"Give me an Ice Cream from the Age of Awakening!" "Sorry, only samples are left." A few days ago, at the China International Trade in Services Fair held in Beijing, the cultural and creative products of "The Age of Awakening" were unveiled for the first time, that is, they were sold out.
From the popularity of Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu's joint name to "learning party history while chasing dramas", from the blossoming Yanqiao Road to the "Awakening Quotations" screen, Chinese youth are using their own ways to get close to the "main theme" and transmit positive energy.
The "out of the circle" of "The Age of Awakening" brought Great Surprises to Long Pingping. Stepping off the podium of the Shanghai TV Festival Magnolia Award for Best Original Screenplay, he made a decision: turn off his mobile phone, close the revision, and create a long historical novel of the same name.
From the screenplay to the novel, the addition is far more than 100,000 words...
It is inevitable to write about "tears" at emotional places
Liberation Daily, Shangguan News: The long historical novel "The Age of Awakening" will be serialized in "Liberation Daily". I heard that in order to create a masterpiece, you spent more than a month recreating it. The TV series is so successful, why should it be "closed and revised"?
Long Pingping: I am very honored to thank Liberation Daily for its love for The Age of Awakening, and I feel very honored to devote more pages to serializing novels this time.
When writing the script of "The Age of Awakening", I was often moved by the plot and gained many insights, and there was an impulse to further express my emotions. However, the script has a specific format and requirements, the screenwriter's understanding and interpretation of history and characters, mainly rely on the actor's lines and performances, through the second degree of creation to achieve, visual expression and direct text narrative There is a gap. Therefore, in the process of writing the script, I have many times developed a feeling of not being addicted and difficult to reconcile.
At that time, I thought that after the script was completed, I must write a historical novel on this basis, and record some of my deep thinking about history, characters and plots in the creation of the script, especially some of the inspirations that suddenly flashed in my mind in the dead of night.
Jiefang Daily Shangguan News: Compared with script writing, is it easier to revise novels?
Long Pingping: The script was approved for filming through censorship in 2017, but this is only the first part of the production of the TV series. In the years from the preparation of filming to the broadcast, "The Age of Awakening" has been highly valued by the central leadership and relevant departments, and my heart has been tight like the creators, and I dare not slacken off a little.
After all, this is a history that has never been so fully displayed on the screen, and the measure of grasping and grasping the scale, just like the "Western Heavens Learning Scriptures", is refined one level at a time, and it is boiling. In those years, I didn't dare or have the heart to do anything other than this TV series.
After the TV series was broadcast, it did receive attention from all sides. In the past few years, I have gained more understanding of this history, which has also made me have a stronger and stronger creative impulse. Despite more social activity, I decided to turn off my phone for more than a month and complete the creation of everything from scripts to historical novels.
Due to nearly 7 years of accumulation and experience, the creative process is relatively smooth, and more than 600,000 words are almost in one go. The Propaganda Department of the Anhui Provincial CPC Committee and the Anhui People's Publishing House have helped me a lot, and the Central Propaganda Department and the Central Institute of Party History and Literature have also completed the examination and approval procedures at an extraordinary speed.
Jiefang Daily: What is the difference between a novel and a TV series?
Long Pingping: The novel "The Age of Awakening" is rewritten on the basis of the script, and the basic content, basic structure, and basic characters have not been changed, but what has been changed is the form of expression, which is the enrichment and sublimation of the storyline, character portrayal, especially ideological nature of the script.
TV drama is a performing art, focusing on showing the state of characters and stories; novels not only describe the process, but also can describe the origin and results of characters and story states from multiple angles, multiple levels, and concentrated and completely through written means, forming a complete narrative chain.
In particular, through the delicate analysis and commentary of the text, the novel can dig deeper into the inner world of the characters and the essential meaning of the story, and guide and inspire readers to understand and think about history and characters.
Liberation Daily: Can you say that novels are richer and more readable than scripts?
