The popular TV series "Chang'an Twelve Hours" is adapted from Ma Boyong's original book of the same name.
"It is difficult to balance non-fiction work adapted into film and television works, and you have to ensure that it is dramatic, while maintaining the historical fullness and texture of the work itself."
After more than a month of hard work, Ma Boyong felt a little tired.
Since mid-February, the creative history writer has embarked on a nationwide signing tour with his new books "The Great Doctor" and "Lychee of Chang'an", covering more than ten cities including Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanning, Guangzhou, and Fuzhou, while also serializing his latest works on Weibo, writing about the various experiences of a Han Dynasty official when he traveled to South Vietnam.
During the Guangzhou book signing, Ma Boyong accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from New Weekly. Thanks to his insistence on exercise, this "honest fat man" who likes to be humble has lost a lot of weight, the insomnia problem that once plagued him has been greatly improved, his daily running that was once suspended due to the new crown has also resumed, and on the morning of the interview, he also ran 5 kilometers along the riverside in Nansha, Guangzhou.
While running, Ma Boyong imagined that in those days, it was connected to the sea and connected to the Lion Ocean inside, and it could bypass the Humen Fort and go directly to Guangzhou City..."
The best way to capture inspiration is on the road
"Not good, this old boy is going to run"
"After the 'meteorite escape', come to the 'signing escape'?"
Probably to catch up with the hit online drama adapted from "Daming under the Microscope", Ma Boyong's signing is much more popular than expected, there are more than a thousand enthusiastic readers everywhere, lectures, signings, interactive a complete set of processes, Ma Boyong only felt that "hands and throats are wasted, red and blue are empty, back to the hotel can only lie dying on the bed to return blood", weak, helpless and poor writer, had to temporarily stop his new "pit".
"The Disciple of the South Eater", which was urged by the whole network to change, is a short story set in the country of Nanyue during the Western Han Dynasty, and it is also an attempt to "find possibilities in the gaps of history" that Ma Boyong has advocated in recent years, as the protagonist of the Han envoy Tang Meng is indeed a person in history, the fall of Nanyue and Yelang is related to him, and the inspiration for the story comes from the experience of visiting the museum.
Every time he goes to Guangzhou, Ma Boyong will visit the Nanyue King Museum, an archaeological site museum built on archaeological remains such as the tomb of King Wen of Nanyue and the ruins of the Nanyue Palace Office, which is a precious slice of the social culture of the Lingnan region during the Western Han Dynasty.
Nanyue King Museum (King Tomb Exhibition Area) in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou/Tuworm Creative
"When I went for the first time, I didn't know much about the country of Nanyue, and after I came back, I took this opportunity to read the "Shiji" to understand the life of Zhao Tuo and Zhao Wei and some customs and customs of the country of Nanyue at that time, based on this, the second time I went I focused on the style of Qin and Han architecture in the Nanyue Royal Palace, including palaces, gardens, wells, as well as the tree vegetation, melons, fruits, peaches, and peaches at that time..."
Every time he went again, Ma Boyong's mind became fuller in the country of South Vietnam, "After visiting five or six times, when I have accumulated enough, inspiration will naturally burst out, and I will write something on this theme." ”
In his view, writing materials do not arise out of thin air, often come from life and reading experience, "our understanding of history is not limited to the words themselves, but also to stand in the places where the ancients once visited, see the scenery and objects that the ancients once saw, in order to have a sense of the scene."
The "Seal of Wen" gold seal/figure worm idea unearthed in the tomb of the second king of the State of Nanyue
Looking back, Ma Boyong also gave back this immersive experience to his works, presenting regional characteristics from the aspects of dialect, clothing, food, housing and transportation, and social customs, whether it is the Lingnan flavor in "The Disciple of Eating Nan", or the style along the Grand Canal in "Two Beijing Fifteen Days", or the portrayal of the Tang Chang'an City Lifang system in "Chang'an Twelve Hours", which is inseparable from the writer's insight into the customs and customs of various places.
