Chen Zhongzhong (1942-2016)
In the literary world of the early 1990s, there was a saying of the "Eastern Crusade of the Shaanxi Army", led by Chen Zhongzhong, who held up "White Deer Plain". In the spring of 1998, he stood on the podium of the fourth "Mao Dun Literature Award". Readers are interested in learning about Chen Zhongzhong's creation of "White Deer Plain" and the twenty years of literary path he traveled before "White Deer Plain". Mr. He Qizhi, the editor-in-charge of this issue of "White Deer Plain" and one of the editors of the final review, introduced chen zhongzhong he was familiar with, and launched some paragraphs of Chen Zhongzhong's confessional article to explore the writer's personality and style of writing.
Home sales and self-purchased pirated copies
Chen Zhongzhong
The book "White" is finally finished. It was an afternoon at the end of the waxing moon in 1991 in the lunar calendar, and after writing the sentence ending with Lu Zilin's death, I didn't seem to be excited, I didn't stand up, still sitting on the small bamboo stool, putting the pen on the small round table that used both the desk and the coffee table, and suddenly fell into a state of unconsciousness. For a long time, I got up from the small bamboo stool and lifted my ass to sit on the sofa next to my waist, and there seemed to be tears gushing out, probably for myself, but also for the tragic end of a life that I cursed and ridiculed. A year later, when a reporter asked me how I felt when I drew the last end, I said that I seemed to be crawling out of a long tunnel, and when I just walked to the entrance of the cave and saw the light, I had a dizzy dizzy that could not stand the stimulation of the light. It was true, two years of preparation, four years of writing, and six years of walking through the long tunnels of history with the men and women of the White Deer Plains a century ago, delivering them from their mother's womb and sending them one by one to the grave—in their own different ways of saying goodbye to the world. The White Deer Plain was liberated, and I, who made up the story of "White Deer Plain", was finally liberated.
The way the Bailu people celebrated liberation more than forty years ago was to assemble, set off cannons and guns, beat gongs, drums, and twist songs; my way of celebrating was to leave this small prison-like study as soon as possible and go to the bahe river to stretch my waist and legs. I walked out of the courtyard and down the hill to the river beach. Over the years, I have countless times along this road to the Bahe River, today upstream, tomorrow towards the downstream, wind and rain, frost and snow, the change of seasons, all in my eyes round after round, never this winter evening walk is easy and comfortable. In the dry winter season of Bahe, the beach is particularly open, and the clumsy peasants who have no skills have to rely on hard work to earn money, prop up a wire woven net, filter the sand and gravel used for construction and sell it to those construction units. I walked past them and said hello, perhaps because the monotony and laborious labor was too lonely, and deliberately said a few slurs to me. I couldn't tell them that I had just finished a job that resembled this kind of filtering sand and gravel, strings of stones rolling down the net, just like the rows of chinese characters I had written on the manuscript paper.
I kept walking along the embankment for ten miles, where the embankment was the head project, and the river turned a big bend to reach the root of the south bank, and the road was cut off. In winter, there are still small water birds frolicking on the beach. I walked around and watched as the night fell one by one. The day was over again, and anyway it was a day I could never forget. On the way back, I always felt that I could not express the pleasure of relieving myself of burdens in my heart, lighting a cigarette and lighting the thatch under my feet. Green felt-like thatch grows on the riverbank, which burns on fire during the arid winter months. The river wind blew from the west, and the joyful flames swept east along the river embankment, so spectacular that my chest finally stirred up as I watched the free and unrestrained flames that rose and fell.
Stills from the TV series "White Deer Plain"
Back at home, I turned on all the lights in the house and hung a large light bulb on the right branch of a flower tree in the courtyard; Turning on the little tape recorder that had been with me, and letting go of the qin famous singer's singing segment, I began to cook a bowl of noodles for myself.
