Short Story 2015: Chinese Stories and Stylistic Self-Realization

New Observations and Annual Review

Short Story 2015: Chinese Stories and Stylistic Self-Realization

□ Cheng Tianxiang

"The number of short stories in 2015 is on the rise. The author's inheritance of traditional literary resources and another way, the telling of Chinese stories and chinese spirit, and the exploration of text typization and classicization are impressive. But at the same time, the writing and reading of short stories tends to be niche and circled. How to establish the stylistic consciousness of short stories, strengthen the construction of spiritual coordinates, innovate the content and form of novels on the basis of absorbing traditional resources, and explore communication channels under the conditions of new media have become important challenges to writers. ”

In 2015, the writing and reading of short stories gradually tilted towards a niche and circle. Short stories have some signs of weakening their own stylistic awareness, insufficient innovation in artistic means, and lack of communication methods, such as how to establish the stylistic consciousness of short stories, strengthen the construction of spiritual coordinates of short stories, innovate the content and form of novels on the basis of absorbing traditional resources, and explore the communication channels of the current new media, which has become an important challenge to writers.

It must be admitted that in the current environment where short stories are not booming, the writer group still shows strong creative energy and has actively and productively explored short stories. Among them, young writers have served as the main force of short story writing, and the creations of Zhang Chu, Sheng Ke, Xu Zechen, Jiang Yitan, Zhu Shanpo, Li Hao, Lu Min, Yu Yiming, Yi Zhou, Zhang Huiwen, Qiao Ye, Jin Renshun, Wang Kai, Zeng Jian, Cai Jun, Zhou Lili, Zheng Xiaodon, Sun Pin, Fu Yuehui, and others have become more and more exquisite in their creations, and the pattern has gradually become more and more sophisticated; while old writers such as Liu Xinwu, Feng Jicai, Ye Zhaoyan, Liu Qingbang, Wang Xiangfu, and Fan Xiaoqing have also continuously launched new works, showing their adherence to short art. The works of these writers either take the inheritance of traditional novel resources as the core and recreate literary forms at the same time; or highlight the exploration of the psychology and emotions of the characters, and write historical sentiments and personal memories; or emphasize the storytelling of the novel and use realistic brushwork to show the picture of the times and the people's lives; or actively conform to the theme of the times and write military literature and genre novels.

From the perspective of theme, local literature has further declined, urban literature has become a creative trend, and the imbalance between the two in the proportion of subject matter highlights the rapid process of Urbanization in China. Therefore, we see that this year's short stories are full of all kinds of community life, working life, urban family life, love changes, house purchases, demolition records, going to the city, part-time work records... They are all closely related to the lives of urban people. However, some works mostly show the social world and daily experience in a straightforward and unadorned manner, everyone rushes to create the "ukiyo-e" of urban life, the more secret space under the surface of life is shelved, and the spiritual field of urban people is rarely asked.

In addition to traditional literary journals, new media such as WeChat and Weibo are also important channels for the publication of short stories. Short stories are small in size and closely connected with reality, which is in line with the rapid reading habits of modern people. Many well-known writers have successively released their short and medium-length works through WeChat, and in the future, this trend will be further enhanced.

The inheritance and development of literary traditions

The art of short stories is often embodied in the characteristics of virtual reality, "real" is the story of the novel, is the shell intuitively presented to the reader; "virtual" points to the spiritual, imaginary and other levels, is to highlight the internal art space of the novel. It can be said that the pursuit of "fiction" has constructed the characteristic tradition of the short story. Since the new era, the emergence of transcendental narratives, classicism, avant-garde novels, and experimental novels has used unique experiences and perspectives to try to communicate and dialogue with the real society, reflecting the absurd life with the light of divinity, expressing the anxiety, dazedness and struggle of human nature, and embodying the writer's cultural consciousness in reconstructing the humanistic charm of the novel and the poetic tradition.

