The Paper's special correspondent Dzolan
Writer Shen Dacheng
Since the publication of her first short story collection "The Man Who Has Been Remembered Repeatedly" in 2017, Shen Dacheng has published her short story collections at a speed of nearly two years. Most of these works were published in the "Strange People" column of Sprout magazine. In the recently published third collection of short stories, "The Lost Man", Shen Dacheng writes about people who know the mysteries of the universe, tribal boys who intuitively perceive their people, clerks hiding in the depths of the garden...
These characters have no specific names and origins, are inherently given identity freedom and less practical qualities, but often stop and go because of some small dilemmas. In the author's own words, it's a bunch of people who "walk around" and "they're still walking back and forth in a certain range, trying to solve problems."
This is not the first time Shen Dacheng has written such a character. In "The Man Who Remembers Again", Poe, a boy with a long pocket on his body, lives in someone else's house, and from time to time he has to face the contempt of normal people. In the second short story collection, "Asteroids Fall in the Afternoon", in order to prevent being infected by the virus, a girl puts herself into a transparent box, and she becomes "Miss Boxman". Because this "Miss Box Man" coincides with some social conditions under the new crown epidemic, Shen Dacheng is also frequently "cared for" by readers. Shen Dacheng felt grateful for this, thanking someone for reading her short story. She didn't feel great about herself, and it seemed to her that fiction and reality were growing, and it was normal to meet at some point.
How do you understand her characters? Readers like me seem to be stuck in the same place when they think about this problem. Those strange, marginal, all kinds of people seem to be variations of you and me. Most of the time, we work like them, live ordinary lives, encounter problems, solve problems. Have we ever fantasized about having the qualities of these characters in order to experience a brief derailment with the real world? Even such a derailment may have to endure a little bit of embarrassment and misunderstanding.
When asked what kind of world he would like all his characters to live in, Shen Dacheng envisioned a world that was not fashionable, simplistic, slightly dilapidated and relaxed. Relaxation means tolerance. In the tense and too noisy reality of the present moment, the author uses her short stories and characters to open a series of half-hidden doors, allowing you and me to walk in with peace of mind at some unclear moments.
The following is the text of the interview.
The Paper: I would like to ask you about the general writing process of this "Lost Man".
Shen Dacheng: This book uses part of the manuscript written in the three years from 2018 to 2020. When I chose the title, I looked for stories that I felt were about "walking around" because there were some commonalities that were put together. Only one of the books was not published in Sprouts, which is a bit like a collection of my work published in Sprouts.
The Paper: Why the name "Lost Man"? I've found that none of the titles of your collection of short stories are from a specific title.
Shen Dacheng: We generally do book writing will first consider whether there is a suitable title in the book to use as the title of the book. The first book happens not to. At that time, I was in Ishikawa Peck's poetry collection (Note: I mentioned here is Ishikawa Peck's "The Taste of Things, I Tasted Too Early") and suddenly turned to a poem called "Home", which contains a sentence that reads , "This home that I have thought of many times over the years ..." I think the usage and phrase structure of "what I have remembered many times" is very good and suitable. In addition, my first book wrote about some marginalized people and strange people, so it was called "People Who Have Been Remembered Repeatedly".
The second book, Asteroids Fall in the Afternoon, almost uses the title of one of the articles, "A Ride at the End of the World." Later, it was not called, and then I thought about it and thought of "asteroid fell in the afternoon". "The Lost Man" is because I really can't find a title that is very suitable for the title of the book, so I thought of another one.
The Paper: Is it also because the title of the book "Lost" is in line with what you just said about the feeling of "walking around"?
Shen Dacheng: Yes, walking around. None of the people in my novels seem to have gotten some very open solutions, and they still walk back and forth within a certain range, trying to solve problems. What they have in common is walking around.
The Paper: Your characters are in this state of incompleteness but self-consistency, in your opinion, is this the norm in our lives?
Shen Dacheng: Yes, this is definitely our norm. But we are a dynamic self-consistency, and if we are static, it seems that we cannot use the word self-consistency, right? We are looking for solutions in the midst of change.
Hearing your question, I thought about my commuting to and from work, seeing people walking their walks, walking their dogs, and people with small children. Sometimes I see a grandfather or grandfather pushing a stroller to take a child out. Some old people can't quit smoking for decades, smoking while taking children, holding the hand that holds the cigarette as far away from the child as possible, and continues to push the stroller away, smoking from time to time. They need to bring children and can't give up cigarettes, so they use this seemingly funny way. This may be close to our state, not the best change, but also with the current situation. This is the self-consistency of the dynamics in my understanding.
