Qianjiang Evening News hourly news reporter Zhang Jinhua
Writer Li Fengqun.
Another year of heavy sunshine. Annual Old People's Day. Have you noticed that the important people in your memory are unconsciously old?
This is the real feeling of the post-70s writer Li Fengqun.
Another problem is that many people have to face the countryside, the real homeland where they once lived. What is that village like today?
In her previous novels Dajiang, Shiver and Liangxia, Li Fengqun described the duck-egg-sized island of her hometown several times, where she lived for eighteen years. "Water blocks my perception of the world, water restricts my freedom, water takes away my relatives and friends, I have always regarded the Yangtze River as the opponent and enemy of our survival, but, suddenly one day, I jumped on the deck and left, got rid of the paranoia about water, and looked back at this small island, my God, it is definitely more than what I have seen in the past, it contains countless things that can be said, old people, is part of the thousands of stories on this small island. In the years I was in china, I went back almost every year, and I believe I will go back for many more years. ”
What kind of collision will occur when the abandoned and forgotten countryside meets the elderly who may also be forgotten by the current society?
The problem of the elderly does not only exist in rural society, at the beginning of the book "Dawang" four elderly people live in Shanghai, but in the metropolis, the elderly still have their own predicament.
From the great Shanghai to the real or fictional Great Wangzhou, the dilemma of "old and helpless" is approaching, and it is stimulating the nerves of our modern people.
When you opened Li Fengqun's masterpiece "Great Hope", did you ever think about the society you wanted to be old and nurturing?
"From that day on, the four Dawangzhou people began a new life on the island – so to speak, back to the old life."
It's an absurd story.
They are the four old men in "Great Hope", surnamed Zhao Qiansun Li. They lived on a deserted island that was almost deserted, and it was also their homeland, because one day they were suddenly forgotten by their sons and daughters, and could not return to the original order of life. How will the four elderly people who have lost the important identities of "father" and "mother" of so-and-so place themselves?
In the novel, four old men live on an isolated island for a month. In the final song of "Great Hope", the four old men parted ways with uncertainty about the future and scattered. Only Old Li returned to his former life, and the future of the other three old men was still in the air.
After being forgotten by their children, their identity, their money, their illness, their daily routine of eating three meals a day, are all problems.
"When I'm old, I can't do a lot of things."
"The old, it seems, has a symbol of its own that obscures other messages: this symbol negates their voices, their majesty, their decency, even their tears."
"The police can't trust them, for no reason, just because they're older.
It's not just a prophecy about the future, it's the reality of the present.
"I grew up on a small island, and now there are no people under the age of sixty on this island, and old people in their seventies or eighties dominate this territory. They formed an old man, and I occasionally heard their stories, and they made me feel troubled and made me vaguely see some kind of future. Li Fengqun said.
In an exclusive interview with a reporter from the Qianjiang Evening News, Li Fengqun admitted that the elderly in her own extended family, including her parents and some relatives, did not have a pension. But the "old man's dilemma" is not her original focus when creating "Hope", she first had a sense of "atonement" to conceive the novel, but the novel has its own destiny, after the novel came out, it seems that the public's focus "from the inside to the outside" has "shifted", people are more concerned about the ageing dilemma, which itself is also quite interesting.
Everyone gets old, it's a cliché. The old man and the old man are for everyone.
This should not only be a topic of revocation on chongyang festival.
The following is the dialogue between the Qianjiang Evening News reporter and Li Fengqun -
In the hometown.
【Abandoned Countryside and Elderly Rivers and Lakes】
Qianjiang Evening News: When did you start paying attention to the elderly? Is it related to your own situation? Or is it because the common social problem of an aging society has caught the writer's attention?
Li Fengqun: Frankly, I never thought that I wanted to create a topic of the elderly, and I did not like to track hot spots, rather than paying attention to the elderly, it is better to say that the important people in my memory have unconsciously aged.
