The Lost Satellite folds.
Last year, young writer Liu Zichao entered the eye of many with a record of his travels to the heart of Central Asia, The Lost Satellite — or, more specifically, with his solid, fluid writing and in-depth observations.
Very few writers in the country were able to travel to the periphery like him and leave such a fascinating record.
In today's interview, you will learn about what kind of life and reading experience makes him a unique presence in travel writing.
Liu Zichao's popularity was unexpected by many people, and even his editors did not expect his works to be so popular.
Last year, when "Lost Satellite" went on the market, the epidemic was sweeping the world. "If you can't go out, who wants to read a travel book?" The editor said so.
But it is precisely because everyone is trapped by the epidemic that people have a little more desire for the outside world.
On closed days, the impact of seeing a young man wandering the interior of Central Asia, using solid footsteps and sincere records to perceive the world that we had previously ignored, is incomparable.
As a result, the book's best-selling has become a certain inevitability.
But before writing "The Lost Satellite," Liu Zichao had already written two travelogues— "Arriving Before Midnight" in Central Europe and "Along the Direction of the Monsoon" in India.
Arriving Before Midnight
By Liu Zichao
Wenhui Press, 2021-8
In the preface to Arrival Before Midnight, Liu Zichao writes: "... I returned to Central Europe like a ghost, and there may be some underlying reason for this, like gravity. ...... Central Europe also attracted me because it always grew in the gap between empire and power... It still has a strong sense of tearing and wandering, which makes me feel a certain spiritual fit at the age of thirty. ”
This passage may explain why Liu Zichao loves to wander around the marginal areas and is keenly able to capture the traces of history in these marginal areas.
The Yugoslav film Underground.
For a long time, domestic "travel writing" was lackluster.
There are many people who travel, and there are many people who record travel, but good travel writing is not enough to rely on records and emotions.
Before asking what is good travel writing, we can ask: What do we want from a "travel writer"?
We want to gain experience about the wider world, and we want to rely on the eyes and records of this recorder to explore the history of corners we have not paid attention to, people who have not paid attention, and unfamiliar areas that we know very little.
"Travel" is an extremely romantic word, but under romance, perhaps it is a more austere landscape, a rougher life, a heavier history, and a more striking similarity.
Being able to accurately describe what you see and think is an amazing ability in itself.
Therefore, we are more curious about why the young writer Liu Zichao was able to write a unique travel record.
Today we're trying to use this Q&A to outline what nourished his writing.
Writer Liu Zichao.
01
The "fringe zone" has a unique aesthetic
Hardcore Book Club: What's been going on lately? How is life like in Tibet?
Liu Zichao: Not long ago, I drove to the Shannan region of Tibet, Loza County, which borders Bhutan. There is a remote temple there, and on the hill there is a meditation cave of Master Milarepa, which is almost untouched. Afterwards, we went to an open-air hot spring on the Bhutanese border, located in the huge folds of the Himalayas.
Hardcore Book Club: Your three books, one about Central Europe, one about India, and one about the five Central Asian countries. It seems that you are always interested in the "marginal areas", why do you focus your attention on these areas?
Liu Zichao: "Marginal Zone" has a unique sense of beauty and rhythm. Its tearing, wandering, kindness and uneasiness are fascinating.
Hardcore Book Clubs: Arriving Before Midnight and The Lost Satellite, when traveling between countries, a vague "sense of boundaries" is felt. The borders between civilizations and nations are ambiguous, and I find vague and ambiguous borders fascinating. What kind of existence do you think of the border areas of these countries, and how are they different from the borders we have in our minds?
Liu Zichao: The border is far from the center. There is a vague sense of relaxation there, and there are many different and ambiguous people. In places like that, there are always stories to be found.
Illustration of "Arriving Before Midnight"
Hardcore Book Club: After COVID-19, the boundaries have become clear. Have you ever spoken to friends abroad about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different regions? For example, what are its different effects between different regions such as Central Asia, Central Europe and India?
Liu Zichao: The epidemic has highlighted the fragility of the border. You will find that in the face of the epidemic, borders are useless, no country can stand alone, and the fate of mankind is really closely linked. The different impacts of the epidemic need to go out and observe, which is the next step.
