Qianjiang Evening News hourly news reporter Zhang Jinhua
Zhao Bo's close-up.
Speaking of Zhao Bo, the wind is blowing, the clouds are moving, the waves are booming, the trees want to be quiet and the wind is not stopping.
Casually search for Zhao Bo, we see a public article with a title similar to "Beautiful Writer Zhao Bo: Slept with Jiang Wen, Touched Gao Xiaosong, loved Zhang Chaoyang".
Look at the evaluation of Zhao Bo by several famous Chinese women artists and writers who are also women.
Painter Yu Hong said: Zhao Bo's youth is beautiful and ethereal, Zhao Bo's words are clear and sensual, she faces the hard reality with her weak and strong heart, and she uses her light and difficult flight to complete her rebirth.
The writer Wang Anyi said this: Zhao Bo's writing is not prejudiced, pure, and she does not inappropriately expand her feelings, but is faithful to her touch, and the experience derived from this is actually more important than she expected.
The artist Xiang Jing said this: If it must be classified, Zhao Bozhen should be regarded as body writing, because her sensitive body is the medium of her connection with the world. She goes through experiences, goes crazy, goes to fun, goes in love, wanders and imagines. Then writing, and because of this, her people and writing are touching and make themselves scarred.
Who is Zhao Bo? Brushing away the hustle and bustle of too much confusion, we see Zhao Bo's life history as a post-70s writer:
Zhao Bo, female, born in the 1970s, from Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. With her unique personality and intellect, she cut into the present life, and because of this personality and intellect, she transcended the present. The feminine tone of her writing is warm, romantic and charming. He is the author of "Beijing Flowing Water", "Flying to the Other Side of the World", "Flying Like a Migratory Bird", "Double Life", "Sad Man under the Wig", "Style Yiren", "Erotic Story", "Happy innocence" and so on.
People born after the 70s have reached middle age. The post-80s and post-90s "houlang" may not have heard of Zhao Boqi, who was very famous in China's literary and art circles in the 1990s. She, "dressed fashionably, constantly experiencing love, constantly traveling in interesting places in the world", many celebrities in China's cultural circles are associated with Zhao Bo's name.
In the summer of 2021, Zhao Bo, a literary and artistic young woman and "phenomenon-level" beauty writer who attracted countless eyeballs and topics, returned and became a middle-aged man who had experienced many vicissitudes, and she also brought a semi-autobiographical novel "On the Clouds". Her friend commented that this is a book that makes people cry, sincere and brave. The woman in the book, with all sorts of efforts, struggles, searches for herself, finds her path and direction.
Zhao Bo himself said, "Some people say that I am like the Tang Dynasty female poet Yu Xuanji, and some people say that I am the Chinese Duras."
In the book "On the Clouds", Zhao Bo incarnates as the heroine Ermao. "I recalled my childhood, my youth, my youth, I wrote about middle age, my parents and brother along the way, and the environment and social background of a post-70s generation."
She wrote: "Ermao's pain is that he knows what is going on with himself and is powerless"; "If you repeatedly suffer setbacks and failures just because you are a woman, you will feel powerless and helpless..."
Beauty, non-beauty. Disfigured. youth. senescence. These sharp, sensitive and heavy words seem to have become the key words that have entangled Zhao Bo for half a lifetime, lingering. How should a woman face the glory and decline of her own face? That is, how do women face their bodies, and the social significance that the body extends? If the body becomes the first master, then what factors can make the body, the female subject, give up a little important position to something else?
In other words, if Zhao Bo wasn't a beauty, would she be a writer, or, a more accomplished writer? Or does she not write at all?
What we see is that no matter what life gives Zhao Bo, what she has always insisted on is writing.
Zhao Bo said that in recent years, her life has been like the title of the book "Flying Like a Migratory Bird" and "Flying to the Other Side of the World" in previous years, and she has been flying, and the epidemic has made her reduce her flight.
She also has a cat and spends very slow hours reading books.
This Saturday, Zhao Bo had a book sharing session at the Hangzhou Snail Library. She gathered with several old friends in Hangzhou's literary circle, Li Hangyu, Xia Lie, Yang Shaobin and Sun Changjian, and also sincerely faced readers in Hangzhou.
Time, as if going back to the 90s of the high-talking thesis, revisiting the past often makes people want to "shoot the railing all over", "this situation can be remembered, but at that time it was already confused."
