In my opinion, Zheng Zaihuan's novel should be the best-selling story of this era, cruel, painful, but also extremely interesting. Of course, if it does not sell well, it seems to be more in line with the above. It's not a paradox, nor is it two sides of the coin, but the world's sense of humor is at work again. The pioneering novelist Cao Kou of Nanjing commented on Zheng Zaihuan's "Zhumadian Sad Stories" four years ago.
The collection of novels did not become the best-selling stories of its time. However, Zheng Zaihuan did not grieve because of this.
Zheng Zaihuan does not like sadness.
"Not happy and not scattered", Zheng Zaihuan's signature on the social software is now signed, and the signature was after a poem by Li Bai was tampered with, "Life must be happy if you are not happy". His real name has always been "Huan Huan". He liked the word "huan" in his name.
"It's not that I'm having to be happy every day, or that I'm going to be forced to be happy, I just like the comedy way." Zheng Zaihuan said.
"I like what young people like"
The day after the interview, around 10 a.m. – this time slot, when Zheng Zaihuan had just finished breakfast, he sent the web link of the two songs he uploaded to NetEase Music, saying that he forgot to send me last night. During our interview, we talked about his identity as a "musician", which appeared in the introduction of the author of his short story collection "Zhumadian Sad Stories".
"This is actually what I brazenly wrote when I published the book." Zheng Zaihuan was so frank, while introducing that he was also learning musical instruments and learning English in the three years he concentrated on writing, writing and playing himself and singing a lot of songs. After hearing me praise him for saying that "there are still a lot of hobbies", he laughed a little embarrassed and said, "In fact, it is a young man's hobby, and I like what young people like." ”
I don't know his "musician" identity, just a hobby, I don't know much about him, I have also searched for "Zheng Zaihuan" and "band" on the Internet, and as a result, I have not found any news related to him and the band.
"I wanted to form a band, but I didn't know anyone I knew. Most of the bands are all able to learn instruments together from an early age, learn together, and play together. I learned musical instruments by myself, played by myself, of course, I also paid tuition to go to teachers to learn, and I also knew some people who learned musical instruments at that time. However, it is not very easy to talk to them. ”
Zheng Zaihuan confessed that his songs were "quite rough", and before the interview, he said that he would send me a few songs as long as I could stand it. That night, he didn't send it to me. The next morning, he remembered and sent me two links. These are two songs, the first is "Persuade the Second Fat Golden Basin to Wash Your Hands" and the second is "We Are Softer Than Banknotes". The first was uploaded in September 2014, with the album title "All the Joy", and the second was uploaded on June 9 of this year, the day before I interviewed him.
With the idea of how rough his music could be, I listened to his two songs from beginning to end. After listening, I knew that this singer, who was called "Huan" on NetEase Music, was completely delayed by his writing. After nearly 7 years of two songs, the accompaniment guitar did not improve, and his broken voice was still rough.
Slowly, his song is so rough, why did I listen to it once and listen to it a second time, and get a little moved when he howled? It was necessary to bring up some of his lyrics
——
"Big fat two fat in addition to throwing (stealing) what else can you do / big fat two fat your love or not / big fat two fat, hurry up the golden basin to wash your hands!" The "two fat" in the song title turned out to be two people, the big fat and the second fat, they are two thieves from the countryside to the city. Singer "Huan Ah" advised the big fat and the second fat to stop taking pictures with the iPhone (stolen) and stop going to the bus station, and finally said very chicken soup "throw (steal) more things to vote (steal) can not come to dignity / vote (steal) more things can not vote (steal) can not come to childhood", and so on.
I was touched when he sang bitterly ,"Throw (steal) more things and vote (steal) can't come to childhood", he sang about two former left-behind children who had no childhood, and he who was also a left-behind child, did not have a childhood. In 2014, the singer "Huan" who wrote this song was planning to "turn out" with his writing, and he has embarked on a different path from his hair boys, but he still often sets his sights on them, writes them into songs, and writes them into novels. The difference is that they who write novels, because of Zheng Zaihuan's comedic talent in writing, the various sad stories they create will make readers laugh out of tears; in the song, although they also interpret songs and cry stories, they are not known because of the roughness of the singer.