Feng Jicai's "New Chapters of the Strange People of the Ordinary World" is a supplement to his collection of novels" "The Strange People of the Ordinary World", which draws on the creative techniques of the Tang legend and highlights the tribute and return to the literary tradition. The novel condenses and embodies 18 Jinmen characters with different images, focusing on the regionality of "customary" (Jindi city culture) and the uniqueness of "strange" (character legends), caring for traditional culture with modern consciousness, and creating a strong Tianjin style and national characteristics.

In recent years, some writers have focused on expressing suspicion and indifference in urban life. Liu Xinwu's "Briquette Plums" provides a powerful response to this ruthless and senseless emotional writing. The hero and heroine of the novel fell in love with each other when they were young, and later experienced social turmoil and went their separate ways, and only in their later years did they have the opportunity to reunite. After seeing the "briquette plum", the "old lady's" "soul spewed out a kind of bliss, and for a moment it seemed as if it had traveled through her life at a rapid pace, and everything she had experienced turned into green smoke, and only the people around her now were real." The novel abandons the literary technique of the flower whistle and restores the original face of life.

Also writing about emotions, the "mother" in Tao Liqun's "Mother's Island" is a woman who was abducted and sold, and the grind of life seems to erase the mother's inner pain and homesickness. At the age of 50, she began to use actions to pave her own determination to run away— first moving to a small island to live alone, and then trying to grow and sell vegetables independently. The cleverness of the novel lies in the fact that it does not point the finger of evil at the family that abducts and sells women, and in the process of the mother's rebellion and exodus, it is also interspersed with warm and well-intentioned family affection. "Mother's Island" has a symbolic meaning in the novel, pinning all the emotional secrets of a woman.

Li Hao's "The Wife Who Disappeared Behind the Mirror" also writes "running away", the wife inexplicably "disappeared behind the mirror", and "I" although I have some concerns, I am indifferent in behavior. The author tries to use a mirror to reflect the rift of life and the spiritual dilemma of modern people, so it is quite absurd and black. In the novel, Li Hao combines the subtle inner world of the characters with the current reality, which has both artistic tension and sociality.

The mirror in Cao Junqing's Testimony of Time is a symbol, "Both know that each is the mirror of the other." There are good mirrors and there are also nasty mirrors that are eager to smash when you see them." The confrontation between the two women leads the story to more suspenseful hidden feelings, reflecting the crux of the deformed and perverted era. The novel is unique in its structure and artistic expression, and the plot setting is ingenious and unconventional. In addition, the novel also implies an indictment of corruption.

The "post-80s" writer Cao Bai's skeptical interpretation of the living conditions of the characters and the critical reflection spirit of complex reality synthesize the more unique genes of his novels. Her "Memoirs of Confusion" is a gloomy sadistic work in which the living "interview" another living person on behalf of the deceased, embodying "I"'s metaphysical contemplation of love and life, thus amplifying the nothingness of love and the sucking effect of death on people.

Wen Fei's "Hundred Sheep Diagram" directly refers to the alienation of money and power to people, and exposes and tarts the dark social reality. The author cleverly connects the relationship between "I", "boss", "sheep breeder" and the powerful, and directs a farce of a man-sheep war. The "demonized people" and "personified sheep" in the novel obviously absorb the magic techniques of "Liaozhai", injecting absurd elements into the novel, making the reader's mood tense up.

Zhang Chu's "A Little About Her One or Two" places a deformed love story in a campus environment, and "I" have a relationship with a housekeeper aunt who is much older than herself, and the two sides have emotional entanglements. Zhang Chu uses the shaping of character and emotion to make this ugly and dark deformity possible, and even full of sadness and beauty. The novel does not indulge in the catharsis of emotional waves, but closely combines human nature with the real background to outline the survival picture of the villain.

Zhong Qiushi's "Xingzi" explores the problem of human life and death, and has a certain "metaphysical" flavor. The terminally ill "he" came to a village, "used the air here", read, walked, slept, and planned to live his life peacefully. With the help of the villagers, he held a rehearsal funeral for himself, and in the process, "his" heavy and depressed heart gradually became quiet and he had a new understanding of life. Although the novel depicts death and funerals, it conveys a life situation that transcends life and death.

