Reporter | Dong Ziqi
Edit | Yellow Moon
As night falls, the boy's room transforms into a submarine, the desk becomes a console, the glass in front reveals the deep sea, and he and his co-pilot Pikachu and the team member Myo Frog Seed sail in the sea together. Pikachu says that Pika Pika means Captain Chan Let's go; Frog Seed says seed seed means everything is ready...
Such fantasy images come from Chen Chuncheng's novel "Submarine at Night". His collection of short stories of the same name was published a few days ago, including "The Cut Cloud", "The Winemaker", and "The Musician". These stories have similar fantasy elements, and to some extent they also tell stories about addiction—when people are immersed in a certain skill, they can reach a state of commonality with heaven and earth: those who are addicted to couplets, when the couplets are complete, will hear the cry of the phoenix, and at the same time the frost of heaven; the winemaker's wine mixed with the five elements has endless black and magnificent nebulae, and everyone who has seen this altar wine is dismissive of worldly affairs.
Where does this mysterious interest come from extending from a skill to everything in the universe, from the imagination of small events to more general, grander and more abstract associations? What texts or experiences influenced his writing? Interface Culture (ID: Booksandfun) connects with Chen Chuncheng and talks to him about the art of mountain qi, pokémon, fatalism and short stories in his novels.
<h3>Mountain fantasy</h3>
Chen Chuncheng's hometown is in mindong, Fujian, a small county town among the mountains. "People feel more peaceful around the mountains, and every day when they look at the horizon around them, they can see the curve of the ridge." Chen Chuncheng said that when he was a child, he liked to run into the mountains, and also noticed the wasteland between cities and cities, counties and counties, a place where almost no one went up except for villagers to chop firewood, and he was fascinated by the area, "It is neither as beautiful as tourist attractions, with elaborate scenic spots, nor is it the kind of primitive forest that is completely reckless." "He remembers that when his father took him back to the county town from Fuzhou when he was a child, a small beast— I don't know if it was a squirrel or a weasel— flashed past the headlights, only to see shiny fur." There seem to be countless secrets in the mountains, and these secrets are running in a way that people can't understand," said Chen Chuncheng, who sometimes thinks that when driving through the mountain roads, he sometimes thinks that in the woods or on the top of the mountain, maybe a small animal is looking at him.
The fascination with this mysterious area also permeated his writings, most notably the short stories "Zhufeng Temple" and "The Book of Cutting Clouds". "Zhufeng Temple" revolves around a temple in the middle of a wasteland, on the road from Ningde to Pingnan Panshan, through the mountain tunnel, in just twenty seconds, "I" saw a corner of the black cornice exposed in the forest, which gave rise to curiosity; in the summer vacation after graduating from college, "I" went up the mountain to visit Zhufeng Temple and met the monk Benpei of the same age on the mountain; six years later, I went up the mountain again, my mood was different, and I also knew the historical past of the temple. "Cut Clouds" is the story of the employees of the "Cloud Administration" located in the mountains, the protagonist's duties include trimming the clouds, maintaining the machine, a person's mountain life is quite comfortable, the sound of moss can be heard at dawn, the chanting of various birds and beasts can be listened to for free at night, he packs up his work, and in his spare time, he goes down the grassy path to the nearest station to catch a ride.
When it comes to Zhufeng Temple, Chen Chuncheng did see a roof on the top of the mountain on the way back to his hometown, but it was not a temple, but an abandoned village. But he said that temples like Zhufeng Temple do exist in his hometown, and how people in the novel go up the mountain is the same as people in reality. In "Zhufeng Temple", "I" first took a country bus to get off at a nearby stop, and then hiked to the foot of the mountain to find a way up the mountain, and halfway met a small mountain beast - "The mountain road is still easy to walk, mostly dirt roads, and the difficult places are cushioned with stones." Halfway up the mountainside, a small beast popped out of the bushes, stood still far away in the moonlight, glanced at me, and hurriedly turned around and jumped into the forest. ”
The monk Hui Hang in the temple is like an entrepreneur, good at navigating different groups of people, which is also based on the image of monks and nuns he saw in real life. Some readers noticed that Hui Hang was similar to Wang Zengqi's nun Renhui, and asked Chen Chuncheng if the two were related, saying that this image of a monk and nun who had joined the world was quite common in his hometown. While his grandfather was sick in bed, someone called for the door one day, "It was a Yangzhou monk, riding an electric care, carrying a carton of milk and a hand string to visit, because grandpa had donated money to his temple before." This is quite a monk. He had also chatted with monks who had graduated from a Buddhist college and stayed in the local area, and felt that their coordinate system was not the same as that of the people of the world, that is, a state of being neither worldly nor particularly addicted to it.