The Paper: I think some of the short stories in "The Lost Man" such as "Economic Wintering Plan" and "Assassination Average" have strong dystopian overtones, can you understand your worries about the future?
Shen Dacheng: I don't usually think about my writing with such a grand word as "dystopian". As for how I think and how I summarize this setting in my novel, I would say that I like to set up a dilemma in the novel and let these people I choose find a way to solve it. I don't write about people who can overturn a dilemma, I just write about them surviving in a changing world. These people do think of a way, and if they can't think of a good solution, they think of a worse way, and the bad way also solves some of the problems. I feel like I'm writing about the opposition between "dilemma" and "finding a way."
When it comes to worrying about the future, I am also an ordinary person, and our worries about the future are the same, no difference, but my worries still have a sense of ease. A person just has his own life, each of us does not have to witness history endlessly, at a certain time will die, a new person to witness a good or bad future. I decided to worry only about my share. If the future is bad, I only share my share; if the future is particularly good, I can only enjoy my share. I am not blessed to be more good or bad.
The Paper: Your novels often write about urban space, how do you understand the relationship between space and us?
Shen Dacheng: I myself am a person who lives indoors, I don't like such an outdoor environment, most of my daily work and life are also indoors, maybe space is a closer way of survival for me. Architectural space is actually equivalent to a hole in modern people. If it is a primitive person, he is also in a primitive cave, and everyone has built the house very well now, and it is also a modern man's hole in terms of function.
The writer photographs the cat while walking
The Paper: Is the short story "Garden Unit" written by you based on your usual walking experience? I've heard that you often go for a walk at noon.
Shen Dacheng: Hmm. When I was a child, my mother worked in a hospital, which was a garden unit. When I was a child, there was no place to go in the winter and summer vacations, so I went to the cold nursery class and summer nursery class of my parents' unit, did not need to do homework well, played most of the time, and ran around in it. There are rockeries and green trees there.
Now I go to work, I want to go out for a walk after eating at noon, and I walked to a nearby hotel, which is also a garden unit, which is very suitable for walking, and on a few occasions I met my colleagues, which attracted us a lot. I want to write something while walking, because magazines that publish novels have time requirements, and when the time comes, they have to write.
Always trapped in this cycle of anxiety, thinking about what to write now, what to write below, and deciding to write this when I walk. With this place as the backdrop, I wrote Garden Units, using elements that fit very well with the garden-style hotel I was walking in. There are white cats inside, there are lawns, there are magnolias, and there are people who work nearby walking in it. They walked as if they were carrying secrets. I rarely see two or three people walking without talking, always having to say something, and this gesture seems to be clearing secrets. That place helped me write this.
The Paper: I think your characters enjoy thin but resilient emotions with each other, and it seems that contradictions are natural and natural. How do you understand this emotion in this fast-food environment, the pursuit of change and renewal?
Shen Dacheng: Isn't our environment just applying this emotion? In this changing environment, the relationship between people and people will be thinner. That doesn't mean people are bad. For example, I myself have experienced this kind of good emotion between human beings, a long time, a lot of trust in each other, always feel that what happens in the future, the other party will not betray like now, or say what you say privately, I believe it should not be. Of course, it's also because I'm not chasing feelings that aren't very strong or are superficially utilitarian.
I myself don't want to focus on the theme of the relationship between men and women, I love to write about the kind of cleaner, a little bit of a pingshui encounter, everyone has a different background, and finally produces an emotional connection. I feel like if I had that feeling myself, I would feel more comfortable and less stressed.
The Paper: The Characters in your novels, including the tone and rhythm of the narrative, have a stable sense of order, moving forward step by step. Would you like to ask you if you are a person who values order in your daily life?
Shen Dacheng: There is a school of view that it is best to write a novel that is completely conceived, rather than writing a part and thinking about the next part. But because I often write here because of the rhythm of my work, I think about what to write below, and I rarely conceive the novel in its entirety. From this point of view - I am actually answering your question, it is not orderly. This rule is not established, and it is often relied on the part that has been written to think about how to write below. But in this process, I did not fully think about how to arrange the actions of the characters, and the characters are also slowly thinking about what to do next, but perhaps they have the methodical and rational way to deal with some problems, so as to obtain a sense of order.
