The Paper's reporter Gao Dan intern Zhao Mengyuan
Lu Xun wrote in "This Is Also Life": "Endless distances, countless people, are related to me. "As far as the eye can see, there is no end, there is no end. The title of the young writer Shi Xiaohan's new book prose collection "Endless Distance" is derived from this. The book chronicles the author's year of study and travels in France. In the process of narration, she understood, adapted, and integrated into the life of a small French town from the perspective of a foreigner, and also learned how to get along with herself.
The author Shi Xiaohan (first from the right) has a dialogue with the critic Wang Gan, the writer Nanxiang, Hu Ligen, and so on.
In a recent "Picking Up Thin Starlight in the Fragments of Life - "Endless Distance" Book Launch", the author Shi Xiaohan had a dialogue with critic Wang Gan, writer NanXiang, Hu Ligen, etc., and expressed their views on the important "eating" elements in "Endless Distance", and also shared their "far and near" with readers, exploring the relationship between the individual, the hometown and the far side.
"Endless Distance" book cover
Regarding the title of the book "Endless Distance", Wang Gan put forward a reflection: Why do we like far away places so much? "Shenzhen is a city of immigrants. One of the biggest problems with modern people, especially those who immigrate to cities, is that they do not have a homeland. A modern person in the true sense has no hometown, which is also a problem that is difficult for us modern people to solve. ”
Wang Gan said, "What is hometown?" The first is the landscape of the hometown, the second is the accent of the hometown, and the third is the food of the hometown. For the younger generation, they can't find the feeling of hometown in Shenzhen, why? First, accents. Children in Shenzhen have no accent. When I went to Guangzhou, I met many children in Guangzhou who have accents, where is there a hometown without an accent? The second is that there is no food. We have eaten all over the country and all over the world in Shenzhen, but which kind of food is the food of Shenzhen's hometown? So I was thinking, why do Shenzhen people love to go out so much? Why love far away so much? They went far away to find their homeland. Therefore, Shi Xiaohan's writing about food or writing about the city is a search for a spiritual homeland for a person without a hometown. She wanted to build a food home through her words. ”
Shi Xiaohan
Shi Xiaohan also agrees with this point of view, she said: "Some time ago, reading Wang Shuo's book, there is a sentence in it that he is particularly envious of those who grew up in small places, because when they look back on their childhood and hometown, the memory lens may be a withered, poor, and very ordinary place in the eyes of outsiders, but for them, their memories have an end. Those of us who grew up in big cities look back blank because we don't have our own dialect, we don't have our own food, and we're missing a lot of memories. Before I wrote "I have some thoughts, separated from the distant countryside", I went to travel to all parts of China, to taste, to explore their customs and customs. But for me, these foods are more related to appetite. But in Endless Distance, these foods become sustenance with more profound meaning. ”
Nan Xiang believes that a good prose essay, when walking and observing, needs information, needs to be laid out, needs documentary, and also needs appropriate self-deprecation, so as to reveal the author's self-confidence, self-consistency and generosity. When Shi Xiaohan summed up the creation of his book, he said: "What I wrote in the book makes you feel that it is not so related to the romantic, high-level, literary and artistic capital of France, but the most real thing that is related to our lives." Immerse myself in other people's cultures as best I can, and look at their cultures, lives, and societies without hesitation. ”
For example, Shi Xiaohan said that during the French strike, there was often no way to attend classes, "At the beginning, we Chinese students were particularly afraid, saying what should I do?" Watching the fire on the news, I said to my friend, he said I envy you, our school is relatively remote, it has not been blocked, we still have to go to school. The first time I looked at other people's cultures from the perspective of others, it turned out that others were thinking about things in this way, and I thought it was interesting. In a situation like this, I don't just write about how many countries and cities I've been to, not just about where I've visited and what many people've seen—it's going to inspire me, but it doesn't really create something different. What is really different must be found in the perhaps not so glamorous side of life. ”
Hu Ligen said that this book is discovered from ordinary life and obtains an extraordinary understanding. He said: "It is not easy to write a beautiful life, but it is the beauty of life itself after all. And to write a very ordinary life very tastefully, this is not the taste of life itself, but precisely the taste of literature. ”
Shi Xiaohan said: "I use small details, more interesting stories that can mobilize the reader's emotions, to show what the living conditions and society are like over there. I hope that through this book, you will feel like you are reading my diary. The book lands in the 'About Me' section. When we read the travelogue, we don't feel any sense of substitution, we think it's beautiful and interesting, but that's it. I think the most important thing is that people, whether it's in the midst of the pandemic, or in life, or in any situation, these people, what they think, their safety, everything they do has to do with me, and that's what this book wants to say the most. ”
Yin Changlong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of Shenzhen Publishing Group Co., Ltd., said of Shi Xiaohan's writing: "I saw Shenzhen in Shi Xiaohan, saw the second generation of Shenzhen, and saw where a city and a country might arrive. There are many great truths in life, life has a big sky, life has great ambitions, but the implementation is every ordinary person, every ordinary meal. Life doesn't need to be too big, just let us rest assured, let us have a moment of calm. Everyone has a different understanding of the far side, but we always hope to have this far side, and after having the far side, everything in front of us will not become too cringe. ”
As one of the representatives of the new generation of young writers in Shenzhen, Shi Xiaohan's works also reflect the cultivation achievements of the Shenzhen Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature in the reading and writing of young people. Zhang Zhongliang, full-time vice chairman of the Shenzhen Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, said at the press conference: "Shenzhen is a great city, and in the past 40 years, this era has brought many opportunities to Shenzhen, especially it has shaped the young generation of Shenzhen - their cultural background, their experience, such a vision and the kind of empathy and empathy that they have caused in their hearts, which is exactly what many young readers like now and in the future." There are many young people like Shi Xiaohan who are rising and developing writing in Shenzhen, such as genre literature, such as science fiction literature, environmental protection literature, animal literature, etc. This phenomenon deserves our attention. I think that the literary environment in Shenzhen will give more space and soil to growing authors to create literary styles that are in line with the love of young readers today and in the future. I look forward to the birth of more young authors in this city who conform to the trend of our times, and write richer works to repay the city and this era. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Liu Wei