"From 'The Chinese Woman in Manhattan' to 'Kissing the World', there is a common characteristic, they all write for the heart, for human suffering. I think this is the characteristic of our overseas Chinese writers, everyone writes for the heart. ”
Zhou Li, a well-known overseas Chinese writer, and Wang Lan, a well-known media personality and former secretary of the party group and full-time vice chairman of the Shanghai Writers Association, recently came to the writers' bookstore to have a dialogue around Zhou Li's new work "Kissing the World - Manhattan Handbook" and his famous work "Chinese Women in Manhattan" 30 years ago.
This live broadcast on the video account and Douyin of the Shanghai Literary Creation Center is one of the series of activities of the "Overseas Chinese Literature Shanghai Forum" of the Chinese Literature Network, and it is also the opening of this year's series of activities of "Writers Talking" in Puxing Street of the Shanghai Literary Creation Center's "Literature into the Community".
The "Shanghai Forum on Overseas Chinese Literature" was held for three consecutive times from 2016 to 2018, inviting 30 overseas Chinese writers, including Zhou Li, Zhang Ling, Lu Xinhua, Xue Haixiang, Dai Xiaohua, Chen He, Chen Qian, and Hongying.
More than 30 years ago, Zhou Li, who traveled to Manhattan with $40, wrote his experience into an autobiographical novel "Chinese Women in Manhattan", which became popular and sold 1.6 million copies. Won the "October" Literary Prize and was named one of the most influential literary works of the nineties.
In 2006, Zhou Li launched "Manhattan Emotional Intelligence".
She attended the "Overseas Chinese Literature Shanghai Forum" in 2016 and 2018, and said in the dialogue, "The Shanghai Forum of Chinese Literature has a great influence on my creation. At the forum, she got along with writers such as Zhang Ling, Hongying, Dai Xiaohua, who she was usually familiar with but could not meet, and exchanged creative ideas with each other, which was greatly inspired and shocked.
In February 2020, Lu Shiqing, the main initiator of the forum and a professor at Fudan University, specially invited Zhou Li to the Peace Hotel to promote a long talk, encouraging her to "write another new work". It was this long conversation that prompted her to write her new work "Kissing the World - Manhattan Handbook".
Zhou Li revealed that the whole book began to be written in February 2020, when she organized overseas Chinese writers in New York to donate money and materials to Wuhan during the day, and began to write at night. But at the end of the darkness there is a light, and this light is literature, that is, literary creation. ”
In September 2020, the third part of the "Manhattan Trilogy", "Kissing the World - Manhattan Handbook", was published by Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, including 28 cultural and historical essays written by Zhou Li while walking. She visited the site of the island-hopping battle, tracing the blood-stained battle flag and the warmth of human nature through the smoke of World War II; Explore the footsteps of Van Gogh, Hemingway, Churchill, Voltaire and others around the world, recording thought-provoking scenes; He also traveled to the North Pole and Mount Everest to pursue the vast spiritual world of explorers.
In order to investigate the cause of Van Gogh's death and the location of the real cemetery, Zhou Li visited the footprints of Van Gogh in the last two years of his life. She ran along the path of Van Gou to his house, pinching her watch and running back and forth several times, trying to verify the authenticity of history. When recalling this search, Zhou Li remembers vividly: "To this day, so many people around the world talk about Van Gogh every day, admire Van Gogh, lament his life, and sigh for his spirit, but until today no one knows where his real tomb and real remains are. ”
When writing the article "Van Gogh's Tears: This World Does Not Deserve Beautiful You", Zhou Li shed tears.
Writer Lu Xinhua said that this is a passionate female writer writing the beautiful text of another male painter who is burning with passion - not with a pen, but with heart. She is Van Gogh's confidant of a different world, a race, and a gender...
From "Chinese Woman in Manhattan" to "Kissing the World", Zhou Li's writing experience has completed the leap from writing about himself to traveling the world.
Liu Jun, a professor and critic at Nanjing University, said that the transformation from conquest to kissing reflects Zhou Li's thinking and tolerance from the self-confidence of a "Chinese woman" to a "citizen of the world".
Lu Shiqing, a professor of Chinese at Fudan University, believes that her novels still have a certain position in the hearts of readers and critics for many years, in addition to the value of the text itself, but also because the work writes the depth and expectation of history, and also writes the spirit of China's rise after the opening of the country.
Professor Chen Sihe of Fudan University said at a sharing meeting of Zhou Li's works that overseas Chinese creation in the new era after the reform and opening up can be divided into several stages: the first stage is mainly to write personal inspirational stories of Chinese writers who have gone abroad; The second stage rewrites the homeland, reflecting on it from a special perspective that transcends history and reality.
He believes that "Zhou Li's recent work presents another trend, which is the conflict between man and nature, with life, and time and space, and she looks at these conflicts from a broader international perspective." This represents the transcendence of the individual, and also represents an overall trend of Chinese literary creation, which deserves attention and study. ”
Wang Lan said, "Due to the impact of the epidemic, the event has not continued to be held after 2019 as in the past, but we have been tracking the creation of overseas Chinese writers. ”
She said that it is gratifying that many writers who participated in the forum have published new works, and some works are quite weighty, some works have surpassed the past creation of writers, and some writers have entered another active period and harvest period of creation. "It's a very interesting phenomenon. Therefore, we hold an event like today's as a continuation of the 'Shanghai Forum on Overseas Chinese Literature', as well as a retrospective of the results of the forum and a showcase of writers' creations." ”
This activity is guided by Shanghai Writers Association, co-sponsored by Puxing Community Cultural Center, Puxing Road Street Community School, Puxing Road Street Library, Writers Bookstore, and Chinese Literature Network, and supported by Shanghai Literary Creation Center and Shanghai Writers Club Co., Ltd.