Zhang Mei, a writer in Guangzhou: Literature looks at human nature and reflects the changes of the times

Photo by writer Zhang Mei and Li Manxia

Guangzhou, August 2, China News Network Title: Guangzhou Writer Zhang Mei: Literature Looks at Human Nature and Reflects the Changes of the Times

Author Cheng Jingwei Li Manxia

The "Master Afternoon Tea" activity of Guangzhou Literary and Art Citizen Space was recently held in Guangzhou, and Zhang Mei, a well-known writer in Guangzhou, exchanged and shared with the theme of "Literary Inspiration given to me by Guangzhou".

Zhang Mei is a native of Guangzhou, and her personal life experience has made her works deeply branded with regional culture. Her novels are full of cultural symbols of Guangzhou, and the prose collection "The Guangzhou I Am Attached to" uses beautiful words to record the evolution of Guangzhou in recent decades. Zhang Ming, professor and doctoral supervisor of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, in the article "Zhang Mei with Sleepy Eyes and a Melancholy City", uses the word "trance" to summarize Zhang Mei's textual style, that is, Zhang Mei's works are fully integrated with Guangzhou, and present a confused aesthetic effect by depicting the trivial life of modern urban men and women.

Jiang Bing, president of the Guangzhou Lingnan Cultural Research Association, literary critic and professor of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, who presided over the event, also agreed with the word "trance" summarized by Zhang Ming, believing that although Zhang Mei's works are outside the scope of traditional realism, they can still maintain the true color of literature to observe human nature and reflect the changes of the times, and the low-key, pragmatic and inclusive cultural character of Guangzhou is interconnected.

Zhang Mei said that she has accumulated a large amount of creative materials from the life of the city in Guangzhou, and the water and soil of Guangzhou have also nourished her character. For her, the biggest feature of Guangzhou is pragmatism, "some people say that Guangzhou is 'loose', but in fact, this is a manifestation of paying attention to reality and not seeking vanity." Therefore, in addition to the material with strong regional color, her works are also permeated with the directness and profundity brought by the pragmatic character.

At the same time, she also believes that at present, there are still many myths, legends, folklore stories and other materials in Guangzhou that need to be discovered and processed by literary and art workers, which is an effective way for Guangzhou literature to exert greater influence.

In addition to its own cultural characteristics, the unique historical and geographical conditions make Guangzhou have extremely convenient and in-depth cultural exchanges with Hong Kong and Macao. In terms of literature, some Guangzhou writers such as Zhang Mei were influenced by Jin Yong, Yi Shu and others, and were inspired in many fields such as theme development and artistic technique innovation. Among them, for Zhang Mei, Yi Shu's pyrotechnic novels prompted her to pay attention to life itself, while paying attention to the sentence tempering in the work.

In Zhang Mei's eyes, behind good works needs solid support from cultural accumulation. To do this, it requires the perseverance of writers, the most important of which is to read widely, find their own direction and characteristics, and avoid homogeneous literary production.

Zhang Mei's extensive reading of Chinese and foreign literary classics has laid a solid foundation for her literary creation, and her creative achievements are inseparable from the accumulation of step by step. "My creation is from short story to novella to long story, constantly polishing, step by step." (End)

Source: China News Network