Li Juan: I avoided a lot of myself in my writing

Southern Weekly

2024-05-13 19:00 Posted on the official account of Guangdong Southern Weekly

Li Juan: I avoided a lot of myself in my writing

Stills from the TV series "My Altay" adapted from Li Juan's essay collection of the same name. Data map

"There are two kinds of things in the world that can cover everything, one is snow and the other is graves."

Li Juan's writing sometimes causes some misunderstandings, making people think that she completed her writing with a natural girlish innocence. In fact, she is thoughtful and rigorous in her writing, qualities that are already present in her first work, Nine Pieces of Snow.

In 2003, "Nine Articles of Snow" was published, which was written during the illness of Li Juan's grandmother, who took care of her grandmother in the hospital, and no longer had to do tailor work, and had a large chunk of time to write, writing for a whole winter. On the way to Urumqi to deliver the manuscript, she left all the manuscripts on the car. Back in Fuyun County, it can only be rewritten. "Whether it's the first draft or the second draft, writing itself is an exciting and joyful thing for me. It's a bit of a pity, maybe I lost a lot of things in the first draft, but on the other hand, maybe the second draft will be better written. ”

Since then, Li Juan has not stopped, and has successively published "The Corner of Altay", "Please Sing Loudly When Walking at Night", "Distant Sunflower Field", "Remember One and Forget Three Two", "The Train Runs Quickly", "Sheep Road" trilogy...... "I have long been eager to write. About the earth, about all things, about vanishing and never disappearing, and especially about man—man's will and man's pride, man's innocence and man's greed. ”

In May 2024, the TV series "My Altay", adapted from Li Juan's essay collection of the same name, will be broadcast, and the ratings will be the first in the country on the day of its premiere. Continuing the hidden girl's heart in "Nine Pieces of Snow", love becomes an important theme in "My Altay", "I was thinking about love all autumn - I fell in love with Messira out of youth".

Yu Shi plays the Kazakh teenager Ba Tai, based on the Messira of "Country Ball", "he is tall, beautiful, has a soft and quiet heart, and a pair of artistic hands", and the love with Ba Tai healed the literary girl Li Wenxiu who returned to her hometown. At the same time, what deeply healed the audience in front of the screen was not only the snow-capped mountains, forests, grasslands, and rivers of Altay, Xinjiang, but also Li Juan's "instinctive enthusiasm for love and life".

Many readers know Li Juan because she once ran a column in Southern Weekly. Seven years ago, in the Beijing office of Pumpkin Vision, Li Juan accepted a video interview with Southern Weekly for the first time because of her new book "Distant Sunflower Field". Seven years later, still in the Pumpkin Television office, Li Juan connected with Southern Weekly via video link, chatting about reading and writing live, but this time Li Juan was in a small town on the outskirts of Urumqi, she lived alone with two cats, "after the age of 40, she chose her current life very wisely."

During the live broadcast, readers kept leaving messages urging Li Juan's new work, and her last new work was "Distant Sunflower Field" published in 2017. In the face of urging, Li Juan talked frankly about her writing status, "Now I am also struggling, I always feel that either I have not yet reached the best state of writing, or it may really be that the time has not come, which is hard to say." In fact, when it comes to writing, I've never been an open-minded person, I've never really been a person who goes with the flow and goes with the flow, and I'm also very anxious. ”

Li Juan. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

The following is based on the live broadcast record.

"Words are the most open"

Southern Weekly: You have repeatedly talked about your first book, Nine Pieces of Snow, thinking that it was the work of a teenager, but "Nine Pieces of Snow" contains almost all the core elements of your later creations—the vigor of imagination and the wonder of words. You write that "there are two kinds of things in the world that can cover everything, one is snow and the other is a grave". Did this kind of sentence come out of your head at a very young age at that time?

Li Juan: It may not be my age, but it is indeed a natural one. Writing is a strange thing, like metaphysics. It's really strange that I can't figure out why I did such an even cruel depiction when I was younger.

Southern Weekly: You yourself said that you had time to write when you were eight or nine years old, what ignited this ambition to write?

Li Juan: It's really hard to say, it's instinct, it's really as an eight or nine-year-old, very ordinary, almost nothing at all, she doesn't have any sense of existence, she doesn't know what the world is like, but suddenly one day she is literate, she can read, she finds that she can use words to write some sentences, at this time she suddenly clear, all the memories are clear, I think this is a sudden awakening.