"Each place has its own characteristics, but I didn't write this paragraph to visit specifically, on the contrary, I must study the local things thoroughly after each place, and then it may suddenly become the inspiration for writing in the next few years."
For a long time, Ma Boyong has maintained a habit of checking the nearby place name in the mobile phone map whenever he goes, and then exploring why it is called this place name and what kind of opportunity it is for.
Six years ago, Ma Boyong passed a narrow street called "Sibeitongjin" in Guangzhou, he was attracted by this peculiar place name, and after understanding it, he found out that Jin, of course, is a pier, but this temple is not a traditional temple, but a church, and there is a path behind the church that leads to the Pearl River pier, so it is called Sibeitongjin.
Church on the side of the road / Photo by Hayashi Zejun
This place name with a story has not yet found the opportunity to be written in the book, but Ma Boyong believes that this curiosity and pursuit itself constitutes people's feelings for the city.
Rough surging is better than rigorous blandness
Also without purposeful interest, there is reading.
Ma Boyong's way of reading is like hunting, he does not like to be "guessed you like" by online big data, and prefers to go to traditional bookstores to "pick up" some unpopular books.
He recently liked to look at the archive collection of Guiyang iron ore mine, and through the archives, he saw the impact of the history of metal smelting in Hunan and even the whole of ancient China on the local official system, army construction and even cultural aesthetics, which was particularly fascinating to Ma Boyong, and this is the meaning of what he calls "random fun"—it may be used in the future, but it is not for the purpose of writing a book to look up these materials.
The accumulation of this unintentional willow insertion has also ushered in thick accumulation. When writing "Lychee of Chang'an", because of the knowledge of the history and geography of the Tang Dynasty, clothing, food, housing and transportation, and even the official system, the only time Ma Boyong needed to spend time to retrieve was the planting method and growth characteristics of the lychee itself, and the writing also rarely entered a state of flow, "inspiration is faster than typing", and it took a total of 11 days to write this 70,000-word novel.
Ma Boyong's most hearty writing in recent years has also been recognized by readers
Another one-go serial is "Taibai Jinxing is a Little Annoying", which is a "fairy workflow water account" with Taibai Jinxing Li Changgeng as the protagonist, created after the submission of the new book "Great Doctor". Writing a lighthearted short story after completing a serious and magnificent long story is Ma Boyong's unique way of adjusting his mood and creative rhythm, similar to stretching after exercise.
For more than a month, Ma Boyong wrote 100,000 words in a hurry, and his exhaustion was swept away. After the end, he wanted to refine the slightly rough text during the serialization, but he gave up because he was worried about losing its original flavor.
When his works were published or reprinted, Ma Boyong would also revise them, but they were often limited to typos, language errors or historical errors, and he tried not to change those literary expressions, "I always thought that this kind of rough surging was better than rigorous and bland." When you write a book flat and without any flaws, the emotions carried by the text itself may disappear, so I sometimes prefer to make it rougher. ”
Ma Boyong cherishes the feeling of passion when creating, and his works are mostly written for the rise of the rise, and some fail to end up, becoming "pits". After being famous for many years, there has been a legend of his "meteorite escape" on the rivers and lakes, plus "Fusu Benlu", which is still being urged to be changed by the whole network, many readers began to sweat for the serialized "Disciples of the South Eater".
He once revealed that the first historical novel he created was not actually "Fengqi Longxi", but a story written around a general of the Southern Dynasty and Song Dynasty, but only wrote the beginning and did not continue/"Fengqi Longxi"
But Ma Boyong said that he will finish this time, "My writing is mainly driven by interest, and there will be many holes that have not been filled in before, but now I will at least maintain the ethics of a professional writer, and the recent works will definitely finish it." ”
The essence of writing is to find friends
Born in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and raised in Guilin, Guangxi, the post-80s writer studied in Shanghai and New Zealand, worked for a decade at a well-known foreign company in Beijing before becoming a full-time writer.
