Recently, Hong Kong writer and publisher Poon Yiu-ming (pen name Yan Huo) wrote "This Emotion Will Still Flow in Your Heart" published by Writers Publishing House. This book selects his exchanges and research articles with modern literary masters such as Ba Jin, Qian Zhongshu, and Shen Congwen, and is accompanied by precious materials such as letters, manuscripts, and photographs. In these articles, the writer Ru Zhijuan and his in-depth conversation have been lost for a long time, and after more than thirty years, they are lost and recovered for the first time, in this interview, Ru Zhijuan recounts his own process of embarking on the road of writing, and reveals the key to writing a good short story.
Novelist Ru Zhijuan
In the early 1980s, there was a twinkling cultural star in Shanghai's literary scene, Ru Zhijuan. Ru Zhijuan is the mother of the famous novelist Wang Anyi. At that time, Wang Anyi had not yet become popular, so when the media mentioned Wang Anyi, they often called "Ru Zhijuan's daughter", and later Wang Anyi became famous, and the blue was better than blue, and the media wrote Ru Zhijuan as "Wang Anyi's mother".
At that time, Ru Zhijuan wrote a short story, "The Story Of The Wrong Clip", which caused a sensation in the Chinese literary circles and won the National Short Story Award, Nie Hualing read this novel, greatly appreciated, and in 1983 invited Ru Zhijuan and Wang Anyi's mother and daughter to Iowa in the United States to participate in the "Iowa Writing Project". At that time, Wang Anyi still participated as the daughter of Ru Zhijuan.
The author is also an invited Hong Kong writer this time, and among the Chinese writers of the same class, there are Wu Zuguang in the mainland, Chen Yingzhen and seventh class students in Taiwan.
The "Iowa Writing Project" activity lasted for three months, and we Chinese writers got along very well, and Sister Ru, our nickname for her, was even more caring for me, a young Hong Kong man who was alone. During this period, I made an in-depth visit to Ru Zhijuan. After returning to Hong Kong, he compiled an interview record based on the recording. This interview has not been found since. On October 7, 1998, Ms. Ru passed away, and I went through all the drawers and couldn't find them.
Thirty-two years have passed. I recently moved home and was overjoyed to find it in one of my old briefcases. It turned out that I was solemnly placing it on the inner layer of the briefcase.
Later, I read this interview carefully, and I felt that there were many precious materials that I had not heard of in the past.
Ru Zhijuan (1925-1998), pen name Aru, Chuxu, etc., was born in Shanghai on September 13, 1925. He has published a collection of short stories, "The Tall Poplar Tree" (1959, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House), "Quiet Maternity Hospital" (1962, China Youth Publishing House), "The Right to Love" (1980, Sichuan People's Publishing House), etc.
"The Wrong Story" won the 1979 National Award for Outstanding Short Story and received rave reviews. Nie Hualing pointed out in an article titled "Breakthroughs in Chinese mainland Novels in Technique: Talking about The Wrong Story": "It is innovative in structure, character portrayal and point of view; moreover, the whole novel is full of gentle irony and humor." ”
Ru Zhijuan is an influential writer in mainland China, she is good at extracting meaningful themes from life and deepening them, coupled with her unique delicate brushstrokes, ingenious conception, rigorous structure, and distinct character, making her works full of rich life atmosphere and strong appeal.
The following is the interview note -
Yan Huo (hereinafter referred to as "Yan"): You have only been studying for four years, how did you go from self-study to literature?
Ru Zhijuan (hereinafter referred to as "Ru"): I still talk about it from childhood. I haven't been in a formal school yet. When I was seven or eight years old, life was relatively hard, and after I began to know a few words, I liked to read a lot. In the book I get another world. At the beginning, there were all kinds of books, many words I didn't know, I jumped over, I was about ten years old at the time, watching "Water Margin", "Seven Heroes and Five Righteousness"...
Yan: Does your interest in reading have anything to do with your family background?