Southern Weekly: Your poetry collection does not have any preface or afterword, what era did this poem be written?

Li Juan: It can be said to have been throughout my writing process, from the very beginning of my writing. Of course, when I started writing, it didn't look like poetry, and many people said that the poems I wrote were not like poetry, just broken prose. Later, when I was compiling this book, I made a lot of changes.

Southern Weekly: Are the writing of these poems synchronized with the writing of your prose?

Li Juan: Yes.

Southern Weekly: Some of the pictures in your book allow us to see the magnificence and beauty of Xinjiang at a glance, but the richness of Xinjiang can only be completed in words.

Li Juan: Yes. On the one hand, I do feel that for me the words are a little bit broader. On the other hand, it may be that I am more impetuous, I always like to fast-forward when watching video things, unless it is a work with a particularly good sense of rhythm, I may be patient to watch it, but basically I don't have much patience to watch film and television works, video things, this may be a very bad problem for me personally. I prefer words, whether it's my own expression or what I get from other people's expressions, I think words are the most open.

Southern Weekly: This time, because I read through your work, I took a lot of notes, and when I look back, I see that many of the scribbles and marks are about magnificent landscapes, how do you deal with the relationship between the stories of the characters and the magnificent landscapes—is this all natural, or is there a lot of deliberation and balance in your writing?

Li Juan: When it comes to the topic of writing skills, I really feel at a loss. Of course, when I write, I will scrutinize, layout, and think repeatedly as you said, but all the time the arrangement of all words is really a kind of judgment, and I don't know where the source of this judgment is, and I also think that writing this way is more appropriate than writing like that, and deleting this part is more concise and accurate than keeping it, anyway, it is a kind of intuition and judgment, and I can't dissect my own writing skills, I think it's really metaphysics.

Southern Weekly: I just talked about the young state of your writing, in fact, Jane Austen wrote "Sense and Sensibility" at the age of 19 and "Pride and Prejudice" at the age of 21.

Li Juan: Yes, I can say "yes" categorically, and I'm not using myself as an example, but I've seen many excellent authors who can write very mature and sophisticated texts at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and of course he never writes again, and I think it really has nothing to do with age. It's like a genius scientist who can solve very difficult problems at the age of eleven or twelve, and the talent for literature is something like this, which is very strange. Of course, I'm not like that, I think I'm slowly becoming more mature and transparent after the age of thirty, but before the age of thirty, it's a kind of rampage writing.

Southern Weekly: Some of the stories you wrote were about Kazakh nomads, and you were outside of them at first, but then you simply walked in. There's a critic who says you're writing quasi-ethnography, but it seems like you're writing about the commonality of people, not just showing some customs. What were your considerations when you wrote about them? How did you think of participating in their transition?

Li Juan: Because I feel that the landscape of their existence is a big thing, and it will definitely have a lot of rich content worth writing about. To be honest, as I mentioned in my preface, I went in at the beginning with a curious mentality, to observe those very different states of existence. But if you really get into that kind of life, you will give up a lot of your original ideas, and you will feel that when you stand with them, you will rebel against the eyes of the outside world with them. This mentality really shocked me, and I suddenly realized that I had misunderstood them before, and I was ashamed of my previous mentality. Of course, I didn't live with them for a long time, just over two months, but more than two months was enough time for me to change myself, so I'm quite grateful for that experience. It took several years to actually write this content, and it took a long time to slowly recall, deny yourself, think, and understand them, and it took a long time to form the last book. If I had written it as soon as I left the ranch, I don't think it would have been anything decent. That's pretty much it, but it's still hard to say.

Both Kazakhs and Mongolians are the people of the horse. The picture shows the male protagonist and the horse in the TV series "My Altay". Data map

"Mom is a female Whitman"

Southern Weekly: In your work, your mother is a very popular figure. Mom appears in many of your books, including the latest one, "Distant Sunflower Fields", where the scenes of life in the book are temporaneous with those in "Sheep Road" or "Winter Pasture"?