At the end of June 2015, Ma Boyong announced his resignation, which said that "I am thirty-five years old, and I want to try a free and rambling life", but he still maintains a 9-to-5 work rhythm, sending his children to school at 7 a.m. and starting work in the studio, returning home after 5 p.m., his commuting boundaries are obvious, and he does not touch the computer at night when he is inspired, and tries to read books, play games, and spend time with his children at home.
Writing full-time for nearly eight years, many readers have witnessed the increase in Ma Boyong's popularity on the Internet. During this period, he wrote well-received novels such as "Chang'an Twelve Hours", "Daming under the Microscope" and "Two Beijing Fifteen Days", and many works have been completed or are about to be adapted for film and television, and some people jokingly say that internal entertainment is ushering in the "Ma Boyong universe".
"Chang'an Twelve Hours" stills
Readers who have been in the pit at different times have very different impressions of his works. To some extent, Ma Boyong is a "Yang Guo-style author", the early style of writing is light and unexpected, and as he grows in age and experience, he begins to work hard and skilllessly, turning from fictional works to rigorous historical research.
Ma Boyong, who randomly switches between the two styles, does not consider himself a genius writer, he describes his growth as "hard work to make up for weakness": "My works have a gradual evolutionary process, at the beginning is purely the pursuit of fun, writing relatively niche and casual works, and then constantly writing to accumulate experience and iterative growth." ”
Some time ago, Ma Boyong was praised by readers for being very good at "picking history" and being able to "cut out a lot of stories in the seams of history", and this kind of strange expression made him on the hot search. In fact, this is exactly Ma Boyong's creative idea in recent years, "big things are not vain, small things are not informal", finding space in the gaps of history, and then interpreting it from a modern perspective.
Douban's 8.8 score "Daming under the Microscope" is regarded as Ma Boyong's transformation from fiction to non-fiction writing. Respondents provide
In Ma Boyong's view, writing is not a process of catering to readers, but a process of finding friends.
"Writing is actually about honestly showing your heart, three views and tastes, attracting readers who share your interests, and in this process if you like my book, then we can definitely become friends, if you don't like it, OK, we will forget about each other."
When visiting the Three Kingdoms Special Exhibition a few years ago, Ma Boyong was deeply impressed by a brick unearthed in the Cao family's cemetery.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the craftsmen in charge of burning bricks carved their anger on the bricks, and after nearly two thousand years, people can still feel this shock, "So why did the Yellow Turban Uprising echo all the time?" In fact, from this brick, we can see that the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the separation of the three kingdoms were not because of the chaotic times caused by Cao Cao and Liu Bei, but because there were so many ordinary people who wanted to resist and die with the oppressors. ”
"The sky is dead" wall tile, inscribed with the words "Wang Furu made me this great wall, and wronged me, and no one knows it." But the genus Ru, Cangtian is dead, Dangbo" twenty-six characters, unearthed in 1976 in the Cao Cao clan cemetery in Bozhou, Anhui Province. National Museum of China
Small people are the real driving force for big history, and Ma Boyong also integrated this heavy understanding into his works.
Of course, deep in the torrent of history, small people are often accompanied by a sense of powerlessness, we can't change the direction of the tide, but we can leave our own records.
"The biggest problem I encountered when writing was that I could hardly find the words left by ordinary people themselves, and could only explore from clues, such as a few lines written by the bricklayer on a brick, or a fragment of a doctor's diary in the Republic of China, which became a very narrow gap for us to understand that era, and we could only speculate, dig, and imagine what that era was like from the gap. I can't help but wonder, if they were willing to write a little more, wouldn't we be able to see more of the experiences of these little people now? ”
Ma Boyong believes that every ordinary person honestly records his or her own observations, at a small point as an attempt to confront and dissolve the sense of powerlessness, and at a large level, it will even become a key key to the study of relevant historical materials for later generations.