<h3>"Technique is close to the Tao"</h3>
Attentive readers can find that several novels included in "Submarine at Night", such as "The Color Pen", "The Winemaker" and "Cut clouds", have similar story trends. The protagonists are immersed in different categories of knowledge and art in order to achieve the Tao of communication with all things in the world, whether it is winemaking ("The Brewer"), casting swords ("Shakubo") or music ("Musician"), all of which use different techniques as carriers to achieve the same realm.
In "The Color Pen", the protagonist gets a magical color pen, with the help of which he has an epiphany of the clumsiness and inadequacy of previous writing, and captures the brilliance of all things in the world, but what this pen writes will disappear into nothing once it touches others, except for the writer himself, no one can witness the ecstasy of writing, the novel gives an explanation: "For the universe, any adjective is invalid, the universe is neither beautiful nor ugly, so the beauty and ugliness of the whole universe should be equal, and the sum of the two should be zero." "In "The Winemaker", in order to make the best wine, the winemaker combines the turquoise old spring wine, the crimson Kunlun Dai, the milky white nameless wine, the black locust wine and the golden Zhenyi wine into one, and the five colors of the wine in the altar exclude each other, merge with each other, and eventually return to emptiness, the drinker is forgotten by the world, and the people who have seen the wine altar have been dismissive of the world ever since.
The "I" in "The Book of Cutting Clouds" also pursues different kinds of learning, and is wary of falling into the "infinite cave" of learning. When "I" was on the mountain, I first studied marine paleontology, some knowledge was deposited in the brain like corals, some were like a school of fish that covered the sky, until I dreamed of a dragon, I stopped learning; then I studied the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, from the clues of the early Qing Dynasty notes to the study of Taoist terminology, and later dreamed of the red fire of the 14th century, and then I knew that it should be stopped, because if I continued to study, "I" would fall into these caves and could not get out of it for the rest of my life. "I" descended the mountain and entered a tube building, witnessing more people who had fallen into the cave all their lives and could not get rid of the study, some spent their lives studying the identity of Jack the Ripper, some people tried to restore the lost musical instruments, some people delved into cryptography, some people were bent on proving the four-color conjecture, the old man who was obsessed with the couplet believed this statement, the words of the couplet came from the immortal verses, and once the couplet was closed, it reached the end of all word games, "The words of the world will disappear completely, and the universe will return to the sacred silence." What is profound is that when the old man exchanged with "me" about the relationship between life and the cave, he said, "Some people are doomed to fall into something, and they can't get around it." Some people will not, live a lifetime outside of caves and traps, live as well as well, usually better. ”
Chen Chuncheng said that he especially feels the same way about people who are immersed in their own world and skills, because he is also at this stage and yearns for the realm of "technology is close to the Tao". He cites "laughter and floating life is worrying, being able to specialize in art is a good strategy" and "human feelings must be sent, and then being able to be happy" to explain this obsession with knowledge and skills, and regards Wang Zengqi's "Chicken and Duck Masters" and "Artists" and Ah Cheng's "Chess King" and "Tree King" as examples of "skills close to the Tao".
