Cover news reporter Zhang Jie
Yuanxiang writing has always been an important theme of writers' creation, and outstanding writers often have their own literary maps, such as Hulan to Xiao Hong, Shanghai to Zhang Ailing. As soon as the writer Hongying returned to Chongqing, he saw the Yangtze River and heard the rural voice, "All the stories cannot be resisted." ”
In the summer of 2021, Rainbow Shadow has three new books published: the essay collection "Women's Rivers: Rainbow Shadow Dictionary", "When the World Becomes a Pepper", and the novel "Moonlight Samurai". Although the genres are different, without exception, they all have a strong Chongqing color. Her memories, her hobbies, her dictionary, all have nothing to do with Chongqing. In particular, "Moonlight Samurai" was first published in the pure literary magazine "Flower City" No. 3 in 2021, and was published by Flower City Publishing House in July 2021. This novel was written by Rainbow Shadow in 2020 due to the epidemic in the United Kingdom. In a foreign country, experiencing the turmoil of the world, and the various memories of her hometown became a powerful driving force for her to write "Moonlight Samurai".
In Hongying's memory, there was a scene about her hometown of Chongqing in 1976 that she would never forget: a little boy lying on the wall looking at the abandoned old warehouse, and a group of young people dancing "Beijing's Golden Mountain" inside the warehouse. This little boy is the prototype of Dou Xiaoming, the protagonist of "Moonlight Samurai". The story of Hongying, set in the "Mountain City" of Chongqing, tells the story of the growth and transformation of the protagonist Dou Xiaoming from a boy to a man, and his mother, Qin Jiahui and Su Yan, three women of different ages and personalities, have become the most important roles in his life, leading and constructing his life code and spiritual genes. The whole book takes a small family in Chongqing as the epitome of the times, telling a vivid and vivid story of men and women in food. In the difficult years, they guarded each other, each other's moonlight, and each other's warriors.
When it comes to Rainbow Shadow, many people will think of her own description of her own tortuous life in the autobiographical novels "Hungry Daughter" and "Good Child Flower", such as her unmarried birth, childhood hunger, those wild love, and so on. But people with dramatic, even frightening, experiences are not uncommon. To become a writer, especially a remarkable writer, you also need an adequate artistic cultivation process. If there is not enough sensitivity, language, and reflection, Rainbow Shadow cannot be a writer Rainbow Shadow.
Interviewing Hongying and communicating with her, the more profound feeling is that she has both a passionate pursuit of writing and a strong enough deconstruction ability for life experience. For example, some tragic past events in her personal life, she will not hide it, but frankly dissect it, and at the same time, she does not have the slightest suspicion of selling privacy. In terms of literary style, Rainbow Shadow pursues transparency, extremes, and rampage. But in life, she is a person who knows how to be grateful. "For what is good for me and what is bad for me, I am grateful. Can be turned into nutrients. Regurgitating with a grateful mood, some became the material for her writing, and some were completely filtered out by her. She holds the antidote — forgiveness and repentance — instead of bitterly chanting or having a sense of revenge. "A good writer needs to be authentic about the consciousness and memory of those sufferings, not to impose emotions and opinions on the reader, not to have revenge, to have a spirit of self-repentance," she said. I write to repent of myself. ”
Rainbow Shadow
Dialogue Rainbow Shadow
Hongying: "The Chongqing in my life deserves to be appreciated and praised with all art forms"
Cover News: Your literary hometown is undoubtedly Chongqing, and some exaggeration can be said to be the Yangtze River. The figure of the Yangtze River often appears in your works, and the sentences written about the Yangtze River are also particularly emotional. What do you think?
Hongying: The Yangtze River is indeed my literary base. It can be said that the Yangtze River has witnessed my life. For me as a young man, the Yangtze River watched me leave it. After that, I encountered difficulties outside, and the Yangtze River waited for me to come back. Now I have some achievements in writing, and when I have something to say, Jiang Shui also gives me the answer. In short, this is a dialogue with my soul and a river that brings me a lot of inspiration. As long as the Yangtze River does not stop flowing, my writing will not stop.
Cover News: In the novel "Moonlight Samurai", the story takes place in Chongqing more than 40 years ago. Some people will say that a lot of changes have taken place in Chongqing now. Now that you are writing About Chongqing, do you think that the Chongqing you wrote can still grasp the core spirit?
