Writing the Story of Eighteen-Hole Village with Life - Posthumous Writer Li Di

Guangming Daily reporter Li Xiaomeng

"There's a teacher Li from the village."

In the early winter of 2019, Li Di dragged his luggage into the Miaozhai stilt house in the Eighteen-Hole Village. Surrounded by green mountains and wooden buildings. For ten days, he braved the drizzle, stepped on the bluestone road, climbed the hills and villages, and shuttled through the eighteen-hole village. Or help the villagers sell vegetables and drink, or accompany the villagers to farm and chat, or go into the back kitchen of the hotel to give the boss a hand, and whoever catches them will listen to the story of poverty alleviation in the village with great interest. Soon, Li Di's arrival became a new thing known to everyone in the eighteen-hole village, and the villagers all said: "This teacher Li from Beijing is not fancy!" They regard "Teacher Li" as an old friend who pulls the family routine and talks about getting rid of poverty.

Deep in the mountains, this old man who loves to wear red clothes is always full of vitality and passion, like a fire shining, jumping, tirelessly listening and recording.

Li Di (left) poses with the villagers of Eighteen-Hole Village whom he interviewed. Profile photo

At 9:38 on June 29, 2020, 71-year-old Li Di left the land he loved deeply. On his deathbed, he completed his last book, Eighteen Stories of eighteen-hole villages. As a writer, his pursuit is to be a sentient person, to do something sentient, to write some sentient works.

Tie Ning, chairman of the China Writers Association, said that Li Di threw his whole life into the road of walking with the times and put his hot heart into works that were in solidarity with the people.

He lit bright flames in the red land:

"Creation is like a match that shines a little bit, you have to protect it, let it slowly grow up"

Li Di loves to tell stories and loves to write stories into books. In his lifetime, he created more than 40 novels and reportages such as "The Valley Where Wild Bees Haunt", "The Woman Knocking on the Door in the Evening", "The Story of Dandong Detention Center", "Police Officer Wang Happy", "Listening to Li Di Tell the Story of the Chinese Police", "Heroic Era - The Story of the Shenzhen Police", "The Story of the Gas Station", "The Story of Yonghe People", "Eighteen Stories of the Eighteen-Hole Village", etc. Among them, "Listening to Li Di Tell the Story of the Chinese Police" and "Eighteen Stories of the Eighteen-Hole Village" have been listed as key publications of national theme publishing, and he has also won the China Writers Publishing Group Award, the People's Liberation Army Daily Long March Literary and Art Award, the Ordos Literature Award, the China Reportage Literature Gold Award, the "Three Hundred" Original Book Publishing Project Award, the Ministry of Public Security Golden Shield Literature Award, and the National Newspaper Supplement Works Selection Gold Award.

Li Di's literary dream sprouted on the frontier.

In 1968, after graduating from the affiliated high school of Beijing Normal University, Li Di responded to the call of the state to devote himself to the construction of the frontier. During his time in the Yunnan Production and Construction Corps, he published his debut novel "Descendants", which attracted the attention of the Yunnan literary circles. In 1972, he dreamed of becoming a soldier, and he was recruited into the Mengzi Division headquarters in Yunnan Province, writing a program in the division's propaganda team.

Liu Xuelun first met Li Di in the division compound. "He was fiddling with the white tennis shoes on his feet, squeezing toothpaste on his hands and smearing them on the uppers, there was no shoe powder at that time, and Li Di was very good at thinking of a way!" It has been almost fifty years, and this picture has always been clear in the heart of his comrade-in-arms Liu Xuelun. Li Di and Liu Xuelun loved to write and one to draw, and soon became acquainted.

Li Di and Liu Xuelun were in a hut where the division propaganda team was in charge, and Liu Xuelun remembered, "Often I had to go to sleep, and he still walked around the house, sometimes writing on the paper with his head down and waving his arm, and reciting a sentence from time to time in his mouth." At that time, Li Di often contributed to the "People's Liberation Army Daily" and the "National Defense Soldier Daily" of the former Kunming Military Region, the bamboo buildings in the red land, the bee farms, the lush forests that extended to the border... They were all drawn into the story by Li Di. In the hut, Liu Xuelun watched him scrutinize his manuscript over and over again, scribbling and changing it until he was satisfied, and then transcribed it from beginning to end. It is here that this Beijing Zhiqing's enthusiasm for words has made Liu Xuelun change his understanding of Li Di from understanding to admiration. Sometimes Li Di's manuscript is really unable to be transcribed, and he will also pull Liu Xuelun to "work hard". "The manuscript is his treasure, his requirements are very high, I made a mistake or a stain, he wanted me to start from scratch, so harsh!" 」 In the middle of the night, the lights were dim, and Liu Xuelun thought while copying: Look at his sacred attitude, there is really a bit of a great writer's appearance.