Li Juan: It's "Sheep Road". "Distant Sunflower Field" writes about our family's farming in three years, not once. The first time I started to get in touch with our family's farming was before I went to the summer pasture, that is, before I entered the life of Zakbai's mother's family, and there was the article "Nine Days", I only stayed in the field for 9 days, and on the 10th day I went up the mountain to the pasture; The second time was when I quit my job and went to the south, and then my grandmother passed away, so I took the train back to Xinjiang, and after arranging my grandmother's funeral, I went to the sunflower field, and at that time my mother was also short of manpower and money, so I helped to do the work for a month or two, which is the main content of this book; The third time was to listen to my mother, I didn't participate, and our family planted it for three years.

Southern Weekly: Mom seems to have a very good life in your works.

Li Juan: Yes, my friend said "your mom is a female Whitman".

Southern Weekly: In "Distant Sunflower Field", the scene where your mother takes your family (including chickens, ducks, and dogs) for a grand walk is particularly spectacular.

Li Juan: Yes, she is a very innocent person, innocent, kind and funny.

Southern Weekly: There are many memorable scenes in "Distant Sunflower Field", such as your mother and your stepfather planting two plots of land, and when they are about to meet, your mother will take care of herself. Mom is a very strong person, but the part that seems to be very soft in front of my uncle is revealed.

Li Juan: It's still very strong, but it's true that her feminine side is also very strong, she hopes to be praised in front of her partner, and she also has a very strong sense of femininity, which I think is also a very valuable and beautiful human thing.

Southern Weekly: Although it is a book with the concept of "sunflower fields", there are many parts about you. Strictly speaking, Li Juan is a very important character in your works, but you seem to be constantly repenting and not revealing some of your own things, don't you think that you are very satisfied with your expression?

Li Juan: Actually, everything I write is about myself, and the reason why I don't express myself so directly may be because I don't really know myself yet. I avoided a lot of things in my writing, a lot of my more complex, more acute, even more negative emotions, just because they weren't worth mentioning, and they hurt the text. In this sense, I feel that I am a depressed person, and I hope that one day I will be able to write about myself, to be able to write myself very accurately and easily.

Southern Weekly: You suddenly have a God's perspective to overlook the world and the earth, how did such a Li Juan appear? Did reading bring it to you, or did your observation bring it to you?

Li Juan: When you told me that there are two mes in the text, one is the first-person me and the other is the third-person me, I also thought about it seriously, and I really didn't have an answer. If I had to say something, it might be that I am a person with strong empathy ability and can understand almost everything. I can understand what I like, what I love, what I hate, what I hate. That's why it's so easy to stay out of things, but it's actually a very indifferent character.

Southern Weekly: When you write about Altay, you think that the one you wrote about actually presented the best parts of your life at that time, and you said that you longed for that you.

Li Juan: Yes, at that time, I was in my twenties, and I felt that I still had the mentality of an ordinary girl, I longed for love, longed for affection, longed for being deeply loved by my mother, and longed for her tenderness, so in this case, love sprouted a little bit, and I would immediately amplify it. If a child is kind to me, it is an expression of friendship, and I will immediately describe it in detail over and over again. If my mother was a little gentle with me, I would not hesitate to intensively write her kindness to me into my words, but in reality it is not so dense.

A friend left a message "a quilt", that was one thing I was very moved, I went to Urumqi to work, my mother was against me working, but she brought me a quilt when she went to Urumqi, it was really made overnight, that is really a strong feeling of being loved.

Southern Weekly: A reader left a message asking if you ever wrote a fairy tale? The little ones in the family love your article.

Li Juan: I haven't written fairy tales, but my words can be read as fairy tales. Small children can also watch it. (A lot of animal stories, juvenile stories) these are not only interesting for adults, but also can attract the attention of children.

I have a lot of elementary school students, a lot of very young children. Therefore, many publishers hope to adapt my things, adapt them into fairy tales or shorten them, and make them into children's picture books with illustrations, I don't think it's necessary at all, don't underestimate children, don't make children mentally retarded.

"I've never been an open-minded person when it comes to writing"

Southern Weekly: Where do you think the power of words comes from? Aside from your mind and eyes, is there any motivation that reading brings you?

