Yang Yao, a writer who came out of a small town, persistently looks at the world with sincere and enthusiastic eyes, focusing on the ordinary and tangled trivial lives of the people at the bottom, and writing about the wrinkles and traumas in the hearts of ordinary people. He pays attention to the delicate balance between reality and human nature, and his works are simple, natural, beautiful and readable, and quietly express the pain of the individual and the times. (Su Tongyu) his latest collection of short stories "Ideal Country" also has such qualities.
Yang Yao, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, vice chairman of the Shanxi Writers Association, holds a master's degree in literature. He has published many works in journals such as "People's Literature", "Harvest", "Contemporary", "October", "Chinese Writers", "Shanghai Literature", "Beijing Literature", etc., which have been reprinted by many selected journals and included in the annual work selection. He has published a collection of novels "The Second Brother's Bunker", "The Knife That Hardens", "We Grow Old Quickly", "The Passing Years", "The Passing of the Village", "The Soft Buddha Light", "The Shining Railroad Tracks" and the novel "The Earth". He has won the "Zhao Shuli Literary Award", the 9th "October" Literary Award, the 10th "Shanghai Literature" Award, and the 4th "China SCE Cup" "Selected Novels" Award.
Engaged in literary creation for many years, Yang Yao's works are solid and his literary skills are profound, and he has won a high degree of recognition in the literary world. His novellas are particularly prominent, and the latest collection of short and medium stories published by the Writers Publishing House, "Ideal Country", includes his new works and masterpieces in recent years, mainly focusing on the attention and revelation of the living conditions of the people at the bottom, writing the life experience of the little people from the perspective of the little people, and restoring the original ecology of life in the way of description and cut-and-paste.
At the same time as the publication of the collection of short and medium stories "Ideal Country", Yang Yao's novel "The Earth" was published by Yunnan People's Publishing House, writing about poverty alleviation and rural revitalization. The response to the novel "The Earth" is different, and it also reflects another expectation of readers for Yang Yao, a writer who mainly writes short and medium stories. In line with this, Yang Yao's 18 short stories were published in "Ideal Country", which presents a different meaning. The reason why it is said to be echoing is that the two novels and 18 short stories reflect the author's perseverance and perseverance, exploration and experimentation. And the latter is even more so. "Ideal Country" should be regarded as a staged summary of Yang Yao's short story creation.
The 18 short stories collected in the novel collection "Ideal Country" can be roughly divided into three categories and three major sections. In the first section, "Black Umbrella", "The Road to the Future", "Blazing Blood", "The Sun is West", "Far on the Yellow River", "White Felt Shoes" and "Silver Needle" have a total of 7 articles, which are basically the writer's sorting and sorting out of the memories of the juvenile town. A little girl persistently and tirelessly plugs the water pipes that flow all day long without being understood, is unwilling to wear a nylon strap to block the rain on a rainy day, longs to get a black umbrella, every day in addition to blocking the water pipes, fighting wits and courage with the citizens of the town, is to go to the garbage heap to pick up, hoping to realize the dream of having an umbrella. ("Black Umbrella") The small town middle school organized a collective viewing of the movie "Shaolin Temple", which caused a burst of excitement and restlessness among the students, and the teenager saw Jet Li standing on one leg on the movie poster, "as if he could stand like this for 10,000 years" The father drank heavily every day, and the mother was so disappointed in her father that she had the idea of divorce; when the aunt and her husband who lived in the mountains had a conflict and ran away from home, the cousin was disappointed in her father and came to stay at home for a short time; the cousin and cousin spent a warm time; the good times did not last long, the uncle and aunt got back together under the mother's words, the cousin wanted to go back to the mountains, and the teenager gave the cousin more than a dozen villain books he had accumulated. The boy was swimming in the reservoir and was bullied for some reason, hoping that the tall cousin would come forward to be angry for himself, but he didn't expect that the cousin went out to get a haircut and was beaten by the tough boy in the town, and was also bullied; the cousin threatened to retaliate, and the mother asked the father to come forward to reason with the other party's parents; however, the cousin and the father thundered and rained, and the revenge repeatedly exaggerated was shirked for various reasons, and finally failed to carry it out, and in the end it seemed that nothing happened. A group of classmates met to play basketball, and the mine boss's luxury car occupied the basketball court and could only play half the court. An ordinary mistake turned out to be a remarkable event. The rich boss was furious, his companion boy shirked, and the school leaders held him accountable, which suddenly plunged the teenager into boundless fear. ("The Sun is West")