It's finally over, whether it's success or failure. The successful end is naturally my expectation and deserves to be celebrated in this way; The end of failure is also worth celebrating, because it is the end after all. No matter what the final outcome is, when it is over, it is time to put a wildfire and listen to a few Qin Lu drink a few cups of Xifeng wine and eat a bowl of noodles, and celebrate the end of his six-year trip.
Saying that the result of not caring about "White" is hypocritical, and it is sour and slippery. The mentality mentioned earlier is short-lived, the feeling of having just stepped out of the tunnel and just unloading the burden and just putting on the pen, short to only half an afternoon and one night. The next morning I woke up and began to worry about the possibility of the book being published, and how readers would react after publication or not be able to publish it at all, when the rest of their lives would pass.
In fact, I was already thinking about this ending when I was close to finishing it. My wife once asked, "What if it can't be published?" I said, unequivocally, "I'll raise chickens."
If it were not for the constraints of non-literary factors, but purely because of the scrutiny of literature itself and was not qualified for publication, I intend to discontinue the profession of writing. I think I can run a chicken farm, even the most scientific chicken farming techniques are never more complicated than writing novels. I think that the feeling of selling baskets of eggs must be more calm and confident than selling the "Four Sisters" books myself, at least not falling into embarrassment and shame. I am already fifty years old, and the novels i write at this age still make it difficult for the publishing house to lose money, and I have to sell myself, do I really have to be as pedantic as Fan Jin to the point of madness? I want to think of literature as just a hobby, of course, not to say that you can throw it away with a loud voice, after all, I have pursued it for most of my life. But we have to change the position, put professional writing back to the amateur position, and put chicken breeding in the primary position of the main business. In the midst of the cry of the hen laying eggs, I can continue to admire the tender feelings and beautiful words of Aitmatov, Hemingway, and Márquez. Moreover, it is time to change the economic situation of the family, creating that bowl of rice because of its own ability is not enough, it should find another bowl of rice that can be eaten, which is a very simple truth. There is occasionally a chicken in the chicken family that only lays soft eggs, perhaps calcium deficiency, perhaps the chicken's own physical defects, the eggs laid have no hard shell, only a thin layer of soft skin wrapped in yolk protein. This egg cannot be marketed and can only be eaten at home. The most unspeakable feeling of selling "Four Sisters" by myself is that I have attributed myself to a writer similar to this kind of chicken.
I wrote a letter to Brother He Qizhi of the People's Literature Publishing House as promised, and the long report has been written, asking whether the manuscript is mailed, Whether I send it or does he take it? Write back saying that someone will be sent to pick up the manuscript. Gao Xianjun and Hong Qingbo arrived in Xi'an at the agreed time, and when I handed them the stack of neatly bound manuscripts, my nose was a little sour, and I swallowed back a sentence that poured into my mouth. The words are: I have even given you my life. The thought that this may have side effects will make them feel stressed, and they will also think that the work is not judged by how much hardship and how much time it has suffered after all. After that, I entered a kind of leisurely waiting day.
According to the convention, long-form publications require three levels of review, and this 500,000-word manuscript alone takes two months to read. Now that my intentions and ideas have been determined, and the results of the review are only one of the two-handed preparation that determines me, it can be said that I am calm.
Unexpectedly, it was only twenty days from the handing over of the manuscript to the receipt of Mr. Gao Xianjun's first letter of attitude. The letter said that he and Hong Qingbo had finished reading the manuscript on the train from Xi'an to Sichuan and in their leisure time at a meeting in Sichuan, and that they had written the letter to me the night they returned to Beijing. Forgive me for omitting the reading and evaluation of the "White" manuscript in Gao Xianjun's letter, but my first reaction was: I can not raise chickens, God!