As for my own sense of order, if these billions of people in society had an average sense of order index, I think I might go a little beyond that. I'm still able to do things pretty much by following a set of norms I've set up, and I don't like to have my plans disrupted, but I don't have any big plans either. What to do today and what to do tomorrow, just this little plan.
The Paper: Many of your short stories use a male perspective, associated with the neutral or even masculine pen name of "Shen Dacheng", and want to ask why more male perspectives are used?
Shen Dacheng: My name was Shen Dacheng at the beginning, more or less because my name was too feminine. In the end, if a person can create something, he may first create a different thing than he has. So I use a pen name that is more masculine.
I also make secret assumptions every day. For example, I now have the opportunity to become two people, one is an extremely beautiful woman, the other is a big man, who am I going to become? In the current environment, I may choose the latter. For example, if I take the subway in the morning and walk on the road, there are more people coming in the same direction as me, and there are very few people in the same direction, and I find that no one will give you a road that is wide for one person. Every now and then, I just think I'm a big man. Will social resources be tilted enough toward the weak? I think women's sense of security and space are too weak.
It's another thing that I use a male perspective when I write novels. It's not that I'm more of a masculine person and more of a male, I just think the male perspective is better to use. It would be complicated to write about women, and I don't know much about how to write about women, which is very distressing. The men I write about are not socially standardized men, they are the kind of men who think about it, are more introverted, and can be said to be partial to neutralization.
The Paper: How do you understand gender differences? What do you think of the current gender environment?
Shen Dacheng: I have a very good friend, she said something to me, I think it is quite reasonable. She said that in her relationship with female friends, she found that women will become feminists at a certain stage. The kind of people she says that will become feminists refer to people who are changing. In a company, for example, a promoted woman is close to a more solid, male leadership team, and she will have a different experience than the environment in which she was once in the lower class. It occurred to me that if a woman is in an environment where there is no change, the things around her do not change relative to her. Because there is no relative displacement and relative speed, she is not aware of her true coordinates and speed, and she will not question and oppose the current situation.
Other journalists have asked why I don't write about women, and I used to think it was okay, I don't think there's a problem with writing about men. After being asked a few times, I was indeed a little ashamed. I wonder if female writers should write more about women? Write about some powerful women. But I'm not at that level at the moment. Later, I wondered if I could respond to this question in a simple way—I confessed that I was a female writer, and if I could achieve anything personally, I would give credit to female writers to help female writers write. Thinking about it this way, maybe I have a little contribution to women's writing, and I'm really looking forward to writing about great women.
The Paper: I think of "The Mouth" in your short story collection, about how a girl with a cat's tongue kissed, and I felt very delicate, unlike other short stories.
Shen Dacheng: This article is different from others, it was written in 2016. I wanted to put it in the second book, but the second book also had a little story about people and cats, so I wondered if it would be repeated. I sense that I am changing, slowly changing, and what I have written in recent years may be a little similar, and I want to take this one from 2016 and break the sense of similarity. Let's help your recent self by helping your past self and creating a different atmosphere for your book.
The first collection of short stories, "The Man Who Remembers Again and Again"
The Paper: I love your first short story collection, Pocket Man, about a group whose skin grows pockets, a pocket boy's friendship with a normal boy. The characters are close to the neutral, restrained male figure you mentioned. Can you tell us about your inspiration for this article?
Shen Dacheng: I tried to recall it, but I can't remember it. I guess I was just trying to write about a person with animal features. In addition, it is written at the beginning that it is snowing at the airport, as if it was because I once went to Japan to play, and on the way back from Sapporo to Shanghai, the airport was snowing. A lot of inspiration is hard to trace, or it can be hard to think about, and I don't think inspiration is floating around. I have to come up with something now, to identify an idea that can be expanded out of a limited selection, and write it according to that idea. If you keep thinking, you can constantly expand your ideas and write them out at the end.
The second short story collection "Asteroid Falls in the Afternoon"
The Paper: In your second short story collection, "Miss Box Man", you write about the human world under the invasion of the virus, which coincides with our current situation, how does your novel foresee reality feel to you?