Hongying: Whether living abroad or in China, it is inevitable to go back to Chongqing to live for a short period of time, and when you look back, you will marvel that Chongqing is not the original Chongqing, but back in your dreams, you will see the Chongqing from the previous hour: standing on the south bank of the mountain, looking down on the two rivers of Chongqing, or going up the river, seeing the city standing in the river, fairytale has become a modern city. Although the appearance of the city has changed a lot, I write novels not only about the appearance of the city, but about the spirit of the city, about the inner world of Chongqing. No matter how the times change, I think the personality and accent of Chongqing people will always remain unchanged.
Cover News: From your point of view, what do you think is the beauty of Chongqing?
Rainbow Shadow: Heaven favors Chongqing, surrounded by two rivers, there are mountains and waters, the mountain city stands next to the river, and the scenery is particularly charming. Chongqing also has mountains with clouds and mist, there are cities on the mountains, and there are mountains outside the mountains. The reflection of the river is like a rainbow, like a group of beautiful Sichuan river women, holding hands together, bathing in the river, dancing against the mountains, and the weather is ever-changing. I've seen cities, and only San Francisco has such a landscape. I like to take the river ferry to Chaotianmen gate and take the cable car up. Walk to the Jiefangbei Pedestrian Street. Turn to the entrance of the field, you can cross the bridge to Nanping and Nanbin Road, and you can go to the Great Hall of the People to watch acrobatics and listen to Sichuan opera, the tower is a green roof red column, as if it comes from the hand of heaven. When night falls, the lights of thousands of families float out of various patterns on the river surface, and the sound of water strikes on both sides of the strait, like music, like the whispers of relatives. For people, this is already the world's number one art masterpiece. The Chongqing in my life deserves to be appreciated and praised by all art forms, and is destined to be rich in my novels and lives.
"As long as I have the opportunity to walk along the Yangtze River and casually carry a bucket of river water, it is a long story."
Cover News: How many of the characters and plots in Moonlight Samurai come from your memories of past lives, and how much of them come from your literary fiction? What was the inspiration for Moonlight Samurai? Why did you choose the name "Moonlight Samurai" as the title of the book?
Rainbow Shadow: Every character and event in the book has a shadow of reality, but it is all my creation. For example, in the place we passed through in elementary school, there were a lot of bad little boys who would attack little girls. I was the one who had been attacked. At that time, I especially hoped that a moonlight samurai could appear in front of me, but it did not appear, so I created such a character myself, which is "Dou Xiaoming" in the novel. Speaking of titles, I especially like the four-word title. Moonlight and samurai are also images that I really like. "Moonlight" represents a particularly feminine and gentle artistic image. The "samurai" has a hard blade breath. Together, the two are a comprehensive image: gentle in heart, with extraordinary skills, shuttling between darkness and light, saving the weak from suffering.
Cover News: Now your personal life is in a very stable state, but you still maintain your passion and creative ability to write. What's the secret to keeping you creative with this kind of casual writing?
Rainbow Shadow: I think the reason why a writer is a writer is that no matter what the state of personal life is, there must be a passion for writing. And I'm especially thankful that I feel like I'll always have enough material in my life to overwhelm. Especially every time I go back to Chongqing, walk to the Yangtze River, hear the sound of the river flowing, hear the hometown sound of the Chongqing people, and the whistle of the ship on the river, I can think of many things at once. Sometimes in less than five minutes, the plot of a long novel comes out. In the past life, I have seen too much beauty, too much sadness, these are precious assets. As long as I have the opportunity to walk along the Yangtze River, casually mention a bucket of river water, it is a long story. I almost felt that I was the Yangtze River, and I was the narrator of the Yangtze River. As soon as I arrived in Chongqing, I heard the sound of the river breathing, heard the chirping of the boat, heard the sound of the countryside, and all the stories surged forward, and I seemed unable to resist, and it was a book to grab a story to write. I think God gave me a bowl of rice to eat, because before I became a writer, I especially liked to listen to stories and was particularly fascinated by stories. In the summer, because there is no air conditioning, everyone splashes water on the ground and listens to stories while eating porridge and kimchi. The chongqing years gave me nourishment that many books could not give, and when I learned more writing skills from books, the stories I heard before seemed to give me a second education and make me more accurate when writing.
Cover News: I heard that the novel "Moonlight Samurai" was written during your time in London in 2019, what was the opportunity to create it at that time?