Qianjiang Evening News: "Dawang" is an abandoned village, which seems to be the epitome of many of China's current withered villages? However, there are old houses in the countryside of Dawang, but people have run out, in reality, because of the tide of work, the young people in the countryside have left, and the remaining old people live in the village with their young grandchildren, that is, left-behind children, and you push the situation of "Dawang" to an absurd extreme, is it a prophecy about the future, or a literary expression of the sense of distress?
Li Fengqun: This question is very good, "abandoned countryside", this is not only a prophecy about the future, it is the reality of the present.
I grew up on a small island, and now there are no people under the age of sixty on this island, and old people in their seventies and eighties or so rule the land. They formed an old man, and I occasionally heard their stories, and they made me feel troubled and made me vaguely see some kind of future.
"Dawangzhou" may be such a place.
【What to do if the elderly do not have a pension】
Qianjiang Evening News: Back to the most concerning elderly problem, I see the plight of the four old people, if you don't say that it is a bureau set up by the author, a narrative of magic tricks, the author threw them into such a chaotic situation, but objectively speaking, they are all old people without pensions, are the old people you write about the most vulnerable group of the old people at the moment: they can only rely on their children to retire, which is also a relatively common situation in the countryside? From the various narratives of the novel, it seems that their lives are not in their own hands, but more on the conscience of their children.
Li Fengqun: I found that I was hit by this problem again.
What you ask is exactly what I want to present, my parents are old farmers without pensions, and my uncles, aunts and aunts do not have pensions, so, to urban readers, this is a past or a legend, no, this is the fate of many people in China.
I have a friend who once did fieldwork, and she said that many elderly people choose to commit suicide by taking poison, in order not to burden their children and for the sake of their remaining self-esteem. In good conscience, I don't think I'm throwing them into such a messy situation, the only difference between reality and work is the difference between holding a group and fighting alone.
Qianjiang Evening News: There are many kinds of plight of the elderly in China at present: for example, the rich but lonely, the rich and lonely, the children who share the responsibility for the elderly equally, the pension at home, the pension in the nursing home, etc., but in the novel, although the author also points out that the old people actually have surplus value, such as helping the children to do housework, but when the responsibility to be borne by the next generation is greater than their surplus value, the risk of abandonment on the surface or in the dark is still there?
Li Fengqun: The risk of the old man being abandoned yesterday, today and tomorrow is playing out everywhere and everywhere. Sometimes it has nothing to do with money, but most of it has something to do with money, and in the process of growing old, people's abandonment and resistance to the "old man" is, to some extent, also a hopeless resistance and rejection of their own destiny prospects.
Li Fengqun's hometown of Anhui is inactive.
【Cruelty and Truth in the "Raising Children and Preventing Aging" Model】
Qianjiang Evening News: In the novel, we see that the lives of the four old people in their later years are actually attached to their children, and their children are just ordinary people with various shortcomings, imperfect but not very bad, there are weaknesses in human nature, this is still the old man in the former "raising children and preventing the elderly" model, how do you see the relationship between the two generations in this model?
Li Fengqun: The city I live in now, many of the friends I know, do not have such troubles, when they were just married, their parents bought them a house, after giving birth to a child, their parents helped them take care of it, and their parents left them a considerable amount of real estate, even in the last years of their parents, they need to free up some time and energy to take care of, but the process is basically acceptable.
However, several children in "Great Hope" have a high degree of self-consciousness of supporting the elderly, that is, no matter whether they have inherited anything valuable, no matter how unbearable their lives are, even if there is resentment or even disrespect in the process of implementation, they will not have any complaints about the matter of "supporting the elderly".
This is like a destiny, which is a characteristic of China's rural system, not a choice.
Qianjiang Evening News: In the novel, it is written several times that in rural society, after the parents are a little older, the children will wait at home for death without sending them to the city hospital, and the indifference of the children in the countryside after the parents' illness is a kind of universal "collective unconsciousness", or are they really powerless to do anything about the "disease"?
Li Fengqun: I have a relative, over seventy years old, one day sitting on the mahjong table with stomach pain, he went to the provincial city, the doctor diagnosed that it was advanced bowel cancer, four sons all present, when the father strongly expressed his willingness to operate, two of the sons objected, on the grounds that no one had long-term cooking after the operation, and decided to treat conservatively.