At the end of "On the Clouds", there is a poem "The World is Like a Chess" that reads:
I seal all my memories,
Don't dare to touch it easily open,
The road to growth has slowly come to the present,
My story became a book.
Before the "On the Clouds" new book sharing meeting in Hangzhou, the reporter of this newspaper and Zhao Bo made a dialogue -
Zhao Bo in front of the painting by female artist Yu Hong. There are Zhao Bo and Yu Hong in the painting.
【How to face a woman's own face】
Qianjiang Evening News: I have always been called a "beautiful writer", after all these years, after experiencing these things, how do you now see this label imposed on you?
Zhao Bo: It's good to be a beautiful woman, and it's also my favorite to be a writer. I used to hate being hatped, but now after so many things, I can accept it. Mu Xin said that it seemed that everything was acceptable.
Qianjiang Evening News: Looking at your "On the Clouds", I have an idea, is the factor of appearance, which has seriously affected your entire life? How should a woman face the glory and decline of her own face? That is, how do women face their bodies, and the social significance that the body extends? If the body becomes the first master, then what factors can make the body, the female subject, give up a little important position to something else? In other words, if Zhao Bo wasn't a beauty, would she be a writer, or, a more accomplished writer? Or does she not write at all? Have you ever thought about such a question yourself?
Zhao Bo: No matter what his appearance is, Zhao Bo will become a writer. There is no doubt about that.
But if it's not beautiful at first, it may be a different style of writing.
Appearance can affect lifestyle, marriage or divorce, and a series of life-shaking choices.
If I had been simple, I might have been more bookish. The content may be more restrained and calm, which is not easy to say.
In Beijing 798.
【As if everything is acceptable】
Qianjiang Evening News: Can "On the Clouds" be seen as your personal "Remembrance of Water Years", named "On the Clouds", does it mean that as a writer, Zhao Bo has not really "landed"?
Zhao Bo: Proust, who wrote "Remembrance of the Lost Water Years", is exactly a hundred years apart, and I am a Cancer. So I'm willing to see "On the Clouds" as my watery year. At the beginning, the book was called "The World is Like Chess", which felt too grounded, and then it was changed to "On the Clouds", which was very good to overlook all sentient beings.
Qianjiang Evening News: Many successful writers are masters of expounding fate, after so many twists and turns in life, how do you now look at the word "fate", will the future writer Zhao Bo's writings focus on people's fate to explore?
Zhao Bo: I can't set my writing direction in another ten years. Recently, at meetings in different cities, many people talked about my writing, some people said that I was like a fish mysterious machine, and some people said that I was a Chinese Duras. There may be a category of women who write like a mirror of growth.
Qianjiang Evening News: Reading your work, I feel very sincere and frank, and I do not deny all the pain in life, which is a calm record of life. I want to ask a question: How do writers put away the painful memories in their lives?
Zhao Bo: My idea is not to waste all the gifts in life. Whether it's painful or happy. Only time will smooth out all traces. I'm going to write about traces before they're gone. You know, I've had a lot of general or half anesthesia over the years, and it's a big injury to a writer's writing memory.
Qianjiang Evening News: But we see that no matter what life gives you, you insist on writing. Some writers have been writing about themselves all their lives, with themselves as the protagonist and as the object of observation, will you always write feminist with yourself as the main body? Will you step out of yourself and let your writing go to a bigger world?
Zhao Bo: So far, I still like to be faithful to my touch of the world and life, just like Wang Anyi wrote on the cover of "On the Clouds". Maybe it will change later.
But you know, around 1996, I published a novel "Mr. He's Present Life and This Life" modeled on the life of a middle-aged man in Harvest magazine, as well as a series of small-character novels published in magazines such as Shanghai Literature, but to this day, not many people still remember, but it is easier for them to remember them based on the theme of my own life.
So, I'll continue to be true to my inner feelings.
Zhao Bo in Shanghai in 1998.
[An Era Has Passed: The Collective Memory of the Post-70s Generation]
Qianjiang Evening News: As a post-70s generation, your book has written a lot of collective memories of the post-70s, which has a lot of simple life scenes, do you think the post-70s generation has some commonalities in personality embodiment? What kind of nutrients does this era bring you?
