Interface News Reporter | Forest people
Interface News Editor | Yellow Moon
In March this year, the book "I Deliver Express in Beijing" was purchased by Penguin Publishing at a high price at the London Book Fair, and has sold the copyright in 12 countries and regions including the United States, Britain, France, and Germany. When the editor-in-charge of this book recounted this incident, it was difficult to hide the pride in his heart.
"I Deliver Courier in Beijing" is the first original work he planned and edited. Many praised Pu Zhao's insight, but not everyone knew that the book was "the last remaining stumbling block" when the literary editor was about to quit publishing. 2022 is a year full of crises for Puzhao and his publishing company, Purui Culture. Due to the closure and suspension of production, the company's publishing progress is seriously lagging behind. In 2023, Puzhao launched the book, which was originally scheduled to be released in April of the previous year, with a desperate mood, "At that time, the company as a whole did not feel that this was a special book, and we did not have such a great foresight. But what I was thinking about was the People story, "Delivery Rider, Trapped in the System," and it reverberated to me. ”
In "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing", the author Hu Anyan records the many jobs he has done in the past 20 years, including courier, night picker, convenience store clerk, security guard, bicycle sales, clothing store shopping guide, etc. It is one of the most talked-about original non-fiction works in 2023, and it has appeared on the book lists of many media, with 44,000 ratings on Douban and a rating of 8.1 so far. Open-book data shows that since its launch in 2023, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies. According to Puzhao, the book has a circulation of 120,000 copies.
Long before Hu Anyan and his first works appeared in the public eye, readers were no strangers to "migrant worker literature", such as the works of the miner poet Chen Nianxi, the delivery worker poet Wang Jibing, and the domestic worker Fan Yusu. However, a noteworthy publishing phenomenon in the past two years is that documentary works about the life and work experiences of grassroots workers seem to be "sprung up". In addition to "I Deliver Express in Beijing", "My Mother Cleans" was reprinted three times in three months after its publication, and the author Zhang Xiaoman was selected as the 2023 Blade Book Award Non-fiction Author of the Year......
Why do we find the everyday stories of ordinary workers, and if nonfiction writing by grassroots workers is a publishing craze, what kind of social mentality does this trend reflect? On the occasion of World Book Day, Booksandfun interviewed a number of editors and book reviewers to try to discuss the issue.
01 "I'm doing XX in XX": The beginning of the grassroots non-fiction writing boom?
Book reviewer and writer Wei Zhou was deeply impressed by a detail described in "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing": when doing express parcel sorting work late at night, I am often so busy that I sweat, and there is no point in keeping it clean, and I always have to get dirty anyway. "Originally, everyone thought that delivering couriers was a very simple job, but now he has broken many things in the courier to show you. He admires the author's personality traits revealed in the text, "Whether it is a dilemma or a frustration, this person is very peaceful and more accepting of his situation." I think it may be in this place that moves people, he makes many people see the real situation of ordinary people. ”
Wei Zhou pointed out that the common characteristics of non-fiction works such as "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing" and "My Mother Cleans" are based on the author's identity as a "migrant worker", with a strong sense of reality and storytelling, and the language is usually relatively plain, and because the theme is mostly to tell the personal experience of laborers, it presents the characteristics of "depoliticization". He believes that the emergence of such non-fiction works by amateur or amateur writers is the result of "class sinking": since the expansion of colleges and universities in the late 90s, the education level of Chinese has been rising, but at a certain stage of social development, there will be a situation where there are not enough jobs to match the high degree of education - people with good education or knowledge have begun to join grassroots jobs, and at this time, some grassroots workers have gained a sense of self-identity and can make some voices representative of their groups.
Laborer writing is not a new concept abroad, and some of its best works have been translated into China, such as Lucia Berlin's collection of short stories, The Cleaning Lady's Handbook. Pu Zhao noticed that perhaps because of the high level of humanistic literacy in Western society as a whole, such works that write about blue-collar jobs usually have a strong intellectual temperament, and the writers are more like facing the work they are engaged in with an attitude of experiencing life and reflecting on phenomena.