Shen Dacheng: I was very grateful. Some friends and strange netizens will show me the bitter news of "there is a person who puts himself in a transparent ball to act" and "a passage at the entrance of the community has been built to spray disinfectant water". Because sometimes I wonder if novels are read, especially short story collections. My own experience is that a person can read a short story collection, which is a very high demand, and it is difficult to expect. Now someone has given you feedback, you have really read this article, and give a real-life example to compare with your novel, this situation I am very grateful.
But it doesn't create the feeling of "I'm amazing", it doesn't happen at all. I think that novels rely on the real world to imagine and develop, and the real world itself is also changing, and at a certain point in time, the two coincide. It means that both have grown and have not stayed in place. The language of the novel does not stay at the level of complete imitation of reality, and reality does not stay unchanged, so it is normal that they meet again.
In the past, when I worked in an advertising agency, I often had to divergent ideas for products, and whenever you think of a concept, others will also think of it. Whether it is a colleague or an advertising book, some people have already thought about the concept of this advertisement, and people's minds will meet.
The Paper: How do you feel your life has changed in the era of the epidemic?
Shen Dacheng: I have the impression that there is a period of time when people do not have to go to the unit every day to report, at first I thought that personal time had become more, but later I found out that there was no. After life was relatively normalized, many values changed, for example, when it came to writing, it seemed to be a little shaken. The weight of everything has changed, is it really important to write about this kind of thing? At present, there are so many strange things happening in society, how can the strange things you write resonate with others? These still caused trouble and affected me. But there seems to be no way to solve these problems, so I make up for life and writing. There is no clear guiding ideology for everyone.
The Paper: Having written so many eccentric and imaginary characters, do you have a preference for any of them?
Shen Dacheng: I like the children I write about. Like the two children in "Pocket Man", the silkworm child in "The Lost Man", and the twins in "Boy Toto". The child in "Silkworm Raising Children" came from my way to work once, and I saw two children after class, both holding a box for silkworm breeding, and I later wrote this article based on this. I think maybe we've become accustomed to the world, but in the eyes of a child who has just begun to understand the world, is he unable to understand that there are four states of a thing? The silkworm has four states, and he loves one of them alone, what if he doesn't want it to become another state? How does this love last? I think so. When I write about children, I feel very emotional.
Does our world sometimes feel that nothing is good? A little pessimistic about a lot of things, or feel different from what you expected, but when you see the children in life, you will feel that they are trying to understand the world, and he appreciates what you don't want, and he tries to understand this society. I think it's interesting, I love the kids I write about.
The Paper: If there was a world where all the characters in your novels could be placed, what kind of world would you like to be?
Shen Dacheng: I don't think the world is too fashionable, maybe it's a slightly broken, very relaxed world. Because the people I write about always think and think, and don't act much after thinking through the problems. They don't have a high need for material things, and they pay great attention to listening to what others are saying and observing what others are doing, and they are quite kind. These people have no names, and if they want to refer to someone to each other, they can only refer to some of the other person's characteristics or occupations. For example, people who will say "people who rub glass", "children who like to raise silkworms", or "people with skin diseases" may use this title to call each other. This world is much less burdensome than our current world, and it is a more simplistic world.
The Paper: I read your other interviews before, and you said you liked Bolaño. Do you have any other writers besides him who you like or admire?
Shen Dacheng: Yes, but my likes do not exceed those of ordinary people. The words of other writers are what ordinary people see and what I see, and I can't say anything about reading.
The Paper: Have you been reading any novels lately?
Shen Dacheng: None of what I've been reading lately is a novel. I read a book about spies called Spy and Betrayal. I also watched J.A. Baker's "Peregrine Falcon", which talks about the life of a peregrine falcon, a bird of prey, and I haven't finished reading it for a while. Usually, if I have communication with the publishing house, I will still read any books given to me. But you can't talk like a critic or a very good writer, you just can't say it.
The Paper: Do you have a new writing plan? It is said that you want to try writing novellas.
Shen Dacheng: Still at the level of thinking, I have not found time. My current work pace is similar to that of the past few years, and I still write short stories. But I think writing short stories may solidify. Now the rhythm of writing short stories or grasping the tone of the novel may solidify in the same space over time, and it should be changed in a way, so I will say that I aspire to write a longer novel. It's like changing a training ground, doing some self-training on yourself, developing yourself. But it hasn't started yet, and it's still a short story, similar to the last two books.
Editor-in-Charge: Fang Xiaoyan
Proofreader: Yan Zhang