<h3>Poetic soothing</h3>
When his mind was more confused, Chen Chuncheng said that he still wanted to return to ancient Chinese texts, and he had read a lot of Su Shi, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and Wei Yingwu in the past two years, "Some people think that the ancients were naïve in their understanding of the world, there are indeed some aspects, but in terms of conditioning the state of mind, the ancients were the best at it." "Round lotus floating small leaves, fine wheat falling light flowers" (Du Fu), "Bamboo outside the peak is partial to the dawn, vine yin water is cooler" (Wang Wei), "summoning guests sencha mountain shop far away, watching people get the rice noon breeze cool" (Huang Tingjian), "Qingfeng River on the autumn sails, white emperor city edge ancient wood sparse" (Gao Shi), in recent years, these verses have given Chen Chuncheng a great deal of comfort. In the novel, we can also see the imprint of this mental influence - the "I" in "Zhufeng Temple" sits on the stone steps outside the temple gate, watching the sky darken a little, thinking of the passage of Liu Zongyuan's "Journey to the Feast of the Western Mountains", "The twilight is clear, from afar, to nothing and still do not want to return." The heart condenses and dissolves, and merges with Wanhua. The novel writes about "I" watching the sunset outside the temple gate, almost an explanation of "the mind is concentrated and dissolved, and the ten thousand are meditative", "in the sky that darkens little by little, everything seems irrelevant." You panic a little, then you're relieved, and then you don't exist. ...... Melts again and again in the cracks of dusk and night. It's hard to go back to the real world, pick up self-motivation, and try to be a worldly achiever. ”
In addition to poetic comfort, Chen Chuncheng was also inspired by the theoretical level of literature and art in ancient poetry. He said, "Su Shi quoted two sentences from Confucius: one is 'cida', which means that the words can only express the meaning; the other is 'not far from the text', which means that the literary style is not good and cannot be passed on for a long time." Are these two sentences contradicting themselves? Not really. He explained, "The really good writing is Da, Da is not uneducated, if you can be poor and wonderful, write out the feelings that millions of people can't describe, it is the best writing, depicting how the rain falls, how the flowers fall, how the clouds flow, as long as you can describe the state of that moment, this poem can be passed down through the ages, it is immortal, and it does not have to contain any world-famous sayings and philosophies." If you can retain a beautiful moment in the universe and in your heart, this is equivalent to another kind of great deed. This concept can also be glimpsed in the "Chuancai Pen", after the protagonist gets a chuancai pen, he wants to write the veins of grass leaves, the texture of the flowing water, the sounds of the forest at night, even a second, a cubic meter, and finally decides to write the truly immortal things, and even the whole universe into the body.
In the interview, Chen Chuncheng also talked about the art of short stories, and he believes that the thickness of the plot has little to do with the novel's good looks. For example, Wang Zengqi's plot is light, but his novels are good. Writing about the life of a person who gets up early to make a burnt cake and sells a brine day, the language and details are well written, and the plot is no longer important at this time, much better than some office storms, who cheated with whom or who killed whom. He also talked about his fascination with Borges's fantasies and narrative methods, looking for a sense of language from Chekhov's writings, and when writing "The Musician" (Soviet background), the sense of language could not be like "Zhufeng Temple", so he watched Rulong's translation of Chekhov for a while.
In addition, he also expressed his views on the popular "New Yorker" style novels, "Now many foreign novels are the style of the New Yorker, the beginning is a few names, dialogue, not very business plot, daily beginning, faintly meaningful ending, this is a clever way to write, but the old so written, many people are written like this, a little tired of reading. Chen Chuncheng said that he did not like the names and dialogues of people, and did not point out the character relationship for a long time before he understood the writing, as if the character relationship had become the biggest suspense of the novel. He believes that the writing style of "The New Yorker" is easy to look like a silent master, but it is dangerous for beginners, "because some basic techniques still have to be mastered, such as the management of the plot, the technique of rhetoric, the switching of scenes, the accuracy of metaphors, and you can't just throw it away at the beginning." He also added that the plot is not only external, but also inward, just like "Chuancai Pen", the characters are static, the plot takes place in his mind, "the characters sometimes do not necessarily run back and forth, as usual, handing over people, a person out of the mind for a moment, the illusion that passes through the brain is not necessarily inferior to the whole "Roselle Endowment". ”
<h3>- Dialogue with Chen Chuncheng -</h3>
Interface Culture: Although Pokémon is very popular all over the world, it is the first time it has been seen in a novel. Can you talk about Pokémon?
