Afterword to "Lishui 1943"
Tian Manlin
There are many reasons that led me to create this work. When I was very young, I heard the word "Japanese devil" more than once from the small talk of my elders. People said these words with horror and nervousness, as if they were talking about a devil. Despite the low level of comprehension, seeing the complex expressions on their faces and somewhat exaggerated movements, my intuition told me that what they were involved with was a topic that made each other nervous, unlike years, floods, droughts, and the like. They went a step further and said that the Japanese devils were coming, and everyone was hiding in which cave or mountain... Yun Yun will be afraid, and naturally think: If one day the Japanese devils come again, where should we hide?
The devil never came again, but this symbol was firmly remembered. When I was a teenager, I didn't think in detail about why Japanese devils came, what they did, what they looked like... Although I didn't know why I was afraid, the shadow was stationed in the inadvertent small talk of the elders until childhood. Later, I read the story of the War of Resistance in the textbook, sang the songs of the War of Resistance with my classmates, especially saw the image of Japanese devils in the movie, saw them brutally slaughter the Chinese people, burned the village... So much so that I read countless articles about the War of Resistance, watched more film and television works, listened to some lectures, had a deep understanding of the devils and the reasons for fear, and had a comprehensive understanding of that period of history from sensibility to rationality, from partial to comprehensive.
Until one day, I saw with my own eyes the trenches, observation posts, machine gun positions, and so on on the hill near the county seat. Such a large-scale combat fortification was actually at my side—I was a little afraid and uneasy. Through some research, I am convinced that these fortifications were built by the Chinese army to resist the Japanese army, and that the Chinese and Japanese armies fought fiercely here. The war is not far away, more than seventy years ago, it happened on both sides of the Yellow River, in the Yangtze River Basin, and it happened in this land around me. In order to prevent the Japanese army from entering the southwest, the Chinese army built fortifications along the Yangtze River Basin and along the Wuling Mountains. The Stone Monument Fortress of the Three Gorges and the Gateway to Western Hunan are important passes for the Chinese army to defend the capital Chongqing. Around 1943, the area was full of wars, smoke and smoke, and lives were destroyed... What are the details? Through searching, collecting, and visiting everywhere, I actually met veterans who had participated in the Battle of Changde, Zunyi had a major of the Seventy-fourth Army, Yiyang had a company commander of a special service company, Hengyang had a director of a field hospital, Tongren had a sapper, Shimen had an artilleryman, and Yuqing County had a literary and artistic soldier... In particular, in 2014, I met Zhang Zhengguo, a veteran of the Special Agent Company of the Provisional Fifth Division of the Seventy-third Army, in Zhijiang. They have a common identity – anti-war veterans. After many years, many past events have become clouds, but their memories of the war are quite clear. They clearly remembered the names of the troops and the names of their commanders, and they could sing the military songs of that year word for word, and even remembered many of the place names of Cili and how they fought in Cili. And the local people can accurately describe the situation of the Japanese plane dropping bombs, where the house was burned, where the body of the Japanese army was buried, where the national army lived, whose family was killed by the Japanese army, which people were humiliated by the Japanese army... From their faces, I saw the expressions I had seen as children, fear, emotion, sighing, hating; hearing their common voices: cursing, accusations. The past is reproduced through the stories of the old people.
This is a fragmented history, but also a valuable asset, my mind has been wandering in the stories of the old people for a long time, trying my best to imagine the real scene at that time. In the folk, I have heard some people say that the Battle of Changde was mainly fought fiercely in Changde, and Shimen and Cili did not fight; others said that the Fifty-eighth Division lost the battle in Cili and retreated to Taoyuan, and there are even people who do not know that the Battle of Changde has affected Cili, and do not know that the footsteps of foreign aggression have run rampant in more than ten townships and towns in Cili, and they did not expect that the pain still remained in the hearts of the old people.
The past cannot be ignored, the truth cannot be covered up, and history cannot be altered. Perhaps, the annals of archival history will involve this history to some extent, but there will certainly be no vivid narration of witnesses, the stories of anti-war veterans and local elderly people, the burning of the county town, the combat fortifications all over the mountains, and the bones of heroic martyrs. What should I say, can I say it clearly? Is it not to write? For this reason, I struggled for more than half a year.
Excavating local culture and boosting the national spirit is the mission of our cultural workers. In 2014, after participating in the creation, filming and production of the script of the documentary film "Cili Resistance Battle", I was still unfinished, and I began to conceive my own novel concept, because this is the best way to show this theme in a three-dimensional and comprehensive way. The creation of the novel is a painful expedition of a person. How to shape the characters, how to unfold the plot, and then the thickness and penetration of the work, these are not things that can be checked on the Internet and consulted by others. Only by relying on their own understanding, drawing on the achievements of others, finding a line from many materials, and skillfully stringing together the content that needs to be expressed. Before I started writing, I remembered the TV series "Blood Xiangxi" with the same theme, and hesitated for nearly a year. An abandoned house near the county seat has become a place I often visit, staying for more than half a day or late at night. I pasted the walls of the house with maps, the history of the troops, and profiles of some places, hoping to get some inspiration from them.
