pingwo: This is not intentional. He is different from ordinary farmers and has many fantasies, which pins on some of the writer's ideas, cognition, and understanding of love. I used all my feelings about love to him, like a crush on unrequited love. In today's day, it is too easy for a man to solve sexual problems, sexual flooding, and spiritual love is less. At this time, if there is still a person who has lived in a crush all his life, in a spiritual love, this is more interesting. I am very proud to write about the introduction, this person is different, his ideas are interesting, and there is a kind of pleasure when writing.

Zhang Ying: After "Gao Laozhuang", including "Qin Cavity", your novels have become more and more complex and difficult to understand, which is in stark contrast to your previous works. Why do you insist on writing this way? You are worried about the lack of seriousness of readers in this era, why not write the novel directly and clearly, so that people can understand it at a glance?

Jia Pingwo: I am very well-versed, literally, formally, and quite traditional. I feel more and more complicated, maybe I write more meaning, more dimensional. In addition, many readers are now unfamiliar with rural life, and the local discourse is a little more.

I have absorbed and borrowed from Western modern literature in the realm of pursuing works, and in form, I must write a national style, try to be realistic as possible under the metaphysics, and try to be virtual as possible in the metaphysical, so that the spirit can rise. Only when the metaphysical is written solidly can the metaphysical rise. For this pursuit I took the approach of writing less story and less plot.

Some people say that they can't read it, he didn't calm down to read, and now the reader hopes to finish a book soon, which is not correct. Writers cannot meet this social reading psychology and needs. Only care about the plot and story, easy to read, turn fast, after reading and feel bored, scold the author for writing badly, no depth.

Zhang Ying: Hometown and land are the themes of your novels. Literary works are accustomed to regarding the countryside as a "poetic hometown" and the last "taoyuan", will you write about this?

Jia Pingwa: My novels with rural themes are not doing "Taoyuan Dreams". Where is the "Taoyuan" now? China is a big agricultural country, with the advancement of the times, the countryside will certainly be urbanized, most countries take this road, the peasants are particularly small, the number of urban people.

Urbanization has led to the transformation of people into the same person. I have traveled to many places over the years, whether it is Shaanxi or Zhejiang or Jiangsu, it has become a sample, a life is a sample, the house I live in is a sample, and many characteristics have disappeared. From the perspective of spiritual life, the same is the entertainment of farmers is to watch television, young people like the same, with the process of urbanization, slowly the traditional culture of various places is gone.

I pay attention to the farmers, record the changes in their lives, and write about their living conditions, which is a necessity for my life and something I can do. I may not write novels in this regard for a long time, "Qin Cavity" has consumed my accumulation of life and feelings in the countryside, and even if I write it again, I can't write it well.

Zhang Ying: Critics believe that "Qin Cavity" has reached another artistic peak in writing. Very few writers who wrote with you have been able to persist until now. How do you stay innovative and ahead of the curve?

Jia Pingwo: It's quite difficult to do that. The elimination rate in the literary world is very frightening, and only by constantly changing can it stand up. I keep learning and breaking through.

I envy the young writers now, with a high level of education, a good knowledge structure, a solid foundation, and a particularly high shot. I am a stupid person, there is a journal "Mass Literature and Art", mainly publish revolutionary stories, I started from writing revolutionary stories, because the starting point is low, I have been working hard, relying on diligence and persistence, while studying and writing. Each work must be taken seriously, not repeated, and the distance between one work and another work must be pulled away.

In order to write this novel of migrant workers, I thought about it for a long time, and then put it down, how to write the most appropriate way, what kind of structure, cutting angle, and which kind of person to use, changed several times, and then encountered a lot of difficulties, headaches. Always want to change, try again, toss and turn. When I was young, I wanted to write as soon as the inspiration came, but now I don't want to write without much meaning or freshness.

"Qin Cavity" writes that peasants leave the land

"Happy" writes about migrant workers going to the city

Zhang Ying: "Qin Cavity" writes about the process of "abandoning the countryside" and the peasants leaving the land; "Happy" writes about migrant workers and peasants' wandering life in the city. Is there a continuing relationship between "Happy" and "Qin Cavity"?

Jia Pingwa: "Happy" can be said to be another part of "Qin Cavity".

"Abandoned Capital" and "White Night" write about people who have drifted from the countryside to the city to work; "Tumen" is written at the junction of cities and rural areas; "Qin Cavity" writes about the process of people slowly leaving the countryside; "Happy" writes about the experiences of peasants leaving the land and going to the city to work.

The idea of writing "Happy" was earlier than that of "Qin Cavity", and when I wrote "Qin Cavity", I was prepared to accumulate the creative materials of migrant workers. This process lasted for a long time, when I didn't think about how to write, and then solved the problem of how to write. I want to show the living conditions and contradictions and confusion of migrant workers today.

Zhang Ying: How do you understand their lives?

Jia Pingwa: There were many peasants in their hometown who went to the city, and some of those township entrepreneurs went bankrupt and some lived in Xi'an, and they never went back. More peasants came to work, pick up scraps, send coal, do the most tired and dirty work in the city, the people in the city looked down on them, they worked for a year, the Spring Festival went back, and the Spring Festival came again. Those who don't come back are crippled and sick at work.

Among these people were my relatives, my clan, my classmates in primary and secondary schools, and I went to the rented accommodation of many people who picked up the rags, ate there, chatted, and did some things for them. Ninety-nine percent of them are not well mixed, and they will have to return to the countryside in the future.

There was a primary school classmate who grew up with me, begging for a living in Xi'an, transporting coal and selling coal, living a general life, he was more optimistic, very talkative, very interesting. I got a lot of inspiration from him. There are a few people who are more familiar with them, understand their lives in the city, and record many of their experiences and encounters in the city, and I have a bottom in my heart.

Zhang Ying: You once said, "I can't imagine what it means for farmers to leave the land and enter the city in the future?" "When you decided to write about migrant workers, did you think clearly about this question?"

Jia Pingwa: What will I do next? I hope that their conditions will improve in the cities, and that the "new rural construction" will develop better. In the past, there were many people and little land, there was no way out in the countryside, and farming was so hard, but you could only be a farmer, locked you there for a lifetime, and you couldn't leave the land. Food stamps are needed to go out to eat, hotels are not allowed to stay without letters of introduction, you can't find a job, and when beggars have someone to send you back. Now you can leave the land, you can go to the city to work, even if it is better to pick up the rags and pull the tricycle to wash the dishes than to farm the land. The city does not welcome peasants, there is no hukou and no house, children cannot go to school, marriage, college entrance and have to return to the countryside...

I want everyone to pay attention to and think about their encounters after reading the works. I feel that people are powerless in the change of the big times. I didn't have the ability to help them, and I couldn't think of a solution, so I could only write out what I saw, thought, and confused.

Zhang Ying: Migrant workers have been in the city for many years, they make a living in the city, live in the worst houses, their children are born in the city, they are educated in migrant schools, their hukou is in the countryside, they cannot return to the countryside, they will not cultivate land, they can only engage in the dirtiest, most tiring and most arduous work like their parents. Are you optimistic about the future of this group?

Jia Pingwa: Not optimistic, what should people do after they leave the land? The family is living in the city, there is no urban hukou, the children can not go to school normally, can only do some manual work, do some small business, although the family has a house, there is land, but for many years do not go back.

The individual is too small to go with the flow. The peasants in Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang have a better life, but the peasants in the northwest region have a more difficult life, and they cannot get rich by planting land, go to the city to work, do the most tiring and arduous work, and it is impossible to get rich.

Peasants go to the city to work, part of it is forced by life, want to earn more money, pay tuition fees for children, go home to build a house, marry a daughter-in-law; part is restless, did not go to college to go to the city, wandering away, wandering and unwilling to go back. Those who have the ability to stay in the city to settle down and buy a house, and those who have no patience to earn some money to go home and farm.

It is estimated that no one has figured this out, including the people who make the policy. Whoever can solve the peasant problem is a great man of history.