Zhao Bo: I am very happy that I was born in a period of succession. Everything is felt, the experience and life are very colorful, both material and spiritual, both. People of the same era will have a lot of specific imprints. Some say I'm speaking for these common '70s people, speaking deep into their shared memories.
Qianjiang Evening News: You set off from your hometown of Changzhou, Jiangnan, traveled through many places, and went south and north, can you say that it is a place that is particularly related to your fate? Now that you have returned to your hometown, can it be understood as a kind of traveler's return, a kind of rest? There are many references to the issue of "security" in your book, and there are also some details about the apartment in Beijing, the home that Shanghai once had, etc., Shanghai, the metropolises of Beijing, are you insecure in it? Your hometown of Changzhou is what you have always wanted to escape as a child, but now it is like a weathered person returning after being scarred, and now you face your hometown, what do you want to say?
Zhao Bo: Hometown has always been the most secure place for a person, a place where I can still go out to eat, drink and play without carrying a wallet and mobile phone, which provides me with healing and makes me feel a kind of glory.
I left home very early, spent my youth in Shanghai, felt the stars in Beijing, bought houses in Shanghai and Beijing, and later bought houses in Pattaya, Thailand, but then the houses in these three places were sold, and I didn't like them, I felt that I was just a passerby anywhere, except for keeping the house in my hometown, because only in the house in my hometown can I have a sense of identity. Only the most secure.
Face the reader.
【A patient, a rose】
Qianjiang Evening News: The most powerful part of "On the Clouds" is the description of the hospital and the mental hospital in the book, as a "patient", these experiences you personally experience are also the spiritual wealth of a writer, how do you see the impact of suffering on a writer? After going through a life of ups and downs, what do you understand about a peaceful or uneventful everyday life now?
Zhao Bo: All the experience of being sick was my unique wealth, and I may not have had much consciousness at the time, but now I feel that this is a heavenly task that God wants to fulfill to become a unique writer.
I cherish those times, all the people I met at the worst, and they came to cross me.
Qianjiang Evening News: You mentioned several female writers: Sagan, Dickinson, Duras, McCullers, Austin, Plath, Woolf, etc., do you feel that you are the same as them, or which of them? Do they have an impact on your writing?
Zhao Bo: A rose is all the roses, I am one of them, and I am all of them.
We are a female whole. I wrote things on their behalf that they may not have had time to write.
Pain is a common experience.
Qianjiang Evening News: From the book, I know that you are a depressed person, so does reading good literary works have a healing effect on depressed people?
Zhao Bo: Reading and writing can have a healing effect, but they also need nature, the seaside, the garden, idleness, and clean air.
Qianjiang Evening News: When several of your friends recommended this book, they all used the words "the world is like chess", how do you think that "the world is like chess", chess, then it is under people, every step is inseparable from human subjectivity, and fate is impermanent, "the world is like chess" and "fate is impermanent", are they two contradictory views?
Zhao Bo: The world is like chess, who is playing? Are we chess players or are we just pawns?
Fate is a game of chess, and character will create different chess games. I began to watch myself and others play chess.
【Original Family and Patriarchal Society】
Qianjiang Evening News: "Afterword" "Father killed my mother" is a kind of fiction? This is too shocking to write, will it bother the reader? Because the reader will tend to be in front of the novel text, and the "afterword" is not a novel?
Zhao Bo: This is not fiction. So I don't want to run away. The afterword and the preceding text complement each other. It can be seen as a fiction or as a dream. For me, writing down means challenging myself.
Qianjiang Evening News: There are many descriptions of the original family, childhood memories, father and mother in the book, it seems that your lifelong relationship with men is related to the influence of your father on you, and you feel that you are also standing on the mother's position, praising the mother and criticizing the father, is this due to the feminist position, or is the real father-daughter relationship, the Relationship between Chinese family and couple in your eyes, giving you more painful memories than happy and warm memories?
Zhao Bo: The common problem in Chinese families is that they do not properly express love and care. The parents themselves have psychological problems, and then give birth to the next generation of the same problems.
Qianjiang Evening News: You wrote in the book, "Full-time housewives will one day lose their autonomy and become the nannies of men and the mothers of their children, and they will also fall into chronic emptiness." As a woman, how do you see patriarchal society now?
Zhao Bo: Women have their own sky, and their strength is greater than that of men. And the staying power is great. I believe that the space for women will become larger and larger in the future.
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Source: Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News