After two days of treatment, another son proposed that it was too troublesome to live in the provincial city and asked to take his father back to the county hospital for treatment, on the grounds that he was close to home and could take care of the elderly and work.
After a few days in the county hospital, the sons proposed to go home for treatment, and the old man's sister was a smart person, she said brother, you must not agree to go home, going home means waiting for death.
Sure enough, after returning home, the sons tacitly refused to let him use Durandine, and in this way, from diagnosis to death, less than ten days.
In the last moments of my relative's life, he slept on the kitchen floor, waiting for his funeral to begin. Relatives who came to the funeral secretly dripped a drop of water on his cracked mouth, and his sons angrily came to stop him because he had "not been to work for several days."
It's not a story, it's our life.
Another of Li Fengqun's novels, related to Jiang, is called "Dajiang".
[How to preserve human dignity when we are old]
Qianjiang Evening News: In your novel, you write about the various actions of the elderly to save themselves, and we see that these old people are actually not incompetent in life, and even have the brain to think of using "vibrato" and other Internet tools to save themselves. In life, we see how many old people are more "stupid" than the four old people in the novel, Zhao Qiansun and Li, they are "left behind" because they can't keep up with the Internet age, they are old and weak, but in order to do one thing, such as paying an electricity bill, taking a taxi, queuing up in the bank to take hundreds of dollars, etc., have to bear more toss than young people, how do you see the situation that there is now a common force of youth in society, but the interests and convenience of the elderly are relatively indifferent?
Li Fengqun: The power of youth is everywhere, movies, television, reality shows, fast-paced lifestyles, electronic payment systems, health codes, online registration, all of which are inclined to youth.
I can only say that this is a hard standard for the degree of civilization to be improved, and the true dignity of the human person can be preserved by relying on the old and the old, not relying on luck and other individuals.
Qianjiang Evening News: There is a description in the novel of two elderly people robbing the weaker elderly people in the nursing home, do you personally not trust the pension institution so that the elderly can raise their children? Could the depiction of a decaying, desperate atmosphere in nursing homes also stem from our prejudices?
Li Fengqun: I remember this description in the novel, and I can only say that until that time, they had not really awakened and repented, whether they wanted to slap Teacher Qian, ask for money from the descendants of the county magistrate, or rob the weaker old people, all of them were the repeated continuation of their character, if they were to be young again, they would still make mistakes when they were young.
The depiction of the nursing home is indeed out of my prejudice, and it can even be said that out of my fear of the future, fear illuminates reality.
A view of the homeland.
[Suppose there are three old people: a good person, an ordinary person and a bad person]
Qianjiang Evening News: The novel seems to have two narratives: one is the current situation of the four old people, forgotten by their children, and suddenly they have to survive independently, and the other is the past of the four old people, and the various unbearable things in their lives, for this novel, is it important at the moment, or is it important to repent for the mistakes made in the past?
Why do you make these two literary themes cause and effect to each other? What we read seems to be that because the four old men have had all kinds of "evils" in their past lives, there will be this month's forgotten punishment. But I have a question, even if the four old people have not made any major mistakes in their past lives, their situation of relying entirely on their children may be problematic?
Li Fengqun: It is another very good question, the situation that people of great goodness will also face, whether using simple cause and effect is a kind of literary shallow book.
It is true that even if there is no past "evil deeds, evil thoughts and evil consequences", man will not be able to escape the final destination of aging to oblivion to death, but this is not a reason to stop pursuing "evil deeds, evil thoughts and evil consequences", no matter what kind of end man goes to, even if he eventually goes in the direction contrary to his evil deeds, what he has done is what he has done, what he has done has always been there, and what he has done has caused facts, history, fate and despair.
Qianjiang Evening News: Good people become old, ordinary people get old, bad people get old, and eventually they all have to get old, always fate, is a natural process, from the upper to the bottom of the people's only way, how do you see the old age problem of these three kinds of people? As a writer, how do you put your emotions or moral laws and things like that?
