"Like Father Like Son"
In middle age, Zhang Ji began to write a "work of ambition", he once said that he would write 100 characters in "South Goods Store", and it was not a collage of strokes.
The origin of this book seems to be accidental, but it reflects Zhang's life experience. In 2016, after experiencing the death of his grandfather, Zhang Ji began to look at the story of his predecessor and delved into the history of a supply and marketing cooperative (South Goods Store) in his hometown for 40 years.
Whether it is a supply and marketing cooperative or a south goods store, it is a very unfamiliar word for people today. But forty years ago in China, it represented Chinese yearning for life. In a small shop, people come and go, and the stories of various people and so on slowly unfold.
Zhang Jie
Representative works: "South Goods Store", "Monastic", "Tiezi" and so on
When it comes to the fascination with matter in the current era, Zhang Ji believes that things and people cannot be strictly distinguished, things are people's reactions, and what kind of spiritual world he has will be faithfully reflected in things. We may as well understand "South Goods Store" as a film that reflects the true side of people through things.
"South Goods Store" is Zhang Ji's latest masterpiece since the novel "Renunciation", and it is also a work of "seeing yourself". Now that "South Goods Store" has come out, it has also completed the transformation of this writer's "seeing sentient beings". But he also said that no matter how many sentient beings are written, in these people, all you see is yourself.
This is the second issue of the interview with the finalists of the 2021 Blancpain Ideal Country Literature Award, and the guest of conversation is Zhang Ji, the author of the shortlisted work "South Goods Store", please continue to pay attention to the follow-up more writer interviews.
01. "My writing doesn't have that particularly heavy motif"
Blancpain Ideal Country Literature Award (hereinafter referred to as the "Literature Award"): Hello Teacher Zhang, let's start with your latest novel "South Goods Store", you have talked in many interviews about the origin of your creation of this book and your own family, can you talk specifically about why a family history that you learned by chance inspired the writing of "South Goods Store"?
Zhang Ji: In 2016, my grandfather died, and at the funeral, my father talked to me about my grandfather's life, saying, "One rainy day, my grandfather's father went out in a collared coat and went to Yuyao to fight a lawsuit and never came back. This description gave me a lot of mixed emotions. A person's life is condensed into a picture. The children and grandchildren who attended the funeral gathered together, and they all came from the character in the picture, but he was simply almost blank. At this moment, I felt that I had a strong desire to write, and I wanted to know what my predecessor had gone through, and how his past was connected to my present. Then I started writing "The South Goods Store," and I wanted to write about the ins and outs of a generation.
Literature Award: Family issues, especially the relationship between father and son, are the motifs of many Chinese writers, "Nan Zheng Dian" is vaguely a matter for your father's generation, and your father works in a supply and marketing cooperative. What do you think was the influence of your fathers on your literary creation?
Zhang Ji: My writing does not have such a heavy motif, and my father and I are still a relatively normal Chinese father-son relationship, and there is no reconciliation. I just wanted to understand the lives of my parents, or even earlier generations, and I made this attempt. But maybe "South Goods Store" embodies several different sets of father-son relationships, which will give people the feeling that I am trying to describe a certain father-son relationship, which is more of a coincidence, for me, my novels start with human and human relationships, such as father and son, such as husband and wife, such as sisters, I think the way people survive is a way to deal with various relationships.
Literature Prize: The book has a particularly large number of characters, and it is said that you have ambitions to "write 100 characters in the novel, not a patchwork of brush strokes, but a three-dimensional presentation of life." I don't interject too much, let each character speak for himself, and generate a picture of Gangnam under the change of the times. "It's almost like Zhang Jie's version of The Comedy of Man, specific to the writing skills, how do you show so many different characters in detail? Do you consciously collect material in this area of daily life?
Zhang Ji: This may be a writer's ambition, the hardest thing to write is to write people. If a novel has the opportunity to show enough people, everyone is likely to write flesh and blood, which is full of great attraction for a writer.
Writers are certainly a group of people with a particularly sensitive mind. In my past life, I must have consciously or unconsciously stored many real people. After they entered my brain, they continued to grow, combine, and separate. When your writing one day suddenly has their place, they come out naturally.