In contrast, "[Hu Anyan] did not write from the intellectual tradition, but from his own personal experience, from the chewing and reflection on life after reading the book, he realized some 'small philosophies', some micro things. His writing does not have that philosophical or sociological framework. ”
Zhang Jiren, editor of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, disagrees with the fact that works such as "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing" are often labeled as "amateur writing", and he believes that a more appropriate description is "life writing", that is, life writing or life writing. Life writing is a record of individual experiences, memories, opinions, and emotions, and many forms of nonfiction writing—including biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, and even pictures and words on social media—fall under this category. "From this point of view, the 'democratization of the expression of individual life experience' has long been a cultural trend of our time. Woolf said in A Room of One's Own that individual writing needs the conditions of the times. In the face of this trend of the times, the publishing industry is basically an attitude of understanding and acceptance. ”
According to Zhang Jiren's observation of the domestic original book market, the non-fiction writing of such grassroots workers has not yet become a climate, "It is inherently difficult for grassroots workers to write non-fiction, because reading and writing are conditional, such as leisure. From the perspective of book publishing, he believes that a more feasible model is for writers with creative ability and publishing resources to write about the experience and facts of grassroots work through a longer period of "undercover" or "experiential" life. This pattern is more common in non-fiction writing abroad, such as "My Life at the Bottom" by American writer Babara Ehrenreich. Zhang Jiren said that this book has influenced many subsequent works on the same theme, "Barbara Allenschweig is a creator who combines knowledge and action, and I especially admire this. Writers, civil rights activists, janitors, restaurant waiters, supermarket salespeople, different social identities appear in one person at the same time, and it is not inconsistent at all. ”
Shi Yong, head of the "Gravity" book department and director of the Academic and Cultural Publishing Center of Guangdong People's Publishing House, told Interface Culture that at present, publishing houses are in a very hungry state for local original works, but the reality is that the supply of excellent original works is very scarce, and it remains to be seen whether non-fiction writing by grassroots workers can become a publishing craze.
Although publishers are interested in such original works, they are more cautious, and generally consider the market feedback of their books, and leave a certain amount of space for newcomers and amateur writers under the premise of having national best-selling works to ensure stable cash flow. In the summer of 2021, Shi Yong read "I Send Express Mail in Beijing" and "I Opened a Rental in Shanghai" in "Reading Library 2103", and two non-fiction works with opposite titles caught his attention. The former article was written by Hu Anyan, and he met Spades, who wrote the latter article, and helped shout on Douban to ask if there was a publishing house interested.
Puzhao also found Hu Anyan on Douban. In April 2020, he read Hu Anyan's "My Year of Night Work in Debang" posted on Douban, and then he was deeply moved by his "A Year of Working in Shanghai". "He's a person with the quality of writing, not the kind of person who writes casually on the Internet, and his writing is clean and unobtrusive, revealing his personal style, which is actually hard to find. After Douban paid attention to Hu Anyan for a year, Puzhao sent him Dou Mail, asking if he was interested in publishing, and later he had the book "I Deliver Express in Beijing".