"The Hermit of Lushan" is a new exploration of Jiang Yitan's short story imagination and narrative, which consists of more than twenty novels ranging from a few crosses to a few thousand words. The author emphasizes the allegorical and fairytale character of the work, and strives to inject the soul of poetry into the novel through "the kind of wandering state between reality and illusion of the characters". In recent years, Jiang Yitan's creation has been pioneering on the basis of absorbing traditional resources, and this novel attempt has also brought a new wind to the current bleak short story publishing market.

In 2015, the selection and renewal of literary traditions (classics) formed the core of most novelists' creations. Lu Min's "Falling Aesthetics" expresses the sadness of the beauty's twilight and the ugliness of emotion; Qiu Huadong's "Falling" uses modern techniques to recount the secret history of the mind of a flight attendant who has nowhere to "land"; Zhu Qinghe's "Wild without Thoughts" presents the entire picture of life with a fragmentary narrative of life; Jin Renshun's "Commemoration of My Friend Jinzhi" has a full and three-dimensional portrayal of the character image, Hu Performance's "Lonely Evidence" has a wonderful use of stream of consciousness creation techniques, Zhou Lili's "Round trip" poetic creation of artistic conception, and so on. All of them made a deep impression.

A way to tell the story of China

In recent years, the concept of "Chinese story" has had a wide and profound impact on the literary and artistic circles, especially in the literary circles. Novels undoubtedly assume the important function of "storytelling", and the image, spirit, and culture of a nation need to be presented by novelists through works. Among contemporary writers, Mo Yan, Chen Zhongzhong, Jia Pingwa, Tie Ning, Liu Zhenyun, Zhang Wei and others have made extraordinary achievements in telling the history of rural China and 20th century China. Today's Chinese stories are facing a new era environment, and the narrative experience and expression methods accumulated by writers in the past have basically failed; the complexity and richness of the current Chinese reality can be described as unprecedented, and the choice of writers is also greater. This year's short stories are moving fast on the road of telling Chinese stories, and there are many good works, but there are also some problems. Some writers are keen on describing daily experiences, and their efforts are beyond their reach in expanding their horizons; their works only pay attention to personal feelings and lack ideological performance; some middle-aged and young writers have not yet come out of the influence of their predecessors' works and formed their own unique creative style, and their artistic expression methods are relatively single; some writers believe that Chinese stories and Chinese experiences are to tell suffering and tears, and write novels as copies of news reports, lacking rich understanding of real life.

In 2015, some writers showed a strong "historical complex" and wrote warmly about the year that seemed to flow like water, which became a way for short stories to tell Chinese stories. Liang Xiaosheng's "Earth Lock" takes the contradictions, conflicts, and delicate relationships between intellectuals and ordinary workers as clues, reflecting the vicissitudes and upheavals of the times; Ye Zhaoyan's "Barefoot Doctor's Handbook" records several small innocent friendships and their respective life encounters; Liu Qingbang's "Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-Law" tells the moving story of a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law getting along in a difficult era; Chu Fujin's "Chess Language, Relying on" explores the philosophy of life from the perspective of Go, reflecting the changes of the times and the fate of individual characters; Ye Guangqian's "Devil's Grave" hooks the past and present lives of old Beijing , exudes a unique aesthetic charm.

After entering the new century, more and more novelists have extended their brushstrokes to the bottom of society, reflecting their survival and spiritual dilemma in the period of social transformation, with a strong sense of reality and criticism. Xu Zechen's "The Prince of Morocco" continues his writing on the theme of North Drift. The novel exposes the cruelty and ruthlessness of society and the hardships of the underclass, but the positive and sunny side of the novel's characters makes the situation of the work sad and unscathed, and retains the hope for life. Zhu Shanpo's "Salesman" borrows the death of a salesman to reflect the indifference between people. Rural migrant workers want to gain a foothold in the city, but they are looked down upon by urban people, and the opposition between the two reflects the clear hierarchical structure of the current society. The relationship between the bystander "I", the saleswoman and the female owner is the epitome of the current pathological reality, which has important enlightenment for us to reflect on human nature for good and build a harmonious social order. Yang Fengxi's "Xuanguan" tells the story of the huge gap between rural civilization and urban civilization, describes the difficult living environment of small people, the harm of material to human nature, and the heavy economic and moral burden that car accidents bring to another family. Sheng Neng's "Little Life" is a "life sketch" that does not need to be interpreted, its daily nature is something that every ordinary person may experience in life, and the vivid and vivid character image condenses the comedic atmosphere of the story.