02
Writing is about salvaging those things
Because similar things will always happen again and again
Hardcore Book Club: In the new edition of "Arriving Before Midnight", you say that you want to be a "writer who travels", and in your articles, you can also see that you are very familiar with the works of many writers, almost at your fingertips. Can you tell us about the writers who have influenced you the most? When you first started writing, which writer did you think was writing that you wanted to be closest to?
Liu Zichao: The impact is multifaceted, and it is more difficult to do archaeological excavation. I started to want to be a writer in high school, and at that time I read Kafka, Faulkner, Hemingway, Modiano, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Han Dong, and Zhu Wen.
Hardcore Book Club: You translated Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, and Chandler's personal style is very pronounced. You mainly write non-fiction and travel literature yourself, and your books also like the environment and the writing of characters, in fact, sometimes people feel that they have the texture of a novel. How do you understand non-fiction and fictional writing? Do you have a plan to write fiction?
The Long Farewell
By Raymond Chandler, translated by Liu Zichao
CITIC Press, 2020-9
Liu Zichao: Fiction and non-fiction are just a simple classification. For me, literature is literature. Travel literature is the first extraction of experience, which is winemaking; fiction is the secondary distillation of experience, which is brandy. I make wine now, and maybe brandy later.
Hardcore Book Club: When you wrote about Central Europe, you wrote a lot of exclamations about the "afterglow of empire", and in Central Asia, you also lamented the huge emptiness left by the sudden withdrawal of the once powerful Soviet Union. How do you understand this interaction between civilizations? You should be a history buff, is there a historian or historical work that you particularly like?
Liu Zichao: What interested me was the things that the will of the state struck like a tidal wave, and finally retreated, and then left on the beach. My writing is to salvage those things and put them in glass jars and observe them. Because similar things will always happen again and again. Many historians are actually dealing with this motif as well. For example, Orlando Feggis's "The Dance of Natasha," "A People's Tragedy," Tony Judt's "History of Postwar Europe," norman Davis' Under another Sky.
Natasha's Dance: A History of Russian Culture
[English] Orlando Figis, translated by Zeng Xiaochu and Guo Danjie
Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2018-3
03
I'm no longer obsessed with the "meaning of travel"
Hardcore Book Club: You said a particularly nice quote from "Arriving Before Midnight":
"A real trip is never a testimony to wonderful spectacles, but also to witness dullness and suffering, and just knowing that 'there are still people living like this in the world' is enough to make the heart vast, and everything will eventually pass away with the wind, whether great or small, will return to dust." ...... I believe that, at least in theory, travel will change a person more or less, will make that person take a few steps in the direction of a more tolerant, more rational, more comprehensive understanding of the world, as to whether it is a few steps, depends on the person's talent and cultivation, but there is no doubt that these steps forward are the meaning of travel and the meaning of living. ”
Traveling it takes us to a wider world and escape from the daily grind of life. Under the influence of the epidemic, I feel that it has become more luxurious. From your very beginning of your trip, to your own travels in recent years, have your own attitudes changed?
Liu Zichao: In the past, I would be obsessed with such a grand proposition as "the meaning of travel", but later I gradually learned to decompose the grand proposition into some small questions. Whereas travel used to be more about the self, now travel is more about gaining knowledge and experience about the world and understanding the realities in which we live.
Hardcore Book Club: I noticed that some people commented on your Lost Satellite, saying that you actually traveled to Central Asia with some "overlook" posture. Many British travel writers have also been accused of having an "empire perspective", how do you look at this criticism? When you traveled in Europe and Central Asia, how did you feel that your mentality was different?
Liu Zichao: The writer's perspective will always change with the object of observation, just like walking, it is impossible to raise his head forever, nor can he always bow his head.
Hardcore Book Club: What books have you been reading recently, and can you give you some recommendations?
Liu Zichao: Guo Jianlong's "The Great History of the Silk Road", Xiao Yu's "Dream of Lima", and Ling Yue's "Floating Address".
The Great History of the Silk Road: When Ancient China Met the World
By Guo Jianlong
Tiandi Press, 2021-9