Guangdong People's Publishing House will also launch another non-fiction work this year, "The Hospital is a Zoo", the author Wang Geduo is a staff member of the propaganda department of a tertiary hospital, and he recorded what he saw and heard in his 15 years of work experience in the hospital, forming a short and dramatic story. Shi Yong mentioned that social networks give ordinary people the opportunity to express themselves publicly, and amateur writers are slowly forming their own communities, from this point of view, "There is actually hope for ordinary people to write." ”
02 Reading Fun Turns Inward: Little People's Identity and Emotional Value
Wei Zhou pointed out that a type of work can resonate universally and needs the support of a specific readership. According to his observations, a noticeable shift in Chinese society in recent years is the increasing interest and interest in ordinary people. "For example, in the past history books, everyone used to pay attention to the big figures in history, but in the past two years, there has been the rise of microhistoriography, and everyone just likes the little people. The explosion of the character "Little Pig Demon" in last year's popular cartoon "Chinese Strange Tan" also reflects this trend, "Everyone thinks that we workers are in the same situation as this little pig demon." If 'migrant worker literature' can arouse a sensation, first of all, a large number of readers have begun to identify themselves as migrant workers. ”
"Whether it's a historical work, a novel, a non-fiction, or an animation, as long as you can express the joys and sorrows of the little people, many people will feel that they have obtained a kind of emotional satisfaction, because they cannot get this emotional nourishment in their daily lives. Whether the work itself is literary or not, many people don't really care much. ”
Wei Zhou noted that another feature of Chinese society is also contributing to the popularity of nonfiction writing among grassroots workers, namely that many of China's intellectual elite also identify themselves as "little people." In any society, publishing editors, university scholars, and other groups belong to the intellectual elite, but in China, cultural capital does not necessarily bring better income to these groups, so that they have a sense of identity in the higher classes, "so the whole society generally has sympathy or empathy for the lower classes." Wei Zhou found that "middle class" is a highly ambiguous concept in China, and few people voluntarily admit to being "middle class". "A monthly income of 20,000 yuan must be considered middle class, right? But many people will tell you that I am just a part-time worker. Ask them again, how much do you think your income is considered middle class? Some people will tell me that they have to earn at least 500,000 or 1 million yuan a year. In his view, the legitimacy of the intellectual elite or the middle class is actually in a state of questionability in Chinese society.
Puzhao feels a clear shift in the social mentality in the post-epidemic era - the middle-class narrative is being questioned more and more. "After everyone disenchanted 'progress', they wanted to see what possibilities there were in life. After the collapse of the mainstream of progressivism, we are now in a state of pluralism and chaos. Therefore, people who can see more meaning or fun in their daily lives can attract people's attention. ”
Wei Zhou further pointed out that the popularity of non-fiction writing for grassroots workers is not more due to readers' interest in industry insiders. He argues that curiosity about the professions of couriers, cleaners or taxi drivers is not enough to explain the attention these works receive, but more importantly the emotional power of such works. "If these books are treated as consumer goods, they must have some function to meet the emotional needs of a specific group of readers," he said, "and Chinese like to see the real experiences of individuals, the tragic and dramatic ordeal that they have experienced." We often see the phrase, 'Reality is more wonderful than fiction' or 'Novelists dare not write like this'. You'll find that storytelling is reading-friendly for the masses. ”
When analyzing the causes of the craze for non-fiction writing among grassroots workers, Shi Yong also frequently mentioned the word "emotion". According to his observations, under the influence of the change in the overall atmosphere of society, there is a trend of inward turning in the reading taste of Chinese readers, and people's concern for grand narratives and the outside world is giving way to attention to the present and themselves, which directly leads to the change in the structure of publishing topics. In his opinion, the "A Brief History of Mankind", which exploded in the Chinese book market a few years ago, may not have such a strong communication effect if it is published today, "That social atmosphere no longer exists, the law of human development, the trend of the whole world, these knowledge values are not helpful for readers to change the status quo." I may be laid off tomorrow and my salary will be cut, I am old and young, what are I thinking about these macro issues?"
Shi Yong noticed that the shift in Chinese readers' reading tastes had already occurred as early as 2018. He still remembers that in 2017, the Social Sciences Academic Press published the "Mediterranean Epic Trilogy" by British historian Roger Crowley, which became a bestseller that year. A college classmate who is engaged in tourism self-media told Shi Yong that she also bought this set of books because she was going to travel to Turkey and wanted to learn some local history in advance. This yearning for the outside world has waned, and the knock-on effect is a decline in the sales of world history books. Shi Yong said that as a publishing practitioner, he has also found that he has not been able to read world history books in the past two years.