The second section, "The Origin of Zou Zhengfang", "Seven Sections", "Plaice Tail", "The Fourth Island", "It Begins to Snow", "There is a Cloud Overhead", and "Big Fish", can be regarded as a concentrated presentation of the writer's accumulation of life from the countryside to the city for several years. Zou Zhengfang, a young man who came to the city from a small county town, was confused by the bizarre life in the big city, had the illusion of entering the mainstream, looked for jobs everywhere, and was not developed in the end, and finally confused the whole city with his own persistence in taking the wrong side. ("The Origin of Zou Zhengfang") The single couple could not get out of the shadow of the death of their only son, so they decided to go to see the sea to scatter their hearts, but it had little effect. A college student who graduated from an art academy accidentally got a job driving for the leader in a provincial unit, and originally wanted to work for a few years to engage in professional music creation, but the leader's promise, after a long ten years, is still a big pie painted in words. ("It Begins to Snow") turned out to be a husband and wife of middle-level managers of state-owned enterprises, buying out seniority in the case of the increasingly declining enterprise and trying to start their own business, but in reality they had to make a living like a small citizen, running into walls everywhere, and being deceived from time to time, and the wife's illness made life worse, but fortunately, life is not monolithic, "people can't live in the shadows all the time, sometimes as long as they move a little, the light will shine in, and then there may be greater changes" , the protagonist finally musters up the courage to find a new world in another country with the support of his wife. In order to get better educational resources for their children, after getting a demolition payment, the husband and wife living in a small county moved their families to the provincial capital with their children, and set up a small shop, hoping to take root in the city, but due to the impact of the epidemic, the business was deserted. (Big Fish)
The third section, "Ideal Country", "Fold Yourself", and "My Father and My Times", if you add "White Felt Shoes", can be regarded as a certain attempt by the writer to "do something". Among them, the novel of the same name in the novel collection "Ideal Republic", the title comes from Plato, but it is not a utopia, but the most pyrotechnic real world. The novel writes about the faces of all beings in the housing community of the school district, the fat female neighbor of the migrant workers, and the stubborn janitor who relocates to the landlord, and the intimate relationship with each other. The reversal at the end, in order to earn money for his son to buy a house, the janitor signed up for performance art, and lived in a transparent cage for many days, which was moving and sad to watch. This is the real boiling life, where everyone strives and lives for hope. For example, a description of the environment in the novel can be called a stroke of genius: "Why don't you look up and hear the clouds floating across the sky as if they were making a swishing sound, like someone tearing cloth." Never thought they would get lost in the park!But the park was really too big, and it was night, and they weren't familiar with it. Why think of the coughing puppy, if it was there, it would definitely be able to bring them back. Thinking about it, I heard the dog's coughing sound, very slender, why useless to think that it must have been delusional. But there were several more clear coughing sounds of the dog in succession. He Min shouted, 'Simba!' and they walked through the fallen leaves towards the place where the sound came from, regardless of whether there was a way or not. Soon, they were standing on the main road of the park, and in the night, there were still people running, and the music of square dancing could be heard in the distance. The neighbor's fat woman walked in front, followed by the coughing puppy, staggering. He Wufu They followed behind, and soon saw the huge black wire mesh on the dome of the Aviary Garden, and they had walked to the other side of the Aviary Garden. Why is it useless to think that the birds are probably asleep by this time. Simba suddenly screamed, and as soon as Simba screamed, a quacking bird call came, and then a few more cooing sounds, and then a series of bird calls kept coming. Surprisingly, their voices are soft and soft, as if they are greeting acquaintances. When He Wufu was surprised, he saw the woman's eyes looking at the bird garden, full of tenderness, like looking at a group of children, her lips curled up, and she made a lullaby-like sound of "sleep, sleep". The birds cooed and responded one after another, and the aviary gradually fell silent. ”
As a professional writer, Yang Yao has always been very concerned about people's livelihood, and he has accumulated rich experience for his literary creation. Liu Cixin commented that Yang Yao has been writing works with rich life texture and profound heritage, like Chekhov, who he likes, does not fabricate, does not play smart, and sincerely dedicates all emotions to each novel, so that the novel has the power of immersion; In Jia Zhangke's view, Yang Yao's novels focus on meaning and atmosphere, and can accurately reach the depths of people's hearts in seemingly undisturbed narratives. His novels are full of camera sense and graphic sense, and through realistic details, he builds a meaningful story. Qiu Huadong, member of the party group, vice chairman and secretary of the Secretariat of the Chinese Writers Association, said that Yang Yao is one of the most noteworthy powerful writers emerging in the new era. In the work "Ideal Country", we can see the urban and rural changes in China in the new era, the rich experience of Chinese-style modernization, and Yang Yao's aesthetic pursuit of constantly surpassing himself. (Reader Daily all-media reporter He Jian)