Long Pingping: Novels are the author's own works, and TV dramas are collective projects. Writing novels, the author can be imaginative, the soul can be "out of the box", the freedom of thought soars, and the freedom of the TV script is relatively small.
The age of awakening aired a 43-episode TV series that translated less than 500,000 words into text. The novel is more than 600,000 words, adding a lot of storylines and analysis, thinking, and comments on history and characters, which should be said to be more three-dimensional, transparent, and readable.
In the final analysis, literary creation is the release of emotions. The history of "The Age of Awakening" is too wonderful, the characters are too touching, and when it comes to emotional places, "tears" are inevitable. But it is not enough to "tear up", but also to lament history. I hope that this book will help readers see the charm and value of history.
In my heart, Chen Yannian is a "pure person"
Liberation Daily, Shangguan News: The novel has more than 100,000 words more than the script, what are the main additions?
Long Pingping: The richness of the content is all-round. "Telling the story of life in the age of awakening" is a sentence I often say when introducing TV series. However, due to various factors, it is actually difficult for TV dramas to show a variety of things. The characters in the novel are not restricted.
For example, some historical figures who do not appear in the TV series, Pan Zanhua, Zhang Yuliang, Gao Yuhan, Ma Yinchu, Ma Jun, Duan Qirui, Feng Guozhang, Xu Shuzheng, etc., have certain pen and ink in the novel. The characters who are impressed by everyone in the TV series are more plump and vivid in the novel.
There are three main aspects of the addition:
First, the characters of Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, and Hu Shi, as well as the reasons and processes of their "from combination to division," are explained in more detail.
Li Dazhao was the first to awaken and firmly martyr, a northern man with eagle-like insight and fire enthusiasm; Hu Shi was a wise man in thought and a yin and yang man in action, always hovering between old ethics and new ideas, old morality and new culture. The description of the characters of the two characters is written a lot in the novel.
The novel is also richer about the family life of three people. Chen Duxiu and Gao Junman, Lang Cai's female appearance, free love, family life is "husband for wife"; Zhao Shulan is 6 years older than Li Dazhao, the two are in love, respect each other, family harmony; hu Shi, a talented man, married a "small-footed woman" and was packed up obediently at home. Carefully savoring the relationship between these three couples, the reader may get a different kind of insight.
The second is the relationship between Chen Duxiu, Chen Yannian and Chen Qiaonian.
This is a colorful chapter in the novel. I never agreed that the father and son were the enemies. In fact, Chen Duxiu's method of educating his children is very unique, he brought his two sons from Anqing to Shanghai to be herded, and gave 10 oceans a month for them to roam, encouraging and respecting them to let go of their ideals and guide them to pursue the truth. Chen Yannian and Chen Qiaonian are classic embodiments of the great spirit of party building, which is inseparable from Chen Duxiu's education and cultivation. Chen Yannian and Chen Qiaonian also respected and worshipped their fathers.
The contradiction between Chen Yannian and Chen Duxiu mainly has two points:
First, as a modern youth, he was not accustomed to Chen Duxiu's feudal patriarchal style and waged a resolute struggle against it.
Second, he has a different view of home and country than his father. Chen Yannian is an extreme idealist with patriotic feelings that ordinary people cannot reach. He believes that the country is in trouble, and the home country cannot have both. This can be proved by the fact that he formulated the "six noes" and the fact that he never married. The reason why he was obsessed with anarchism and disapproved of violent revolutions from an early age has a lot to do with this. This inevitably leads to a conflict of thought with the father.
The novel has made a relatively full literary display of the relationship between Chen Duxiu's father and son on the basis of respecting historical facts, and I hope that everyone can read it carefully.
The third is the relationship between Chen Yannian and Liu Mei.
Willow Eyebrow is a fictional character that I have carefully considered and carefully designed without a prototype. The setting of this character image is functional and serves to shape Chen Yannian. On the basis of the script, the novel has greatly enriched the relationship between the two people.