Establish a biography for the "Great Doctor of Cangsheng"
In 2017, Ma Boyong visited the History Museum of Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, each seemingly ordinary exhibit is a microcosm of China's modern and modern history, as the predecessor of Huashan Hospital, the General Hospital of the Red Cross Society of China, deeply involved in every major event in the medical history of the Republic of China.
At that time, China faced many deep public health crises, but fortunately a number of doctors stepped forward to turn the tide. During the writing period, Ma Boyong's feelings were deepened by various observations under the epidemic, so there was the work "Great Doctor".
"The Great Doctor" is divided into two parts: "Breaking Dawn" and "Sunrise"
In this book, there is an outline of the words -
Whoever heals the sick, he must be at peace, have no desire or desire, be the first to show great compassion, and vow to universally save the suffering of the spirit. If there is an illness that comes to the rescue, do not ask whether he is rich or poor, young and old, resentful of relatives and friends, foolish and wise, and ordinary people, all as the thoughts of the loved ones, nor must they look ahead, worry about their own murder, and protect their lives. Seeing that he is troubled, if he has it... This can be a great doctor.
This is an opening passage of the "medicine king" Sun Simiao in "Prepare for Emergencies", and its spiritual core echoes the Hippocratic oath that future generations must memorize when studying medicine.
As the main theme, this passage is recited many times by doctors in "The Great Doctor", their nationalities, ages, genders, specialties, and the situations they face are different, but they all adhere to the spirit of "Great Doctor" and use professional medical knowledge to save thousands of people from fire and water.
Ma Boyong also admitted that the creation of "Great Doctor" actually wants to review the modern and modern history of the entire China from the perspective of medical treatment. The core question explored in "The Great Doctor" is "where is China going".
One of the protagonists, Fang Sanxiang, representing the poor people at the bottom, once witnessed the war between Japan and Russia when he was young, which led to the destruction of almost all his hometown, and when he grew up, he saw Germany and Japan running rampant on the Qingdao territory, and he couldn't help but angrily ask: "Why is it that it is obviously our land, but unrelated people are fighting for it?" Why are we the ones who suffer? ”
In the book, the German priest who was questioned gave the answer, "I don't know the answer to your question, but I think if enough people have this question, the answer will naturally emerge."
Later, Ma Boyong asked Fang Sanxiang to find the answer in Yan'an. Looking back, each of us has long lived with the answer.
Q&A
New Weekly: The three protagonists of "The Great Doctor", Fang Sanxiang, an orphan in Northeast China, Yao Yingzi, a rich daughter in Shanghai, and Sun Xi, a Guangdong boy who has experience in the ocean, how was the setting of such an "iron triangle" spanning different regions and classes conceived?
Ma Boyong: The reason for setting up these three people is actually very simple, they just represent the three main sources of Chinese doctors at that time.
In China at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Dynasty, a complete training system for modern medical students had not yet been established, so where did the early doctors come from? On the one hand, it is necessary to recruit some cold children as contract students and provide free training, but after graduation, they must work for the hospital, in this way, to ensure a steady stream of doctors and nurses; The other is to absorb young people with overseas experience, who have language advantages and a relatively high degree of acceptance of Western culture and modern science; In addition, there are some rich children who have awakened consciousness and advanced consciousness, they do not have to worry about livelihood, they have the room to choose a career, and some of them will choose to take this path.
So, looking at the small and the big, through the three protagonists, we can see the different sources that make up the early doctors.
New Weekly: The "Breaking Dawn" of "The Great Doctor" began in 1904 and ended in 1950, to tell the story of nearly half a century of vicissitudes and personnel metabolism, what setbacks or challenges have you encountered in the creative process?
Ma Boyong: It was also my first time to write a novel with such a long time span.
There were many major events between 1904 and 1950, and the difficulty was to grasp the key points of each era, because you can't write every year in everything, so you have to cut and choose, why write about this year? Why are other events ignored?
These must have some considerations in terms of the structure of the novel, the drama and the growth arc of the characters, but there are many major important events and nodes in modern history. So in my opinion, the biggest problem is how to "do subtraction", some things are really reluctant to delete, but they have to be deleted.