Li Fengqun: This is a philosophical question! This involves the relationship between "old" and "sin", and the relationship between "old" and "punishment".
If there were three old men, a good man, an ordinary man, a bad man, when they were dying of old age and holding out a hand in need of help, to be honest, I had not considered the problem.
When I imagine standing on a street corner at this moment, facing three old men with labels like this, reaching out for help, I think I will run to the person I feel is closest to me, who needs me the most, or who shouts the most urgently, and morality will only get involved in the aftermath, creating prejudice or experience.
The focus of the creation of "Great Hope" is on "sin" and "repentance", "old" is only presented as a person's dilemma, you are old, still have to ask about your sin, you are old, still have to accept punishment, this is the logic that faith teaches us.
Qianjiang Evening News: Although the author's brushstrokes are full of sympathy for the forgotten of the old people, he also observes the four old souls with a pair of sharp eyes, not avoiding good and not avoiding evil, the four getting along every day in the novel, a large number of life details, etc., written very meaningfully, which has both unity and cooperation, and selfishness and small calculations, there are pay and take, the small world of the old man is the same complex, but you said, what you particularly emphasize is a kind of spiritual force of introspection? At the end, let Old Li return to his past life first, while the other three seem to be hanging there, why does a novel that reflects the theme of the old man's plight end up being classified as the theme of "atonement"?
Li Fengqun: I think there are a lot of people who have misread this work. In other words, the "old man's dilemma" was not my initial focus, but, as you can see, in the end, it ended up here, and I think this is the fate of the novel itself.
Li Fengqun was on the road.
[You must have experienced something before you are qualified to write it]
Qianjiang Evening News: I see the duality of the old people being forgotten in the novel: one is to be their own relatives, which is the most impact and blow to the spiritual feelings of the old people, and the other is to be forgotten by the world, you write all kinds of social aspects that they are contacted after being forgotten by their relatives, written cold and absurd, even if they shout hard, explain hard, no one really listens to them, regards them as air, the same is true on the Internet, they use various means, but they can't get the eyeballs, and we know, A random girl can get more attention by making a live broadcast and scratching her head, do you think this is a reflection of the situation of the elderly in the real world?
Li Fengqun: You see very accurately, forgetting is hierarchical and step-by-step, first by one's own relatives, then by the world, the world includes past students, downstairs neighbors, and even systems, they are regarded as non-existent, but this is not the most deadly, the most deadly destruction is forgotten by oneself.
One of the core propositions in "Great Hope" is "Who am I?"
"Who am I" is a "yes" question. The so-called "I" exists in the observation (or perspective, thought, insight, and way of thinking) of ordinary people, exists in the burning "love", "take", "have", "live", "die", leave the senses, leave the memory, "I" does not exist, this is the devastating blow suffered by the old people in the text.
In the real world, forgetting happens all the time, and it may even be not only the countryside, but even the city, but also a place of higher materialism, and "old" as a sign of the decline of life, its regret and tragedy are always there.
Qianjiang Evening News: The point of "telling the truth" in the novel seems to have become the key to the final customs clearance? Why is it set up this way? Will this "truth-telling" parable be too deliberate?
Li Fengqun: We can understand this as a parable: "Telling the truth", but we can also understand that it is their self-deception. When all means and actions fail to improve their situation, every straw is tightly squeezed in the palm of the hand. If the Truth can be cleared, they will not still part ways.
Qianjiang Evening News: From the great Shanghai to the real or fictional Great Wangzhou, the approaching dilemma of "old and helpless" is stimulating the hearts of our modern people? The four old people in the book do not have any private property under their names, even if the seemingly rich grandson has no private property, are you deliberately setting up this "same situation"?
Li Fengqun: I have something to say about this, their situation is not exactly the same, Teacher Qian not only has no property, but also has a fixed medical expenses, Old Zhao is in good health, he can still take care of his son, Old Li also takes care of YeZi for many years, even if he is a laborer, I think Sun Laoshan should have savings, but the loss of identity is the reason why they return to the same starting point, not the same situation in terms of property, in other words, if Old Zhao and Sun Laoshan have other property, when this story happens, it must also be invalid.