In the autumn of 2015, he participated in a one-month study at the Party School of the county party committee. Participating in the study meant that I could temporarily leave some of the daily tasks of the unit and take time to think about writing. Studying during the day, staying at school at night, having a beginning, and having a chapter and an ending, the framework came out. Since then, intermittent and stopped writing, 2015 has passed, 2016 has passed, until the National Day of 2017, the first draft was finally completed. After a period of suffering, in the summer of 2018, basically took shape, I decided to consider publishing.
"Lishui 1943" is about 200,000 words, which is a literary and artistic work that refers to historical materials and absorbs local cultural creations. The following questions need to be explained:
Character archetypes and main characters. The protagonist, Shum Dazhu. Cen Dazhu is to support the pillar beam and represent the backbone of China's War of Resistance, although his War of Resistance was accidental, at first it was passive and spontaneous, and he was once confused and could not see the direction. However, the cruel war taught him that in the fire of war, he slowly matured and persevered in the War of Resistance to the end. His prototype is, to some extent, Zhang Zhengguo, a soldier of the former Special Agent Company of the Seventy-third Army. The death of General Peng Shiliang was told by Zhang Zhengguo himself. Hearing from a crowd how a major general's division commander was sacrificed, I was immediately shocked and couldn't help but focus my eyes on him. Zhang Zhengguo enlisted in the army for a long time, experienced many wars, especially participated in several battles in Changsha, Shimen in the First World War of nine deaths, retreated to Dayong, and later participated in the Battle of Xuefeng Mountain, ushered in the final victory of the War of Resistance, he has too many legends. Of course, it also synthesizes other characters, which is why cili is native to the hanchen pillar. Other characters, Mr. Su, Natural Hero, Zhang Jicai and other characters are shaped on the basis of reference to folk characters, literary and artistic works are not all documentary, shaping characters is to show the theme, expand the plot, if there is a similarity, it is purely coincidental, can not be seated. The three sisters of the Chang family represent three different female figures in Lishui, especially in the Cili area, who, although they have different personalities, have common characteristics: tenacity and tenacity, hard work and kindness, and clear love and hatred. In order to show the character of Wadang, it is natural to think of the Thirty-fourth Division in Xiangxi, that is, the later 128th Division, in order to show the panorama and depth of the War of Resistance, it is necessary to link with the struggle of the 128th Division Jiashan, and the protagonist's shadow naturally appeared on the initial battlefield, which was convenient for expressing his experience and inner world of displacement and depression in the future. In order to avoid the expression mode of such works on the dispute between the beliefs of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the work introduces a legendary figure, Wa Po Po. Wa Po Po is a historical figure, and there are indeed people in history. She is the hero of the anti-Wu, the common god of war of the wolf and the earth soldiers, and also the earliest spiritual support for the Xiangxi people Wadang and others to go to the front line and Cen Dazhu. The work has a detailed description of the Japanese army that entered Cili and the main battles that took place, but there is no positive description of the Japanese army, not even a decent image of the Japanese army, only mentioning the officer of Xue Jiapu and the commander of the Sixty-fifth Wing, Ito Eihiko. Why there is not too much rendering of the devils, mainly from two aspects: one is that the devil's vicious cunning is introduced enough in similar works, and the re-description is only a simple repetition, not much significance; the other reason is that this work is not simply to write a war, but to reflect the society at that time through historical events, to introduce the humanistic customs of Lishui, the perspective is the perspective of veterans, local old people, and also the perspective of the People of Cili to review history.
The background of the story and related historical materials. Hunan was the main battlefield after the Chinese War of Resistance entered a stalemate, and hunan has been a front-line battlefield since the Japanese occupation of Wuhan in 1938. Cili was a hot land of resistance, and more than 10,000 young and strong people stepped onto the battlefield. The cili folk anti-war forces surged up, spontaneously built monuments, and created anti-war songs. Regarding the War of Resistance, Cili has a large number of ready-made physical and human evidence, the Memorial to the Fallen Soldiers of the War of Resistance, "Hunan People, Defending Great Hunan" is a work of this period, and in 2015, it was found that there were still more than thirty veterans who participated in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. On the other hand, because I wrote the script of the documentary "Cili Obstruction War" before, I consulted relevant historical materials, and I have studied the background of the war, the two sides of the troops participating in the war, the places where the troops are stationed, and the war situation, especially the many visits to the place where the war occurred, and the grasp of the historical materials is still relatively sufficient.