Writing is definitely skilled, I don't know how to describe it, skill is too fine, too personal. All I can say is that you have to keep the right distance from your character, don't try to control him, don't try to speak for him, and I think if you can do that, the face of the novel should not be bad.
02. "Things and people cannot be strictly distinguished,
Things are a reflection of people."
Literature Prize: This book spans a wide time span, from 1970 to the 1990s, which coincided with the most drastic changes in China, why didn't you continue to write when you were writing, dealing with the fate of the characters after the new millennium? Personally, as a person born in the late 70s, your youth is almost accompanied by the story of "South Goods Store", inside and outside the literature, what special emotions do you have about the time period involved in the book?
Zhang Ji: Actually, there are still the second half of the book, and there are many characters and stories, which are already in my mind. But I don't know when I'll write it again. Writing a novel in two parts is the first time in my writing experience.
It turned out that I envisioned writing the novel by the end of the 90s, when the new world arrived. But when I finished writing about the 80s, I felt that my mood had changed a little, because the 90s were a very different era compared to the 80s, and if I continued to write with the characters and story lines in "South Goods Store", it was not enough to represent the 90s, or not particularly appropriate. So, after I entered the 90s, I paused the novel. Of course, to some extent, by writing this, the novel can also be over. But I should write it again, and it may be another story, another group of people. I feel like I may have found a way to describe the '90s, but I'm not quite sure, I'll have to wait.
《South Shop》
Zhang Ji
Literature Prize: The fine depiction of matter is a feature of "South Goods Store", the food utensils in the book seem to have their own temperature, you also like to collect on weekdays, then how do you think about your delicate writing of matter, in an era of fetishism, do you think this worship of "things" is not a spiritual symptom? Or do you write by pinning the human spirit on the material?
Zhang Ji: The emotions about things in my novels are consistent with the time when the emotions about things in my life occur. In my novels before I was 35, I rarely saw such tireless descriptions of things. Before I was 35, I preferred to deal with people. After the age of 35, it seems that he prefers to deal with things.
Of course, things and people cannot be strictly distinguished, things are the reflection of people, and what kind of spiritual world he has will be faithfully reflected in things. Speaking of novels, I think things can be a way to be novels. A true depiction of things is a true depiction of people. I think there is an iron rule in literary creation, and you can never come straight. Therefore, when describing the characters, especially when describing the state of mind, I try not to let him say it directly, but I can't help but write, at this time, the object is a particularly good depiction object, it can reflect the true side of people from another angle.
Literature Prize: You completed this work during the pandemic, during a period of great turmoil, did changes in the external environment have had an impact on your writing?
Zhang Ji: At the time of the epidemic, most of this novel has been completed, and the end of this novel was written during the epidemic. The epidemic is sudden, so people will have a trance feeling, as if everyone is facing life and death, very heavy. But after a while, because the TV is good or the Internet, all the time is overwhelming publicity, suddenly feel that everything is not so heavy, even life and death is not so important, it has become a daily thing. So, in that mood, I finished the end of the eulogy at the South Goods Store. I don't know if this ending is best suited for the novel, but it does have some particularly specific connection to the pandemic.
Literature Prize: What have you been doing in the past few years between "Renunciation" and "South Shop"? Do you think your mindset changed when you wrote these two books? You have also talked about whether you would not write "South Goods Store" without entering middle age, what do you think is the relationship between a person's writing and the state of life?
Zhang Ji: There is no special thing to do, it is to live normally, work, make money, and raise children. I don't have creative anxiety or writing addiction. Life is definitely far bigger than writing. Of course, I have not absolutely left the novel, although I have not written in the past few years, but some of the things in the novel have always grown in my head, and when it is almost over, I may write.
From "Renunciation" to "South Goods Store", I think my mentality may become a little calmer. To take the simplest example, when I was writing "Monasticism", I heard a writer say that when a novelist can't write, he will write the characters to death. I listened to this sentence, so when I wrote "Renunciation", I would deliberately let people live. But in "South Goods Store", I didn't do this kind of thing, just do it.
