Words that cannot be loved by love - written after the online publication of "Mistakenly Entering Africa" | essay Lu Yi

Twenty years ago, when I was in my second year of high school, the school was divided into liberal arts and science classes. I went home and asked my father. His father was a liberal arts graduate at a prestigious university before the Cultural Revolution and suffered for decades. So he said to me without hesitation: Go to science and engineering, be an engineer. At that time, I did a good job in liberal arts, and even served as a representative of the English department. But the image of the father is tall, and the father's choice is also ironclad. Although my teacher, who was the head teacher of the liberal arts class, came specifically to see me, I chose my father's choice.

Not only was I admitted to a good polytechnic university, but I also performed very well after work. At the age of thirty, I was promoted to senior engineer and received three exemplary medals.

Father's text is good. Maybe I got some genetics, so after achieving certain results in my work, I began to think about writing some "words", first in the newspaper run by our unit, and later in the provincial enterprise newspaper. I have hardly published any "articles" in local newspapers, although some "articles" have even been said by some senior editors. Someone told me the reason for this: ordinary newspapers do not use articles of the unknown, and the "words" printed in lead are either celebrities' or "own" people. So he died of this heart and wholeheartedly made an "article" in the corporate newspaper.

Later, because of my work, I went to Africa, and I lost the soil that I could cultivate with a pen, and I thought I could put it on the shelf. I didn't think about what happened around me every day, and often whipped me like a whip, so that I had to do it again to "write". I used to write short essays, but this time I could only write a longer "text". It's not my forte, but I can't choose it.

I have worked in several countries in West and North Africa. Africa is backward, and every country is small. There are very few Chinese in each country, and everyone usually knows each other and often helps each other. I could often drive myself straight to the embassy, where ambassadors and counsellors were responsive. This is very different from the Chinese environment in Western countries. It was a big help for me to get familiar with life, but it was undoubtedly a fatal blow to fiction writing, because it was easy to find friends or shadows of themselves in the stories they wrote. Therefore, I had to create a "Fatan" as the location of the story of the novel out of thin air to prove that the story was completely fictional, and if there was any similarity, it was purely coincidental.

Realistically, I don't write novels at all, and I don't have any experience or education in this area. The only article I have seen about the way the novel is about Mo Yan's creative feelings about "Seven Uncles" in the Novel Monthly. He said that novels should be typical events in a typical environment. I personally experience that there are two ways to do novels, one is that the literary style is outstanding, such as "Remembering the Wolf", etc.; the other is the absolute experience of life, such as "Gao Yubao" and "Lin Hai Snow Field". There is no doubt that I can only be the latter.

The first draft of the novel took me forty-five of his time. For forty-five days, I felt that I was not writing, but talking, linking the stories I had seen or heard, and repeating them to myself. For forty-five days, I shared my fate with the characters in the novel, the stories in the novels that touched me deeply, and I wept for the characters in the novels twice in my writing. For forty-five days, I was in a situation other than me all day, except that I had to arrange visits to customers every morning, and the rest of the time I was preoccupied with the computer, sleeping and forgetting to eat. Continuous high-intensity writing triggered my frozen shoulder. My arms couldn't be lifted and my back couldn't touch the bed. I think every day: don't write anymore tomorrow. But the next day, too, I did it at that desk. Thanks to my wife for the ointment she prepared for me, I got through that period of days that were almost crazy. On the day the first draft of the novel was completed, I couldn't hold on any longer, and I fell seriously ill and was bedridden for three consecutive days. It was then that I learned that literati were not good either, and I vowed never to write any novels again. A strong hatred of words gradually arose from then on.

After the novel was written, because of my shyness, I rarely showed it to my friends. The first person to support me was Mr. Huang Yong, who also worked in Africa, who not only gave a high evaluation to my novel, but also took me deep into the ordinary Chinese of african life and collected a large amount of material. I wrote an outline of nearly 10,000 words for my second novel, True Black. Although I will not write it again, this wealth is eternal.

My classmate and good friend Mr. Pu Desong, although busy, did a lot of work for the publication of my novel, and he also took matters into his own hands to correct typos for my text. I'm sorry, but I had this problem when I was in school, and I haven't completely changed it yet.

Then there is Mr. Xu Jingzhou, the editor-in-chief of "Riding the Happy Pen", who is chivalrous and courageous, arrogant, and definitely belongs to a rare family among the literati. As soon as he got the manuscript, he immediately edited it, so that the novel had a chance to meet with everyone.

I'm an engineer, I have a good job, and I also have a satisfactory income. I never imagined what kind of reward I would get paid literally. At the same time, as a relatively successful individual, I will never arbitrarily exalt myself through the so-called "self-funded" publishing. As the great poet said, "I am me, I am fire."

After the publication of "Mistakenly Entering Africa", "Mistakenly Entering Africa" received unexpected responses and received a group of letters from readers. Most of them have different opinions about the characters in the novel and their experiences. One of them was an email from the southern shore of the Mediterranean, which said: "Lu Yi, we saw your "Mistaken entry into Africa" from "Taking pleasure in the pen". Your boy has a chance to escape back to China, but don't forget your difficult brothers. The novel is good, it seems that your boy still has two brushes. When you are proud, do not forget the days we spent together, do not forget the stories we have told you, do not forget the 'five golden flowers' in the desert, do not forget the 'Sahara testimony' that you promised to write for us...".

The user base of "Taking Pleasure and Walking" is even beyond the scope of this country, which should be a happy thing. But after reading this email, I almost went crazy: what kind of difficult brother and brother, how can I sprinkle salt on people's unconnected wounds, how to specifically expose other people's scars, how to open that pot and how to open that pot. After thinking about it, I can't blame them, and I can only blame them for this hateful and resentful text.

Words give people an opportunity to express and vent, and at the same time this opportunity is absolutely stingy for an ordinary person. It really is: love is also words, hate is also words.

Made in 2001