Ru: My parents died early, I was with my grandmother at that time, life was very hard, there was no fixed place to live, sometimes with my grandmother to the relatives' home in Hangzhou, sometimes to the relatives' home in Shanghai, so that I kept going back and forth, on the one hand, to accept the help of relatives to us, on the other hand, to find some handicrafts. Because life was very difficult, I had to find another world in the book and forget some of my worries in the real world. Since I was a child, I have had to worry about the chai rice oil and salt at home. That's how I got to get close to literature. When I was a little older, about twelve years old, I came into contact with "Dream of the Red Chamber", and I once had an article about the place where I lived in Hangzhou, entitled "Looking at the Red Chamber Under the Ziyang Mountain", and there were all kinds of people in this courtyard, all of whom were very low-level people, making matchboxes, and some unemployed. There is an old gentleman of rice industry, the ancient text is very good, and the writing is also very beautiful. In our big courtyard, only his daughter can go to elementary school. Other young people, such as those who make soles, do not have the opportunity to go to school. This girl who can go to school is very proud, and I feel that she is very proud of herself. But I am also very unconvinced in my heart, what is the big deal of going to school and studying, reading books, is not reading, I can also read at home, when I read "Dream of the Red Chamber", I read it as a textbook, the poems in "Dream of the Red Chamber" are memorized, I may not necessarily understand it when I memorize it, but after memorizing it, I gradually and slowly understand it in my life.
Yan: You've been to an orphanage, haven't you?
Ru: After my grandmother died when I was thirteen years old, because I had no home and only one brother, and then my brother couldn't live on his own, I was sent to a Christian orphanage in Shanghai. I remember when I went into the orphanage, I had no possessions, I only brought a book with me. I still remember that the book I brought with me was "The Education of Love", which had a great influence on me. When I read "The Education of Love", I cried when I read it, I didn't have the opportunity to go to school, I read it myself, I wrote my own brush words, memorized these books, and some of them I still remember, this is my situation in the orphanage, indicating that I was very fond of literature at that time.
Run out of the orphanage
Ru Zhijuan became everyone by studying hard and self-taught. The following are the answers to Ru Zhijuan's self-study and embarking on the path of a writer -
Yan: Didn't you study for four years?
Ru: I went to study for four years later, probably when I was ten years old, I went to primary school for one year — very coincidentally, I lived upstairs from the primary school, which was run by Zhong Wangyang, the chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Literary and Literary Circles at that time. He was an underground party at that time, running a popular primary school there, he ran this primary school as a cover, because I lived upstairs from them, I went to their school to study, I studied for a year, and then there was no way to read, and then after coming out of the orphanage, I went to Shanghai to study in the cram school for a year, I studied Chinese, accounting, abacus.
Yan: How long have you been in the orphanage?
Ru: I was in the orphanage for about half a year.
Yan: How did you come out?
Ru: I know a saying: if you are not free, you would rather die. Because in the orphanage, the last thing I could stand was that I was not allowed to read books. The orphanage has half a day of classes, teaching the Bible, and another half of the work - female red, sewing. Dozens of orphans lived in a house and wouldn't let you out, and I was least used to it, so I ran out on my own.
Yan: Why did you go to shanghai women's cram school again?
Ru: First, it doesn't charge like a normal school, it chooses subjects according to what you want to study, and only symbolically pays tuition; second, you can live. I came out of the orphanage with no place to live, and my brother gave me a little money and attended a women's cram school for a year. My brother's own income was very limited, and later I went to the American church school to read the Bible, which could also live and provide food. But the book was the Bible, and after a year of studying it, it happened to be the Pacific Incident, the Americans left, and that school was gone. After studying without books, I asked my brother to study at Wukang Modern Middle School in Tianmu Mountain, Zhejiang Province, for a year. At that time, I was older, and I thought that I would have a diploma anyway, so I would transfer to the third year of junior high school until I graduated from junior high school. I studied like this for four years and got a junior high school diploma. After mixing with the diploma, I went to Shanghai and lived in my brother's lover's house. I began to teach primary school, taught for half a year, I left Shanghai, after arriving at the Sudong Cultural and Labor Troupe, this is the beginning of my real love of literature and art, there is drama, music.