I think if a writer is sincere, his novel must be consistent with his real age and ideas. I used to look at those old words and thought they were written in a normal way, but now that I look at them, I feel that they are thrilling. The ancients divided each age group, and standing, not confused, knowing the destiny of heaven and the like, this is not an invention, but a summary of experience, different ages, the landscape of writing out is definitely completely different.
03. "Only the calmness of the narrative,
to be able to complete some kind of cruelty in writing."
Literature Prize: You said that "Renunciation" is a work of "seeing oneself", while "Nan Zheng Dian" is "seeing all beings", from the self to the sentient beings, it happens to be two different aspects of literature, which marks a change in your outlook on life or literary concepts?
Zhang Ji: When I first started writing "South Goods Store", I felt that it was completely different from "Renjia", "Renjia" was to see myself, "NanShidian" was to see sentient beings, but then I felt that in fact, "NanFangdian" was also to see myself. It seems that your pen writes about all sentient beings, but in these people, all you see is yourself, and you are using yourself to write about all sentient beings. Later, when I watched "Renunciation", it seemed inaccurate to say that "Renunciation" was seeing himself, he saw himself, but this self was also a sentient being. So the question you asked is particularly interesting, seeing yourself and seeing sentient beings seems to be two different aspects of literature, but from another point of view, it is actually the same thing.
Zhang Ji's works, from left to right, are: "Tiezi", "Nan goods store", "Monastic"
I'm particularly afraid to talk about things like life and literature now, because my things are always changing, and I'm always a little unsure about what I say. For me, this may have become a wake-up call for me not to make judgments when writing.
Literature Prize: To some extent, dealing with the pain and changes brought about by "reform and opening up" has become a new collective unconscious of contemporary literature, and contemporary literature after the Cultural Revolution has come from "scars" and "roots", and it seems that it has been unable to get rid of the call of grand history. Is it possible that this reflection on the pain caused by reform becomes another new trend of thought in Chinese literature?
Zhang Ji: I don't care much about other people's writing, when I was in my twenties, I would care about what my peers were writing, what kind of works were being published in journals recently, and what kind of subjects I was doing. But now I don't care much, I only make judgments about my own writing, for example, I have several things in my head that I want to write, and I will communicate with them. One day, one of them told me that you can write, and I was ready, and I started writing.
I am not very sensitive to grand history and the like, relatively speaking, "South Goods Store" may be more direct to the performance of the big era, but this is not my writing disposition, and "Renunciation" that I wrote before is a more personal novel. In general, I will deal with novels according to the temperament of specific subjects, without special presuppositions.
Whether the reflection on the history of reform and opening up is likely to become a new trend of thought, I don't know, I don't think about these macro things, for me, I am just a novel writer, and all my interest and energy are focused on dealing with the characters of the novel, the details of the novel.
Literary Prize: "Monasticism" is a satirical work, but it is also touching. Where did this novel come from? Do you have a religious belief? Do you think faith still has value in such an era? Of course, monasticism can also be seen as the protagonist's escape, in this sense, have you ever wanted to escape from something?
Zhang Ji: The inspiration for "Renunciation" comes from curiosity, in fact, the starting point of all my novels comes from curiosity. When I have a huge curiosity about a certain group of people, a certain industry, but I don't have an answer, I will try to write a novel, try to answer myself. I can't talk about religion, but my family, from my grandmother, to my mother, and some other relatives, most of them believe in Buddhism, so in that sense, I will be a little closer to Buddhism. No matter what era, faith is certainly valuable, but how big this value is depends on the specific person. I don't like it or can't afford to sum up a particularly big thing from a lofty height, so I can't talk about any particularly good views on the relationship between the times and the faith.
The word escape was a positioning given by the editor at the time to find in the book, which I think is quite accurate. Especially when a person is aware of a certain possibility of life, his desires will appear particularly irrepressible. For me, writing is my escape, you construct another life in the text, you experience and experience in it, this is the best way to escape.
Literature Prize: Your novels often give me a sense of pursuing drama in daily life, writing about ordinary little people, but they have often done amazing things, is this effect of "listening to thunder in the silence" something you deliberately pursue?