Not long after arriving at the army, Wang Dingyi, director of the Political Department, said to Li Di, "You are a young man, if you just cultivate the land and feed the pigs, you don't know what is going on when you are a soldier, and how do you write about soldiers?" In this way, in May 1973, Li Di went down to the company as a soldier to exercise.

"When the Thousand Mile Camp was training, Li Di's city soldiers did not suffer less!" The old squad leader Lu Jiang remembered that Li Di had a small characteristic of walking, always landing on the ground with his front feet on the ground, tiptoeing on his heels, carrying more than forty kilograms of weight on his back when marching, tiptoeing and tiptoeing, walking in the team was particularly conspicuous. At each training site, Li Di also had to complete at least one issue of the field tabloids. During the day, training and helping peasants cannot be left behind; at night, Li Di will find a qualified hometown to start writing. When he finished writing, the comrades-in-arms began to engrave words on the steel plate, lay out the white paper, clip the wax paper, and adjust the ink -- the soldiers in the marching team were dry and wet, wet and dry military uniforms, the comrades-in-arms were cool and heroic during the training, and the Yao aunts gave a dance to thank the hygienists for curing their leg diseases.

War tabloids, feature-length newsletters, live newspaper dramas, program lyrics... Li Di wrote all the way. He carried a small notebook with him, scrawled handwriting, a five-pointed star here, and a circle drawn there. Sometimes, don't look at him as if he is chatting with people without any reason, and when he turns his face, he starts to write and draw in a small book. Such a scrawled "codebook" can probably only be untied by Li Di himself, and what remains in the hearts of his comrades-in-arms is a popular poem, which is a spirit that lifts people's hearts. "Red rice, pumpkin soup, revolutionary traditions will be passed on forever" "Playing straw shoes, playing straw shoes, hard work to shine"... Lu Jiang still clearly remembers the allegro words of "Playing Straw Shoes". "Not only this program, Li Di participated in the creation and directing of the cross-talk "Military and Civilian Fish Water Situation", performed and sang "Happy Group Photo", etc., which has always been a reserved program of the Lianli Singing Team, and after leaving the company, he also came back to see our performance."

Sweating on a sunny day and mud on a rainy day, Li Di, a city soldier, and his comrades-in-arms from the countryside crawled and fought together and withstood the test. Li Di joined the party in the company. His gaze never left the lovely comrades around him, nor did he leave the ordinary people who lived tenaciously in the vast land.

Li Di once said to Liu Xuelun that creation is like a match that rubs out a little light, you have to protect it, let it slowly grow up, you can see the fire burn bigger and bigger, more and more vigorously. In the dark night, Liu Xuelun saw that Li Di's eyes seemed to reflect a spark.

This spark is a fire, and when it burns, it is a lifetime.

He used a flame to reflect the life of Baiwei:

"People have been living in the wind and rain for decades, and they use a morning or an afternoon to talk to you, do you still think it is long?"

How many bridges are there on the Zhi River in Yonghe? Yonghe people don't necessarily know, Li Di is right. How many terrifying waves are hidden in the eyes of the old man of the Yellow River who opens the farm? Yonghe people may not have heard of it, Li Di said. How many patrons can the car repair stall on the street welcome in a day? Passers-by may not have noticed, and Li Di had a clear yard.

In May 2019, Li Di came to Yonghe County, Shanxi, an old revolutionary area, carrying a piece of "locust flower cake", going up the mountain, wading the river, turning the fields, exploring the jujube forest, stripping away the cocoon, looking for a simple and moving story full of power hidden in the Jinshan Grand Canyon. "Di Lao is the most able to chat with people, he always has the ability to get acquainted with people in a few words, so that people are willing to dig their hearts and lungs out of him." Ma Yijie, chairman of the Yonghe County Federation of Literature and Literature who accompanied the interview, saw the "magic" of Li Di chatting with people.