In 1986, Yanhuo visited Ru Zhijuan in Shanghai at her home in a small alley on Yuyuan Road in Shanghai
Yan: Who were the first writers of new literature you came into contact with?
Ru: The first contact was with Lu Xun, as well as writers from the Liberated Areas. By 1945, I was concentrating on Russian literature and 19th-century foreign works such as Roman Rolland, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, etc.
Yan: When did you start creating?
Ru: I practiced writing poems and taking notes early on. My purpose is not to publish, I just feel happy to write it out. Before the Battle of Huaihai, the division of labor in the cultural troupe was relatively fine, and in addition to the performances, a creative group was set up and I was assigned to the creative group. I started writing square cabarets, writing allegro, writing everything. After the Battle of Huaihai, we performed a regular drama. I was the leader of the creative group, and I went deep into Xuzhou, where the railway station was very large, and I stayed for a long time, and I wrote several plays such as "Eighty00 Locomotives Out of the Hole", mainly praising the working class.
Yan: What is your official debut?
Ru: My official publication should be before I joined the revolution. Didn't I work as a primary school teacher for half a year? When I was a primary school teacher, I wrote an essay entitled "New Life", about a thousand words, and submitted it to the newspaper, and when it was published, I had left Shanghai, and later I learned that it was published. Then when I arrived in the Liberated Areas, I wrote again in the Sudong Bao, first writing an essay on the subject I forgot, and the content was about the distress of the students in the Kuomintang area. Then the third one is the drama book "Eighty00 Locomotives Out of the Hole". The play was written collectively, but by me.
Desperately created
Ru Zhijuan's childhood and adolescent life path are bumpy and bumpy, and she insists on creating in a very difficult environment, paraphrasing her words as "desperate".
Her true creative career began at the age of fifty. Her creative path is not one-horse Flat River -
Yan: When did you create in a big way?
Ru: After the founding of New China, I tried other forms of writing other than drama relatively quickly, such as novel writing, and I wrote my first novel in 1949 and 1950, which was serialized in Wen Wei Po in Shanghai, titled "He Dongliang and Jin Feng", writing the story of a nurse who fell in love with a combat hero. A nurse falls in love with a wounded combat hero, who is well injured and needs to return to the front line, when he is very conflicted, on the one hand, he is very reluctant to her, on the one hand, the front is calling, after returning to the front, there may be casualties; on the other hand, the nurse loves him just because of his bravery. So he's very conflicted. At that time, I felt a bit of a small asset atmosphere, and I had not included it in a single book, and I would include it in the future when I had the opportunity.
Yan: "Lilies" should be your famous work, right? Mao Dun was very appreciative. I heard that the publication of this work went through many twists and turns.
Ru: Mainly Mr. Mao Dun mentioned it. "Lily Flower" I first sent to "People's Liberation Army Literature and Art", which was rejected; sent to "Yangtze River Literature and Art", and then rejected; and later transferred to "Yanhe", and finally published. Since "Lily", I have also worked hard, in addition to my own confidence, on the one hand, because of my gratitude for Mao Dun's recommendation and encouragement.
The key to writing a good short story
Although Ru Zhijuan participated in the revolution in her early years and wrote many works on revolutionary themes, the brilliance of humanity in the works, coupled with fresh and delicate words, often left a deep impression on readers, and in her later years, she still did not quit creating, and wrote a long story "She Came from That Road" with her own experience.
Yan: You later wrote "Children's Love"?
Ru: I heard about this. For example, the love of the son is heartfelt, the child hopes that he will become a dragon, and there is also myself. The revolution is that after we entered the city, our children were all burdens. After getting married, having kids, by the '60s, '70s, '80s, kids are growing up and they recognize that your parents are a peak. In the past this problem did not exist, and in the past it was not married.
Yan: In addition to these works, I heard that you are also writing a novella, "She Came from That Road."
Ru: The novella has been published, published in Harvest, 110,000 words.
Yan: Is this novel bigger than other novels in all aspects of boldness?