The "White" text was serialized in "Contemporary" in two issues. When the sixth issue came out in late 1992, I went to a nearby post and telecommunications office to buy it, and the person who sold the book said that the current issue of Contemporary had been sold out. The post office only orders ten copies per issue, and this issue is the fastest selling. I hurried to the post and telecommunications building in the center of the city, where forty copies of "Contemporary" were sold out in each issue. The book seller said that this issue of "White Deer Plain" sold very quickly, and many people have already booked the next issue. She took out a slip of paper with the name of the booker and asked me if I wanted to register the reservation. I looked at the name and unit of the booker on the note, and there were no acquaintances in the literary circles I knew, and there were almost no people in pure literary units. I am greatly relieved that the book "White" will henceforth enter the real ordinary readers, and the shadow of embarrassment and shame of "Four Sisters" selling itself has only now begun to be swept away and dispelled.
Stills from the TV series "White Deer Plain"
Earlier, before the "Bai" article came out in "Contemporary", I jointly concocted a news draft at the home of Tian Changshan, director of the literary and art department of Shaanxi Daily, that is, to tell a friend who was still concerned about my long story an accurate message. The book-style message manuscript was about a hundred words, and the two of us knocked on it for an hour, not bragging or boasting, not even mentioning the difficult process of creation, and the content introduction was so simple that it could not be summarized. In the end, it was just a book, a plain and simple book, whose purpose was to inform the "White" article of publication and the time of publication. The only thing I made for myself was this book news, confident that it did not belong to the overheated hype and planning.
I will not mention the comments after the writing of "White".
The book "White" was first released and sold in Xi'an in July 1993, and ten days later the pirated book was placed in the newsstand. The People's Literature Publishing House, however, was as underestimated as I was, and the first edition of about fifteen thousand copies had been greatly encouraged, and now it was only in a hurry to reprint it, from the first printing in June 1993 to seven times in November, and finally blocking the sales channels by various stolen copies. What is even more ironic is that in the autumn of a year later, when I went to Hanzhong to participate in the "prose pen meeting" held by the Shaanxi Writers Association, a friend in Hanzhong said that some leaders in the city wanted my signature book. I walked around the streets of Hanzhong for half a day, and finally found the only two remaining copies of the White book in a small private bookstore, and they were stolen versions of the first and second volumes of the works that I had never seen before. I bought it and filled in the blank space with the self-deprecating words of buying the pirated version. Previously, I firmly refused to sign the pirated version, which made many readers and friends unhappy. Then I opened this ban, and the pirated version was not wrong. The reader is innocent. There was nothing I could do. I actually have A Q-style masturbation, which is better than selling "Four Sisters" myself.
Chen Zhongzhong and his White Deer Plain (excerpt)
He Qizhi
From life experience to life experience
Chen Zhongzhong has walked a difficult and long road from a teenager who loves literature to a writer with great influence at home and abroad.
In 1959, when he was in the third grade of junior high school in Xi'an Eighteenth Middle School, he was a Liu Qing fan. At that time, the first part of Liu Qing's "History of Entrepreneurship" was also called "Rice Season Storm", and two chapters were published in each issue of "Yanhe" magazine, and he went to the post office on time every month to spend two cents to buy a copy of "Yanhe" - these two cents were already a big expense for him at that time.
When he was young, Chen Zhongzhong's deep love for "History of Entrepreneurship" exceeded all the literary works he had read at that time, because Liu Qing's description of the rural scenery and peasant life in Guanzhong was more true than all the literary works written about the countryside that he could see at that time. For a junior high school student, there is no more analysis of literary and artistic theory, mainly true and credible, Liu Qing's characters can find shadows around him, which is enough. "History of Entrepreneurship" was published in the early 1960s, and by the early 1970s, he had faithfully bought seven copies, and when he went to the May 7 Cadre School during the "Cultural Revolution", the "History of Entrepreneurship" in his backpack was a "History of Entrepreneurship" in addition to "Mao Xuan". But now there is no one, always reading one and losing one, and being taken away by others.
