The dialogue with the online writer Kugu Liuyun made an appointment to meet in the "air" in the online conference room. Before anyone saw it, a bright and hearty voice appeared first. In the first four years of writing, more than 3 million words have been published on the starting point Chinese website, and the historical trilogy "Tang Twilight Cloud", "Great Song Qinghuan" and "Great Ming Yinghua" have been widely acclaimed, among which "Great Song Qinghuan" has been collected in the Shanghai Library.
"The online literature industry is too volatile! Writing 3 million words in four years is already my limit. "It's just that the empty valley rhyme of writing in his spare time has a sober positioning for himself. Perhaps related to the "mobile" nature of living between Shanghai and Singapore, she has a greater awe and love for Chinese history and "intangible cultural heritage" culture, and she firmly believes that writers need to have a stable core and refuse to cater to "cool" writing, "only in this way can we gain real readers".
Dialogue guests: Konggu Liuyun (Internet writer) Sun Yanyang (intern of this newspaper) Xing Xiaofang (reporter of this newspaper)
Reporter: At present, you have written more than 300,000 words, and this number is still rising, and your writing has been deeply rooted in the historical scene, and I know that you also love history, war, and biographical books, how do you deal with the relationship between historical materials and imagination in your writing? Do you think that historical writing is actually a kind of human writing?
I was in my thirties when I started writing, but my interest in history has always been there, and it is also related to the large amount of literature, history and philosophy I have accumulated during my study at Fudan. It has been my long-standing creative impulse to intercept a passage of history and turn it into a story. I am a writer with history as the theme, the first two completed works are the background of the Tang and Song dynasties, and the novel "Ming Yinghua" with the background of the Ming Dynasty was originally planned, and it is the finale of the Great Era trilogy. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty of the mainland, which coincided with the Age of Discovery from a global perspective, I wanted to write about the wonderful combination of Ming Dynasty scenery and maritime trade in the place where the historical materials were not written, showing the tenacity and wisdom of our nation.
Paying attention to the hearts of people in history is not only my reading habit, but also my writing preference. By weaving stories in the cracks of these historical materials, I hope to focus on different human nature and its development direction. I will take into account the court and the little people in the rivers and lakes, the court has a difficult to say, the little people on the rivers and lakes also have their moving characteristics, everything is dynamic in the development of the story, there may be people who are more aggressive at first, but will move towards good thoughts and good deeds, and there are also seemingly innocent people who eventually fall into the soil of evil.
Reporter: The way you write about intangible cultural heritage is very dynamic, and your natural and melodious style has touched many readers. How do you write about historical traditions so vividly and youthfully? The intangible cultural heritage techniques in the novel are usually drawn out by specific "things", describing the moment when some "things" first entered history, and interpreting them from a more contemporary perspective of the heroine. How do you see the collision between objects and people, history and contemporary?
Empty valley rhyme: Intangible cultural heritage itself is very vivid, and there should be no "sense of aging". Intangible cultural heritage has been passed down after encountering various natural and man-made disasters in history, and it already reflects the vigorous vitality, it is down-to-earth, and it does not need to add too much imagination to be perfect. To write intangible cultural heritage is to maintain awe, collect the style well, patiently understand the intangible cultural heritage technology and its development of several generations, appreciate the ingenuity and taste of life in it, and then write them out.
In my book, the intangible cultural heritage closely related to the development of the main and secondary clues includes Songjiang Gu embroidery (Han Yuan embroidery), Fujian Zhangrong weaving, Songjiang cotton dyeing, Danyang metal smelting, and watertight compartment technology for sea vessels. The characters have a relationship with them, such as Gu Xiu and Zhangrong, I combined the two to become the heroine's product innovation, and took the lead in the foreign trade of Fujian Yuegang. For example, the watertight compartment method of sea vessels, I used it as a key plot push, and put it in the conflict between two teams.
In terms of the relationship between people and things, it must first conform to the logic of the heroine as a time-traveling character, which also brings a more contemporary world vision to intangible cultural heritage. There is a detail in the book, the heroine saw a handkerchief made of Fujian intangible cultural heritage, and immediately thought of the color matching in Van Gogh's works, and she also thought that if the traditional Chinese skills were integrated with Western art, would there be more orders for export trade? Of course, this design is also related to my own life experience, I do trade-related work, and when I write, I will integrate Chinese and Western art with a more open vision.