Once a school dropout made a lot of people laugh with writing
Zheng Zaihuan, who is now a writer, musician, screenwriter, poet and other multiple identities, was born in 1990 in a remote village in Zhumadian. He was grateful to his father for naming him Huan Huan, and he loved the name, even though his childhood was not joyful.
Zheng Zaihuan's mother died within a few months of giving birth to him; his father, who had been doing some small business on some overpasses in Guangzhou for many years to make a living; his stepmother was extremely violent; Zheng Zaihuan was brought up by his grandmother. In Zheng Zaihuan's impression, due to her education level and family environment, grandma did not pursue the life she wanted, and even, "there was no desire to pursue a little pleasure in life, but she habitually regarded the happiness of her family as her own happiness", but at that time, his family did not have much happiness.
In the 1990s, when Zheng Zaihuan was born and raised, his hometown in Zhumadian was stumbling along with the development of the whole of China, and many of his elders, who had not dried their mud feet or went south or north to the city to make a living, were torn apart by the huge urban-rural gap, and created countless stories in the city and their hometown to make a living. Since childhood, Zheng Zaihuan has heard and witnessed these stories growing up, and he himself sometimes inevitably becomes a part of the story.
"I grew up in the countryside, I knew society, everyone knew, and then I started writing novels, and they undoubtedly became my most direct material." When writing "Zhumadian Sad Stories", Zheng Zaihuan processed the material that could be picked up in the memory along the real context, not refining the theme, nor judging, "just like the painter's character sketch, without adding any color, I just want to test my own memory, test these people I know, what they look like in my heart."
Although the acquaintances in his memory, in his childhood and adolescent life, constantly staged full of love and hatred and even killing and deciding parents, when they appeared in Zheng Zaihuan's pen, no matter how tragic the tragedy was, they seemed to have their own comedic aura.
Zheng Zaihuan's personality and the comedic elements in the text, he once traced back to the roots, chased to the slogan of a TV station he watched in his teens, "Happy life every day", happiness is a day, unhappiness is also a day, at that time, he felt that what was said on TV was the truth, so he was actually not happy at that time, he took this slogan as his own "life creed". On June 11, in response to my supplementary interview, he retraced the comedic elements of his personality, this time correcting that his comedic elements were due to his nature, "I have always been a funny person, and I have always made it my mission to make fun of others."
Fortunately, he did not forget his mission after dropping out of school early, and began his writing after working in the factory and helping people deliver goods, and let his writing success amuse many people, although many people have a longer time to think about it after a momentary smile.
dialogue
"You spoon very much"
Xiaoxiang Morning News: There is a story of a "eight stalls" who pick up dung in the "Zhumadian Sad Story Collection". The labor of picking up dung has basically withdrawn from the stage of history in the 80s of the last century, and I am curious, how can you write about this after the 90s, and it is so vivid?
Zheng Zaihuan: Hey hey, your economy there developed earlier than my hometown. I saw my grandfather pick up dung when I was very young. The economic environment determines a person's growth. When I was a child, we were still in a very "primitive" state. For example, there are freighters who carry goods to sell needle and thread. My hometown didn't call until I was seven or eight years old, in 1997 or 1998. The great changes I have experienced have spanned a lot. In my memory, after SARS in 2003, there were mobile phones and Internet cafes, and we were connected with the world.
Xiaoxiang Morning Post: Smartphones have changed you a lot, and it is said that you originally started writing on your smartphone. Were you first introduced to literature on your smartphone?
Zheng Zaihuan: When I used my smartphone, I had already left my hometown. I bought my first smartphone in Beijing in 2009.
When I was a child, my father sold pirated books, from "100,000 Whys" to martial arts novels to local stall readings, but there were relatively few so-called famous books. I was the first to write something, and I wrote about martial arts, it was 2005 or 2006, I was fifteen or sixteen years old, I watched martial arts with my peers, I read it and Wrote.
Xiaoxiang Morning Post: Was it imitation at that time?
Zheng Zaihuan: No, no, I never imitate what I ask of myself. I have to write something differently from others before I write. I'm not satisfied with what I see, and I write: Or, if I see good, I'll say I can write something different. This is a kind of self-confidence and arrogance - I have loved to read books since I was a child, when I was a child, I didn't think of writing, I had to study at that time, I didn't have time, I fought for time to read, read between classes, watch in the nest at night, when I had time or the ability to start writing by myself, I had accumulated knowledge of books and stories. When I started writing martial arts at the age of 16, I also wrote an autobiography about my middle school years, and I saw Han Han's campus where they wrote. I was a little indignant: What is there to be sad about these people? Tears and pain at every turn, my school experience is the feeling that people can't be sad - we are all left-behind children, no one cares, children do not respect each other, including the tense relationship with their parents, and so on, something cruel. I just wanted to write it out for everyone to know.
