Chen Renjie
Reporter: You are a native of Zhejiang who has lived in Tibet for 10 years because of aid to Tibet and later decided to transfer Tibet to work. What kind of spiritual transformation have you experienced along the way?
Chen Renjie: I am a native of Tiantai, Zhejiang, and after graduating from graduate school, I worked in Hangzhou, and then I came to Tibet in 2012 when I had the opportunity to help Tibet. In Shenzha County, Nagqu City, Tibet, at an average altitude of 4,700 meters, I worked for seven years. It can be said that coming to Tibet was an accident, but it was also a destined thing, thus starting a journey of blood relative-like love. A wanderer, or a "fugitive" inside, was suddenly placed in a primitive wilderness, and the life I saw seemed to flow in primordial blood. In the face of primitive nature, people suddenly feel a sense of vagueness and awe, which is completely different from the beauty of Hangzhou West Lake that has been artificially carved for thousands of years, and the poetry erupted is also a world of difference. In the singing and dancing willow wind of West Lake, it is difficult to evoke cosmic consciousness, ancestral complex, and living feelings, while in the Qiangtang grassland, the hinterland of northern Tibet where spirit and legends do not grow a tree, looking up, are all nature that is difficult for human civilization to plunder and transform, retaining the frozen time and geographical form since the rise of the ancient sea of Tethys as the roof of the world, I am always pityed by the stars and pointed by dewdrops, as if every blade of grass is in the time of origin, origin and reopening. Here, the wall of the body is suddenly torn down, and the soul sneaks into this earth house, making people feel an inexplicable touch. Before this mighty force of nature, concealment and openness, darkness and clarity, distance and closure, solitude and bosom, cry and silence will always inspire me deeply with the essence of its existence, with a higher unity of opposites: this is the home of the soul. For Tibet, a short stay is not enough, it needs to be integrated and observed by the body and mind for a long time, put into life, and seep into its great rivers like water droplets.
Reporter: The Book of Tibet is the first collection of poems you wrote after you arrived in Tibet. It can be seen that the landscapes and winds of Tibet are important inspiration and materials for your poetry writing. How do you extract poetry from nature?
Chen Renjie: The source of poetry is inseparable from the nature on which people live. The sky above the head, the surrounding plains, and the small feelings and chaotic mysteries that rise in the bottom of the heart, blend with each other, and together give birth to wonderful poetry. But modern people are tired of running around and toiling in chores, often forgetting to pay attention to nature, let alone dialogue with nature, so the relationship between man and nature has become relatively alienated. In some works of poetry, desire completely overrides nature, piling up personal emotional catharsis. Because of its unique geographical environment, Tibet has basically retained its relatively primitive nature and religion. Therefore, Milarepa's nature is full of harmony, clarity and joy, and it is the true joy of "self-observance, super-life and death" produced when contemplating nature. The magic of Tibet speaks for itself, from natural things to religious culture, but how many people really read it. The current era is more about the mentality of tourists, walk all the way to show off. However, the hidden meaning of life revealed in Tibet requires you to meditate on all things alone in order to wait for inner enlightenment. When I came to Tibet, I was always under the impact of nature and felt the stimulation of language in the vast world. I slowly felt that I was no longer a bystander to the land, but a resident of its soil. I walk every texture of the snowy plateau, caressing the flowers, grass, streams, stones and mountains, sinking myself into this mystery. Therefore, the Book of Tibet recited nature in order to raise the lyricism of the essence of poetry from the tranquility, searching for the gold of poetry in nature.
Reporter: From the "Book of Tibet" to the Lu Prize-winning "Between the Mountains and Seas", all of them are written on Tibetan themes, but whether from the perspective of the collection of poems or the operation of specific poems, the poet's sense of subjectivity has been enhanced. How do you, as the author, see the continuity and variation between these two collections of poetry?
Chen Renjie: The difference between these two collections of poetry is quite large. The Book of Tibet mainly records observations and perceptions during the period of aid to Tibet from 2012 to 2017. The contents and emotions written in it include: the strangeness and wonder of the first arrival on the plateau, the experience of the local beautiful mountains, geography, and humanities, and the gaze on the cause of aiding Tibet. It is undeniable that at the beginning, there was a tourist mentality, but as time progressed, I traveled to most places in Tibet, gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the real life on the plateau and a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between man and nature. In other words, the process of writing the Book of Tibet is also a process of continuous growth of one's own soul. Later, after three consecutive sessions of aid to Tibet, I decided to transfer to Tibet, and my whole mentality underwent a relatively big change. When aiding Tibet, no matter how I integrated, I was just a cadre who aided Tibet, like Sun Wukong, with one foot on the ground and the other foot in the sky, there were many retreats and thoughts, and I could run on both sides of Zhejiang and Tibet at any time. But when you decide to stay on the plateau and work, your feet will fall heavily on the real land, and you can no longer fly, you must rethink the relationship with this land and the people, only by establishing the feeling of drinking water and thinking of the source like blood relatives can we completely integrate, open up your own new hometown, and create your own spiritual starry sky. Therefore, "Between the Mountains and the Sea" has a more important meaning for me. It can be said that "Between the Mountains and the Sea" is the book of the soul that I "walked" out of the plateau, the poetry of the earth, the poetry geography of the spiritual territory, the poem of soul torture and spiritual reinvention after I stayed in Tibet, and the book of my desire to move towards the poetry plateau. Therefore, when creating these poems, it may inject stronger subject emotions, and at the same time, as you become more familiar with the object of writing, the brushwork is relatively more skillful and calm.
Reporter: The short poem "Moon Postmark" and the long poem "The Genealogy of Light" in the poetry collection "Between the Mountains and Seas" all face the main theme of the new era. When you write these poems, how do you deal with emotions and techniques to avoid falling into the trap of slogans?
Chen Renjie: As far as new age poetry is concerned, realistic themes are a huge nutritional treasure trove. I did a lot of realistic writing in "Between the Mountains and the Sea". For example, the sisters Zhuoga and Yangzong, who have been shepherding the frontier for many years, have attracted widespread attention for their deeds. How to start small, present major historical events, conceal them in subtle euphemisms, create endless imagination and poetic space, and make political poetry light and deep? I remembered my personal experience of aiding Tibet, not only in the letters of "love letters between the two places", remembering Hemingway's iceberg theory, only the small horn of the iceberg exposed at sea level, but the huge and deep part has been buried under the sea, and I also remembered the moon written by Li Bai, Du Fu, and Su Shi, and the postmark after entering the postal era... Finally, the image of "moon postmark" written in the sky was condensed. Isn't "moon postmark" a modern expression of "a thousand miles together"? Thinking of this, although the time like water turns everything into the past, it also promotes the birth of a poem. The "Moon Postmark" reads: "When the spring breeze blows away the snowdrop / I write to you / The envelope is as white as snow / It is stamped with the postmark of the moon". New era poetry still has to return to the text itself, in addition to paying attention to the choice of subject matter, but also to emphasize an aesthetic creativity, better combining ideology and artistry.
The long poem "The Genealogy of Light" deals with the theme of relocation and poverty alleviation. In November 2019, I came to Yeba Village, Linka Township, Basu County, and experienced first-hand the process of relocating 75 poor households in Yeba Village to Xiba Village near the county seat. It's certainly a pleasure to be able to move to a safer and more comfortable environment. But Yeba Village is, after all, the homeland where these relocated people have lived for generations, and I see reluctance and melancholy in their eyes, so in writing, I cut into it my many years of rural life experience. The richness of life and the profundity of poetry require us to return to the event itself, so I wrote in the poem: "This early grass is the book of middle age / The neighbor is like a side of the country / The insects sing the moonlight, it is the subtraction of the bleak." And this homeland will not be completely deserted: "Something will not really disappear / It is lost in my absence / The eagle is being recovered from the sky". The forces of nature will repair all this and make it a home for new life. For the new life in the county, "from open courtyards to flat high-rise buildings, from dirt to reinforced concrete", "I want to re-study the personality geography hidden in objects" to see how they become new people in the city. In this process, "the wind of the homeland, blowing the new home, has been blowing, blowing towards the future of Hongmeng", and the villagers are moving towards a new life in dialectical thinking about tradition and modernity, past and future. I think I try to provide multiple aspects of thinking in my poems, and truly reflect the life development and spiritual changes of the villagers from multiple angles.
Reporter: There are many chapters in "Between Mountains and Seas" that look back at Jiangnan from a plateau. How did the experience of Kogen and Gangnam come together in your poems?
Chen Renjie: Tibet and Zhejiang are two completely different regions, but they both give me great nourishment in poetry writing. In Jiangnan, I can write a lot of poems with small touches and gentle feelings, but after arriving in Tibet, once I enter the writing of plateaus, I am more likely to write a sublime and magnificent realm. I try to combine these two elements to create a new kind of poetry. For example, in "Between the Mountains and the Sea" there is an image - "the tile of the roof of the world". We know that the "roof of the world" is the experience of the plateau, and the "tile" is the experience of Jiangnan, and with the eye of discovery, as soon as the two are superimposed, new images will appear.