Li Juan: Yes, I think all authors start their writing with reading. Even now, when I read a really good book, I wonder how far I would have handled it if I had written. Of course, I'm not saying that plagiarism or borrowing will really stimulate my desire to create. And when I read something very bad, I would be sorry, and if I had written it, I would never have written it, and I would have liked to write it all over again. I still read a lot, but to be honest, it's far from the stimulation of reading like when I was a child, reading makes me forget everything, and makes me fascinated.

Southern Weekly: I see that you even named the grass in "Spring Pasture", what kind of lingering grass, lyrical grass.

Li Juan: Because I don't know what kind of grass it is, and I'm too lazy to bother to study it, but you like that kind of grass, just like the story of "The Little Prince", it seems that after taking the name, you will have more feelings.

Southern Weekly: You can also see the trajectory of growth in your work. Do you think "Winter Pasture" is your masterpiece?

Li Juan: Hmm. "Distant Sunflower Field" is also my masterpiece, I think its language is more gorgeous, and the expression is more joyful and incisive, but I personally prefer "Winter Pasture" because it is more complete, it contains more complex things, and of course it is more difficult to write. Anyway, my selfishness is to like "Winter Pasture" very much.

Southern Weekly: Your Nine Articles of Snow was still handwritten, right?

Li Juan: Handwritten. The second books, "The Corner of Altay" and "My Altay", were used on the computer. Actually, I learned about computers when I was in school, and at that time computers had already begun to enter daily life, although they were not particularly popular. I really started to use it when I was writing about Altay, I was working in the Propaganda Department at that time, I rented a computer, I forgot how much it was a month, it was very heavy, I took it home in two parts, first the monitor, then the mainframe, walked two streets and carried it home, and it was written with that computer. Later, Sister He came to Altay, she gave me her computer when she left, to be precise, she gave me the very heavy and large main chassis, she carried it to Altay from Beijing, because it couldn't be consigned, it had to be carried by hand, so I was really grateful to Sister He, her help to me at the beginning of writing was extremely huge. Of course, I also encountered all kinds of help later, but there really was no one like Sister He.

Southern Weekly: She also introduced your text to Southern Weekly.

Li Juan: To be precise, when I went to the (local) Propaganda Department (to work), Sister He also went to the ranch to find me, put me in touch with work, and let me go to work. Now many people say that they found me, helped me arrange a job, crossed a few rivers, climbed many mountains, and found me among the sheep. Actually, no, from beginning to end, there was only Sister He, she went to Fuyun County to see me, I took her to live on the ranch for a few days, and then after she returned to Altay, she began to help me run for this matter, and then I was very ashamed, relying on that book to have a job, finally I could have an income, I could have a desk with peace of mind, and I could write with peace of mind.

Southern Weekly: You were still in the local propaganda department when you wrote "Sheep Road", right?

Li Juan: Yes, I was about to leave at that time. I really wanted to go to the ranch, but the work became a burden, so I discussed with the leader, and I wanted to resign several times, but the leader was very supportive at that time, she said, "You don't have to resign, we will give you a leave in the name of the unit, you go", and then sponsored me a camera, and then I lost the camera, and I also paid the unit. Then I brought a camera, and that camera only had one battery, so it didn't take long to shoot, and it couldn't be recharged in the mountains, so there was very little picture information about "Sheep Road", and in the end I lost that camera, and the last part of the photos was gone. At that time, I had only lived on the ranch for two and a half months, and the unit called me back because I was too busy, I was an archivist, and it seemed that I had to do a file check. So it's a pity, otherwise I might have more accumulation, and then I can create when I return to the unit, but I still feel that there is a conflict with the work, and I don't get along very well with my colleagues in the unit, so I want to write, and then I left, of course, the leader at that time was still very good to me.

Southern Weekly: There are constantly comments from readers urging you to write, because the last book was published in 2017. What kind of writing are you working on right now?

Li Juan: I'm also recording anytime and anywhere, and now it's very convenient to use my mobile phone to record things. Voice input it is automatically converted into text, and a lot is recorded. But I think it takes a very long time to form a written paper, and it takes a lot of energy. So now I'm struggling, and I always feel that either I haven't written the best yet. In fact, when it comes to writing, I've never been an open-minded person, I've never really been a person who goes with the flow and goes with the flow, and I'm also very anxious.

I've worked hard this year, but it's actually a pleasure to write.

Southern Weekly contributing writer Xiang Yang Peng Zimin

Editor-in-charge: Liu Youxiang

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