Ru: This is my first novella, which is relatively slow to master the rhythm, and it has the characteristics of a short story, because it involves several different problems, which can be separated into short stories. It's about women in the '20s and '30s. I have a sequel in my plan, and I hope that the sequel will be improved a little bit and the pace will be faster. I'm sorry that these things aren't written out. Most of it is my own experience. I am writing the part of my childhood to adolescence, that is, the part that has been published, and now I am writing about the youth part, and the third part is after joining the People's Liberation Army.
Yan: If you finish writing it, it's a big scale, right?
Ru: After writing it, it was three or four hundred thousand words. (Ru Zhijuan's "She Came from That Road" was originally planned to write three parts.) Ru Zhijuan only wrote the first one, and did not finish it before his death in 1998. Later, her daughter Wang Anyi sorted out and selected according to her manuscript and outline, and took photos on the spot according to her outline, completing Naimu's wish. ）
Yan: Can you tell us about your creative experience, your feelings, and what conditions do you feel you need to have in terms of creating novels?
Ru: First, what I write about is the life that people are exposed to, the life that people see together, but when I write it, I want to show others a deeper life. Because you also see, I also see, why do I have to look at you, I must give people something deeper than life. Second, I pay great attention to the beginning of the novel, because the beginning of the novel is a very critical moment, and the reader takes your novel, and if he is not allowed to throw it down, one of the main keys is to determine the beginning of the work. Why should readers look at your stuff. Artistically, it is necessary to propose to set suspense from contradictions and to show something. The third is to make the story from complicated to simple, because the more complicated the story, the more difficult it is to write a short story. I think that short stories are, in a sense, more difficult to write than long ones, and kneading very complex stories into very simple and profound meanings is also a necessary condition for the success of a novel.
Yan: Do you pay more attention to ideological things in your creation?
Ru: That's very important. Why do readers like to read your work instead of looking directly at life? Because your work has the profundity of thought, unless you write romance novels, martial arts novels. Ordinary serious writers, to give people a little thought, must be like this. The books I've read in the past—books that I think are good—are inspired by reading them, giving me things I didn't expect. After reading, the reader has a new understanding of something, which is a good novel.
Yan: Today's young writers in the mainland are very different from the older generation of writers, the former do not think much about giving readers education and inspiration, they are more faithful reflection of life, the more real the better.
Ru: I think that if they live faithfully and write about this life, or that specific life, it will have social effects. Mao Dun commented on my work, he believes that the positive characters in my novels are not exactly the people of the Lotus Seat (Yan Huo Press: meaning Guanyin Bodhisattva), it should be said that the purpose of literature is not to teach people, but to let you read it later, so that you have gains.
Yan: So do you want to consider social effects?
Ru: I think in terms of literature, the situation is more complicated. There are many people from the old society, out of the mud and not stained, in the 30s shanghai, there are all kinds of people, in Hong Kong this kind of society, it is more rare and valuable to maintain this ideal, but this kind of valuable thing, there is.
Yan: In the past hundred years in China, in addition to the "May Fourth", a number of important new literary writers have emerged, and in more than half a century, it seems that there have been no such important writers as the "May Fourth".
Ru: For today's Chinese writers, I have some hope. From the perspective of young writers, I think important writers may be produced in this group, and some are emerging. From an academic point of view, we have a group of old writers in the 30s, who are both writers and scholars. Our generation is different, we are writers, but we are not scholars. Because of the environment, our youth was spent in the fire of war, so there are very few scholars among people my age. And among us young people, they can make up for our shortcomings in this regard, such as writers like Zhang Chengzhi, who have begun to show their sharp edges, and the future development is unpredictable. He was a scholar, a man of geology. Like there are some young people, they still have time, they still have time, they can go to school. Their reading conditions and environment were better than in our time. For example, Zhang Chengzhi and Shi Tiesheng, they are relatively young, it is not difficult to make up for this lesson, and they are making up. The country also offers them a lot of conditions, and they are more promising, both writers and scholars.
This interview was made in the autumn of 1983 during the "International Writing Project" at the University of Iowa in the Midwest, and after more than thirty years of dust, it can finally be draped, so that the honorable and lovely sister Ru who dedicated her life to the literary cause can be sacrificed!