In his opinion, the books that have guaranteed sales today are often those that are closely related to the fate of the individual and allow readers to see their own works. "Emotional value may be more important than knowledge value now, because knowledge is already very difficult to change something, or it takes a long time to change, and I can't wait. At the very least, this book has to tug at my heartstrings and give me psychological satisfaction. ”
03 The story of grassroots workers is on fire, and then what?
Both Puzhao and Shi Yong told Jiemian Culture that they did not deliberately make publication plans in the direction of non-fiction writing by grassroots workers, whether it was "I Deliver Express in Beijing" or "I Opened a Rental in Shanghai", their publication and market response were quite accidental.
Shi Yong said that the traffic of "I do XX in XX" works has actually been almost consumed by the two books "I Deliver Express in Beijing" and "My Mother Cleans" in 2023, and if you want to continue to publish this kind of work in the future, you must provide readers with something new, either a fresh perspective or a fresh language. "Whether the non-fiction writing of grassroots workers or 'migrant worker literature' can form a trend mainly depends on the quality of the works themselves and whether there are enough people to write a sufficient number of excellent works," he said. ”
In Wei Zhou's view, if the non-fiction writing of grassroots workers has formed a trend, it must be related to the change of social mentality. To judge whether this trend will continue, we need to look at two factors: first, whether the market supply of such works is increasing, whether the writing mode can continue to be renovated to give readers a sense of freshness, and second, whether the social mentality is adjusted again, so that readers may lose their emotional resonance with "little people" and "migrant workers".
Shi Yong believes that publishing hotspots are rarely the result of careful planning by publishing practitioners, and whether a work can succeed is actually a "gamble", which is also the meaning of what he said about the need for publishing houses to have national best-selling old books - this can ensure that the publishing institution can still "stay at the table" and continue to "bet" on the works of the next batch of cutting-edge writers. Of course, book editors don't choose books blindly, and they must have some kind of intuition to discern the unique meaning of a manuscript. But overall, making a book is no different from venture capital, maybe only 10% or even 5% of the books are 'successful', and a large number of the remaining books may become 'cannon fodder'. ”
As the manager of the editorial department of a publishing house, another important reason why he values the discovery of amateur or amateur writers is that in this era when enthusiasm is particularly scarce, it motivates editors to stay enthusiastic for longer. "Amateur authors need a lot of energy to put in the editor, but as long as the run-in is smooth, there will be more possibilities, and the sense of accomplishment will be greater for the editor. Famous works have honor and their own traffic, but mature writers may make editors lose their enthusiasm, and once enthusiasm is lost, it is very difficult to rekindle. ”
In the process of editing and marketing the book "I Deliver Express in Beijing", Puzhao regained the state of "all enthusiasm is invested in this world" when he first entered the industry. Now that he thinks about it, he is glad that he was able to discover Hu Anyan when he was most confused about the editing profession, and grew up with this new writer who also has a "people-pleasing personality" like himself.
Puzhao often shares his thoughts on editorial work and the publishing industry on social media. He once wrote an observation that was endorsed by his predecessors in the industry:
"In the reader's reading taste, the so-called 'whiteness' has long since failed, and the 'East Asianness' has also failed, and now it seems that there is only 'in the present'. In the first two years, Xiang Biao talked about the loss of 'proximity', but suddenly proximity became the only thing that could be done. There is so much uncertainty about what happens in a larger space outside of the individual's neighborhood that people simply don't face it, but instead choose to build around it closer together, which is a very instinctive, whole group reaction. At least in terms of original books, we have to do what is closest to the reader now, and look at our current lives in a more subtle way, from as different angles as possible. ”
After Juanyan's book, he also made clear the direction of his next work—purely autobiographical non-fiction, or "autofiction" between fiction and non-fiction, as in Ernaux's works. "I want the writer to reveal himself, to write about himself, to be on the spot, rather than to write about others and relay other people's stories. I couldn't find the passion to do something like this. ”