In the long poems "Letter with Wife" and "Between Mountains and Seas", the experience of plateau and Jiangnan is integrated in many aspects. On the night I first arrived in Yeba Village, I recalled my seven years of aiding Tibet in northern Tibet, and now I have arrived in the vast corners of the Hengduan Mountain Range in eastern Tibet, from Hangzhou, a paradise on earth, to a village with almost no lights. I can't help but ask questions of fate and ponder what kind of mission and glory poetry has in a person. Especially in the quiet night, when I listen to the sound of the Nu River, I feel as if this wave is also from the Qiantang River. For a time, the years of Jiangnan and the time of aiding Tibet surged into my heart, deeply feeling the vicissitudes of the sea and the changes of the times, and the sky seemed to have an oracle splitting through: you have no way to follow, you can only redeem with poetry, and turn the black and white days into golden mines of poetry. Therefore, there is the book of blood and tears written with life experience, "The Letter to His Wife", and the literary answer "Between the Mountains and the Sea", which has been handed over for Tibet's poverty alleviation and constantly forged the consciousness of the Chinese national community. "Don't worry, our children / I take good care, children on the white cloud / You gently wipe away the sorrow ...", "You see, the son has grown taller again / His age is exactly the annual ring you are hiding". The book became a record of my life and that of my family, which wrote about the dialogue of fate of gathering less and leaving more, and the "spiritual geography" of the heroic love of cadres in the new era. And in "Between the Mountains and the Sea", I mainly focus on a remote village from Hangzhou, Zhejiang to Shenzha, Tibet, and then from Shenzha to Basu, thinking of how long a person's lifeline is, can only be measured by his own steps, in the cold, isolation, introspection, again and again to broaden the inner spiritual territory, as if hometown and other places, half hanging high in the nine skies, half sinking in the body, with me as the rainbow, setting up a dialogue between the two heavens, divinity and suffering, are using lightning to cut the line of poetry. Between the mountains and the sea in geography, in the context of the big era, it has become a small footnote that forges the sense of community of the Chinese nation.
Reporter: In your creative talk, you said that poets "should uphold the poetic spirit of realist poets such as Du Fu and have an everlasting compassion." How do you practice this concept of poetry in your specific poetry?
Chen Renjie: After arriving in Tibet, I deeply felt that poets should have a strong feeling. Because you pay attention to nature, every grass and every stone, you understand that all things are animist and all things are equal. In "Between the Mountains and the Sea", there is a poem called "Frozen Red Stone": "The plateau is not lonely / In the world, there is no real desolate place / Lonely, but people feel lonely / One night, I saw the stars twinkling high / The snowy peaks were gathering / Another time, I came back from that song / I saw the stones in the wilderness frozen red / Like a child's face." And other stones are as black as iron / Like old fathers / They are scattered on the plateau, safe in / in the silence of the earth / Never need the language of man". We need to be kind to nature and believe in the invisible power.
More importantly, the poet loves life – only then will life love the poet. To speak of the light and salt in life is to speak of the love and pain in life. From the original collection of poems "Going Home", to "The Book of Tibet", to "Between the Mountains and the Sea", there are many words and ink that pay attention to the ordinary people around them. Of course, writing about the herders of Tibet may require some shifts. They have faith as a support, rarely complain about the predicament of survival, and die in heaven and earth. They live a simple life, like a weather-beaten tree, tenacious and tenacious, with a sense of religion. "All days are a day, all roads are a road", from here, I seemed to see that all emotions finally pointed to the home deep in the soul.
Reporter: What kind of writing plan do you have next?
Chen Renjie: As a person who relies on the stars of language to make warmth, I inevitably come to Tibet to find spiritual roots, hoping to make a spiritual leap through poetry. Only when the heart is like a spring and blends with the Tibetan mountains and rivers can transcendence be completed. I'm mainly writing the collection of poems "Plateau Peak" now. Among them, of course, there can be no lack of long poems about the Himalayas. I wanted to combine its mountainous, geographical, religious and painful history. Through walking the border defense, I also learned about the hardship and strength of our border defense work, as well as the glorious mission shouldered by the border defense troops. All these require us to excavate and deepen through the language of poetry, and write epochal poems to be grateful for this land and this era. In addition, in the Chinese culture of the unity of heaven and man and the interconnection of all things, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, this solemn, mysterious and quiet mother land, perfectly symbolizes the spiritual territory of the peak of the plateau. It is not only a coordinate in the geographical sense, but also the spiritual backbone of the Chinese nation, but also a spiritual highland that every artistic conscience looks up to, and I look forward to the glory of this mission that belongs to poetry and Tibet.
Source: Literature and Art Daily, February 27, 2023, 2nd edition (Some text was deleted from the Internet)