Liang Xiaosheng shared his new book creation experience at the meeting.
Image courtesy of Writers Press
"Chinese Peach and Plum"
Liang Xiaosheng
Writers And Publishers March 2022
"Little People Walk Through Big Times"
Liang Xiaosheng
Oriental Publishing Center March 2022
"At that time, the salary was at most more than a thousand yuan, and suddenly I heard that whoever earned tens of thousands of dollars in one thing, I remember that my first feeling was shock, so angry that my hands trembled."
"Choosing a life partner is choosing a destiny, which is more important than choosing a city or a career."
"The sum of the social relations of many people is getting bigger and bigger, but there are fewer and fewer people who really care about themselves and themselves, and most of them are a 'core'."
On April 22, Liang Xiaosheng, the original author of the novel "In the World" and a famous writer, held a media meeting for the new novel "Chinese Tao Li". The interview scene unsurprisingly turned into the writer's own Q&A and insight sharing conference on "the world": he did not shy away from talking about the "very vulgar" side of reality such as house, income, marriage, and social networking; but from time to time he changed into "Zhou Bingyi", and he was fascinated by the emotions and pursuits of "our time".
After more than seventy years of "human world", this old-school realist writer still vividly interprets to people a sentence he wrote in "Me and Literature": like a donkey hovering between two meadows, he has always "looked left and right between idealism and realism".
Respond to new questions
Admit that some of the plot of the novel has a tendency to "beautify"
"I'm an extremely calm realist. My vision of life, the goal has always been set very close, very low, very realistic and realistic. Liang Xiaosheng once wrote in the book.
Since childhood, the family has been in a difficult situation, the father has been working in the province for many years, the mother is frail and sick, and there is a sick brother in the family... Liang Xiaosheng, who loves literature and art, has long known that he can only be loyal to realism in his life, and he cannot be exaggerated, abstract and hypocritical.
However, like the little girl in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, he regards writing as a light of hope that illuminates life, and has compassion for all sentient beings. In life, he is very concerned about the happiness of his students, especially their housing problems. Speaking of houses, he couldn't help muttering: "In Beijing, a 120-square-meter house may be 12 million, and it is not necessarily a good condition." ”
In the newly launched essay collection "Little People Walk through the Big Times", he uses a deep and simple brushwork to describe ordinary and vivid lives, reflecting the changes of the times and the hearts of the world: workers who intersect with hardships, migrant workers who run for their livelihoods, intellectual fathers who have lost their beloved daughters, peasant women who have been cheated by stock speculation, female owners who fall in love with their own hired workers, as well as scavengers and black car drivers... The 30 essays are full of sour, sweet and bitter life conditions, once again showing Liang Xiaosheng's conscience and sense of responsibility as a writer.
In the novel "Chinese Tao Li", he reviewed in the first person the college life, love, friendship and success and failure experienced by the "post-80s" small town youth, Chinese students Li Xiaodong and Xu Ran, as well as the successes and failures on the way to Beijing, who endured the ruthless pressure of high housing prices, experienced ups and downs in the workplace and love field, and wandered and suffered in order to choose to return to their hometown or stay in the big city. Although the content is not easy, he seems to be deliberately unloading the worries and heaviness of "The World of Man", and occasionally flashes a trace of humor between the lines, so the new book also gives people the impression of a "youth version of "The World of Man".
Liang Xiaosheng frankly said that writing about the love and friendship of young people is indeed a great challenge, and there is also a "generation gap" between him and this era, and he will not use his mobile phone to ride and pay until now, and he only learned to reply to text messages in the first two years. Still, "we can communicate intimately." ”
In the face of the outside world's doubts about the "too beautifying" of some of the plots in the book, he generously admitted that the friendship that the protagonist experienced "beyond class" was "not very existent" in life, "almost repeating the pattern of "In the World"; but he patiently explained to the reporter that the kind of friendship that can be opened up to life, those cadres who can be called the "clear stream" of the officialdom, are indeed experienced by him personally.
So what message do you want to convey through these two books? What do people pursue in this life? "If you think about it, in addition to truth, goodness, and beauty, everything else is a passing cloud." Liang Xiaosheng said.
Look back on your creative career
"Writing is a craft, not much different from opening a noodle shop"
In the TV series "The World", Liang Xiaosheng made a cameo appearance as a judge for the first time, becoming the biggest "Easter egg" in the film. In the new book "Chinese Tao Li", there is also a shadow of his "personal battle".
He spent a lot of time describing the situation of Mr. Wang, a professor in the department of Chinese, when he was in class, such as guiding students to think about the similarities between "Wang Liulang" and "Daughter of the Sea" in "Liaozhai", explaining that the Chinese department was "understanding human nature and then understanding their profession" with Rodin's sculpture "Centaur"; he encouraged students to start a journal that allowed them to lie on the table with candy in class to watch the movie "Taxi Driver"... All of this makes people vaguely see Liang Xiaosheng, who is from the Chinese department and is a professor at the School of Humanities of Beijing Language and Culture University.
Liang Xiaosheng once said that he sincerely thanked literature for giving him kindness and compassion. Borrowing from Mr. Wang, he once again expressed his reverence for literature: "Literature is essentially a renewable resource left by human society to ordinary people, and there is almost no need for investment. ”
"If you think about it, there are only so many good things in this world that have a relationship with people, which can be summarized by 'wealth'." Liang Xiaosheng said that for most ordinary families, the best family wealth left to their children is books.
"The Mr. Wang in my mind, I have found it." I like Fan Wei, his whole facial expression, especially when he squints his eyes and smiles slightly, has a feeling of kindness. "He seems very confident in his casting vision.
Interestingly, despite his admiration for literature, he deliberately took his "writer" identity to make a splash, and wrote in the new book that a writer named Liang Xiaosheng would give a lecture, but relatives and friends were reluctant to come forward to support the scene; he also arranged a line for the characters in the book: "If I come to write 'Human World', it will definitely be better than Liang Xiaosheng." ”
He said that these jokes actually contain their own attitude to writing: in a certain period, literature did play an "enlightenment" role, but in today's peaceful era, writing is a craft, "not much different from opening a noodle shop", just like making music, making leather boots, making wine, making incense, the profession of a writer does not mean that it is superior. Those who have to carry the novel "on a high place, as if it is mysterious", in his view, are all "nonsense".
According to him, "Chinese Tao Li" will be his "penultimate" novel, and after writing the last two, "no matter what the level, 'Liang Ji Noodle Shop' will be closed." He lamented that people still have to learn to put it down, not to be too stubborn, and after putting down the pen, "it is the old man sitting on the side of the road basking in the sun." ”
Nanfang Daily reporter Huang Chuxuan Guo Shan