The realist creative method is a "heavy weapon" to tell Chinese stories, Fan Xiaoqing's "Shutdown is Always Faster than Booting" recounts the phenomenon of human indifference formed by modern people's excessive dependence on mobile phones, and the novel sorts out the relationship between tradition and popularity from a rational point of view, reflecting the microscopic observation of the current impetuous society. Through a disaster relief operation, Lao Teng's "No Rain in Liaoxi" vividly shows the embarrassing situation in which state policies are difficult to connect with the township level under the influence of official logic with Chinese characteristics. Huang Yuehua's "The Crow Who barked" directly confronted the practical problems of illegal lending by the private sector and the malicious interference of criminal syndicates and evil forces with private enterprises, the rupture of the capital chain of private enterprises, and the inability to sustain themselves, and profoundly demonstrated the evil of human nature and the sense of powerlessness of ordinary people in the face of evil. Qiao Ye's "Boiling Dumplings Must Not Be Broken" uses prose culture brushwork to explain the life experience of ordinary people, showing the strong love between relatives. Akbar Mijiti's "The Dog Affair" takes the Chinese story abroad, borrowing the experience of a dog to tell the embarrassing experience of Chinese surviving under the American system. Wang Fangchen's "Qilin" shifts from a familiar rural writing to an urban theme, depicting the changes in human nature under the squeeze of modern civilization. Xing Qingjie's "Debt Collection" portrays the cunning, cute, and simple character of the peasants in a limited space, and takes care of each other with a witty storyline.

In the eyes of Chinese writers, the hometown is a spiritual refuge for people. Among the short stories in 2015, there are more than ten novels with the theme of "returning home". Liu Yudong's "Journey back to the Hometown" reveals that the returnees face a kind of emptiness and aphasia in their hometowns, the poison of speechlessness is quietly shifting from the city to the countryside, and the isolation of people's hearts and the indifference of human nature are the internal causes of this lesion. He Yuru's "Returning to Hometown" records the experience of the revisiting of two intellectuals and young people, expressing the strong nostalgia of a generation in the context of a special era. Ji Dongliang's "Homecoming" tells the arduous journey of the wandering people to survive in the cracks of the city, and these marginalized people who can neither go home nor integrate into urban life have become a journey of burning hearts.

The switch between genre literature and serious literature

The discussion of genre literature has a long history, and a basic consensus is that genre literature cannot be regarded simply as popular literature. For example, military literature, as an important branch of genre literature, because of its own political ideology and the literary tradition of realism, presents the characteristics of intertwining genre narratives and pure literary creation. Genre literature is more closely related to daily life and cultural consumption, and is often more accepted by the public, reflecting the structural changes in the current literary and cultural pattern. In 2015, the genre tendency of some short stories and the classicization trend of genre novels were impressive, which also reflected the complexity of the author's creative choices.

Military literature blossomed with vitality in 2015, a number of anti-war novels appeared intensively, reproducing the most important war in the history of the Chinese nation 70 years ago, and many writers wrote about the brutal nature of war and the tearing and collapse of human nature in war, praising the indomitable heroism and national spirit of the sons and daughters of China in the face of strong enemies. Zhao Dahe's "A Day of Floating Life" does not describe the frontal battlefield too much, but cuts the perspective into the protagonist's love and life, opening a new perspective for readers to understand history and understand the spiritual history of the heroes of the War of Resistance. Xiao Di's "Glacier" recounts the tragic life of the female soldier "Linggu" of the War of Resistance in restrained language, with bloody words, and bitterly complains about the cruelty of war and its poison to people's hearts. Liu Yueqing's "My Comrade-in-Arms Li Keqin" borrows the change in thinking and work style of a captured Kuomintang soldier after becoming a soldier of the People's Liberation Army, and shows the inevitability of the Kuomintang losing the hearts of the people and the Communist Party winning the final victory. The novel shows the daily life and emotional psychology of PLA soldiers in many ways, without political criticism and simple main theme penetration, full of authenticity, interest and readability.

