【Approaching the Writers】
Author: Zhao Fenglan (Senior Reporter, China Culture Daily)
At the age of 95, he transformed from a journalist to a writer, spending nearly half a century to complete the long-form masterpiece "War and Man", and won four literary awards, including the Fourth Mao Dun Literature Award. He hopes that the works he has written with all his might will allow young people to see the tragic history experienced by the suffering China, so that they can understand the past, know the future, and understand their responsibilities.
Wang Huo, who had gone blind in his left eye, was reading a book with a magnifying glass. Photo by Zhao Fenglan
Journalists and writers are often only separated by a line, and there is no shortage of people who love literature in history who have devoted themselves to the media, and many journalists have transformed into writers after seeing the changes in society. The 95-year-old Wang Huo is the latter. On November 8 this year, on Journalists' Day, I went to Wang Huo's home at No. 36 Dashi West Road in Chengdu as promised, and visited this journalist and writer who had interviewed well-known figures in modern history such as Hu Shi and Yu Youren, as well as literary works.
Since I am also a journalist, Wang Huo and I saw each other as before. In front of him, he was tall and thin, with a straight waist and sharp legs. After a moment of greeting, Wang Huo led me into his study, a room with a strong atmosphere of life, the desk was disorganized with all kinds of books, newspapers and magazines, and the lush greenery outside the window blocked the sun. Under the dim lamp, Wang Huo took the materials and newspaper clippings of his interview with the Nanjing Massacre that year, and fell into the memories of the past.
In the 1920s, Wang Huo was born in Shanghai in a family of scholars, his father was a celebrity in the field of political science and law education, living next to Zhang Taiyan and Li Jinhui, and most of the contacts were Cai Yuanpei, Xu Dishan and other cultural celebrities.
As a child, Wang Huo witnessed the atrocities of the Japanese army invading China and experienced the great famine in Henan, which accumulated valuable material for his later writing career. "My career dream at that time was not to be a writer, but to become a war correspondent like Xiao Qian and Ennie Pyle, advocating for fairness and justice." Wang Huo said.
With ideals in mind, Wang Huo was admitted to the Department of Journalism of Fudan University in 1942, and studied under Chen Wangdao, Xiao Qian, Chu Anping, Zhao Minheng, Cao Hengwen, Shu Zongqiao and other famous teachers. Chen Wangdao paid attention to the speed of writing news and the accuracy of the wording, and proposed that reporters should not only write quickly and well, but also practice the ability to write in noisy environments such as teahouses; Zhao Minheng proposed that as a reporter, he should be qualified, write something, write something, and do something and do nothing; Xiao Qian suggested that when writing news, we should pay attention to adding some "preservatives," that is, literary value, political value, and economic value, and strive to turn news that originally had only short-term vitality into a historical record of lasting value. These teachings have made Wang Huo deeply rooted in his heart and benefited him for life.
With his outstanding writing skills, Wang Huo won the title of a nominal reporter in Chongqing's "Current Affairs News", Shanghai "Reality" Magazine, and Taiwan's "Xinsheng Bao" during his studies at Fudan University, and often traveled to Shanghai and Nanjing for interviews.
In 1945, when Japan was defeated and surrendered, Wang Huo interviewed Li Xiuying and other survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, observed the public trial of Japanese war criminals Tani Shoufu and Okamura Ningji, and witnessed the fufa of Sakai Takashi and Mei Qisiping. These extraordinary interview experiences have been transformed into unique resources for literary creation under Wang Huo's pen, making him a writer with a rich past.
Talking about the advantages of journalists transforming into writers, Wang Huo said: "Journalism is a wing of literature, journalists have good writing training, and are well-informed and experienced, once they master the laws of literary creation, it is not difficult to transform into writers. The difference is that writing a brush in the news is a stroke that requires truth and conciseness, and it is enough to explain things clearly, without the need for a plot; while literature, like painting ink paintings, needs to be laid out and blended, creating a world that is as complex and long as reality. ”
In terms of literary creation, Wang Huo has never been a forgetful person, nor will he write novels based only on information and experience, and his writing stems from his recollection of real history. In his view, the novel should not be a forgery of false weaving, and its vitality depends on the truth of life and the truth of art. He set himself a rule: he did not write where he had never been; all characters who wrote with their real names and surnames must know or contact them; even the clothes they wore, the dishes they ate, and the cars they sat in should be known to themselves.
The long epic novel "War and Man" is Wang Huo's representative work, and it is also a work of disgust that he has worked hard and lost and regained. In order to appeal to the tragic and magnificent past experienced during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in the form of a novel, Wang Huo sacrificed rest and entertainment, tied his legs to the desk, and used his spare time to create the predecessor of "War and Man", "The Youth That Never Returns". Unexpectedly, all the manuscripts were burned to the ground during the Cultural Revolution.
In the late 1970s, when the publisher asked him to rewrite it in the spirit of Hepu Zhu's wishes, Wang Huo was undecided, wondering whether it was worth rewriting. After much thought, he felt that many of the characters in the book had archetypes, and many historical events were real and credible, and had their irreplaceable value, so he decided to rewrite the work. "Although there are many difficulties, I can think of the manuscript of the chronicle "Guo Yu" that Was painstakingly completed by Tan Qian for twenty years, which was stolen by thieves when it was completed, and then spent ten years rewriting the 108-volume "Guo Yu", and I was determined to regroup." Wang Huo said.
The roof leaked during the overnight rain. When Wang Huo went to the publishing house with a sample of the first book manuscript he had just written, he happened to encounter a little girl who fell into a deep ditch. He suffered head injuries while rescuing people, causing intracranial hemorrhage and blindness in his left eye, which was a huge blow to writers who read and write.
In order to make the work reappear as soon as possible, Wang Huo, with amazing perseverance, overcame physical and psychological difficulties, insisted on creating with a right eye that had already been spent, and finally completed the long-form masterpiece "War and Man" of more than 1.6 million words for the second time, and won four literary awards such as the Fourth Mao Dun Literature Award.
Looking back on the difficult creative process of "War and Man", Wang Huo was full of emotion: "To really write this work, ten years is enough, but the ups and downs and encounters of life have made this book stretch for nearly half a century, otherwise, how many works should I write!" ”
In Wang Huo's view, a good literary work should be a testimony to the social history of a country, an outpouring of a writer's true feelings and a touch of life experience. He hopes that the works he has written with all his might will allow young people to see the tragic history experienced by the suffering China, so that they can understand the past, know the future, and understand their responsibilities.
Guangming Daily (13th edition, November 27, 2019)