I have said many times that the person I most want to write about and admire in "The Age of Awakening" is Chen Yannian. In the early years, while participating in the creation of "Our French Years", I was inspired by an old leader to study Chen Yannian, and I have lived almost everywhere. In my heart, he is what Comrade Mao Zedong called a "pure man."
Fiction is not a factual concept but a story
Jiefang Daily, Shangguan News: Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao can be said to be the "double male protagonists" of "The Age of Awakening", which is rare in the artistic creation of the same theme in the past.
Long Pingping: From the day I wrote "The Age of Awakening", I have been hanging my heart. In the end, it is because of Chen Duxiu.
In 1945, Comrade Mao Zedong said at the preparatory meeting of the Seventh National Congress of the Party that Chen Duxiu was meritorious, that he was the commander-in-chief during the May Fourth Movement, and that he actually led the entire movement. He created the party, and we were all his students. In the future, when we revise the history of the Party, we must talk about his merits.
In October 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that history will not forget that Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and a group of advanced intellectuals with study abroad experience, together with Comrade Mao Zedong and other revolutionary youth, vigorously propagated and actively promoted the integration of Marxism-Leninism with the Chinese workers' movement, founded the Communist Party of China, and made the Chinese revolution one of the new.
In October 2019, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of Chen Duxiu's birth, the Second Research Department of the Institute of Party History and Documentation of the CPC Central Committee published a commemorative article calling Chen Duxiu "the spiritual leader of the New Culture Movement, the commander-in-chief of the May Fourth Movement, the main disseminator of Marxism, the main founder of the Communist Party of China, and the main leader of the early Chinese Communist Party." This article was published in the name of the central party history research department and has a high degree of authority.
The novel "The Age of Awakening" wants readers to see that it is such a Chen Duxiu. I think this is the big question of upholding historical materialism or historical nihilism. After all, novels are different from textbooks, not to lay out the facts and tell concepts, but to tell stories, to tell everyone a vivid and vivid Chen Duxiu.
Jiefang Daily, Shangguan News: To achieve this, is the challenge bigger than imagined?
Long Pingping: Indeed, whether or not I can create a good character image of Chen Duxiu that can withstand the test of history and can be accepted by all aspects is something that I dreamed of throughout the creative process. The challenges are so great and the difficulty is unimaginable.
I am very impressed with the two plots that are fictional based on facts.
One is Chen Duxiu's ideological fission.
A month after May Fourth, when Chen Duxiu walked out of his house and saw that Peking University had become a prison for thousands of patriotic students, his mind collapsed. This shameful thing, which had never been seen before in the history of human civilization, completely shattered his decades-long pursuit of a bourgeois democratic republic. He wept alone in the Red Chamber, struggled for several hours in the purgatory of thought, and finally was reborn in the fire, phoenix nirvana, and completed a complete break with the old democracy.
That night, he wrote the famous article "Research Rooms and Prisons". Later, he personally went to the streets to spread leaflets, determined to put out the fire with moths, sacrifice himself, and wake up the people with blood.
Writing this, I suddenly couldn't help myself and hid in the toilet for a long time sad. How difficult it is for a person to be reborn and grow into a revolutionary! Shouldn't he be respected by posterity?
The other is "Southern Chen And Northern Li, Meet to Build the Party."
I checked the information, that year the northern catastrophe, hunger and death. Seeing the tragic situation of the victims of the Haihe River embankment all over the wilderness and wailing in the sky, Chen Duxiu issued an oath to build the party. Li Dazhao asked: Why did you build the party? Chen Duxiu cried and said that not for others, but for these refugees in front of him, so that they can live like people and get people's happiness, human dignity, and human rights.
This is the original intention and mission of the Communist Party of China! In this way, I am afraid that only a person with such a personality and such a quality as Chen Duxiu at that time could say it. Seeing this, who dares to say that the Communist Party is not great?
Today, our party is celebrating its centennial anniversary and is full of vitality, our country is stable and peaceful, and the people are happy, and we must not forget the founders of the party, and we should pay respect and thank them.