Other short stories with military themes are mainly to express the emotions and lives of ordinary soldiers in peacetime. Shi Zhongshan's "One Soldier, One Dog, One Mountain" depicts the image of a loyal "veteran". Because of the task arrangement, the "veteran" was alone on the empty mountain, with only one dog with him, and only went down the mountain twice in 8 years, once betrothed and once became a relative. The short and repetitive calls with the female telegraph platoon every night became the only bright spot in his lonely soldier career. The novel presents the soft and rich inner world under the tough exterior of the soldier, and in the poetic narrative, "one soldier, one dog and one mountain" is like a solemn and solemn stick figure presented to the reader. Zeng Jian's "Toward the Sea" focuses on the excavation and display of the psychological trajectory and psychological roots of soldiers, praises the ordinary and great Shubian soldiers, and uses the symbolic image of "old man" to express the romantic feelings of Chinese soldiers and the life and death of the motherland and the sea frontier of the motherland. Wang Kai's "Scratches" attacks the human phenomena and corruption phenomena that exist in the current military through the comparison of the gap between the rich and the poor of the recruits and their personal experiences.

In various literary publications in 2015, the performance of science fiction novels attracted people's attention. In the seventh issue, People's Literature published three science fiction novels in one go: Liu Yukun's "Man on the Journey", Chen Qifan's "Ba Scale", and Bao Shu's "Falling into Darkness". "Man on the Journey" uses a non-fiction form to tell a trans-Pacific journey with a dislocation of time and space, and Liu Yukun uses "the tension between the ordinaryness of words and the mysterious forces in the plot to allow readers to see the miracle at a distance." The "Scales" in "Scales" are the author's imaginary humanoid rather than humanoid races, which "imitate human movements, are exquisite, and are not bad at all, so they become human dolls." After becoming an adult, the protagonist wants to understand the heart of "Ba Ling", pointing out the narrative theme of the work, that is, how we understand others by understanding ourselves. The insights about human nature and the universe in the novel expand our imagination of the world. "Falling into Darkness" embodies Baoshu's distinctive creative style. In terms of describing "the grandeur of the universe and the vastness of interstellar warfare" and "the infinite vastness of the world, the infinite smallness of human beings themselves", it is closer to Liu Cixin's works. The novel uses basic elements such as "doomsday", "artificial intelligence" and "survivors" to create a classic model of science fiction work, and the lines are full of jokes and irony, reflecting the reflection on the present.

In the short stories on the theme of officialdom, Yang Shaoheng's "You're Okay" is a masterpiece. The "mayor" who was "about to reach the limit" constantly ridiculed and ridiculed the "deputy mayor, repeatedly asked his subordinates, "Are you okay?", and vaguely revealed the repentant heart of the "mayor." The novel satirizes the moral state and subtle psychology of some officials under the national anti-corruption situation with a strong sense of presence, and the writing is restrained and sophisticated. Emma's "Something Happened Around Me" does not positively describe the corrupt situation of "Director Zhong", but dissects and excavates the secretive, wrinkled, and tortuous psychology of "Director Zhong's wife", so as to present the situation of confusion and fear brought by corruption.

Hu Xuemei's "Spiritual Clinic" is a novel that reflects workplace life. The newspaper's "Spiritual Clinic" column includes the world, and the mentally ill, suicidal, and people for various motives flock to the newspaper, and the crowd is noisy, collectively depicting the impetuous face of the times.

In recent years, Cai Jun's works have always stood out in the complex and convergent novel texts. His "A Night on the Tip of the Tongue" portrays the legendary life of a "foodie" with absurdity and suspense. Through the creation of mysterious scenes and atmospheres, and the extreme contrast of horror food, the novel shows the author's profound reflection on the darkness of human nature. The "cannibalism" part of the work coincides with the spirit of Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman", which highlights Cai Jun's unremitting pursuit on the road of classicization of the work.