Qianjiang Evening News: Your "big" series of long stories, feel the power of narrating for Cangsheng, the central location of the novel, including this "Great Hope" seems to be related to your own life experience? How do you think a writer can apply her home experience?
Li Fengqun: Writers cannot use the experience of their hometown, and writers benefit from the experience of their hometown. Shohorov's Cossack identity helped him leave the world with an immortal masterpiece, Naipaul's India, Kuche's South Africa, Faulkner's Mississippi... Hometown is the source of everything.
Qianjiang Evening News: The issue of old age is also a world context, have you read literature on other related topics? Are there any impressed?
Li Fengqun: I have not deliberately read such works, and if I have, it is only a chance encounter, such as "Diary of a Sick Old Man", such as Ross's "Legacy", such as "The Old Man and the Sea". And, once I'm ready to create a genre, I avoid subjects that might be similar.
When I was writing Gale, I heard that Yu Hua's "The Seventh Day" also spoke with dead souls, so I resolutely refused to read it, and I only had this one of his books.
Regarding the end of life, I recommend the Indian physician writer Arthur Guvinde's The Best Farewell: Common Sense You Must Know About Aging and Death, a book that tells us what we can and should do to make the last years of life meaningful.
Qianjiang Evening News: The literary field of the "lonely island" atmosphere or closed environment is an interesting literary scene in some of the works we have read, such as the previous movie "Stepping on the Boundary", there was a new collision between men and women of different classes on the isolated island, the four elders in the novel, Teacher Qian seems to have been able to think with his brain, the seemingly weak female Old Li is actually more effective, you said "use thirty days to beat people back to their original form", are you still very heavy on female strength?
Li Fengqun: When I mean playing back to its original form, there are two meanings.
First, behind the seeming prosperity, there are thousands of contradictions hidden, and I want to find a little bit of them;
Second, behind a decent life of pampering lies evil, sin, selfishness, history, and introspection.
I'm just pointing to the point. I do have a preference for Old Li, I have a preference for thousands of women who suffered and suffered, who were shackled heavily, who could not decide their marriage, childbirth, and lifestyle in that era, and I had a preference for nearly 100,000 abandoned Chinese babies who were adopted overseas.
Qianjiang Evening News: As a woman, what kind of concept do you personally have about how to be a parent and a child? What are the main influences of this concept?
Li Fengqun: To my mother, I have written about her in many works, I have hated her, and I have expressed forgiveness.
My feelings for my parents have been up and down for decades, and they have reached a fixed point. It is – love them, love all that they have, old age, sorrow, selfishness and trepidation, love what they have and will have; I have done much less to my children, I have followed the same path, I have been very disciplined, and I am doing much less now than in the past - because I realize that sometimes the more I do, the more I am wrong, the greater the shade, the more shadows I leave.
This is the experience I have gained from comparing different forms of education, and I think that as I get older, my perception will change.
Qianjiang Evening News: Is it possible for a writer to write works related to the theme of old age until he is middle-aged?
Li Fengqun: My answer is yes. Yes, you have to have experienced something, you have experienced the real situation, you have to be qualified to write about it. Writers should honestly write about what they feel and touch, and writers should have great love for the characters they create. Write everything you can be compassionate about, and that's what writing is all about.
【Writer's Business Card】
Li Fengqun: Anhui has no one. Vice Chairman of Anhui Writers Association. He is the author of many novels such as "Great Hope", "Daye", "Gale", "Big Riverside", "Trembling", "Reason to Live", "Contrary to the Road", "Liangxia" and so on. He has won the 3rd and 4th Purple Mountain Literature Award, the "Five One Project" Award of Jiangsu Province, the First Lu Yanzhou Literature Award of Anhui Province, the 2nd Novel Rising Star Award of Anhui Province, the 2003 Young Writer Award, the Nomination Award of the 7th Lu Xun Literature Award for Novella, the 2018 Annual Novella Award of People's Literature, and the Nomination Award for Novelists of the Year at the Southern Literary Festival.
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Source: Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News