Zhang Ying: All the characters in "Happy" have archetypes, and all the character experiences and details have happened in real life. "Happy" is a simple work, easier to read than "Qin Cavity", and the gap between the two works is very large.

Jia Pingwa: "Happy" has fewer characters and a simple story; "Qin Cavity" does not have as many story characters.

Zhang Ying: What is the current status of the character archetype of the protagonist Liu Gaoxing in "Happy"?

Jia Pingwo: He's not picking up the rags anymore, he's selling coal. His real name is Liu Shuzhen, and his family has a good relationship with my family. When I was a child, we used to play together, and we were classmates, and after graduating from middle school, I went back to the countryside to work, and he joined the army. I stayed in Xi'an after studying for college, and he returned to his hometown after being demobilized from the army.

The prototype of the "Shuzheng" character in "Qin Cavity" is Shuzhen, who came to Xi'an to work, came to my house to chat with me, and I learned that he ran to the city where his son entered, first collected the rags, and then sold coal to the coal factory with his son, and his wife later came to Xi'an, and the family settled in the city.

Zhang Ying: How much influence did he have on this novel?

Jia Pingwa: If he wasn't picking up the pieces, I wouldn't have paid attention to the industry or written this novel. I live in Xi'an, and I often see people picking up rags, selling them old books, magazines, and newspapers, but I don't know much about their lives. Listening to the stories he told, I wanted to write about their fates and experiences.

Zhang Ying: When you write a real person into a novel, what is it that attracts you? Did a reporter interview him have an impact on his fate?

Jia Pingwa: His personality, his mental state attracted me. After he entered the city, he changed his name to Liu Gaoxing, who was naturally optimistic and spoke humorously and funny, from childhood to adulthood. My intellectual friends who saw him enjoyed chatting with him.

He had no phone and could only find him through another person. I wrote novels based on him, and he also wrote articles for me, writing about our experiences as teenagers, although they were journals, but the writing was vivid.

After "Happy" was published and published, some TV and newspaper reporters interviewed him, he was still selling coal, his wife worked as a nanny after entering the city, people thought she ate too much, and was dismissed.

Zhang Ying: In addition to your classmates, who else did you interview?

Jia Pingwa: It is not enough to understand a person's experience. Friend Sun Jianxi, he and I are the same village, also From Shangzhou, he has a relative in Xi'an to pick up rags, we went to the villages in the southern suburbs of Xi'an to find him, did not find, contacted many people who picked up rags, saw where they lived, their daily life status. We went to see Sun Mixi's relatives again and learned a lot of things. He was beaten up at the construction site and cheated of 300 yuan, and these two details I used on Wufu.

I went to see them as a fellow countryman, not an interview. I didn't bring a pen or a notebook, I brought cigarettes, went into their house, sat on their beds, and listened to their stories. When they are thirsty, they take their bowls and drink water, and when it is time to eat, they take their boiled porridge and eat them. Also helped them out with difficulties. In this way, they can gain their trust, and they can tell you what they are talking about.

It's lonely to pick up scraps in the city, and it's especially lively when you get back to your place. Everyone gathered together, talking and laughing, singing and dancing, talking and scolding, the joy was incomparable, and the taste of life was particularly strong.

They are very willing to talk, and you must respect them so that they can communicate with you.

Zhang Ying: With such solid interviews and materials, why is it so difficult to write a novel?

Jia Pingwa: I didn't think about how to grasp the emotions and attitudes of the novel. The experience of these people who pick up the pieces of in the city of discrimination and bullying makes people feel very depressed and painful. If I hadn't gone to college, would I have left the land to work in the city to pick up the mess like them? Being bullied and discriminated against like them?

I will involuntarily bring their dissatisfaction and hatred for the city to the work, their dissatisfaction with the huge gap between urban and rural areas, complaining about the world, with this emotional color, has been writing 100,000 words, because there are too many prejudices, which will lead to a clear view of the essence of the times, so they will completely burn the manuscript and write it again.

Often unable to write, I went deep into the group of people who picked up the pieces, chatted with them, and talked about the world. In terms of writing, I want to distance myself from "Qin Cavity", and I repeatedly changed and overturned several times in terms of character shaping and narrative structure, until the fourth draft was basically formed. The novel was short of words, but I wrote very slowly.

Zhang Ying: In the novel, you wrote: The fiercest bullying of migrant workers is migrant workers, which is very surprising.

Jia Pingwa: There are too many people going to the city, there are not many jobs that are suitable for themselves to earn money, and everyone has to work hard for survival. I talked to my fellow villagers, and none of the people who bullied them were urban people, and urban people ignored them. Peers bully each other for the sake of profit. Like abroad, when I went abroad, overseas Chinese told me that there are very few foreigners who bully Chinese abroad, and they all go out Chinese bully Chinese. Foreigners don't have you in their hearts, or look down on you and don't deal with you.

Zhang Ying: The "Liu Gaoxing" in the novel is a peasant who only existed in the new century, which is more heterogeneous; the five riches and yellow skins are more traditional, which is more in line with the image of migrant workers in reality.

Jia Pingwa: Now young farmers are all cultured. Many people did not go to college and could not farm before they went to the city to work. They went to the city for a few years, and you couldn't tell whether they were rural or urban in terms of what they were dressed and talked about.

Liu was happy that these people were a generation of peasants with cultural knowledge and restlessness. They yearn for the city, do not want to go back to the countryside, want to stay in the city, settle down, and their views on the city are completely different from the peasants in the past.

Wufu and Yellow Peel are traditional old-fashioned farmers. They are engaged in the work of picking up rags, which does not require knowledge and technology, and at first glance they know that they are from the countryside, and this is how everyone knows and understands the peasants.

Liu Gaoxing told me that he was a leaping soil, of course he was not a leaping earth, the leaping soil is the image of the peasants in the twenties and thirties, Liu Gaoxing is the image of the peasants since the new period, and there is a difference between the current peasants and the peasants of the leaping soil. Now when it comes to the image of the new peasants, we often talk about some people who have made a fortune and those who have led everyone to get rich, this is the image of the new peasants, and more often, it should be people like Liu Gaoxing.

Zhang Ying: The "Liu Xing" in the novel seems to be very happy and optimistic, but he is not happy and miserable. He sighed, "You love the city, the city doesn't love you." "The results and the reality are sad.

Jia Pingwa: My classmate's life is particularly difficult, but you can't see that he is a person with exaggerated talk, a river of words, and a particularly good mentality. He farms in the countryside, his strength is not enough, but his brain is flexible, his mouth can speak, he makes friends, and he has a good mentality.

Liu Xingxing's pain lies in the low social status of Chinese peasants, living in poverty, and being discriminated against. He saw very clearly all kinds of deficiencies, defects, and backwardness in the five riches, yellow skins, and others, and was not accustomed to their destruction, selfishness, and fierce use of force. He also has these problems, he can introspect himself.

He was not willing to live like this, yearning for the life of urban people, such as his yearning for women in the city, his cleanliness habits, hoping to have a Xi'an hukou, a good job and his own house, he struggled; but he also knew very clearly that his idea was just a dream, the most basic conditions of survival could not be guaranteed, he was a little self-deprecating, like Don Quixote.

Liu's happy love is destined to be desperate, but he is still desperate to pounce on it, he loves a woman with all his heart, gives everything for her, and even sacrifices himself. Van Gogh lived in poverty, and an old prostitute liked him, so he cut off his ear and gave it to the old prostitute.

At the beginning of the novel, Liu Xingxing sold his kidney to the city, he thought it was sold to Veda, he regarded Veda as a brother, a friend, a part of his own body, and finally he knew that Veda did not change the kidney, but the liver, he was very disappointed. This meant his relationship with the city, and he could not fully integrate into the city. The fate of the peasants is this fate, and the fate of Liu Xingxing is this fate, and there is not much that can be changed.

Zhang Ying: In the novel, Huang Ba said: "Why is there a distinction between poor and rich in this world, and why is there still a city and a countryside in the country with a south and a north?" "His idea is real and thought-provoking.

Jia Pingwa: These people are in a very difficult situation in the city, their living conditions are very difficult, they are afraid of getting sick, they are not cured of illness, they eat steamed bread, porridge, pickles, and their lives are very hard. When I met them, they scolded the city so much...

Huang Ba's words represent the attitude of some people towards the city, which is dissatisfaction with the huge difference between urban and rural areas. People are born equal, but life is very different in the countryside and the city, and the starting point is different. They went to the city to work, and the people in the city didn't like them, and they couldn't do without them.

Zhang Ying: Every year, scholars make suggestions to provide some minimum services for the floating population in the city, such as children's education, employment guidance and skills training. Many places already have special apartments for floating populations, free residence permits, and handbooks for migrant workers to facilitate their integration into the city. They found that the cost of these services was worth it, much lower than the cost of policing.

Jia Pingwa: If we can help them solve the minimum survival problems of employment and children's schooling, and pay more attention to them, the security situation in the city will be much better.

Zhang Ying: As a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, have you submitted a proposal to solve their problems and difficulties?

Jia Pingwa: I also appealed for them at the meeting, signed some proposals, and the state is also issuing policies to solve the problem of migrant workers' arrears of wages, children's schooling, and hukou problems. It's a long process, and the trend is getting better and better. How well it's done is another matter. At least this problem is aware.

Zhang Ying: You have been abroad many times, will the situation abroad be better?

Jia Pingwo: I don't understand the situation abroad. In this part of the northwest, the peasants have no knowledge and no technology, and after these farmers in my hometown enter the city, they first pick up the rags and then find opportunities to do other things.

Zhang Ying: With the process of urbanization and industrialization in the mainland, the trend of farmers going to the city to work will continue for a long time.

Jia Pingwa: The country is so big and the rural population is so large, it may be necessary to sacrifice the interests of one or two generations of peasants.

For The five riches, yellow skins, and apricot beards, they can only beg for a living in the city. When it is time to harvest the crops, it is not cost-effective to go back, and it is better for the crops to rot in the field. Where the way out is, I don't know.

To write about Qinling is to write about China

Zhang Ying: The novels you publish are basically two words: "Qin Cavity", "Ancient Furnace", "Polar Flower", "Yamamoto", "Happy", and "With Lights". Is there anything special about naming?

Jia Pingwa: There are also three words, there are also four words, generally two words, I like the title of the book with two words, it is a hobby.

"Yamamoto" was originally called "Qin Lingzhi", and later felt that it and "Qin Cavity" were all "Qin" characters at the beginning, which was easy to confuse people, so they decided to change the name. Why mention "Yamamoto"? Naming a book is the same as naming someone, naming a person has a special, like giving a child an accent, the last word, the upper and lower lips touch open, that is an accent. Avoid the last word of the name with a clumsy accent, clenched teeth or pouting, which is not good for children.

Why do you have an accent? The child is born, no matter which ethnic group, Chinese, foreign, the child's first call to the mother is an accent, directly related to blood, father, mother, father, are all open accents, lips open as soon as they touch. Grandpa, grandma, aunt, uncle, aunt, there are also some blood relations, but they all become clumsy accents.

At that time, I considered calling it Yamaji, Yamaji, and Yamashi, all of which were clumsy accents, and later simply used "Yamamoto", and "Ben" was opened. "Yamamoto" has never been used, since the book is called a book, there are ledgers, textbooks, picture books, why can't it be called Yamamoto? That's the name.

Once a book is written, it has its life, it has its destiny, some books have a good fate, some books have a bad fate, and the fate of "Waste Capital" is not good, and it will be republished more than ten years later. Some books go far, and it's good.

Zhang Ying: "Yamamoto" and "Qin Cavity" are the two largest novels in your weather, one virtual and one real. How did the novel "Yamamoto" come about?

Jia Pingwo: The Qinling Mountains span three provinces, Gansu, Shaanxi and Henan, and the main part of the mountain is in Shaanxi. In the past, I wrote the story of Shang Luo and the story of my hometown, and I also wrote about Qinling, but I didn't say it directly. Qin Ling expanded his hometown and expanded the scope of his writing.

I first wanted to write about the animals and plants on the Qinling Mountains. In the process of writing, I learned that the people and stories of the turbulent period in the 1920s and 1930s mainly came from folk circulation, and then collected a large number of historical materials, which I thought was very interesting, and my interest shifted, I wrote history, combed through the history of the twenties and thirties, and showed the complexity of human nature in that period of history.

Zhang Ying: It seems to be writing about a mountain, or writing about China.

Jia Pingwo: To write about the history of Qinling is to write about the whole of China. There is an inscription in front of the novel, Qinling is the dragon vein of China, it can best represent China, it carries the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, dominates the south and the north, this is based on the Qinling Mountains as the center.

It turned out that everyone commented on Qinling, all in terms of a mountain, or standing in Beijing, looking at Qinling in the capital. When I wrote "Yamamoto" this time, I said in my heart: I want to write a story of the 20s and 30s, with Qinling as the center. After taking the Qinling Mountains as the center, it can be said that it dominates the south and the north, and brings up the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.

"Yamamoto" wrote about the relationship between Lu Ju and Jing Zongxiu, writing about the war and chaos in the 20s and 30s, when the warlords were divided, the people did not have a good life, who had guns, who had the final say, at that time there were national government troops, there were guerrillas, there were bandits, there were bandits, there were all kinds of bandits in the bandits, from the legendary story is a chaotic world, the heroes said in the legend are all reckless heroes, the more heroes, the more the people suffer.

Zhang Ying: Lu Ju and Jing Zongxiu, their love is a typical classical love, a lifetime of "out of love, stop at reason", platonic love totem, has become the spiritual pillar and faith of the two people.

Jia Pingwo: It is more in line with the traditional concept of sexual love in rural China. If this book is all fights and kills, it is too cruel and too boring.

I said in the afterword that the book is full of gunshots and dead people, but instead of writing about the war, in this context I write about two people, one is Jing Zongxiu and the other is Lu Juren, these two people I write the most carefully, in addition to fighting, I carefully write about the relationship between the two of them.

Many people say that the two have no physical contact, is it too romantic or too idealistic? At that time, the women of the good family paid great attention to the issue of chastity, either guarding themselves like jade or being debauched prostitutes.

Lu Juren's husband and Jing Zongxiu are small and grow up together, and she has been a child bride since she was a child, and she has also grown up together. Lu Juren admires Jing Zongxiu, and her husband is not angry, they care for each other, support each other, is the spiritual sustenance.

In the end, the two people turned their backs on each other, and Lu Juren saw that Jing Zongxiu's path was different from what she imagined, and became someone she did not like. Lu Juren was disappointed in Jing Zongxiu. A vain thought inspired the ambition of this man and woman to think of a big thing.

Jing Zongxiu's troops were all dressed in black and black flags, and the Qin Dynasty soldiers were all black, black clothes, black pants, black turbans, and black flags. All those armed with black clothes and black flags came and whistled away. I also instilled this kind of thinking, and the armed force of Jing Zongxiu soon arose, just like a rainstorm in the summer, and the uproar came and passed.

The relationship between two people produced in this environment, you say, is love? It is also love, love has a variety of ways, physical contact is a kind, do not touch the body, spiritual sustenance is also a kind. I admire Lu Juren more as a woman.

Zhang Ying: The role setting of Ma County Governor in "Yamamoto" is very interesting, he has been writing a book about Qinling, is his role in the novel equivalent to that of the writer Jia Pingwa? You originally wanted to write about the mountains, water, plants, grasses, birds and beasts of the Qinling Mountains. This wish becomes the outer structure of a novel.

Jia Pingwa: Many of the feelings of Mayor Ma are my feelings and thoughts. The governor of Ma County is very helpless, an intellectual will not be an official in the official field, has no background, has no future, but also insists on himself, and lives very stubbornly.

Intellectuals have no direct role in the turning point of history, and no matter how many ideas and methods they have in their hearts, they can understand things again, but they are empty-handed, relying on one mouth, there is no way, and they are helpless.

The works are all about themselves, about all aspects of themselves. "Journey to the West" only writes about wu Cheng'en's emotions alone, he scattered all aspects of human nature, scattered a person, part of the Tang monk has a compassionate heart, part of Sun Wukong dares to fight and dare to make trouble, part of the eight precepts of the pig, part of the sand monk hard-working, the eight precepts of the pig lazy, hungry, greedy, the scattered aspects of human nature.

There are so many characters in "Yamamoto" who are writing about myself, writing about a certain aspect of myself. There is such a saying, if parents hate their children for having so many problems, they are actually hating themselves, and their children are part of themselves. A good friend has passed away, a loved one has died, and what you have lost is a part of you. Give all aspects of yourself to each person.

Zhang Ying: The perspective of the novel is unique, the author is like a Buddha, looking down on "Yamamoto" in the sky, no matter what the power background, all are level, all beings are equal, full of compassion and compassion. At the end of the novel, it is written that no matter how the world is turned upside down, relative to time and nature, people are like ants, the emperor will be phased, the wenchen martial general will appear on the stage, and after the legend has finished the actor's curtain, there is only the bright moon breeze and the silent mountain.

Jia Pingwa: There are many death scenes in "Yamamoto", and the deaths are particularly simple, some of them die on the road, or they suddenly die. In real life, this is often the case, no one dies violently, dies by chance, and dies meaninglessly.

So many people have died, all kinds of ways to die, I feel very embarrassed, very frightened. Why write it out? To write in this way is to curse that era, to expose that era, people are too worthless, to live a valuable, orderly, or peaceful and prosperous world.

Zhang Ying: There is a paragraph in the afterword of "Yamamoto" that says, "I am facing a period of history in the 20s and 30s of Qinling, and that history is not facing me?" From which piece of history should Yamamoto turn out another? What does the other piece of history refer to?

Jia Pingwa: Faced with this period of history in the 1920s and 1930s, how to transform it into literary works? All books that record history are not only about some things in history, they are all making a judgment on history, presenting their own ideas, their own ideas, through history.

History is history, literature is literature, and when history slowly becomes a legend, this is the process of literarization. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin", "Fengshen Yanyi", classical novels are all talking about China's past history, the storyteller keeps talking, you talk about some, I will talk about it when it is my turn, everyone adds some of his feelings when speaking, after alienation, and finally another person gathers it into a novel.

That's how many legends are born. How historical materials become literary works, there is a choice for me, how I look at this history, how to say it through my words. The famous landscape painter Ni Yunlin said that in the face of how landscapes become paintings, it is the presentation of my heart after I met landscapes by chance. Literary theory talks about creation, and novels are all created, and unlike the original history, they are sublimated, and they occur after my psychological action.

Hometown Shangzhou and the world of literature

Zhang Ying: The writer's hometown and growth experience are a valuable asset to creation.

Jia Pingwa: Shangzhou is my hometown, and it is also my novel world. Why do I write about Shangzhou repeatedly? This place can perceive the rise and fall of our nation from another perspective, and I feel that I am also participating in the new changes after the nation has gone through various tribulations.

I try to express the reality of contemporary Chinese society, under high-level cultural examination, summarize the mood of the times in contemporary Chinese society, and try to write the sorrow and belief of historical pain. I hope that people will realize the meaning of that land, and try to direct this meaning to a deeper awakening and understanding of history, tradition, and reality of national life, and of various ways of life and the content of social humanity.

Zhang Ying: Like "Impetuous", "Waste Capital", "White Night", "Tumen" and "Gao Laozhuang", these novels are very full and meticulous in both form and content details, using addition; and in "Missing the Wolf", you are using subtraction, a lot of interesting things are point to point, and the space for association is greater. Have you found a solution to present the grand and heavy theme in a more relaxed form?

Jia Pingwa: How to write a novel, one is to look at the requirements of the subject matter, and the other is how to look at things and how it is expressed. Some novels need to be added, especially full, such as "Gao Laozhuang", a total of ten days of writing things, but the burden is very much, I stuffed a lot of other things in the work. Some use subtraction, which is written very simply, but more symbolically, such as "Remembering the Wolf". I use two methods to deal with it, naturally much easier. The original novel, the imagery is very much, are relatively partial, used bluntly, in the "Gao Laozhuang" symposium, some critics put forward this problem, I thought of a solution at that time: to write symbols directly with the plot, the plot can not be written very complex, with very bright and simple details to write, from the whole to express the symbol.

Zhang Ying: In "Waste Capital" and "White Night", you write about the pain and degeneration process of the soul of urban culture people, "Tumen" writes about the pain in the gap between life between the city and the countryside, "Gao Laozhuang" writes about the conflict between urban civilization and rural civilization, and "Remembering the Wolf" reflects the embarrassing situation between people, animals and the environment. Step by step, you have retreated back to your hometown, does this mean that you have adopted a wise way of writing about the failure of the city?

Jia Pingwo: When I wrote "Gao Laozhuang", I had already returned to Shangzhou, and "Missing the Wolf" was just a continuation of this pursuit. My current writing about Shangzhou is completely different from the previous shangzhou, and the angle and position of my observation have changed very much: before I looked at Shangzhou through my own works, now I write Shangzhou, I see myself through Shangzhou, and through my own works, I understand the image world I have created. It is no longer the real-life Shangzhou.

I don't know as much about urban life as I do about rural life. The city I describe, Xi'an, is also a big city in China, it is different from Beijing and Shanghai, it is closer to the countryside, and most of the urban people I am familiar with are from the countryside. Writing about the countryside, I write about the rural people in the memory of urban people, this city is not a city with a particularly strong modernization. My understanding of the city, from the management, to the operation of industrial enterprises, to financial stocks and high technology, is relatively unfamiliar.

I returned to Shangzhou according to the needs of the subject matter, writing about wolves, and it is impossible for the city to produce wolves. Maybe my next work will write about the city, and even if it is returned, it is a spiral return, not as direct as before.

Zhang Ying: Can you write about the city well?

Jia Pingwo: It depends on which corner of the city and which part it is, writing in an all-round way, not my specialty, and I can't write well.

Zhang Ying: There are many writers who criticize reality and speak about reality, but the reality they describe is rigid, often speaking about a concept, immersed in anger, what do you think of this kind of work? You started writing about reality from "Impetuous", rarely speaking directly in your works, rarely making clear evaluations and conclusions, what considerations did you come from?

Jia Pingwa: Many literary works are handled in this way, no matter what style, whether it is exquisite or atmospheric. For example, writing about the changes caused by reform or changes in the times in people's psychology, turning them over and over again, like keeping a running account. We try to avoid it, and it's another matter whether it's successful or not.

Literature is most opposed to conceptual creation, especially political concepts and philosophical concepts, and the task of the writer is to provide a living life and material for philosophers to draw conclusions.

Zhang Ying: Reading your novel has a very deep feeling, the development of technological society has progressed, the material society has been enriched, but the most primitive wildness, resistance consciousness and primitive vitality flowing in people's veins are being lost little by little, and cutting-edge technology has brought convenience at the same time, but also poses a great harm to the animal nature of people themselves. Your thinking is expressed metaphorically, but it does not give a conclusion, even if it is your own conclusion.

Jia Pingwa: Literary works do not require drawing conclusions about social problems and finding solutions to problems; literature is not a reference book or an academic paper, so there is no literary significance in writing, and this is not the responsibility of literature and writers, but the responsibility of professional intellectuals. I only provide the story, this story contains all levels, which requires the symbolism, ambiguity, richness and story association space of the work to be larger, and the reader comes to some different conclusions and ideas after reading it.

What a writer can write

There are all fatalistic factors

Zhang Ying: I have read many comments about you, and there is a view that there is a kind of change in Jia Pingwa's creative thinking, which deviates from the tradition since the May Fourth New Literary Movement, but goes back to the source, from the Ming and Qing vernacular novels all the way to wei and Jin's zhiwei sketches, which are particularly deeply influenced by classical literature. This view is more representative.