The whole book of "The Great Doctor" has 800,000 words, many people think how can it be so long? But this is already my streamlined and streamlined version, if you really want to let go of writing, you may not be able to type 1 million words or even 1.2 million words, which is too long.
New Weekly: What are the cases that have been searched in great detail, but were not included in the book?
Ma Boyong: There was a very important event. After the beginning of the War of Resistance, there was a man named Lin Kesheng - many people do not know him, but he is actually a key figure in the history of the Chinese Red Cross Society - he unified all the medical forces in China at that time and organized them into more than 100 medical rescue teams. These rescue teams numbered various theaters across the country and provided counterpart support. In this, different medical teams have their own stories, and two of them also went to Yan'an and did a lot of work for the revolution.
Like this story, it is a very good subject in itself, and this is the first time that the medical forces accumulated over the decades at that time have been brought together to do a nationwide rescue and support. But because it covers too much breadth and content, I only mention it slightly in the book, but I can't expand the narrative.
New Weekly: There will be some small characters in your works, and there may not be many scenes, but they are very vividly shaped, such as the "library" in "Antiques Bureau Middle Bureau" and Director Cao in "Great Doctor". Are such characters born on observations in life, or are they completely original?
Ma Boyong: No character can be completely original, it must be derived from the observation of life. But this kind of observation does not only mean observing the people around you, but also observing historical figures.
When I read history books, I read them from the perspective of human nature, reading historical figures as normal, flesh-and-blood people. For example, reading the Hongmen banquet, when we see Xiang Yu now, we feel that it is an image with a simple mind and developed limbs, "He actually released Liu Bang?" ”
But if we substitute the information he received, you will find that he does not know that Liu Bang will win the world later. At the time of the Hongmen banquet, Xiang Yu was about 26 years old, while Liu Bang was already in his fifties. If it is replaced by us who reached the peak at the age of 26, already the most powerful person in the country, in front of an old man who is more than half a hundred years old, not of high origin, cowering and lying there, in fact, you will not have a very strong desire to kill him, "You are not worthy of my knife at all."
From Xiang Yu's point of view, it was of course a mistake to let go of Liu Bang, but there was an understandable reason behind his decision. Read history in this way, and after reading more, you will find that behind history are all vivid little people, and history books only record one side of them.
New Weekly: Everyone who writes has his own teacher in his heart, and those who write historical novels may have a teacher in literature and historiography at the same time. What are the authors and scholars who have influenced you a lot?
Ma Boyong: There are many. In literature, I have loved to read the works of Zweig and F. Forsyth since I was a child, as well as China's Xu Xingye, Yao Xueyin, and Japan's Inoue Yasushi, their descriptions of big history and the portrayal of big historical views made me admire.
There is more in history, and when I watched Mr. Gu Cheng's "History of the Southern Ming", I was simply painful; There is also Yoshiki Tanaka's "The Legend of the Galactic Heroes", which repeatedly emphasizes a sense of historical participation, and this description of the past era by later historians actually laid the foundation for my description of the big time. Including the book reviews I listened to when I was a child, and the TV series I watched, they will also have a profound impact on the direction of my interests.
Including the historical papers I read now, the academic achievements of many professional scholars in them will also be used by me in novels. In the case of "The Great Doctor", I have been in close contact with Professor Chi Zihua of Soochow University since the beginning of the creation, he is an expert on the history of the Red Cross, I have taken a lot of material from him, and after writing, I also asked him to help me do a rigorous review to try to ensure that the historical details involved in the book are accurate.
Xinzhou: We have always observed that it may also be a stereotype - many people's interest in Chinese history is actually biased, people prefer powerful dynasties and rulers at that time, such as Qin Huang Hanwu, Tangzong and Song Zu. In modern times, because it involves many humiliating historical memories, many people have a little evasive mentality, and do not want to understand and touch this pain. The background of the era of "Great Doctor" is the late Qing Dynasty and early People's Dynasty, and the result is very popular, and the reputation and sales are very good. In fact, everyone is also very interested in the stories of this era, but there has been a lack of good works.