One afternoon with light rain, they walked into the paper-cutting exhibition hall of the folk paper-cutting artist Liu Lincui's family. Li Di was pleasantly surprised by the fiery red work and wanted to sit down and listen to her paper-cut story. "But Liu Lincui is not good at words, asking a question and answering a sentence, not asking without saying, less than ten minutes cold." Ma Yijie said. Li Di was not in a hurry, got up and turned around, looked at the beautiful two-story building of Liu Lincui's family, and turned his words around: "What year was this house built in your family?" How big does that have to be? At this point, Liu Lincui opened the conversation box, from farming before, to later acquiring red dates, to wandering the countryside to sell needles and threads, and now his own paper-cutting can sell money, and all of his brains have been poured out, Liu Lincui feels that this is the most he has said in his life. Considering that Li Di is more than old, Ma Yijie once discussed with him to shorten the interview time, but Li Di politely refused: "People have been living in the wind and rain for decades, and they have spent a morning or an afternoon to talk to you, do you still think it is long?" ”

Li Diwu went to Yonghe and walked all over this small county town with only one road. Locust flower cakes, dates, paper cuts, bean skins, vermicelli... The story of the struggle of yonghe county party members and cadres leading the masses to fight a decisive battle to get rid of poverty was engraved by Li Di with words full of fireworks. He loves every character he interviews, and in the vicissitudes of life, he can always find the beauty of human nature, and inject his feelings into the people in each story. Seeing that the poor old people in the village were in tattered clothes, Li Di asked his wife to sort out three large bags of clean clothes and send them to Yonghe, many of which were newly bought and matched.

Li Di's writing has a characteristic: "fishing" to a good story can not go. In the fall of 2012, Li Di followed the Beijing Daily to cnilicon to the Tarim Oilfield in Xinjiang. As he passed the Tarim Desert Highway, a humble well house on the side of the road "stumbled" on his footsteps.

The Tarim Desert Highway, which runs through the hinterland of the Taklamakan Desert, is the lifeline of the Tarim oil field. In the spring of 2004, Deng Dongping took his lover Gu Hua to work in the Tarim Oilfield and installed his home in the 004 well room: a hut of more than 20 square meters, a low table, two single beds, and three large plastic buckets filled with water on the ground. On the four-kilometer road under the jurisdiction of the 004 well house, trees protect the road from quicksand erosion, and Master Deng and his wife protect these trees. More than three thousand days and nights, of which, how many hardships, how many stories? Li Di couldn't take a step. "Our large troops passed by the well room, rested for a while and then continued to advance, but Li Di chatted with Master Deng, and did not expect that Hu Yanglin and Korla Xiangli could not pull him away." Li Peiyu, then director of the Beijing Daily Supplement Department, who led the team, recalled.

What shocked Li Peiyu even more was that more than a month later, he received a call from Li Di in Beijing: "Brother Peiyu, I am in the 004 well room. It turned out that in order to write the story of "004 Well House", Li Di ran back and forth to southern Xinjiang three times.

Write a story, how many times do you want to interview? Li Di also did not have a clear answer. But you always have to see clearly and talk thoroughly before you can write, right? Li Di wrote, under the most "stupid" kung fu - in order to write "The Story of Dandong Detention Center" well, he simply lived next door to the detainees.

In November 2009, Li Di followed the "Series of Activities for Chinese Writers entering the Police Camp" and walked into the Dandong Detention Center for the first time. "We didn't expect that he had come seven times in succession since the fight, and spent three Spring Festivals with us." Wang Jing, political commissar of the supervision detachment of the Dandong City Public Security Bureau in Liaoning Province, said. At that time, she was still the deputy director of the Dandong City Detention Center and one of the protagonists in Li Di's story.

Inside the high walls, good and evil clash, love and hate are entangled, and as much repentance there is, there is no sleep. Li Di looked at the place and asked the director to find a room for him in the office, "preferably next door to those detainees." Li Di firmly believes that the real in-depth life is not to go through the flowers and add trouble to others, but to take root and live with the people in the story. Living in the Dandong Detention Center, Li Di's conversation with the police was at the dinner table, in the conversation room, in the laundry room, and even in the police car when he was out. It was also much more convenient to talk with the detainees, or to sit on the floor of the prison seat, or to bask in the sun together while they let the wind blow, and in their mouths, Li Di changed from "Li Writer" and "Teacher Li" to "Old Li" and "Old Li Han".