Zhang Ji: When I write, I rarely have a presupposition, even if I write a novel of the size of "South Goods Store", I will not outline anything. I often say that I like to write in a paradoxical state, thinking too clearly, and it is not interesting to write. So the effect you said is certainly not deliberate. I think it's the same as life itself, the surface of life is always unusually calm, but underneath this calm is often an undercurrent. In the novel, this calm and turbulence can form a good inverse ratio, and only the calmness of the narrative can complete a certain cruelty in writing.
Literature Award: I read your "Ride", "Fat Sea" and other novels, the most uncomfortable part is that you always stop abruptly in the most embarrassing and uncomfortable places of the characters, do not give a comforting redemption, unlike ordinary writers to arrange a decent ending for the characters, why do you arrange it this way?
Zhang Jie: Novels, especially short stories, cannot be particularly extravagant to show anything, it can only be intercepted, and in what position it is intercepted depends on the judge's judgment and ideas. So, different writers will choose to start and stop in different places.
As for my novels, I think the characters in the novels will always try to make some kind of deal with me, and they'll tell me at some point, OKAY, that's it. If I hear something like that, and then I feel like they make sense, I'll put the novel to an end.
04. "The novel is definitely about expressing the attitude and values of the author"
Literature Prize: In your conversation with Yi Zhou, you talked about reading "The Tale of the Flowers on the Sea", and you said, "It's like putting a camera there, faithfully and completely recording everything." In such a novel, you can't see the author, and in the novel, the identity of the author disappears."
In your opinion, writers should not appear in good works, can you talk about your reasons? Do you think the author's attitude and values should be reflected in the novel? Or you can ask, how is your personal experience expressed through literature?
Zhang Ji: The novel is definitely to express the attitude and values of the author, and I mean that this attitude and value are an equal relationship with other people who read it. It cannot be said that the author is higher than the reader, or even the author's is the standard answer.
When I say that the disappearance of the author is actually a matter of creative attitude and creative skills. I especially hate some works, writing and writing, the author will come out and show off his insights. The author's attitude is yes, but it needs to be hidden in the novel. Some writers always seem to worry that the reader will not see them, and always speak those words in a prominent position. For such novels, I would be particularly rude to classify them as insufficient novel skills.
The novel is actually an author's more honest response, your aesthetic, your thinking, must be expressed, but this expression should be appropriate, appropriate, can not make people look at the disgust.
Literature Award: After Jin Yucheng's "Blossoms", dialect writing was once hyped by the media, and you can faintly see the imprint of the Ningbo dialect from your works, but it is basically still standard Mandarin, in recent years, the literary and art circles seem to have risen a kind of "southern consciousness", "southern film" and "southern literature" Concept has been created, what do you think about this. Do you think there is a literary tradition that belongs to the South or Jiangnan?
Zhang Ji: I may be a figure who belongs to the boundaries of the literary and art circles, I live in a small place, and I am far from the core, so what is popular in the literary and art circles, I am not particularly concerned, and I am not too sure whether there are too many southern things being proposed or happening. Moreover, the South cannot be just a geographical concept, it cannot be said that I am a Southerner, I should be summarized in the term South. I also don't think that the word South has become a cultural symbol, can not say that the use of dialects, in the novel a little more rain is the South, at least in the category of writing, I think the South has not yet been established. Judging from my limited reading, most of the works of southern writers are still blurred.
I like "Blossom" very much, and for me, I feel that Teacher Jin's blossoming sends a strong signal. "Blossoms" is not a brand new work, from my point of view, he is a very old work. I can see our literary traditions in the blossoms, such as "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Golden Plum Bottle" and so on. He can achieve such a big response in such a Westernized writing environment at present, which gives me a lot of confidence. I think this is an orthodoxy of the Chinese novel, and my view of the novel happens to be within this orthodoxy. As for dialects, strictly speaking, I don't feel that I am writing a dialect novel, and this language, which is also in the orthodoxy of this novel in my opinion, is a Chinese way of language. I am a person who cares about language in particular, and I feel that no matter where the novel goes, language will always be its foundation. And I think the best language that Chinese writers can use is this language.
Literature Prize: In other interviews, you talked about your love for works such as "Jin Ping Mei", "Ru Lin Wai Shi" and Wang Zengqi's novels, from which you can get a glimpse of your literary context, can you take this opportunity to talk in detail about your reading history and what works and authors have influenced you? Your novel has some flavor of Ming and Qing legends, is this inseparable from your reading?