Jia Pingwa: Not so. My classical literary cultivation is not very deep, if you really ask me a word for an ancient text, I don't understand, but I can understand. I have good comprehension ability, some words may not be recognized, but I can know the meaning immediately. I have read Ming and Qing dynasty literature, and I have read the works of each representative figure, such as Zhang Dai and Gui Youguang, not only looking at anthologies, but also reading all the works. Each person's work has his own unique feeling. "Dream of the Red Chamber", I have read it once in elementary school and university. "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Chatting with Zai Zhiyi" have a greater impact on me than "three words" and "two beats". After watching "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Liaozhai Zhiyi", there is a correspondence that can immediately understand those feelings for women, which is particularly kind. There are two kinds of writers in the world, one is the innate type and the other is the acquired type. One is that his works are a complete and rich style stable system, and the other is a writer whose style is changeable and seeks novelty, Su Dongpo's works cannot distinguish his ideas for writing articles. The former writer's works are easy to grasp and understand his ideas.

Zhang Ying: Critics believe that the writing of literary writers is roughly divided into two types: entering the world and being born. The former and the present are very tightly integrated, the latter focuses on the tension between the individual and the whole society, and you say that literary history is divided into two lines represented by Du Fu and Li Bai. What kind of writers do you belong to? As you get older and your creative imagination wanes, do you pay more attention to your own experience and writing experience?

Jia Pingwa: I am what I am, and I cannot be summed up by these two distinctions. With the growth of age, the growth of experience and the maturity of ideas, the further deepening of understanding of the world, I do not like the more beautiful, ethereal, romantic style, and want to go to the atmosphere and the big realm. I am not a person who writes dull articles, I like to be relaxed and open, and I don't like to be bold and romantic. I'm not a particularly political person. I was cautious and bold in writing articles. All my life I am unhappy, and all my life I am constantly being criticized. Both kinds of people with bumpy fate and heavy reason can achieve the realm of openness and contemplation.

Zhang Ying: Reaching the realm of Buddhist detachment, peace of mind, and contemplation of life.

Jia Pingwa: A young man, no matter how much he can endure loneliness and be calm, there is still a gap between him and the elderly monks and Taoists, and I have done a better job than the average person.

Zhang Ying: After "Waste Capital", you found your own way of narration. In the past, when you mentioned your works, you would think of Sun Li or Ming and Qing novels, Wei and Jin essays, which can capture the shadow behind your works. Now people don't speak anymore, posing a certain intellectual challenge to critics.

Jia Pingwa: In the past, those works were basically still in the stage of imitation and experimentation, and I didn't know what kind of works were suitable for writing, and I had not yet entered the stage of professional writing. I was looking for a free way to write, to write whatever I wanted, and thanks to the change in my concept of fiction and the perception of fiction, I found my own way of speaking, my own voice rather than other people's voices.

Zhang Ying: In the mid-to-late 1980s, when a new generation of writers rushed to learn and even imitate the creation of European and American novels, what you revealed was the unique charm of the Chinese language, which made it easy for us to connect rhetorically with the traditions of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Jia Pingwa: I wrote some very modern things in the late 1970s and early 1980s, mainly drawing on the views of foreign art. The introduction of Western modernism to China was first of all the art world, and I still pay attention to the trends in the art world. In order to absorb Western modernism in the realm and express the Chinese style in form, how to combine, I have been pursuing, groping and experimenting.

I oppose the rejection of the so-called traditional "vernacular literature" of foreign cultures, and many people talk about tradition, talking about the tradition after the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the real tradition is before the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially the Han and Tang dynasties. I am not satisfied with the european and American style in form.

My mother tongue is Chinese, and my writing should be based on modern Chinese. To emphasize, I do not agree with "middle school for the body, Western learning for the use".

After "Waste Capital", "White Night", "Tumen" and "Gao Laozhuang", I have always adhered to my point of view, intending to tend to something common to mankind, to have Chinese thinking, And Chinese flavor.

Zhang Ying: Many people say that before you wrote "Waste Capital", you were at a peak period, and after "Waste Capital", it was not as good as before, and some people said that you have only entered the peak period now.

Jia Pingwa: What others think, I don't think so, engaged in writing, no one can estimate that they will not come, after the "Waste Capital" came out, many critical articles scolded very ugly, saying that I Jiang Lang was exhausted and could not write anything.

Definitely uncomfortable, and can not be discouraged, write slowly. It's the peak, it's the trough, and whatever it is, writing is more important than anything else.

A writer writes all his life, what he writes, what he can write, has a fatalistic factor.

My early works were clear and beautiful, but they were all written by other people's affairs, other people's words, and they were inspired to write. Later in life, I experienced it, write it out. It seems to be unorthodox, unclear, chaotic, and some readers are not easy to accept, but I have gained more myself.

Zhang Ying: In recent years, you have won more awards abroad, but you have not won as many awards in China as before. What are your thoughts on winning the award? Are you misreading foreign awards?

Jia Pingwa: Winning the award represents a kind of affirmation, and I also think about it in my heart. No, we don't have more complaints. It is not to praise when you get it, or to scold if you don't get it. Writing doesn't work on that. Keep a calm mind, don't continue to write, get it, and continue to write. I have no opinion on how the domestic awards differ from the foreign awards. They don't understand, I don't know, we don't understand foreign languages, they read my works are not Chinese, they are translated into foreign languages.

In 1978, the 26-year-old winner

Zhang Ying: Your luck is very good, only 26 years old, won the National Short Story Award.

Jia Pingwa: After graduating from college and being assigned to a publishing house, I began to engage in amateur creation and published some novels. In 1978, I won the first National Outstanding Short Story Award, which was the first literary award after the Cultural Revolution, and more than 20 people won the award. There were Wang Meng, Liu Xinwu, Zhang Jie, Zhang Chengzhi, I remember just these people, and the rest can't remember.

I went with Wang Meng to collect the award, and that night, Wang Meng came to my room, and he joked, you see you write so long, you win, I write so short, I also win. He was 54 at the time, and I was 26 at the time, very young, and won the award for the first time.

At that time, the attention to literature was many times stronger than it is now, and I was reading literary works, and one work made you famous overnight. It doesn't matter what awards you receive now.

As an editor in the editorial department of a publishing house, there is a rule that it is not allowed to engage in creation, for fear of affecting the work. I do creative work after work, and the leader always criticizes me for not doing the right thing. After winning the award, I was transferred to the creative research room of the Xi'an Municipal Federation of Literary and Art Circles, engaged in full-time creation, and after a short time, I was elected as the chairman of the Literary Association.

I didn't want to be the chairman, I said I was still engaged in creation, and I said that the chairman of the Federation of Literary and Literary Associations asked people who had some influence on literature to do so. The organization does not affect the creation, with a strong party secretary, the daily work is managed for you, and there are activities you can participate in. I said that I would not sit at work, that managing personnel and daily work was not my strong point, that I could not manage it, that I would leave it entirely to the comrades of the party group to manage, and that I would come to participate in any literary activities and meetings.

I was in my thirties and didn't go to the office to work, which was the greatest luck of my life, working and living relatively freely, not being constrained by commuting.

Zhang Ying: Such a good day, now there is no such good opportunity as you.

Jia Pingwa: In this life, good and lucky, one is the state of freedom, and then the same hobby and the profession engaged in, I have achieved. Hobbies and creations, work careers have also come together. Since then, I've spent most of my time creating.

What I write, how I write, is completely at my own disposal. I am the most free in my work. Of course, what you write, meets the requirements, or criticizes, this is another topic, from a professional point of view, writers are still better, especially in the eighties, are concerned about literature, literature is a temptation for young people.

I was in my early thirties and everywhere I was invited to talk about literary creation. The number of participants was particularly large. There are hundreds of literary lectures, and sometimes I attend, there are thousands of people. Literature in the period after the "Cultural Revolution" has never been popular, with such a large degree of attention and social influence, it has never been before.

Zhang Ying: Many writers and artists miss the 1980s.

Jia Pingwa: I don't think a similar phenomenon can happen in other countries, and it can't happen again in the future, and a large number of writers were produced in that period. It's not about how clever the literature of that period was. Mainly for a long time, there are too many forbidden areas, and literature has taken on the responsibility of breaking through.

This literary work, suddenly broke through what forbidden areas, criticized what, everyone pays attention to this, but also led to some phenomena, to see who broke through bigger. The breakthrough of the forbidden area is not a breakthrough of literature and art. There are also many excellent works, but the ones that stay in politics are still bigger.

When I was writing "scar literature", I came down from the countryside, and my mind always had those stories in the countryside, so I wrote those. In retrospect, it was a little shallow, some pretty shallow.

At that time, many people wrote my comments, there was an article summarizing my creation is a step slower than the Popular one in China, others have walked over, you are still writing this, I said that a slow step is also a fast step, it is all circular.

When I entered the literary world, I wrote about the countryside, the age is quite far away, and the men and women in the countryside in the distant era are not related to "scar literature" and are not criticized. That trend passed, and I wrote a so-called "scar" novel.

Later, in the new literary period, a trend went down one trend after another, I was slower than others, and at that time I was also prosperous and famous, but the impression was not particularly prosperous, why? You don't dance at the head of the tide.

At that time, there were a group of critics, a group of readers, a group of cultural workers, all looking at who broke through what, saying that you have to be ahead to catch fire.

Later, I felt that literature is a marathon sport, it does not rely on a momentary sprint to accelerate, it is a long race, look at the whole time written out. Decades have passed, and looking back, many of the first winners quickly disappeared, and there were not many people who could write.

Zhang Ying: You insist on running to the present, in good shape, writing novels one after another.

Jia Pingwa: The marathon movement of literature is constantly adding people, constantly eliminating people, and I have been walking all the way here.

My fate in life coincided with the end of the "Cultural Revolution", the rural areas began to synchronize with the land reform, I experienced that period of life in my early years, after graduating from college and starting to work to catch up with the reform and opening up, when I was most energetic, my literary creation was just in sync with the reform and opening up, step by step to the present, one novel after another was written to the present.

A lot of people write, they think about stories that have nothing to do with reality. I write about the present life that I am familiar with, that I recognize.

If the title is "Reform Literature", on the rural theme, the Shangzhou series, I wrote "Waxing Moon, New Moon" and "Chicken Nest Depression People's Home", writing about the changes that have taken place in the countryside. It is not that I am conforming to the times, singing what praises, it is indeed from the heart, I am more familiar with the countryside, there are many people in the country, there is food at home, I am not worried in the city, there are difficulties in the family, difficulties are solved, I am also at ease, there is a connection between life and soul. What happens in the countryside is directly related to me.

Zhang Ying: Working in Xi'an, the novel does not write about the city, but always writes about the countryside.

Jia Pingwa: I write a lot of novels, young, energetic. In the 1980s, the writing fee was particularly low, and everyone had no spare income, so I had income and it was not bad. Ten dollars, dozens of dollars, up to forty dollars. How much do you earn in January? I only earn thirty or forty dollars in January.

Paid, you have to take care of the family, the children who come to the city from the countryside, all this is the case. My father later returned to work, he had a salary, and the pressure was not too great. After all, there are brothers and sisters, and the standard of living in the countryside has been relatively improved, but the food and clothing will never be better than that in the city.

I go back every year, and it used to take five or six hours without a highway, now it's an hour and a half. Relatives and neighbors are there, especially in the past few years, I often go back, and I have a lot of contacts with the village to work.

Zhang Ying: How do you see the changes in the countryside over the past few decades?

Jia Pingwa: The implementation of reform and opening up in the 1980s has rejuvenated the enthusiasm of the peasants, the rural areas have flourished, the peasants have saved a lot of energy, and production has been vigorously developed. As a person from a rural area, the mood is very exciting.

There is also a crisis of changing concepts in the rural areas, and there are sudden changes in traditional rural life, and many concepts cannot be changed, and there are traditional and political ones, and there are many contradictions. Writers are not disconnected from this society, nor are they here to publicize this society, but to discover this relationship between people and people, what has changed.

The land was divided, the responsibility of the land was divided, the enthusiasm of the peasants came up, and then the road of urbanization began, and the peasants went to the cities to work.

There have been crises in the countryside again: the crisis of the three rural areas, the crisis of the countryside, the peasants, the land, these have emerged. The crisis of rural medical care, the crisis of land loss, the crisis of farmers eating and living from the land, the crisis of children going to school, the crisis of village appearance construction, there are many aspects, and the rural areas are slowly losing their vitality.

"I Am a Farmer" writes that after I graduated from junior high school, until I went to college, I became a farmer in the countryside. Compared with the city, suffering is in the countryside, but happy. The more people suffer, the more joy they really have, they can show it, and they can also experience it.

Zhang Ying: You have been following the changes of the times and the changes of society.

Jia Pingwo: Materials are abundant, life is rich, but people's desires are also more. The city is the mouth of desire, how many miles in all directions, people, wealth, all sucked away, the prosperity of a city, built on the basis of huge suburbs, many places around the desolate, the city sucked the essence of the countryside - after people sucked away, the countryside became a general and a lot of soldiers relationship, "a will become a thousand bones dry." ”

On the one hand, it is particularly difficult to find employment in the cities, and many educated college students and graduate students cannot find jobs; on the other hand, there is no one in the countryside, young people who have been admitted to the countryside, no one goes back after graduating from college, there are no teachers in schools, there are no doctors in hospitals, and everyone is reluctant to go back.

Later, when I said "building a new socialist countryside," I was very emotional, who will build it? The old men, the old ladies, the children went to build. Nor can we force young people in the cities to return to the countryside, so they can return to the old road of history.

When I was young in the countryside, everyone was similar, noisy, noisy, hitting, scolding all day, it was a kind of anger. Now I can't touch anyone when I go back, there's no one. Traditional farming societies are slowly disappearing. From this point of view, I wrote the theme of "Qin Cavity". So, why is it that the more you write, the less light it is, and the more you write, the more you fall back? It's the writers and the whole society that's changing, and it's one.

Again, for this change, a writer is older and he sees more things. When I was young, I was curious about what I saw and wanted to write about everything I saw. When I get older, there are some things that I don't want to write when I think about it, and I don't think it means much. When you are young, you focus on some skills, plot changes, or how the language changes, after reading the book, you can also pick a few sentences and write a post-reading feeling.

When you are old, when you write something, you don't pursue those things, you have something to say, you can say long, if you don't have something, you will say it short, and you will talk completely about home. When I was young, I was writing something, influenced by Zhang Sanyi's novel, and suddenly I had an idea, or who told me a story, and I was inspired.

When I get older, I write entirely by experience in life and accumulated wisdom. Without more skill, the corresponding writing is more regressive. The pursuit is different, the view of society, not the part, is the whole to grasp, which is related to age and understanding of literature.

Zhang Ying: The function and role of literature have also undergone tremendous changes.

Jia Pingwa: What literature is really doing, what is the function of literature, I think a lot about this aspect.

The avant-garde writers of the 1980s, who are now also the main force of literature and the first-line writers. At that time, all writers were concerned with foreign literature, the emergence of avant-garde literature, or the rise in China, which had a revolutionary significance for Chinese literature, which completely stripped literature from its propaganda role, or pulled it out.

At that time, Mo Yan, Han Shaogong, Ge Fei, Yu Hua, these writers were very popular, very modern, very cutting-edge, they were young, they came into contact with a lot of Western literature, and I also read a lot of representative works in this regard. But how do they combine with my writing, and with the rural life I experienced? How do you fuse them together? The most important thing is the change in the concept of literature, as well as the techniques and techniques of writing.

Many of my works, both in terms of realm and connotation, are traditional Chinese expressions, which have been nationalized. The influence of the West is not direct on the surface, it seems dazzling, and my later writing, took this path.

I look weak, but I'm actually very strong

Zhang Ying: In the book "Friends", you divide your friends into two categories: relatives and friends, who is the person who has the greatest influence on your life?

Jia Pingwa: My father had the greatest influence on me. He was very serious, very upright, had a bad temper, scolded children at every turn when he was a child, beat children with his hands, I was afraid of my father, hid far away, and did not dare to sit with him. When I was a kid I didn't understand him very much. The family is not rich, he is very hospitable, likes to be lively, loves friends, there is good food, he will call a group of people to come home, drink and eat, a little decent meal, the family can not eat, all for others to eat.

My father liked to drink, and I was particularly against it. It wasn't until after I got married that I stopped being afraid in front of him. One spring festival, my wife and I went back to my hometown, and my father sent me a cigarette, which surprised me very much, maybe he thought that his son had grown up.

The mother is a typical housewife, and the family is dominated by the father. My mother was older and often couldn't remember the things of the present, but she remembered some things from the past very clearly. Who in the village fought with whom, played cards, who was good with whom, she remembered very clearly, spoke with great humor, and listened to it for half a day.

Zhang Ying: You are afraid of your father, but your children are not afraid of you. Is she on good terms with you?

Jia Pingwa: My father was deeply influenced by Confucianism, and he was very strict about education, and his hometown was a place where Buddhism and Taoism were particularly prevalent, and there were many superstitious people who were superstitious and popular in witchcraft. I went to school in Xi'an, tomorrow morning to go, my father will definitely hold a family meeting, open until two or three o'clock in the morning, rural people sleep early, to nine o'clock to sleep, our family is still in a meeting, my father repeats the same words every time, this year to talk about next year also, such as in the unit to do a good job, filial piety, people should be kind, tolerant, do not be too arrogant, all said is the words of old-fashioned education.

Although I am the father of two daughters, I manage the children less and don't want to be too strict, and I don't spend much time with the children. I don't like to take people home, I don't write at home, I stay in the studio, friends come, and I meet and talk in the study. Every morning when I went out, she went to school and left, and when I came home she was already asleep.

At home, I don't take the initiative to call, she won't take the initiative to come over and stick to me. I don't like children, I'm annoyed that I'm pestering you. I'm not a good father. Sometimes busy, the wife can not take care of, the wife has an opinion can not help, I have a lot of chores, but also to write, the unit of things are also more. I told my wife that when you have a big cadre at home, the big cadre always doesn't go home and is busy. Now I go out at nine o'clock every morning, the driver drops me off at the studio, and I don't go back until the evening.

Zhang Ying: One type is friends who help each other, and the other is spiritual and spiritual friends. What kind of friends do you have?

Jia Pingwa: There are many people written in the book "Friends", and some of them are not necessarily friends.

There are many types of friends, friends with the same hobby, friends with similar personalities, friends with work relationships, or changes in interests, and some slowly stop coming and going.

A person's life is a journey to find friends. It is like a magnet, it sucks iron sheets, wire, screws, but does not absorb wood, flowers, porcelain, who sucks what people, which variety attracts which variety.

Friends are helping each other to become friends, otherwise the reason for communication is gone, always want to get something in your place, do not want to pay, the friend will certainly not be able to do long. Again, friends are constantly changing, there are enduring friends, there are also friends who have less contact.

There are not many friends who have spiritual exchanges in life and who have contacts in life. Speaking of which, most of my friends are not in the literary circle, painting and writing, collecting cultural relics, engaging in mysterious cultural research, and so on.

Zhang Ying: In the days before and after "Waste Capital", you re-understood and met many friends, some friends fell into the well and hurt you, and some friends stood by your side all the time, comforting you.

Jia Pingwo: See people's hearts for a long time. After "Waste Capital", I have new friends, and I have lost many friends, and some people, in the name of friends, always look for you, want to get something, and bully you at every turn. But some people bully you again and again, hurt people's hearts, and we will stop paying attention to you. Under normal circumstances, we can be tolerant or as tolerant as possible.

Friends are a kind of fate. Like me and you, there is nothing to do, old to play with you, acquaintance is a friend.

The friend who can best understand a man is often a woman, she can read you, and her purpose in associating with you is very simple, without a utilitarian worldly purpose. Such friends come and go very little.

Zhang Ying: Are you a pessimist?

Jia Pingwa: I have a pessimistic view of life, whether I am a "pessimist" or not, it is difficult to define exactly. Whether people's emotions are pessimistic or optimistic, there are innate components, there are also acquired parts, and emotions are affected by many factors. A lifetime is too small. Seeing the news of Gorbachev, so ambitious people, in their last life, they did nothing...

Affected by the outside world, temperament will also fluctuate greatly. Life is all accident, it is all fate. Pessimism is also a beauty. My pessimism has something to do with writing, and it is more or less reflected in the work.

Zhang Ying: In the twilight years, is the understanding of life deeper?

Jia Pingwa: People have a "Gao Laozhuang" complex in middle age, and they have more experience of life. Once you reach the age of fifty or sixty, you have no passion, the age is the most terrible, and next year will certainly know more than this year, just like wheat, as soon as it is hot, it will inevitably ripen, and it will die of old age. At the age of twenty, you will never think about death, and suffering again is always joyful; after forty years of age, you will be exposed to death, and the real environment makes death everywhere, such as your relatives and friends who have died early, and disasters and accidents are frequent, and these phenomena constantly signal to you: the pace of death is coming. The experience gained as you grow up in life is far more important than the knowledge gained from books and television.

Zhang Ying: You are a confident person. I went to Xi'an in 1995 to interview you, you are being criticized for "Abandoned Capital", your father has just died, the family is dissolved, and you are seriously ill. Under all kinds of pressure, you are very confident and believe that you are not wrong. Now that you're starting to feel skeptical and unconfident, what does that mean?

Jia Pingwa: I am a person, there are many difficulties and difficulties, none of them go smoothly, and I have never lived a comfortable life. It looks weak, but it's still strong.

"Remembering the Wolf" is more difficult to write. I was particularly quick to write novels, which were only over 100,000 words and took me several years. I wrote nearly 400,000 words of "Waste Capital", more than 300,000 words of "White Night", and more than 200,000 words of "Tumen" and "Gao Laozhuang", which were written quickly and smoothly. However, despite the effort of writing, it is relatively smooth to read. When I revised the second time, I was very depressed, and later, the editor of the publishing house came to Xi'an, gave some comments, and gradually got better, and when I changed the fourth time, I was particularly excited, and I thought, this may be a good thing.

I am very scared, I don't know how this way of writing, whether it looks good or not, the outside world recognizes it, the work comes out, I hear the evaluation is good, I still can't believe it, is it really that good? My manuscript was written by hand, and my wife was typing (she wasn't in the business, she worked in a museum, wasn't a literature lover, didn't read novels at all), hit halfway, and she said, what novel are you, not good! My heart was cold, and I was angry and didn't let her fight again.

Zhang Ying: The vitality of Chinese writers is relatively weak, and once many writers write famous works, they can no longer write works that surpass themselves. You're doing a great job, what's the takeaway?

Jia Pingwa: Compared with foreign writers, the literary vitality of Chinese writers is relatively short, and I don't understand the reason, but every writer wants to prolong his vitality.

I know what I have to do, we are not suitable for administration, or meetings to make reports. Writers have to write their own works, although they become officials, I will not go if I can not participate, these lively things are a waste of time and not interesting. This is not my profession, I don't want any political achievements, just do a good job of writing. I don't feel comfortable when I don't write, and writing brings me a lot of joy that can't be replaced by anything else.

I have a low view of fame and fortune, and if there is any extravagance in literature, I hope that the works I write can be satisfied and others can affirm. As for what awards can be won, I don't know, and if you write your work well, you won't be buried.

Zhang Ying: What kind of person are you in life? Is it a person who is very vain and utilitarian, as others have described it?

Jia Pingwo: I can't speak well, my image is not good, I can't get up when I go out, I am afraid of the stage on big occasions, I hold a meeting of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, I rarely speak, I don't like to speak, I can't speak Mandarin. When I spoke in the unit, I used to have to prompt a few points on paper to speak, but now it is better not to write an outline.

Others don't understand me and use himself to infer me. Speaking of writing, I never thought I would become a best-selling author, I am not very concerned about the market, making money, I only care about writing my own works, after writing to the publishing house, packaging, design, distribution are their business.

I also felt inexplicable and strange. In my life, people who have been in contact with and understood know that they do not love to show themselves in front of people, nor do they like to talk.

A lot of criticism of the article, saying that I will hype. They didn't understand me, and as soon as I handed over the manuscript, I ignored it. I don't care how the publishing house designs, how it typeset, or how big the folio is. And so, I slowly became a best-selling author.

Zhang Ying: Becoming a best-selling author is the dream of most writers, hasn't it benefited you?

Jia Pingwa: I am free and free to write as much as I want, without pandering to anyone or being subject to any constraints. I don't have to think about the publication and publication of my work.

There are front best-selling as a paving, and I write what someone buys to see. If at the beginning, there is no market formed, the process of writing is afraid that the publishing house will not publish for you, and the journal will not be published.

My prose sold well, and before the nineties, I only published an anthology for two writers, which was the first time after the Cultural Revolution. Lijiang Publishing House, a self-selected collection of novels for Wang Zengqi and a self-anthology of essays for me, were the first to enter the book stalls on the street to sell. Books were sold in bookstores at the time.

I established the foundation in the eighties, my works sold well after publication, and by the nineties I could write more freely after "Waste Capital", and the novels sold at least 200,000 copies, and later sold 300,000 or 400,000 copies.

Before "Waste Capital", there was a group of readers who were particularly interested in my prose, and after "Waste Capital", some readers left, and they were particularly intolerant of sexual depictions, and how did essayists who felt relatively fresh become like this? But another group of novel readers came, constantly changing. Come a batch, go a batch, go a batch come in a batch, there are always readers here.

Signing books, every time I meet old readers to sign, I take dozens of books, I am very moved. The reader is the god of the writer, but you write completely about yourself, regardless of society, regardless of the market, regardless of the reader, you have a market, you have a reader.

I often give examples of a family, as a woman, the more you hide, the more your husband is reluctant to abandon you, the more you rely on him, he will leave you. You write about yourself, you write sincerely, you write interesting things, and you give it to the publisher. Old pondering the market, thinking about readers, the market and readers are constantly changing, can you catch up?

The advantage of the book selling well has that I am more free to write novels, at least I am not constrained in the writing process.

Zhang Ying: Fame and fortune will not affect writing.

Jia Pingwa: My life is particularly simple. This studio, I came every morning, at half past seven, at eight o'clock at the latest, and only went back at one o'clock in the evening. Eat casually downstairs, or bring some semi-finished products from home to eat here, for seven or eight yuan a day. It's good to live this kind of quiet, simple life. Eat the most basic food, rice, wheat, vegetables, eat other things is not good for the body. Dressing depends on feelings, and it is good to be comfortable. The stay was also not exquisite. It is to love collecting and watching it yourself pleasantly. Interests and desires are as little as possible, and life is plain.

It should be very happy to write for a lifetime

Zhang Ying: You have made great artistic achievements in the fields of poetry, prose and novels, which way of expression do you prefer?

Jia Pingwa: Before graduating from college, I mainly wrote poetry, but I couldn't write well, so I turned to novels and prose writing, and I still liked to write poetry. When the prose was well written, some people said that my prose was better than the novel, and I got angry, so I didn't write prose to write novels.

I have a strange temper: you say I can't do what I do, you say I can't do anything, I don't get it. Now what genre to write depends on the material, prose, poetry, novels I am writing, cross-writing is good for the feeling. It is not artificial pursuit of tricks, based on interest, to promote each other. I write very little poetry now, but the language, rhythm, and mood of poetry can penetrate.

Zhang Ying: You write less prose essays, short stories and novellas, and write less for others, writing and painting for others, have you given all your energy to long novels?

Jia Pingwa: Writing a long novel can take into account a lot of things, prose essays can't take care of more things, write more long when the energy is strong, and writing too many small things wastes talent and consumes energy. After writing a long article, take a break to write a small article by hand. Drawing and writing is purely a commercial act, mainly to support the family.

Zhang Ying: Compare all your works together, which one is more important?

Jia Pingwa: When I first wrote it, I felt good, and after a period of time, I felt that the new writing was better, constantly denying myself, and the art work existed by conquest. Fifty years after a work is still read by people, it is a good work.

Zhang Ying: The dream of being a good writer in this life has come true.

Jia Pingwa: People must have hope and dreams in their lives. When I was a child in the countryside, I didn't think about what to do later, that is, the crops were harvested, and when the next round of crops were about to be harvested, don't break the meal, there is food to eat, there is always food to eat, it is best.

Later, I wanted to be a worker, but I didn't have the opportunity, so I left the countryside because I went to college and was very proud to eat national meals. A few students from the countryside chatted in the dormitory at night, and everyone chatted with tears in their eyes, lamenting that it was not easy to stay up to this step, and they were very satisfied at that time.

There is no end to the dream, and when this dream is realized, another dream continues. From the professional point of view, there are so many books, no big money, general life, do not have to consider going, famous, there are houses, there are.

But in a literary sense, the difference is too far, why are you still writing, why after winning the National Literature Award for the first time, why most people don't write, why I'm still writing, I can't write at all, I always feel that I haven't written satisfactorily, I want to prove myself, I urge you to write, I always feel that the energy has not yet been exerted.

I want to be famous, but fame doesn't necessarily work. In ordinary life, sometimes I feel proud and feel that it is OKAY. Sometimes I am particularly depressed, I feel that I have just learned to write, but I don't have enough energy, I really don't have enough energy.

Zhang Ying: You're still writing a long novel, very powerful.

Jia Pingwa: Engaged in creation, after the age of fifty, I have a little feeling. There is no end to life's dreams.

Elderly people often say that my son is also married, my daughter is married, and the house has been bought. Say this, the body will soon be out of shape. To deceive God that I am not finished, that the world needs me, that the family needs me, that the community needs me. There are old and small people, can't die, can't die, his task is not completed, if the old one dies, the small one becomes a family, he is a superfluous person, almost gone, almost finished. Keep pursuing, pursuing forward, to enter your subconscious.

Good things can't be written, think well, just can't write, that anxiety, that kind of emotion of hating myself, often affects me. My dreams, there are still many unfulfilled, many works have not yet been written, forcing me to stop.

Zhang Ying: Chinese writers are finally in line with the international community, living to be old and writing to be old.

Jia Pingwa: Some of my college classmates hugged their grandchildren, some played tai chi, and lived this kind of life, they are all blessed people. I'm still writing, I used to be busy, now I'm busier.

A classmate who lived with me on a building said with emotion, "Ping," if I were you, I would have died a few times earlier." "I'm so busy, I still create so much, I don't know where the energy comes from." Those years were good and exuberant, and these years were powerless, but many things forced you to move forward.

I'm still wrestling with myself, and foreign writers are still writing novels at the age of eighty, and they're the kind of transgressive, groundbreaking.

Chinese writers, from one to sixty or seventy years old, they first relaxed, do not know what the reason, each person's situation is different, many writers are older, can not write; some writers write memoirs, that is, the people who write novels, very few.

If the writer is in good health, he should write for a longer time. In this era, unlike those old writers in the past, Liu Qing, this group of writers, I calculated his age, in the most energetic forty years old, the "Cultural Revolution" came and did not write, how pity, if that group of writers continue to write, can write a lot of things.

(Source: Works)

Jia Pingwo is a famous contemporary writer, who has authored many important influential works such as "Full Moon", "Waxing Moon and New Moon", "Impetuousness", "Waste Capital", "Ancient Furnace", "With Lights", "Lao Sheng", "Polar Flower", etc., and has won the National Excellent Short Story Award, the National Excellent Novella Award, the American Mobil Pegasus Literature Award, the National Excellent Prose Award, the French Fermina Foreign Literature Award, the Lu Xun Literature Award, the World Chinese Novel Award and other important awards at home and abroad, and in 2008, Jia Pingwo won the Seventh Mao Dun Literature Award with his novel "Qin Cavity".