In April 1982, at Zhang Shouren's home, Li Cunbao and this well-known "bold Bole" in the literary world were having a heart-to-heart conversation.
On the not very spacious sofa, the two sat next to each other, and on the table in front of them, there was a thick pile of manuscript paper, which was the interview materials that Li Cunbao had kept for three years, and the story manuscript that had been repeatedly revised and shelved in the past three years.
After reading countless times in the past three years, he knew the content of the pile of paper in front of him.
With the first-hand information obtained from his personal interview, he shook out what he saw, heard, and felt on the front line.
"During the period when I was on the front line, I published a lot of political papers, and the response was very good.
But without exception, none of them can really show the emotions and contradictions in these real events, so I wanted to write stories. ”
After listening to Li Cunbao's narration, Zhang Shouren was emotionally aroused:
"Write! Be sure to write! It is necessary not only to write truthfully, but also to write tragically. ”
Li Cunbao, who was supported, asked about the doubts that had been bothering him:
"But will this be suspicious of discrediting the army?"
"No organization can be a pure and unflawed blank slate.
As creators, we should write boldly, break through the shackles, get rid of the precepts, and show the cruel war, the vivid soldiers, and the real army vividly. ”
As a result, "Garland Under the Mountain" was born and quickly sparked a national craze, and the film of the same name adapted from it is still a household name today.
So how did this deeply moving work come about? What's the story behind it?
Inner dissatisfaction
In March 1979, Li Cunbao served as one of the creators of the creative room of the propaganda team of the Political Department of the Jinan Army.
According to the notice and arrangement of the superiors, he went to the front line of the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam with 95 other literary and artistic creators from all over the country to conduct battlefield interviews and writing.
During the four months of in-depth interviews on the front line, he wrote a total of more than 100,000 words of war reports and essays, but without exception, these articles only focused on publicizing the results of the battle and describing the course of the battle.
As he listened more and wrote, Li Cunbao often fell into a state of difficulty, and he always felt that he could not express the moving scenes he saw and the moving stories he heard in words.
Words don't make sense, it's a very painful state of writing. He began to reflect on what the problem was and how to solve it.
By looking at the essays he wrote during this period, he found that the root of the lack of moving power in these works lies in the fact that they do not reveal the content of the characters' hearts.
In August of the same year, under the arrangement of going to interview another Guangxi front-line team, he decided to seize this opportunity to observe the spiritual world of the soldiers up close.
In this front-line writing, he focused more on "people" than on "war".
At this stage, his reportage work "Jiangmen Huzi - Remembering the Battle Hero Lan Fanghu" was widely praised for its sincere and moving emotions.
Later, with this article, he also won the first prize of reportage in the "Praise of Heroes of Self-Defense and Counterattack to Defend the Frontier" essay competition.
But for literary and artistic creators, or only for Li Cunbao, this award only represents encouragement, not a goal.
Nine years ago, he was transferred to his current studio to write literary and artistic works, and he had more opportunities to read domestic and foreign works publicly.
Like a traveler in the desert who came across a clear spring, he plunged headlong into the sea of books and wandered in it.
Under the long-term influence of hundreds of Chinese and foreign masterpieces, he gradually formed his own independent creative ideas, and began to make some bold attempts to "to a certain extent the contradictions in the life of the army at that time."
Among them, the five-act drama "Fighting Meng Lianggu Again" co-created by him and several colleagues, although it was somewhat controversial and was considered to "scandalize the old troupe leader", it still successfully carried out more than 100 performances.
Overall, the response has been very good.
This drama greatly encouraged Li Cunbao's enthusiasm for creation, and he mustered up the courage to go further in the literary creation of describing the life of the army.
Unfortunately, during the turbulent period, he created many works of the same genre, which led to various criticisms and criticisms.
Under the successive blows, Li Cunbao lay dormant, but his creative ambitions have always existed.
Therefore, after the end of the turbulent period, in the face of the ready-made creative material of the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, his literary ambitions began to stir up again.
However, the confinement and trauma brought by the previous were not easy to break and heal, and it took Li Cunbao three years to break the confinement and heal himself.
The first impulse and the shelving
In the more than seven months that he was writing on the front line of the battlefield, Li Cunbao looked more at people and recorded many touching stories.
That day, he followed the military truck carrying the remains of PLA soldiers to a creek next to a Dai village near the battlefield.
Long before they arrived, Li Cunbao looked out the window in the car and saw that many villagers had gathered by the stream.
When they saw the truck coming, they not only did not show their fear of facing outsiders, but their faces showed sadness that could not be concealed.
Faced with this situation, Li Cunbao couldn't help but have some doubts, and in the spirit of creative curiosity, he opened his mouth to ask a PLA soldier sitting next to him about the reason.
"This isn't the first time we've transported our fallen brothers here."
In just one sentence, it also brought a huge impact to Li Cunbao, who had already gone deep into the front line and seen many fierce battle scenes.
Faced with the topic of death, people's hearts will always flutter unconsciously.
When the truck stopped, the door opened, and the body of a body that had been alive two hours ago was carried to the stream, both the soldiers who carried it and the villagers who helped them, all looked sad.
The blood-stained water in the stream, the neat lifeless warriors lined up by the stream, the sobs of the villagers as they helped sort out the remains of the fallen soldiers......
It is difficult for Li Cunbao to describe the shock that scene brought to him, he said that at that time, only five words came to his mind: "military and civilian fish and water situation".
Art comes from life, and many of the characters and events in "Garland Under the Mountain" can be found in Li Cunbao's collection and writing materials.
For example, the bloody debt slip after the death of the company commander Liang Sanxi in the novel was taken out by a battalion instructor when Li Cunbao interviewed the 92nd Regiment of the 31st Division.