"We all especially admire Teacher Li Di, who is always full of vitality, sometimes talking with detainees for three hours, often people crying and crying." Wang Jing and the teachers in the institute all had respect for the old man in his sixties. In Li Di's eyes, although the old detention center on the banks of the Yalu River is dilapidated, the opening and closing of the big iron door is a story - he uses his pen to dissect the reasons for the "extreme" of alternative life word by word, records the humanistic care of the correctional police to respect and protect the rights and interests of detainees, and his detention center is more like a soul transformation center, which deeply shocks the reader.

In February this year, Yonghe County got rid of poverty and took off his hat, and Li Di on the sickbed seemed to see the most beautiful Yellow River Bay and the Sea of Locust Flowers in the Jinshaan Grand Canyon, and he was happier than the people of Yonghe County. In June this year, "The Story of Yonghe People" was published, and the cover was selected from Liu Lincui's paper-cut work "Send Public Food", the rustic rural atmosphere accompanied by ink fragrance came to the face, red and hot, reminiscent of Li Di - he loves to wear red clothes, big red shirts, T-shirts, down jackets... People who knew him well called him "Red Lidi", saying that there was a hot flame burning in his heart.

He left a warm spark for the times:

"Sometimes outside the door, I can hear him whimpering inside, crying as he writes."

On November 3, 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited Eighteen Caves Village in Huayuan County, Xiangxi Prefecture, Hunan Province, and for the first time proposed "precision poverty alleviation" to guide the national poverty alleviation battle. The eighteen-hole village sleeping in poverty has since changed into a butterfly and flew in the spring breeze of poverty alleviation and well-off.

In September 2019, the China Writers Association launched the "Poverty Alleviation Theme Reportage Creation Project", and among the 25 selected writers, Li Di was the older one. On November 10, with the mission of finding the story of accurate poverty alleviation and self-improvement in the mountains, Li Di set off for Eighteen Caves Village. Like countless previous separations, his wife Wei Guilan was waiting for him to return in Beijing. No one thought that the story of eighteen-hole village would be Li Di's final farewell to us.

Li Di and Wei Guilan have been together for more than forty years and have gone through the ups and downs of life. When Li Di was writing "Distant Betel Nut Village" at the Yunnan People's Publishing House, Wei Guilan was the editor of the publishing house's cultural and educational group. In a courtyard of the publishing house office building and the writers' guest house, the two went back and forth, and the two changed from friends to lovers. One day in 1978, Li Di rushed from Kunming to work in Wei Guilan's lower village production team, and the scene of that day was something that Wei Guilan would never forget for the rest of his life, "He told me that he was going to be demobilized and returned to Beijing, and I immediately felt that the matter between the two of us was going to blow!" "Unexpectedly, Li Di came this time to pull her to get a marriage license." At that time, many people around me said that I was too stupid. Li Di is smart and good-looking, and will certainly not come back. But "he was a soldier, especially loyal, and most important to integrity." Wei Guilan was determined.

Watching Li Di write a lifetime of manuscripts, Wei Guilan never felt that he was in pain or anxious. She remembered that Li Di was always intoxicated and happy when writing.

Lidy's study was small, crammed with a bed and a desk. The desk was placed in front of the window, and as soon as Li Di, who was buried in the manuscript, looked up, he and his wife planted peony flowers in the small courtyard. "When Old Li came back from the interview, he closed the door and started writing, and I had to knock on the door first when I went in." The reason why there is this rule is because Li Di was frightened by Wei Guilan——

"Once I brought a plate of fruit in, and when I came to it, I asked, 'Old Li, can you eat some fruit?' Who knew that Li Di was all about creation, and he didn't hear Wei Guilan enter the door at all, and he was shocked, "Oh, how come you came in without a sound, it scared me!" "Li Di, who is immersed in the story, is not completely quiet." Sometimes outside the door, I could hear him whimpering inside, crying as he wrote. At this time, Wei Guilan quickly knocked on the door: "Old Li, don't cry, the people you wrote are living well, crying like this hurts the body." She knew that Lao Li had integrated himself with the people in the story, and that the "chai rice oil and salt" of others was his "chai rice oil and salt", and the joys and sorrows of others were his joys and sorrows.