Clue arrangement and detailed description: The bright line of the work is the protagonist's experience of participating in the war and the growth process, through him, expressing the resistance in my heart. In the winter of 1943, the Japanese army invaded Cili and left Cili for 12 days, using flashbacks and memories to reflect the historical facts of the War of Resistance in a panoramic manner, and traced back to the history of the fight against the Wokou hundreds of years ago. The dark line has the emotional entanglement (emotional line) between Cen Dazhu and the three sisters of the Chang family. Good stories have wonderful beginnings, but no final endings, wars, which deprive them of all goodness. Mr. Su's fight with Zhang Jicai (political line). Behind the national war is the contradiction between the two parties. After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance, the two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party superficially reached a consensus and insisted on the nationwide War of Resistance, but the friction never stopped. The Central And Military Command went around hunting down communists and pro-communist soldiers in the ranks of the Nationalist army and restricting the activities of communists until they created the "Anhui Southern Incident." Many of the stories in the novel are based on the narratives of anti-war veterans, with slight changes. If Ning Ning died and could not give up a bag of Guangyang's secretary general, nicknamed "eating sand" Sichuan soldiers, the troops pulling people between each other was called "digging sand", the commander of the Wu regiment ran away, the Yangjiaxi massacre, the car rutted to kill the devils and grab the knife, and grabbed the transmitter, all of which have a history. Many place names and names of people are also readily available. In terms of plot, although it refers to works of the same genre, in order to avoid falling into the situation of similar techniques and no suspense, it avoids the blunt battle scenes.
Regional colors and terroirs. The novel tries to combine local folklore as much as possible to express personality. Pulling fibers and placing rows was once the most passionate past on the Lishui River; the Lishui trumpet and the Cili folk song are the unique cultural symbols of the Lishui River; the bodhisattva and the plate dragon lantern are folk activities that have been passed down for thousands of years and are still loved by the people of Cili; food and snacks, local architecture, colloquial slang, etc., are reflected in the works. In particular, it is worth mentioning that the works highly recommend the scenery of The Cili Landscape, and the picturesque scenery on both sides of the Lishui River, hot springs, ice and snow worlds, forty-eight villages and other places is integrated into the deep personal feelings.
As a person engaged in cultural management in an administrative unit, I don't have much time and energy to engage in literary creation. First of all, I would like to thank the teacher who dragged me out of the campus into the classroom, Teacher Lu Yinzhong, teacher Zhu Yinping, who was like a brother, and Fu Chunlian, Tian Guizhi, Li Chaozong, and Zeng Shengyang, who taught me enlightenment in writing. They always teach me, give me encouragement and expectations, let me remember my original intention, and dare not slacken off. Professor Wei Yi and Professor She Danqing of Hunan College of Arts and Sciences, their alma mater, often pay attention to those of us who are scattered in all corners, and several friends who insist on pen cultivation in the same window often communicate and discuss in the WeChat group, and have never been far away. Then there is the work, a leader and brother I met in 2000, although he does not play literature, he is a wise, warm, affectionate and responsible person. For more than 20 years, he has trusted, supported, and encouraged me to keep writing. Thanks to the leaders and colleagues of the Propaganda Department, they have high hopes for this work, and read the full text word by word and put forward suggestions for revision. Special thanks to Mr. Zhao Huiting, who has known Mr. Zhao for nearly 20 years, he himself has struggled unceasingly on the road of art, set an example for the literary and art workers in our city, and always gives me encouragement every time we meet. Mr. Zhao took precious time out of his busy schedule to read the full text, and in addition to giving me pertinent advice from a professional point of view, he also wrote a preface to the inscription of the work. And my literary friends, childhood playmates, riding friends... And the people who live in this land, who give me heart and strength. In my works, there are the roads I have traveled, the things I have experienced, the books I have read, and the people I have loved.
I am grateful to the veterans who personally contributed to the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and who have worked tirelessly to record history today. Many of them have passed away in the past few years, and they have not been able to see the advent of this work, and here, they deeply remember their anti-war deeds and efforts to record the war of resistance. Thanks to the volunteers of Hunan Veterans' Home, they accompanied me to go deep into every veteran's home, examine every relic, selfless dedication, and the volunteers' love and righteousness gave me too much strength.
Looking back, at first, I didn't want to write a novel, and I didn't expect that the first novel I officially completed in my life was actually based on the theme of the War of Resistance. However, driven by my heart, I still insisted on walking. From 2013 to 2018, about six years, my main energy was spent on the study of the War of Resistance and the conception and creation of the Novel of the War of Resistance, ignoring a lot, losing a lot, but having an expedition that I had never had before, a particularly profound and precious experience, countless times of entanglement, insomnia and emotion, enough to support me to overcome more difficulties in the future.