Of course, when I was 16 years old, I thought that what Han Han wrote was very beautiful and very literary. I think that if I had to write down what I saw and what I experienced, it would definitely be a huge fire. It was such a naïve idea at the time. Now it seems that what I wrote at that time was particularly childish and taken for granted, but I also cherished it very much: hey, how could I write that. However, this is a private thing, and I will not take it out.
Xiaoxiang Morning Post: When you started writing after work, how did your friends around you think of you and your writing?
Zheng Zaihuan: At that time, I only showed them the martial arts I wrote. My martial artists like to write funny plots. At that time, there were very few funny plots in martial arts. They looked at it and laughed and said, "Huan Huan, what do you think?" "They didn't think I was writing, but they were bored writing for them. Later, I bought a smartphone to write novels and participated in an essay contest on the Internet. At that time I was living in the boss's house. Boys live in a room and girls in a room. The boy lived in a room with me and the boss's son, the girl standing at the counter. We all came from the same background, all dropped out of school to work. When they knew I was writing an essay, they said, "Huan Huan, you still write something." They mean "rejoicing and playing again" when I was playing.
Xiaoxiang Morning Post: In the epilogue of "Zhumadian Sad Stories", you said that you like to write stories that are basically sad in a comedic way. How did you find this way?
Zheng Zaihuan: It should not be said that it is found, closer to nature, I have always been a funny person, and I have always taken it as my duty to make fun of others. Since I can remember, my grandmother's accusation has been with me, "You spoon very much", "spoon road" in the dialect means a lot of words, that is to say, I have appeared as a talkative image since I was a child. What a child can say is most likely "colorful words" - this is also a dialect, this meaning is more complicated, almost nothing practical but think it is wonderful. Of course, the speaker thinks it is wonderful to say it, but if the listener does not think so, it is a disaster. So my grandmother was very worried about my problem of having to interject a mouth on everything and was still proud, and often used another sentence to teach me, "I think about what I can say, and I can't say it." Like all children, I chose not to listen to the words of adults, so this problem has not changed and has become more and more refined.
Xiaoxiang Morning News: How has the comedic approach affected your life? Does it continue into your latest creation?
Zheng Zaihuan: In the practice of insisting on saying "colorful words", speakers will soon find that it is easier to win pleasure and recognition for harming people.
On the other hand, in the early stage of comedy, although I have a rough grasp of the means of damage, but I do not have insight into its mystery, so I must have hurt people, such as giving people nicknames, choreographing other people's troubles and so on. Now that I think about it, I must have hated it at that time. This reflection happened when I was also nicknamed and powerless, and relatively, at that time, I had fewer words. So I went back to my grandmother's proverb, "Think about what you can say, and rush to say what you can't say." Creation is the process of thinking about speaking, thinking about saying that gives "speaking" a strategy, even if it is just to say a "colorful word", but with a strategy, there is also a target.
Xiaoxiang Morning Post: In your poem "I Cry", you who "often want to cry a lot" and you who write stories in a comedic way in "Zhumadian Sad Stories" are two sides of the same coin? Is writing an emotional relief or explosion for you?
Zheng Zaihuan: You can say so, but certainly not only one coin, it should be a drawer coin. There are too many faces in people, and some faces are fleeting, which is also one of the pleasures of approaching "people" through writing, like the sentence "often think, howl and cry" - yes, there is a comma here, it is a very important comma, and the comma means that the relationship between "often thinking" and "howling and crying" is fleeting, not linked.
Emotional relief or outbursts are a function, not a purpose, for writing. Of course there will be such moments in writing, but writers certainly don't write for that. Imagine a writer sitting at his desk on time every day and saying, "My emotions are about to start exploding." Isn't that weird? Emotions are the product of the field, they cannot be planned, and all the writer can create is the field, and whether it is an outbreak or relief in it, or simply a completely out-of-control loss of control, which is generated in writing, not presupposed, which is also one of the pleasures of writing.
Written by/Reporter Liu Jianyong