Because he especially likes "History of Entrepreneurship" and Liu Qing's prose and close-ups, it is inevitable to imitate and learn from Liu Qing in his early creation. For example, the short stories "After The Succession" and "Gao Jia Brothers" published in the 1970s are considered to be very similar to Liu Qing in the artistic feeling of people from language to rural atmosphere. This was naturally an affirmation at the time—although the story of rural life in the novel was inseparable from the tone of the class struggle. It can be said that until the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chen Zhongzhong's works, from language habits to art levels, had not left Liu Qing's influence.
But that changed markedly by the mid-1980s. Faithfully, he and Liu Qing did not actually have any personal interaction. It was not until the early 1970s (1972-1973) that the Shaanxi People's Publishing House held a symposium of workers, peasants, and soldiers, and faithfully attended the meeting as an amateur author, and only then did he see Liu Qing for the first time. At that time, Liu Qing had just been politically liberated, but her health was not good, and she used a sprayer to spray medicine into her throat while speaking, and then she could go on with her breath. He spoke easily and excitedly, without a draft speech or clichés, but it was a decent article. When he came to the meeting, he wore a black coat and was as simple as an old farmer.
Before Liu Qing's death, Faithful had seen him on such occasions. For Liu Qing's position in the history of literature, the image of a generation of writers is affirmed, and loyalty especially respects the strength of personality he showed during the deformed era of the "Cultural Revolution". By the time of Liu Qing's eightieth birthday in 1996, Zhang Luo, in the name of the Provincial Writers Association, had rebuilt Liu Qing's tomb, and solemnly reiterated Liu Qing's unique views on the creative labor engaged in by writers in the sacrifice in front of Liu Qing's tomb: "Literature is the cause of fools" and "Writers are sixty years as a unit." Faithfully believe that Liu Qing's "fool" spirit and the view that creation should be regarded as a lifelong career have the most basic warning significance for writers.
However, early learning and eternal respect for Liu Qing is one thing, while it is another thing for a truly accomplished writer who should eventually go his own way. Therefore, by the middle of the 1980s, Faithful had become more and more soberly aware from the wider study and his own artistic practice that a person who followed others step by step in art could never walk out of his own style, could never form an independent artistic personality, and could never walk out of the huge shadow of the worshipper. For example, when a child is toddler, once he can stand up, he must shake off the adult's hand and walk his own path. This is especially true as far as artistic creation is concerned, and it is necessary to shake off the invisible hand of the admirer as soon as possible in order to go our own way.
Chen Zhongzhong did not lack an understanding of rural life, in fact, he himself has always lived and worked among the peasants.
From the time he graduated from high school in 1962 to 1982 when he transferred to the Shaanxi Provincial Writers Association to engage in professional creation, he has been in the countryside. He first became a primary and secondary school teacher in the countryside, then a grassroots cadre, and a deputy secretary and deputy director of the commune. It was ten years, and it was not until the new period of 1978 that he was transferred from the commune to the Xi'an Suburban Cultural Center. As a rural grassroots cadre, in addition to personnel organization work, he must manage all other things, such as field production, pig breeding and vegetable breeding. He knows more than just the big and small policies in the countryside, but can be said to be a direct implementer and participant. In the summer of 1977, he was also the commander-in-chief of the commune's land leveling and land science village, sitting on the front line for three months, leading more than a thousand people to realize the task of transforming the three running fields of running water, running soil and running fat into water storage and fertilizer fields. In the first half of 1978, he was also the commander-in-chief, organizing the commune's manpower to build the embankment of Bahuali on the Pu River, which still plays a role in blocking water and protecting the land. Therefore, for the rural life in China since the 1960s and 1970s, Chen Zhongzhong can be said to be inadvertently familiar with it, and he is naturally as familiar with the people around him and even his family because he often mixes with them.
However, just being familiar with rural life and various characters is obviously not enough for creation. Although Chen Zhongzhong had the regret of not going to college, since the new period, he did not miss the opportunity to learn on his own, and read the world's famous works extensively. Reading not only makes him pay attention to the artistic structure of the novel, but also realizes that the writer must not only be familiar with life and feel life, but also improve the ability to feel life to the degree of feeling life, then the creation will get a sublimation.