He said that this was found from the military coat worn by a platoon commander of their battalion after he died, and on the small pieces of paper, the arrears were densely written in detail, 17 names, and the total amount of arrears of more than 620 yuan.
He took out the platoon commander's suicide note, which mentioned the amount he owed many times, and repeatedly instructed:
If I die in battle, the pension will be used to pay off the debt.
But what the platoon commander didn't know was that at that time, even the pension of the platoon-level cadres after their sacrifice was only 550 yuan, which was not enough to pay off all the arrears.
It is worth mentioning that after Li Cunbao wrote this incident into "Garland Under the Mountain", with the explosion of the novel, more attention was paid to the pension of the sacrificed soldiers.
Not only has the amount increased, but the benefits of family members have also been improved.
Whether it is the relationship between the military and the people, the bloody bills, or other similar stories of singing and crying, they all greatly shocked Li Cunbao's heart.
He felt the strings in his body that were bound and tightened, faintly about to break.
He had his first creative impulse and thought:
I had to write something!
But the idea was soon shelved by him again. When he started to write, he felt that he had not chosen the right angle, and he always had a heavy feeling when writing.
So, he put down his pen and thought, "I can't just write without pain."
The refusal to "write without pain" is Li Cunbao's rebellion against the "non-conflict theory" of the past decade.
Impulsive and put it on hold
After the end of the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, Li Cunbao reorganized and summarized all the collected materials.
In the process, he found that there were two types of incidents that stood out.
The first is the problem of the martyrs' arrears, and the second is the problem of the "curve transfer" of the children of cadres.
Soon after, the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam broke out, and some of the children of cadres who enlisted in the army needed to fight on the front line under the arrangement.
However, some cadres feel sorry for their children and try to use their connections to transfer their children away from the front, as the "People's Liberation Army Daily" openly criticized:
They believe that this is to give their children a comfortable life, which is considered to be fulfilling their responsibilities as parents.
Two things, one is the tragic sacrifice of ordinary soldiers to protect their families and defend the country, but they still keep their promises, and the other is the shamelessness of some cadres' children who are greedy for life and afraid of death.
Li Cunbao wanted to write, but he didn't know how to write it, he didn't want to write it "painlessly", avoiding these contradictions "good for everyone", but if he didn't write well, he was afraid that it would discredit the army.
In February 1980, Li Cunbao was invited to participate in a symposium jointly held by the Central Committee and the China Writers Association.
"How do we deal with the dark side of society, to write or not to write? Of course you have to write!
There are always some erroneous ideas and erroneous deeds in society that hinder progress.
For these false typologies, we can't pretend not to be invisible, we can't pretend not to exist. ”
These words inspired Li Cunbao's new creation, and he not only wanted to write about the noble heroes and the dark side behind reality, but also to create a strong contrast between the two and sharpen this issue.
He wants to write the main idea of the story more clearly, and he can write about the selfishness of cadres and the greed for life and fear of death of cadres' children.
But these are always very individual people, and they cannot discredit the army, and the story should write about the transformation of these people, and tell those who have done the wrong thing what is right.
With a clear direction, the story structure of "Garland Under the Mountain" gradually took shape, and the key characters and storyline were also sorted out with a clear line.
However, at that time, the "bitter love incident" of the army writer Bai Hua had a great impact on the army's literary and artistic creation, and Li Cunbao had to re-examine his creation of "Garland Under the Mountain".
It is not that he does not have the courage to break through the invisible shackles in the creation of literary and artistic works after the "decade", but in such a period, the stories he created are themselves extremely sensitive.
After three years of waiting, it was finally published
During this period, Li Cunbao also published a number of articles that touched on the contradictions between society and the army to a certain extent.
Two years later, Li Cunbao participated in the National Symposium on the Creation of Military-themed Literature, which made his sinking mind reactive.
At the meeting, more and more people were no longer silent, they stood up, and their sharp words were like sharp swords, pointing directly at the invisible shackles.
"Avoiding contradictions, the problem will never be solved, we are just covering our ears and stealing bells, deceiving ourselves!"
"As long as we stand in the right position, put ourselves in the right position, and create authentically.
In the struggle between light and darkness, firmly choose the light, and we will not be afraid of criticism! ”
Compared with two years ago, both the atmosphere at the symposium and the atmosphere of the society can be significantly relaxed.
The encouragement of his peers at the symposium and the "icebreaking" of Xu Huaizhong's "Anecdotes on the Western Front" have given Li Cunbao great creative courage.
At the meeting, he made an appointment with Zhang Shouren and summoned up the courage to briefly describe to him his creative ideas for "Wreath Under the Mountain".
Although the idea at that time was slightly immature, it aroused Zhang Shouren's great interest.
He wrote his address on a note and invited Li Cunbao to his home for a detailed discussion, so the opening scene happened.
Li Cunbao conceived this work for three years, and in the end he completed the first draft in only one month, and completed the revision and transcription in more than ten days, and delivered it to Zhang Shouren's desk.
In 1982, "Garland Under the Mountain" was officially published in the sixth issue of October magazine.
epilogue
After the work was published, it quickly caused a sensation throughout the country, and many readers sent letters to Li Cunbao to express their feelings, and many people openly expressed repentance for the wrong things they had done in the army before.
Not only did the novel become a bestseller, but more than 60 theater troupes bought the rights to him and adapted his works into plays, dance dramas, operas, etc., and performed them all over the country.
Among them, the movie of the same name adapted from it "Garland Under the Mountain" has become a household name.
To this day, it is still an immortal patriotic educational film.
"Garland of the Mountains" sharply writes about death, poverty, and bad winds, but it also describes more comrades-in-arms, love, family affection, army affection and patriotism, and is an excellent work that reveals human nature, emotions and responsibilities.
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[Text: Winter]
[Editor|Chang Gung]