Rainbow Shadow: In the Spring Festival of 2020, I went to the UK to see my daughter, and as a result, the epidemic developed and I was stranded in London for a year and a half. When we first arrived in London, the epidemic situation was still very good. But soon, Britain also began to quarantine, and the sound of ambulances roaring in the streets could be heard every day. When people are in such a state where their lives are threatened, they think differently. People will especially miss the place where their lives set out, and miss the most important people in their lives. For me, about my hometown of Chongqing, many dusty memories have returned. For example, in London at that time, public transportation could not be taken, and it was only by walking when going out. I remembered that when I was a child, I walked with my mother on Chongqing No. 1 Bridge, which was more than an hour. The downhill is better, the uphill is more tiring. Walking on the bridge, you can see the stilt house and the gloomy clouds in the sky. Summer sweated before I walked five minutes. It was this mentality and emotion that I finished writing the novel that had previously started in China but had not yet progressed, which was "Moonlight Samurai".
Cover News: In your "Women's River: Rainbow Shadow Dictionary", watching you write about your father, although not the biological father, but his nurturing feelings, you have always been full of great gratitude, and wrote a lot of memories about him, which are very touching.
Rainbow Shadow: Right. Although my father was unsmiling and rarely spoke, although he was an adoptive father, he was very kind to me. He is a native of Zhejiang and does first-hand Zhejiang cuisine. He couldn't go out to work because of his sick eyes, so he often cooked at home. He is a foodie. His control of fire and time is very precise, and he does not need a timer. It takes 15 minutes to cook a dish, and he doesn't have to look at his watch, and when the time comes, it's not bad. He would not have made Sichuan kimchi, but as soon as he learned it, he made it very delicious. Everything in our house, he put it neatly. My mother was very talented in language, playful, humorous and vivid. I benefit from that. But in life, I love to be neat, clean, and able to cook, which are the positive effects that my adoptive father brought to me.
Cover News: You revealed in your essay that when you were a teenager, you read Wuthering Heights, "tears, wet handkerchiefs, and shouted: I'm going to write a book like this, don't waste the next life!" "Now, do you think you wrote that kind of novel?"
Rainbow Shadow: At my age, I felt that a novel like Wuthering Heights had reached an extreme. But then I saw better works, like Woolf's. If only in terms of the sense of extreme, I think my novel has also reached it.
"A novelist, in addition to the management of language arts, the ability to tell stories needs to be tempered again and again"
Cover News: Your novel has one outstanding feature: breaking down the line between serious literature and popular genre literature. Highly readable without losing its literary character. How do you see this trait yourself? I've seen you say in your essays that you learned writing skills from web novels and drew on their strengths, such as being good at storytelling.
Rainbow Shadow: A novelist, in addition to the management of language art, the ability to tell stories needs to be tempered again and again. Let the story carry your language. This allows the reader to enter the world you have created. Literature is not enough to be "elegant", or to be able to tell stories. I have always liked martial arts novels, like Gu Long, Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, they all tell stories, the characters are very plump, better than the network text foundation, the context, the main line of the branch, to go back.
Cover News: What do you think about the meaning and value of the text itself, pure literature in the current era? The current era is very fast, and all kinds of changes are very fast. Literary readers have also changed a lot. How do you feel about that?
Rainbow Shadow: A lot has changed. In the past, the reader was the reader, and the author was the author. The reader is offstage, watching the author on stage. This is not the case now, there are no pure readers in the audience. Because the reader now can also be the author. Everyone has enough chances to jump on stage as an author. This presents an even bigger challenge for writers: you have to come up with really good work to be able to stand on stage all the time.
"Writing requires not only a passion, but also technology and tenacity to implement your enthusiasm"
Cover News: You are a person with a lot of life experience and at the same time a good writing skill. So over the years you have been making new works and maintaining a good creative continuity. Like you just said, there is no sharp line between the reader and the author today. However, it is not easy to write decent literature. For those who also want to write, please give some advice that you think is more important, right? For example, what unnecessary detours can be avoided?
Rainbow Shadow: I know a lot of readers, I do have a lot of life experience, I am also very sensitive, and I want to write something, but most of them have not written anything. What I want to say most is that to become a good writer, you need a certain amount of technology to carry, you need the ability to persevere. It's like if we want to make up a hat, we can't make it up halfway and put it down. Half a hat cannot be taken out for people to wear. Writing not only requires a passion, but also technology and tenacity to implement your enthusiasm and form a specific work. I also feel that many people, want to be writers, write novels, can make a particularly good start, but only a very small number of people can write in the middle, and they can persist to the end and modify and form, and even fewer.
Cover News: After the arrival of the new crown pneumonia virus in 2020, the world is still under its influence. Uncertainty, a sense of rupture, these are all words that appear frequently. As a member of society, what is your own mentality?
Rainbow Shadow: I personally believe that the future will definitely be good. I also kept telling my daughter that the world was going to be a better place. It's not that my prediction is accurate, but if we don't believe it, we won't be able to move forward, or even survive. I always thought that all problems would be temporary.
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