Works by Zhou Li
Over the years, overseas Chinese writers have opened a window for Chinese people to see exotic customs with their own creations, and also introduced a richer and three-dimensional contemporary China and Chinese civilization to the world. Their works not only have Chinese cultural heritage, but also are immersed in the local culture, presenting a unique style and characteristics, and many classic works and classic images created during them are unforgettable. Among them, writer Zhou Li's "Chinese Women in Manhattan" is a work that many people have heard of.
On November 8, Zhou Li 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, came to the writers' bookstore to have a dialogue on Zhou Li's new work "Kissing the World - Manhattan Handbook" and her 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".
■ Event site
If "The Chinese Woman in Manhattan" is a successful autobiographical novel, "Kissing the World" is a cultural-historical essay that travels between reality and history. The work includes 28 prose works by Zhou Li, many of which can be read from the names of the deep sense of history: "Burning Pacific: Battle of Peleliu and Nimitz Stone", "Cherry Blossom Lakeside: From Arlington National Cemetery to the National Archives of Washington", "Through Purgatory: Okinawa Revelation"... During the creation of these articles, Zhou Li visited the site of the island-hopping battle and felt the humanity and choices in the extreme historical environment. She also explored the footprints of Van Gogh, Hemingway, Churchill, Voltaire and others in Europe, America and Africa, and formed her own literary and historical feelings and unique insights during her visits. She also traveled to the North Pole and Mount Everest to refresh the meaning of struggle in the challenge of her own limits. After the launch of this new work, it received many praises from critics. Wang Lan said that this kind of one-stop in-depth field visits and excavations is in contrast to some historians who only study materials from libraries, archives and other places. "It is precisely because of such deep excavations that she has made many new discoveries and unearthed many historical materials that others do not know. As a female writer, her attention and approach to the history of the war is also admirable. ”
"Kissing the World" was written to use history as a lesson and history as a mirror to pursue the light of history and human nature." Zhou Li said. As the daughter of a soldier of the New Fourth Army, Zhou Li has always been very interested in this history, and when she was in China, she went to the places where historical events such as the Menglianggu Battle and the South Anhui Incident took place. After having the opportunity to travel overseas, she traveled to several World War II battlefields, including Normandy, and read many biographies of related people. Her interest drove her to dig deeper, doing a lot of fieldwork in many places. In the first half year or so of the epidemic spread to the United States, she concentrated on sorting out the materials obtained from personal investigation in an anxious mood and quickly completed writing.
■ Some of the locations involved in the work
The second part of the book is essays written while traveling around the world. With the opening of the country, travel writing is a very popular form of creation, but Zhou Li's writing is very different, her focus is on human nature, human complexity, and the special role that people play in history. When doing research and writing, she also uses fieldwork to go deep into the scenes in which the characters lived in those years, just like writing about World War II. Wang Lan said. She took the repeatedly mentioned "Van Gogh's Tears: This World Does Not Deserve Beautiful You" as an example, in the work, in order to verify the cause of Van Gogh's death and the location of the real cemetery, Zhou Li ran along the path of Van Gogh to his house, pinching his watch and running back and forth several times, wanting to verify the authenticity of history, "this way makes everyone very emotional." 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 today no one knows where his real tomb and real remains are. As I wrote this, I really wanted to find Van Gogh's remains and I was in tears. "What is more inspiring in "Kissing the World" is the adventure experience in the third part. Her own fearless exploration of the world is not only her own fearless exploration, but also the retrospective and remembrance of the explorers who came before her.
Throughout Zhou Li's creation from "Chinese Woman in Manhattan" to the present, Lu Shiqing, professor of the Department of Chinese of Fudan University, believes that her novels still have a certain status 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 of history and historical expectations, and also writes the spiritual spirit of China's rise after the opening of the country. "The leap from writing about himself to walking the world is also the process of Zhou Li's spiritual transformation, which is why there are creations such as "Kissing the World"." Wang Lan said. She agreed with Chen Sihe, a senior professor at Fudan University, at a sharing session on Zhou Li's works: Chinese literature in the new era after the reform and opening up has gone through an unusual process, and the first stage is mainly to write personal inspirational stories of Chinese writers who have gone abroad; The second stage rewrites the homeland, but with a special perspective that transcends history and reality. He believes that Zhou Li's recent work shows 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. ”
"From "Chinese Women in Manhattan" to "Kissing the World" has a common feature, writing for the heart, writing for human suffering, never writing for personal fame and fortune, never writing for perfunctory and trends, I think this is the characteristic of our overseas Chinese writers." Zhou Li said, "To live, people must strive to obtain the best value of life, and the only failure is to stop exploring." For writers, no longer writing is no longer exploring - writing is exploring, to measure the scene with heart and footsteps, and not to make up stories in your head. ”
During his tenure at the Writers Association, Wang Lan led the establishment of the "Shanghai Forum on Overseas Chinese Literature", which was held for three consecutive times from 2016 to 2018, aiming to strengthen the exchange between Shanghai writers and overseas Chinese writers and promote the research and development of Chinese literature in the world. Each forum will invite 10 writers and 10 critics to carry out one-on-one exchanges and discussions, and 30 overseas writers such as Zhou Li, Zhang Ling, Lu Xinhua, Ye Zhou, Liu Arantian, Shaojun, Jiang Lan, and Hongying have successively become guests of the forum. Although the forum has been postponed due to the impact of the epidemic, the tracking of the creation of overseas Chinese writers has been continuing.
■ The scene of the first forum in 2016
"We are pleased to see that many writers who participated in the forum later published their new works, and some of their works are quite weighty, and some writers have entered the active period and harvest period of their own creation, and there are also those who surpass the past creation and form a new peak of creation, which is a very interesting phenomenon." Wang Lan said, "Holding such an event is a continuation of the Chinese Literature Forum, a retrospective and display of the results of the forum, and on the other hand, it is also a display and promotion of the personal creation of overseas Chinese writers." ”
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.
New Media Editor: Yingying Zhang
Image: Courtesy of Writers' Bookstore, infographic
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