In short, with this realization and realization, with the profound reflection on the fate of our nation when writing "Mr. Blue Robe", and the strong tension of desire emanating from life itself, Faithful strongly realized that if he could not complete a large book that could be placed in his coffin as a pillow after death by the age of fifty, it would be difficult to imagine how to live in the future. This was in 1986, when He was forty-four years old and had just made friends, he faced the major problems of life. Then there were two years of serious thinking and solid preparation, as well as four years of perseverance, and then the epic long-form "White Deer Plain" was born.
"White Deer Plain": a thrilling peak
In 1985, when he wrote the novella "Mr. Blue Robe", Chen Zhongzhong began to think deeply about the fate of our nation. In order to complete a large book that can be called "the secret history of a nation" that can be placed in his coffin as a pillow after death, and in order to complete this novel that was once proposed to be named "Guyuan" and later named "White Deer Plain", Chen Zhongzhong spent two or three years making preparations in several aspects: First, historical materials and life materials, including consulting county records, local party history and literary and historical materials, and engaging in social investigation; second, studying and understanding modern Chinese history, reading "Modern History", "Rise and Decline", "Japanese", "Psychology", "Modern History", "Modern History", "Rising and Declining", "Japanese", "Psychology", "Psychology", " New works on ethnic issues, psychology and aesthetics such as "Criminal Psychology", "The Analysis of Dreams", "The Course of Beauty", and "Art Creation Engineering"; the third is artistic preparation, carefully selecting and reading important works of novels of various genres at home and abroad, in order to learn from the strengths of others, including the method of studying the structure of long stories. He attaches particular importance to contemporary Chinese writers' "Activity Transforms Into Human Form" (Wang Meng) and "Ancient Boat" (Zhang Wei), while foreign writers' works include "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "Love in the Time of Cholera" (Márquez), Moravia's "Roman Woman", and Sheldon's best-selling novels in the United States and Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover".
After making these preparations and reflections, he realized that only by returning to the remote environment of his hometown cottage could he hope to achieve his ambitions.
Chen Zhongzhong's hometown is in Xijiang Village, Baqiao District, the eastern suburb of Xi'an. This is a small village bordering the Bahe River in the north of Bailuyuan in the south, and the whole village has less than 100 households. Although it is only a fifty-mile journey to Xi'an, it is naturally secluded, and it is most suitable for contemplation and meticulous writing. The backyard of each family in the village is close to the north slope of the White Deer Plain. The towering and steep slope of more than 100 miles blocks the TV signal, and the TV set here can only be used as a radio, only to listen to news and music. But this place not far from downtown Xi'an is indeed free of industrial pollution. As long as the Bahe River continues to flow, the river will be crystal clear, and there are trees on the river and the original slope, where there are foxes, badgers, roosters, croaking chickens, owls, etc., which is really an idyllic scenery.
Stills from the TV series "White Deer Plain"
Turning around the Guandi Temple, which is on the verge of collapse in the village, it is the home that Chen Zhongzhong handed down from the hands of the old lady, grandfather and father. On the side of the street not more than ten meters in front of the main gate of the homestead, there are French plane trees that stand tall and erect by faithful hands. This small tree, which was originally only the thickness of the index finger, was planted in the early spring of 1988 when Chen Zhongzhong was determined to write "White Deer Plain", and after four years it grew to the thickness of an adult's arm, and finally allowed its owner to enjoy a green shade the size of a sieve. It is a testimony to the hardships, painstaking efforts, and even the unbearable loneliness that Chen Zhongzhong has endured in order to write "White Deer Plain" in the past few years.