Chen Chuncheng: I only wrote about Pokémon in "Submarine". Fantasy Bikachu and Myo Frog Seeds are with me, it's true, they're two of my favorites, Bikachu is a little more lively, And Myo Frog Seeds are quieter and gentler. When I was a kid, I was very obsessed with Pokémon with a group of friends from my neighborhood, and called Pokemon at the time, I thought it was a bit boring to have a world where Pokémon didn't exist. I only acknowledge the legitimacy of the first two hundred and fifty-one Pokémon, and the later they are drawn, the worse they are, and the design is too sloppy. Mainly like the shape design of the elves and the attributes and personality, they have a good classification method, there are fire, water, electricity, wood, a bit like our ancient Chinese five elements, in line with the order of all things.
The stories of the elves are quite interesting, and some of them will bury some deep stems. For example, there is an episode of the lighthouse of the fast dragon, about the lighthouse attracted a mysterious giant beast, the giant beast believes that the fog horn is the same kind, and the giant beast is the fast dragon, this story was born from the science fiction writer Bradbury's "Fog Horn", I found out a few years ago that this stem was hidden in it. There is also a monster called Dream , the legendary Pokémon that roams the world, floating under the seabed or under the moon in space , in the form of a lilac kitten, full of mystery and a sense of silence. "Submarine" is indeed a personal fantasy of childhood, imagining your room as a submarine, and at night this environment will move away from its original position and venture into the sea.
Interface Culture: There is also a fox in "The Book of Cutting Clouds" that can talk, is this born from the ancient Chinese Zhi Monster?
Chen Chuncheng: It may not be Zhi Wei or "Liaozhai", it may be Naoko Anfang or Haruki Murakami. Why can't there be foxes? It's an age when a fox can talk and doesn't really need the author to explain or make a fuss, and I didn't want to define it as a fairy tale or serious literature when I wrote it.
Interface culture: it does not have to be implemented, but the implementation loses the mysterious interest.
Chen Chuncheng: The core of "Zhufeng Temple" looks like a weakened detective novel, with a lead to hiding and finding, but I want to talk about not external objects, but how a person subdues and settles his heart, and that sense of impermanence is a real feeling. In the past, I especially liked a road in the county town, which was the road to and from school every day in my junior high school, and there were many green brick houses built in the 1980s and 1990s on both sides, dormitory tube buildings in some units, and the alleys on the street were very familiar places, scenes that I often dreamed of. Now that I close my eyes and remember it, one day suddenly there is no more, and I feel impermanent at that time. For a child, growing up in an old house since childhood, he felt that this was as long as heaven and earth, and he could not imagine what the world would be like before this thing, nor could he imagine that it would disappear. This disappearance gives people the feeling of having no one to rely on. "Zhufeng Temple" is actually a simple story about placement.
Interface Culture: You mentioned in previous events that you believe in fatalism and believe in its aesthetics. Can you expand on that?
Chen Chuncheng: I don't believe, as mentioned in the novel, just appreciate its aesthetic value—there is a kind of coldness, and its falsifiability—and question its behavior is also contained in fate. What we now generally believe is that the universe is the aimless sum of time and space, with a little less beauty and order than fatalism. Sometimes it's fun to put aside reason and allow yourself to briefly experience the cold of fatalism. And the time loop that Borges was obsessed with, everything that happened would happen again in great detail, and there was a little stability in the vertigo. This is nothing new.
Interface Culture: Can you share the genre of literary reading other than pure literary reading?
Chen Chuncheng: I don't like very hard science fiction, but I like "Nine Billion Names of God" and Ted Ginger's "Babylon Tower". "Nine Billion Names of God" enhances the divinity of the text, and the ending is very neat, and if it is unfolded, it is a very ordinary novel. At the end of "Babylon Tower", their heavens and earth are connected at the end, like a carved roller, and compared with their world, our spherical world is much worse. In fact, in ancient times, there was a similar world view, the sky was round, and the land floated on the back of the giant.
I am a fan of speculative fiction, and if Conan had only written a few pieces sporadically without forming the category of speculative fiction, Holmes's Musgrave Ritual Case, Six Busts of Napoleon, and Gold-Rimmed Nose Glasses could all be small masterpieces in the short story. I'm not particularly interested in the high-IQ puzzles of detective novels, but I like the atmosphere, watching "The Hound of baskerville" as a child, especially obsessed with the ancient manor house in the wilderness, the fog, the mud swamp, seeing a flickering candlelight in the darkness from the window of the promenade late at night, and someone in the depths of the wilderness is playing a code.