【Night Reading】Knowing the land under your feet is wider than knowing the world - writer Liu Liangcheng shares his reading experience

Walking in the fields and listening to the sounds of nature is what Liu Liangcheng likes. (Photo provided by the interviewee)

On the afternoon of April 14, the Xinjiang Federation of Literary and Art Circles held the "4.23 Scholarly CPPCC Member Reading Day" activity, inviting Liu Liangcheng, member of the CPPCC Autonomous Region, chairman of the Xinjiang Writers Association, and winner of the Mao Dun Literature Award, to share his creative feelings on the creation of the new prose collection "Hometown on the Land", and to exchange reading experiences with members of the studio of the CPPCC Autonomous Region Committee members of the cultural and artistic sector and CPPCC members. Liu Liangcheng said that a person's reading should be related to his hometown, and he should first read books related to himself when reading a book.

"Reading is first of all to read the books of your hometown, to read the books that are relevant to you. ”

When asked by a committee member who participated in the activity what is the purpose of reading, what books should a person read, and how to read well, Liu Liangcheng frankly said that his reading began with understanding nature. As a child, he spent his time in the countryside basking in the sun, watching ants move, listening to birds singing, feeling the sun, air, wind, rain, day and night, and the sounds left by insects crawling in the grass, and the whispers in the depths of the village. When he was in a small village called Huangshaliang, Liu Liangcheng didn't know that it was a kind of reading. Many years later, when he came to work and live in the city, he looked back on his childhood and adolescence, and realized that there was a kind of reading, starting from knowing the place where he lived - his hometown.

"Reading is first of all to read the books of your hometown, to read the books that are relevant to you. Liu Liangcheng said that living in Xinjiang should start with books about Xinjiang, books related to literature, history and culture in Xinjiang, and books that have been left behind and repeatedly recited by our ancestors, such as the lyrics of the epic poems "Jangar", "Manas" or "Muqam", including those folk tales that have been passed down from generation to generation. These are all classics left by the land of Xinjiang that everyone needs to read, and in the future, no matter where they go in the world, they can communicate with scholars anywhere. Xinjiang people have read a lot of books about their hometowns, know the world of Xinjiang, know the folk customs of their hometowns, and know the land under their feet, which is broader than knowing the world. That's the real purpose of reading.

That's what Liu Liangcheng said, and that's what he did. In Liu Liangcheng's bookcase of Mulei Academy in Rapeseedgou, you don't need to look carefully to see the thick "Jianger", "Manas" and county histories in various parts of Xinjiang. Liu Liangcheng has always believed that only by reading enough books in his hometown and reading his hometown thoroughly can he go further and understand the world. "These are all original stories that happened in the land of Xinjiang, and in these works, you can read the familiar mountains, rivers, grasslands, deserts, the traffic of the city, the roosters and dogs barking in the villages, and you feel like you are in a book when you read them. Liu Liangcheng said.

When Alijiang Maimat, vice chairman of the Xinjiang Artists Association, attended the event, he was very excited after hearing Liu Liangcheng's creative feelings, "All the words are in his mind. If you look closely, you will see that every paragraph he says adds up to a wonderful prose. This may be the ability that reading and writing has given him. ”

"Books are the least place-occupied and most vast spiritual world in the world. ”

When someone asked how to understand "there is a golden house in the book, and there is Yan Ruyu in the book" in today's era, Liu Liangcheng humorously replied that although he did not find either of these things in the book, reading can indeed change people's hearts and lives. The difference between a reader and a non-reader is that there is indeed a "golden house" in the heart of a reader.

Everyone will encounter all kinds of troubles, when the world makes a person become disappointed and feel depressed and lonely, as long as he closes his eyes, there will be a world in the book in his heart. What is the relationship between people and books? "Books are the world's smallest and largest spiritual world. When we open a book, we actually enter a golden path presented by literature. Liu Liangcheng said that everyone is reading himself when he is reading.

In a long novel, people look for themselves in the book. When a person is moved to tears by the fate of a character in a novel, he is shedding tears for himself. "A person finds his own emotions in the book, finds the fate associated with his heart, finds the breath he wants to sigh, and of course finds his own smile. In Liu Liangcheng's eyes, everyone who enters books through reading books gets an emotional and fateful experience - this is a new self.

Liu Liangcheng said that when people read books, in addition to feeling the present moment of life, they also read the past and present in books. Because in addition to one's own life, one can also read the spirit and destiny of thousands of people in books. "If we read a hundred books, then we live in a hundred worlds. If we read all the ancient and modern Chinese and foreign history, our lives are actually connected with the ancients thousands of years ago, and we already have a world from the past to the present. Liu Liangcheng's views on reading won bursts of applause. From this passage, people heard a writer's unique views on reading, and read Liu Liangcheng's sea of thoughts both inside and outside the book.

"Reading allows us to regain a world. ”

Nowadays, with the rapid development of smart technology, many people still go to bookstores and libraries to read books. This shows that no matter how advanced the human civilization has advanced in the era of intelligent technology, people still need to read books that enlighten and enlighten their minds. Similarly, more and more smartphones are starting to accompany people's reading.

"People who are looking through information or videos on their mobile phones, I think they are readers. Liu Liangcheng said. Mobile phone reading has broken people's definition of books, and those who may not have read books at all before, because of mobile phones, they have been exposed to many books, because many of the content in mobile phones may come from one book after another, but they read fragmented books.

In such an era, mobile phones have given more people the opportunity to read. In the rapeseed ditch where Liu Liangcheng lives, the aunt in the village used to not know much about reading, but now she starts to study because she wants to look at her mobile phone, and he calls this kind of reading reading. Because of this, he believes that paper books are especially important in such an environment. Because of the interest reading promoted by mobile phone software, what you read may tend to be fragmented, and people read a paper book, and the feeling is completely different.

"Reading a paper book may be reading a piece of history in the world, or reading the experience of a family, etc., each paper book may write an era, a world, and the fate of people. Liu Liangcheng believes that such in-depth reading is not available in the information sent every day in the mobile phone.

When Liu Liangcheng was still living in Huangshaliang Village, he read several books with no beginning and no end. The book was repeatedly borrowed from the people of the village, and when it reached his house, only the book was left. That's it, Liu Liangcheng still reads voraciously. He found the reading experience to be amazing—"a book suddenly takes you out of this village world and into a world of books." I think that's the whole point of reading, it takes you from the real world to a fictional literary world imagined by the writer. If you can summarize your view of reading in one sentence, Liu Liangcheng said: "Reading allows us to regain a world." ”