In March 1992, I received faithful letters. In the letter, he talked about the creation of his first novel, "White Deer Plain", and said that he attached great importance to this work, and also attached great importance to the attitude of "Contemporary" magazine and the People's Literature Publishing House. Later, Hong Qingbo of Contemporary Magazine and Gao Xianjun, head of the First Editorial Office of Contemporary Literature of the Humanities Society, were ordered to go to Xi'an to retrieve a thick stack of manuscripts of "White Deer Plain". According to the regulations of the third-level review, at that time, the magazine "Contemporary" had Hong Qingbo, Chang Zhenjia, Zhu Shengchang and I reading the manuscript according to the method of assembly line operation. The first compilation office of contemporary literature, which is responsible for publishing books, has Liu Huijun, Gao Xianjun, and Li Shuguang involved in it. Although there have been some specific comments on the manuscript, in general all the fans involved in this matter recognize that this is a big work that we have been looking forward to for many years. Because of its amazing sense of reality, thick sense of history, typical character shaping and elegant and popular artistic characteristics, it is bound to be at the peak position in the history of contemporary literature. From this, we agreed that it should be accorded the highest treatment, that is, it should be serialized in the magazine "Contemporary" and published in a single edition by the Humanities Society. In early August 1992, Zhu Shengchang signed the final opinion on the serialization of "White Deer Plain" in the sixth issue of Contemporary In 1992 and the first issue in 1993; on January 18, 1993, as the final reviewer of the manuscript, I signed the review opinion: "This is a realist masterpiece that shows the author's maturity. The magnificent scale, rigorous structure, profound thought, real power and fine character portrayal (Bai Jiaxuan and others can be regarded as typical) make it an atmospheric (majestic) work in the contemporary novel forest, a work with permanent artistic charm. It should be treated as a focus book. "White Deer Plain" was published in June 1993.
Now, although his life-like imperial masterpieces have been criticized by some reasonable people, misunderstood, and suppressed in some form and form, after all, "White Deer Plain" has undoubtedly had a sensational effect that has shook thousands of readers that has been rare in contemporary literature for many years. It has been hailed as the "Strange Book of a Generation", a tome that "puts it in Eurasia, although Balzac and Standar did not give way" (Fan Zeng), and is "not inferior to those novels that won the Nobel Prize in Literature" (Liang Liang). In the contemporary Chinese literary world, "White Deer Plain" is undoubtedly a large tree with lush foliage and brilliant leaves in the jungle of the novel, and it is indeed a peak that rises from the ground and is infinitely shocking. After completing the heavy work, big work, and unique work of "White Deer Plain", Chen Zhongzhong not only surpassed himself, but also surpassed his teacher Liu Qing in a certain sense. It is by no means that the faithful scholar is bigger than the teacher, but after he has the consciousness to surpass the teacher and follow his own path, he has made a tenacious struggle for nearly a decade (a doctor or nurse in Shijiazhuang said in a letter: "I want to write this book without exhaustion and vomit blood... I wonder if you are alive or not, can you still see my letter? "); Also because the times are different, faithfulness has more references, less constraints, and a more free creative environment than Liu Qing.
Chen Zhongzhong deservedly received many honors and was naturally well-known at home and abroad. Now that his heavy heart could be relaxed, he had reason to let out a happy laugh, and the deep knife-like folds on his face seemed to stretch a little, right?
Issue 2, 2022
Contents
Novel
Yan Shi Ji (Retrospective Chapter)/Ge Liang
novelette
Taolai's story / Shi Shuqing
short story
Nian Guan/Ma Jinlian
Nineveh Miracle/Trinity
Flower City attention
Keywords in this issue: Avant-garde Literature Extension
Column moderator: He Ping
Introduction: The so-called pioneer, or will be the old discarded / He Ping
Spend the weekend with Dr. Uranium/Soel
Leprosy hospital front / Yang Fei
poetry
Akiyama Shimo (group poems)/Yubang
Essay essay
Twelve tigers whispering/Feng Jie
Flower City Translation
Moderator: Happy
The Great Life: Selected Essays by Boban /[French] by Christian Boban, translated by Zhao Danxia
Extraterritorial perspective
She confronts her spiritually– misogyny in literature/ Wang Zhao
Editor: Xu Yangsha
Review: Du Xiaoye
Image source: Internet
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