On the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the party, bird's nest staged "The Great Journey", the opening 40 seconds, that is, the two actors in "The Age of Awakening" performed "South Chen Bei Li, Meet to Build the Party". I sincerely admire the CPC Central Committee and show the mature thinking and scientific attitude of the centennial party in looking back at history.
The theme of modern China can be said to be "catching up with the times"
Liberation Daily, Shangguan News: The Age of Awakening is about the history from 1915 to 1921. What is your biggest impression of revisiting this history?
Long Pingping: The theme of modern China can be said to be "catching up with the times." The script and novel of "The Age of Awakening" are based on the basic judgment of "the change that has not been encountered in three thousand years, and the strong enemy that has not been encountered in three thousand years".
Three thousand years, once glory, suddenly became a burden. After the Opium War, Chinese spent 75 years learning from the West and trying out various prescriptions, until 1915, when he found two gentlemen of "democracy" and "science", through ideological enlightenment, crossed the threshold from agricultural tradition to modern civilization.
There is a saying in "The Age of Awakening": Once the people's minds are enlightened, the old society loses its foundation. The awakening of a nation is marked by finding the right path to "catch up with the times". The New Culture Movement made Chinese realize that feudalism could not save China; the May Fourth Movement made us further realize that capitalism could not save China. It was through the baptism of the May Fourth new culture that the most advanced part of the Chinese found the road of Marxism-Leninism and the October Revolution, founded the Communist Party of China, and defined the goal of socialism.
Is this the right path for China to "catch up with the times"? In the beginning, many people had doubts. The Chinese Communists have spent 100 years answering this question. Over the past 100 years, the Communist Party of China has led the people to build a country that is poor and weak and allowed to be slaughtered by others into a rich, civilized, full of vitality and vitality of a socialist country, creating a miracle in the history of human development.
Today, when we look back at the history of these 6 years and trace the trajectory of the founding of the party and the great spirit of party building, the vast majority of people will be convinced: the pioneers' choice is correct, socialism has not failed China, and China has not failed socialism! This is the aftertaste of history.
Liberation Daily: It is also said that "The Age of Awakening" also beautified some characters and plots when recounting the history of this period of the blue wisps of the road. For example, the main figures of the New Culture Movement have been "whitewashed".
Long Pingping: In dealing with history, I believe in Comrade Xiaoping's saying: It is better to be coarse than to be fine.
I entered the history of Beijing Normal University in 1978, and then studied ethnology with Mr. Wu Wenzao and Mr. Lin Yaohua. From the perspective of human social development, Chinese society 100 years ago was the initial fission period of the transformation of three thousand years of farming society into modern civilization. From fission to finalization, there is a long transition period.
In "The Age of Awakening", Cai Yuanpei has a line: "No matter what era occurs in the future, it will eventually be led by the new culture we advocate today." "That's how I think about the New Culture Movement as a whole. At that time, the dispute between the old and the new, in the final analysis, was a conflict between tradition and reality, a conflict between agrarian society and industrial civilization, and a clash of Eastern and Western civilizations, which could not be summed up by simple right and wrong. Without this cultural debate, China would still be a "backwater" of an agrarian society, and it would be impossible to "catch up with the times." Therefore, "The Age of Awakening" is not "whitewashing" for the conservatives, but respect.
I really bothered to portray Gu Hongming. I repeatedly sorted out Gu Hongming's thoughts and selected the word "gentle" from them. At that time, Gu Hongming was about the same age as I am now, and it was not a coincidence that he felt the same way about the spirit of Chinese. I am relieved that this view has been shared by many people. A few days ago, "the gentleness in the bones of Chinese" was on the Internet hot search, which is a strong proof.
Of course, there is no need to hide some extreme views on the new cultural masters because of the current respect for traditional culture. In fact, most of the masters of the new culture, including Chen Duxiu, eventually returned to traditional culture. Historical research should "go through the changes of ancient and modern times", and I would like to try something through literature.