Ma Boyong: My personal preference for a dynasty or historical period is not determined by whether it is strong or not, but whether it can show sufficient complexity. For example, I like the Ming Dynasty very much, not because it is a unified dynasty, but because the Ming Dynasty happens to be the peak of the classical dynasty, and at the same time there are already some Western factors that have begun to come in, that is, the Ming Dynasty has actually joined the rhythm of globalization to a certain extent.
In addition, the market culture of the Ming Dynasty began to rise, and the derived citizen novels, popular novels, including some dramas and cultural phenomena of the style of urban residents familiar to later generations, also began to appear one after another. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty itself shows us a very rich dimension.
The rise of market culture in the Ming Dynasty, the emergence of small people / "The Silk Case of the Great Ming under the Microscope"
As for the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Dynasty, it was indeed a very humiliating period, China was in a weak position at that time, it was bullied and ravaged all the time, but it happened that this period can inspire us to think - why is this so, and what to do next? Exploring the significance of these two issues itself is actually more important than the drama of the novel itself.
New Weekly: Some time ago, when "Daming Under the Microscope" was broadcast, you served as a screenwriter for the first time, filming historical non-fiction works, what do you find difficult? "Chang'an Twelve Hours" was so popular before, what do you think was done right?
Ma Boyong: The biggest difficulty in converting non-fiction works into film and television works lies in their drama. Because the real historical event does not develop according to our imagination, it may suddenly break off while walking, and there is no follow-up, which is not complete in drama.
In addition, there is a lot of narrative text in non-fiction, which may narrate a person's life, and when converted into visual and auditory expression, it needs to add a lot of details and bridges. The transition process is actually very difficult, because you have to make sure it is dramatic while maintaining the historical fullness and texture of the work itself, which is a difficult balance.
The film and television adaptation of "Chang'an Twelve Hours", I think the most powerful point is that director Cao Dun has built a new era of Sheng Tang aesthetic system in terms of aesthetics, which makes everyone feel refreshing and very longing for the visual sense.
New Weekly: In recent years, the epidemic, wars, celebrity deaths, the world we live in seems to have changed so much that many people will say that "to live is to witness history", do you feel the same way?
Ma Boyong: Actually, we have been witnessing history since ancient times, but now that information is too developed, we will see a lot of things.
One of the things that struck me very much was that I read a lot of "Declaration" when I was writing "The Great Doctor", and I read that a day or two after the 9/18 incident, there was only a very small piece of text in the entire newspaper that said that there had been a conflict in the northeast - not yet called "incident", but "conflict".
That report, to the effect that China and Japan are now very restrained to start negotiations, the League of Nations has also intervened to investigate, using a word called "peace can be expected", and then on other pages everyone should dance and dance, watch movies that should be watched, or those parents in the short content, no one realizes that the wheel of history is turning, and China is slowly moving towards a darkest moment since modern times.
The interesting thing about history is this, when you have enough participation to look at these news, you may not be able to see it accurately, even if the event has been reported, people do not realize that this is a big thing, but some insignificant little things, which will be considered a big thing at the time. For example, you think that Brexit and the assassination of the Japanese prime minister in recent years are major events, but in fact, it was quickly covered by another hot search, and it may not even be as fast as a short video of a North American raccoon stealing garbage spread on the Internet.
So the problem now is that we receive not too little information, but too much information, and a lot of useless or insignificant information will wipe out the really critical things.
New Weekly: Ask readers a question, will "Fusu Benlu", which has been suspended for more than four years, continue to be written?
Ma Boyong: I can write, in fact, its framework has always been there, but I haven't found the right opportunity to present it.
Author | Lu Yiming
Edit | Xiao Feng
Typesetting | Yang Yue
Proofreading | Xiangyang