Li Di ran out many times, his wife and children had to send her to the station every time, Li Di was distressed by her, and often lied about "military information". The train, which was originally one o'clock in the afternoon, told Wei Guilan to leave at four o'clock, and by the time Wei Guilan was ready to send him, he had already dragged his suitcase into the Beijing West Railway Station. Wei Guilan didn't understand, "Does it take so much effort for others to write things, can't we rest more at home?" At such an old age, I have run out one after another, and I always go to places with difficult conditions." She often joked with Li Di, "You are married to writing." I am married to a table and chair bench. "However, every time Li Di was interviewing outside, Wei Guilan still liked to listen to him talk about the harvest of the day on the phone and in the WeChat video." Xiao Wei, there are many stories in this village, especially touching, I have to write them well..." Sometimes as he talked, Li Di on the other end of the phone shed tears.

"The weather in xiangxi was humid and cold, and when he came back, he first had a fever, and then his waist hurt badly, and the pain that drilled his head was so bad that the doctor said he could only rest in bed." Wei Guilan couldn't help but think that if he could persuade Old Li to stop writing at that time, wouldn't he have left?

On March 30, Li Guoqiang, deputy editor-in-chief of the Chinese Min Public Security Publishing House, received a WeChat message from Li Di: The battle has begun. Li Di, who had been lying in bed for more than two months, had just been able to sit up and began to write the story of the Eighteen-Hole Village, and after each article was written, he would pass it on to Li Guoqiang and ask him, a senior editor, to help proofread it. In the past ten years, Li Di's manuscripts for the public security front have been passed by Li Guoqiang, and Li Di trusts him. "The next few di lao wrote too hard, and after completing it, he didn't have the energy to start over again." Between the lines, Li Guoqiang felt that Li Di was desperately insisting.

"Writing a manuscript has always been the happiest and happiest time for Old Li, but this time he wrote it one by one." Wei Guilan said. In the plan, li di had to write a total of eighteen stories about the eighteen-hole village, and when he completed the twelfth one, Wei Guilan saw Li Di counting the manuscripts back and forth. "Oh, Xiao Wei, I remember that I wrote thirteen articles, how come there are only twelve, where are those thirteen?" Why not? ”

The old wife, son, and daughter-in-law turned the study to the bottom and did not find the thirteenth manuscript. Li Guoqiang slid the WeChat dialog box to his head, and only counted out twelve.

It was Li Di who remembered wrongly, he was too anxious, too afraid that he would not be able to finish writing.

"Old Li, forget it this time, we won't write it." Wei Guilan was extremely distressed, but where could she be persuaded. Long Xiulin, leader of the poverty alleviation task force, Long Jilong, village director, Long Shuwu, village branch secretary, Pu Litao, teacher of Eighteen-Hole Primary School, Long Ba'er and Jin Di, hotel owners, long Xianlan and Yang Chaowen, villagers... Li Di has always been thinking about these lovely people in the eighteen-hole village. "How can I say pick a pick and a pick? I don't write, who tells their story? At four o'clock in the afternoon of May 25, Li Guoqiang received a message from Li Di: the victory is over and the work is complete. From his hospital bed, Li Di completed the last five stories of the Eighteen-Hole Village.

On the morning of June 29, Li Di, who was overworked, was unable to carry the postoperative infection of heart surgery. The red flame was extinguished.

More than a dozen writer friends, with tears, completed the obituary word by word: Li Di was free all his life and his temperament was frank. As a writer, he went deep into life, rooted in the people, diligently pursued, and devoted himself to creation. He fell like a warrior in front of the case where he had spent his life writing true love articles...

The poet Gao Hongbo wrote a poem for Li Di's visit to the Eighteen-Hole Village in his old age: Le bent his waist for poverty alleviation, and the smoke and rain in western Hunan province suffered several times. Eighteen holes were sprinkled with a stroke of a stroke, and the Luohan group looked at the sketch.

In the impression of the writer Zhang Ce, Li Di is always happy, even if it is a tragedy, in his pen, there will be a taste of laughter in tears, and there is hope with a salty taste.

The writer Mada said: There is another fiery red star in the sky.

Zhang Yali, editor-in-chief of the Writers Publishing House, said that holding the ink-filled "The Story of Yonghe People's Family", it was as if Li Di, who was always dressed in red and enthusiastic, stood in front of me and told the emotions in the interview in a colorful way...

Is he really gone? Some people say that in those vivid narratives, in those warm feelings, there are Li Di's fiery shadows everywhere. Because the stories that burn yourself write are always sharpened over the years, the brighter they become.

Short comment: Put the hot heart into the works that share the same heart with the people

Guangming Daily ( 2020-08-04 01 edition)