The political discernment and artistic appreciation of contemporary youth cannot be underestimated
Liberation Daily, Shangguan News: What are your experiences in making young people fall in love with the "main theme"?
Long Pingping: One of the biggest surprises that "The Age of Awakening" gave me was that the two revolutionary martyrs of Yannian and QiaoNian became idols of contemporary youth, especially college, middle and primary school students.
I've been to the Longhua Martyrs' Cemetery and Hefei's Yanqiao Road, where the flowers and tribute letters bring tears to my eyes. Looking at Youku's bullet screen version and the B station commentary version, young people's worship of Yannian and Qiaonian is even more blood-boiling.
Before, someone said to me after reading the script and the TV series sent for review: Good is good, but young people can't understand it, I'm afraid they won't buy it. Looking at it now, we underestimate the political discernment and artistic appreciation of contemporary youth. Contemporary youth love to prolong the year and the year of Qiao, which to a certain extent shows that "The Age of Awakening" has communicated the ideas of several generations of Chinese youth.
The great spirit of party building represented and embodied by Yannian and Qiaonian has not only touched the contemporary youth, but more importantly, it has been inherited.
There is a hot search on the Internet: "The Age of Awakening" YYDS (Eternal God). What is God? It is the great spirit of party building. How can it be forever? It is passed down from generation to generation of young people.
One more thing: Is there a sequel to The Age of Awakening? Our happy life now is the sequel. Contemporary youth use their own language to sublimate the theme to be expressed in "The Age of Awakening". They not only know the relationship between prolongation, the choice of the year, sacrifice and today's happy life, but also shoulder the responsibility of continuing to struggle.
This not only allowed me to see the charm of literature and art and the power of the spirit, but also let me see the quality of contemporary youth and the hope of china in the future.
Jiefang Daily, Shangguan News: What experience do you have in balancing historical truth with artistic truth, ideology and artistry?
Long Pingping: Literary and artistic works with revolutionary historical themes are, first of all, the embodiment of the author's view of history. To adhere to a correct view of history, there are several important points: respect historical facts; follow the established historical identity; absorb the latest research results; we must not copy books, we cannot copy concepts, we must have our own views and opinions, and "when we investigate the heavens and people, we must change through the ancient and modern times, and become the words of a family."
In the creation of revolutionary historical themes, we must pay special attention to the unity of historical truth and artistic truth, ideology and artistry. A conventional experience is that "big things are not vain, small things are not informal" "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" can be described as a classic work of "big things are not vain, small things are not informal".
Major events are not vain, because they are based on historical facts and are easy to handle, and the key lies in having a good structure and a good connection. For example, "The Age of Awakening" takes the new cultural movement, the May Fourth Movement and the three major events of the founding of the Communist Party of China as the main narrative, reflecting the historical inevitability of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and the main line and structure are real things, all supported by historical facts.
But as far as fiction or TV series are concerned, the difficulty is that "small things are not informal". It is not enough to possess historical materials, but we must also start from historical materials and turn them into stories, and we must have vivid and tortuous storylines, ups and downs of character fate, and vivid character images. In this sense, historical fiction is not to examine history, nor does it assume the function of revealing historical truth, let alone copy history. History cannot be replicated. Any historical novel, in terms of the way it is presented, mainly relies on artistic processing. When people write live, the story looks good.
On the basis of the TV series, the novel "The Age of Awakening" further excavates the personalities of the characters, such as the "troika": Chen Duxiu is whimsical, extravagant, spontaneous, and vicious as a vendetta; Li Dazhao is "humble", generous, selfless, affinity, and more true; Hu Shi is sharp in thought, charming, weak, indecisive, and so on.
The reason why I am willing to use more pen and ink to show these characters is that I hope to make some new attempts and accumulate some new experiences in showing my ideology through artistic means and writing about historical figures.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Title Image Source: Visual China Photo Editor: Shao Jing
Source: Author: Xia Bin