Zhang Ji: My reading should be similar to the reading of ordinary people, everyone reads things, I read, when I was a student, I liked Zhang Ailing, I liked Shen Congwen, I also liked to read "Ordinary World", Lu Wenfu's "Gourmet" is a novel that I particularly liked, and later I liked some foreign literature, such as Kenzaburo Oe, such as Kuche, and later, I especially liked these works you mentioned, similar to "Jin Ping Mei", "Ru Lin Wai Shi" these novels.
To be honest, I'm not particularly clear about whose novels have been influenced, but through reading and writing, I feel that I am becoming more and more aware of my aesthetic, which is in line with our tradition. Here, the term county reflects its uniqueness. Compared with larger cities, the development of county towns is also a matter of more than ten years. Relatively speaking, it is more conservative, more traditional, and more Chinese. I have been living here, and my way of thinking, my way of life, will be more closely connected with this tradition and conservatism. So, when I reach a certain age, when I see those things in Ming and Qing novels, even novels like "Blossoms", I will feel particularly kind, and I will feel that that is what I want to write.
05. "Writers no longer have the courage to say anything good about readers"
Literature Prize: I know in the media reports that you have lived in a county town called Ninghai for many years, why do you insist on writing in the county town? It can be seen that the characters in your pen are often small people in small places, what nourishment do you think county life brings you? In your opinion, is this way of life a conscious resistance to modern urban life?
Zhang Ji: I don't insist on living in the county town, nor do I insist on writing in the county town, in fact, this topic is talked about a lot, it seems deliberate, and it has become the "lower life" that many literary and art workers in big cities say in their mouths. I was born here, my parents are here, my life relationship is here, then naturally I live here. And maybe you don't know much about the southern, especially the county town of Ningbo, it is not much different from the modern city, I have to say the difference, it may be cultural life, such as museums, big sports events, etc., other are the same, including the house here is also very expensive, buying things on Taobao is also free shipping.
Going back to writing, living here, is definitely nutritious for my writing. Because I've been growing up here, if I've grown somewhere else, it might be something else. I may be the kind of person with a weaker personality you're talking about, I like to live in familiar places, and I'm poorly adapted to unfamiliar environments. In addition, I like to live in a smaller place, the place is smaller, it will be more secure, specific to writing, the writing gas will also be concentrated.
Literature Prize: What do you think the ideal reader for a writer would look like? Have you ever met such a reader in some form?
Zhang Ji: In the current environment, I think writers have no courage to say anything good readers, too many consumer goods appear, reading has become a rare thing, we can only say, we need readers, as for what kind of readers, this topic is too luxurious. I am an unknown writer, and I have not given much thought to the so-called ideal reader, I can only say that I hope to have an ideal book. When a book comes out, it's the same as the author's relationship with everyone else, and everyone is facing the novel on the same platform. For me, a book comes out, and if everyone who sees him can see something different from it, including myself, it is a particularly ideal book.
The Blancpain Republic Literary Award, co-founded by the Swiss haute horlogerie brand Blancpain and China's most influential publishing brand, the Republic, is the first award in the field of Chinese literature to be jointly created by a commercial brand and a publishing house to discover and encourage outstanding young writers under the age of 45. Impartiality, authority and professionalism were the principles established by the Blancpain Prize for Literature at the birth of the Blancpain Prize for Literature and will be consistent. Following the first "No Regrets, Less Works", the second "Passion for Writing to Reconstruct the World Picture", and the third "Becoming a Contemporary", the annual theme of the 2021 Blancpain Ideal State Literature Award is "May you have a long road".
The finalists of the 4th Blancpain Republic Literary Awards have been announced on September 15, and the final winners will be announced at the award ceremony at the end of October 2021. The focus of this year's review is on the degree of completion and inspiration of the work, and whether the author can maturely deal with the subject matter, and shows a possibility of continuous writing. The five works that were selected by the members of the jury, Alai, Ge Fei, Li Zongsheng, Liang Hong, and Ma Jiahui (in alphabetical order of names), after intense discussion and voting according to the principle of majority, were as follows: