The New Folk Art Review | the sea of the hometown

On the embankment of his hometown Haiyan, Yu Hua said while walking: When I was a child, I thought, how is the sea water here yellow? I wanted to swim out until the water turned blue. Today, after seeing the blue sea, the writer Yu Hua has returned to the seaside of his hometown. The sediment deposited seawater, from time to time rolled up the white and yellowing waves, but also brought up Yu Hua's thoughts, the post-60s writer sat in a familiar small restaurant, narrated by his childhood dreams... This is Jia Zhangke's documentary "Swim until the sea turns blue" - the spirit returns home, and everyone is looking for their own piece of the sea.

Yu Hua's first novel was "Eighteen Years Old And Gone Out". Recalling the story of his own walk out of Haiyan, his narration is as wonderful as the words. In November 1983, Yu Hua, who worked at the dental office in Haiyan County, received a long-distance call from Beijing asking him to go to the editorial department of Beijing Literature to revise the manuscript, and his first reaction was who would bear the travel expenses? All the way to the train station to Beijing, into the editorial department, executive editor Zhou Yanru asked him to change the ending brighter, he asked: After the change, let it be published? The latter replied that it would be published if it was changed, and he said happily: If it can be published, it can be changed in full. Four years later, Yu Hua received three or four letters of engagement at the same time, which he gave to his surgeon father, who hoped that his son would inherit his father's business: "This is called famous. ”

Today, Yu Hua is a full-time writer living in Beijing, but many times, he likes to hang out on the streets alone at night, because this is the benefit of the city — you are just a passerby, you can withdraw and concentrate on thinking about your identity.

The documentary asks here: Is the city bad? Yu Hua and three other writers used their own experiences to answer the question. Ma Feng, who wrote "The Biography of the Hero of Lü Liang", gave up his work and life in Beijing, ignored the doubts of his father-in-law and others, and dragged his family back to Jiajiazhuang in Fenyang, Shanxi. It was as if back here, his whole being was alive. He encouraged the young people in Zhuangli to love freely and explore ways to govern the saline-alkali land, and Ma Feng became the Ma Feng praised by the Fenyang people, the representative writer Ma Feng of the Yam Egg Sect, not just a writer in Beijing

30 years later, Jia Pingwa felt the same pain as Ma Feng. He is an editor at the Shaanxi Provincial People's Literature Publishing House, and he immerses himself in writing after work, but no matter how he writes, he feels that his soul is not guarded. So, he returned to his hometown of Shangluo, rode his bicycle every day to collect wind, ate at the villagers' homes when he was hungry, and slept when he was tired. After spending the happiest and most painful period of his life, he made his debut novel "Impetuous" to settle down - based on Shangluo, looking at China, and observing the world.

Liang Hong, a writer from Dengzhou, Henan Province, who is younger than Jia Pingwa and Yu Hua, used a spiritual return to his hometown to complete his most important work "China in Liangzhuang", which also solved the entanglement between the city and the countryside in identity. Because there was a strong voice in his heart urging Liang Hong to go back to see and go back to do something. Therefore, after many years, she once again faced the early death of her mother, the remarriage of her father, and the sacrifice of her eldest sister, opening these youth memories sealed in cans, and also unveiling the loss of rural civilization under the great changes of the times for readers.

At the end of the documentary, Jia Zhangke ends with Liang Hong's son learning to speak his hometown dialect. The Beijing-born child began to lack confidence, but with the guidance and encouragement of his mother, he finally completed his self-introduction in a rural tone. It's something in the veins. Looking at the shy and happy son in front of the camera, Liang Hong said.

When I was young, some people said that the most scenic place in the world was my hometown. "Swim until the sea turns blue" says that the most scenic place is the sea in my hometown. (Gangnam)