Reporter: Speaking of the global perspective in the novel, you have many overseas readers and fans, and you were awarded the "2023 China Literature Overseas Influential Writer" last year.
I studied and started my own business in Shanghai and lived in Singapore, both of which are my inspirations. Shanghai is a city that never stops, with a strong pioneering and inclusive nature, creators will have readers, applause, and criticism, just like a stone thrown into a waterhole will have an echo, which is precious for creators. Singapore's integration is very obvious, and the integration of different ethnic arts and cultures provides nourishment for writing.
I read a lot of comments from readers with overseas IP addresses, most of whom are Chinese. They are particularly sensitive to the details of intangible cultural heritage, ancient poetry or Chinese culture, and grasp them accurately; some readers are very happy to see the passages of cooking, because Chinese cooking and foreigners cooking are different in themselves. All this touched me very much, and I felt a sense of cultural resonance with the same ancestry.
After completing the history trilogy, I plan to start writing about contemporary realistic themes, but still using Chinese civilization as the background.
Reporter: Your work focuses on women's perspectives, discussing issues related to growth and entrepreneurship, gender relations, and social development. In your eyes, how do women gain power, and how do they relate to our society today?
Empty Valley Rhyme: The topic of women is also one of the points I want to express the most. Writing from a feminist perspective is still in vogue, and in my opinion, women are definitely not flat "heroines" who are detached from social reality, but face their situation head-on and build their own strong core. I don't like the so-called "three golden chapters", there are no black and white characters, and I want to be able to show the charm of the characters in more patience.
For example, the treatment of the heroine in the three works I am currently writing is different, the heroine in the first "Tang Dynasty" is actually a tragic character, and the helpless life of the female little person stumbling is full of "bad reviews"; in the second "Great Song Dynasty", I deal with the heroine's world as first suppressing and then rising, and she gradually breaks free from the cage with the weakness of her own personality; the heroine of the third "Da Ming" travels from modern times to the Ming Dynasty, and the female consciousness is completed, this one is obviously much more popular. Of course, I understand the different needs of readers, but as far as my own writing is concerned, "cool writing" is not what I want. In my novels, women exist first and foremost as independent human beings, she does not depend on men because of her femininity, or rescue men as heroes, she is herself first and foremost.
Reporter: You seem to have a lot of "conversations" with your readers, and you pay a lot of attention to their suggestions and respond to them in the text. Do some of the readers' comments confuse you? What do you think about the faster communication between the author and the reader on the online text platform, and does the reader's feedback "participate" in your creation in some way?
Hollow Valley Rhyme: I'm really happy to see the feedback from my readers, and I often interact with them. My readership is also very high, for example, some readers saw Gu embroidery and pointed out that it was called Han Yuan embroidery, because the peak of development was the Gu family's daughter-in-law Han Ximeng (female No. 2 in the book). When some readers saw Matsue cotton, they pointed out that I had a mistake in the size of the cloth and the corresponding name, and I immediately thanked and corrected it. Some readers are more excited to see the intangible cultural technology of metal smelting, because in the military weapons of the Ming Dynasty, under the premise of absorbing foreign technology, artillery cast of copper and iron began to appear. There are also some relatively unpopular intangible cultural heritage items, and after I wrote them, readers felt that they had filled in their cognitive gaps, and they were very happy to have gained something from reading.
As for bad reviews, I will accept them, I will not be bothered, and I will not be angry, because each reader has their own world, and I will also observe the person who speaks, and he may also become a flesh-and-blood character in the new work in the future. Of course, there are also those that bother me, and that is the distorted remarks about the plot and characters of my work.
Writers need to have a stable core, and I won't write stories I don't like in order to fit the cool points of some readers, I think, only in this way can I gain real readers. I don't want to be limited to "genres", just as my characters are altruistic but by no means "Madonna" or "Holy Father", because that itself forms part of the real world.
Text: Sun Yanyang (intern) Xing Xiaofang
Photo: Publisher
Editor: Wang Yan