In Iowa, he met 94-year-old Nie Hualing

On September 9, 2019, several of my colleagues and I were invited by the University of Iowa to the university for academic exchanges. Arriving at Iowa University City, it was already 6 p.m. After a short break, we made an appointment at a restaurant less than 100 meters opposite the hotel to meet with friends of the American organizers.

When we went in, there were already more than 20 people. Everyone came to greet us warmly. We noticed that in the middle of the crowd was a small, thin old lady, wearing a long purple dress and a long snow blue scarf, and gracefully greeted her. Someone next to me introduced, "This is Teacher Nie Hualing." oh! Famous people, such as Lei Guan'er, famous Chinese-American writers. Nie Hualing smiled and held out her hand, "Welcome, welcome to you!" Hard all the way!" When I looked, the old lady was not young, and she was 80. I don't want someone next to me to say, "Teacher Nie is 94 years old this year!" Ah!" All of us in the room exclaimed. Although we knew that she must be very old, we did not expect to be so old, and we did not expect that she could actually come to the scene to welcome us. She looked much younger than her actual age.

It turned out that the organizer of this academic exchange was an institution called the "International Writing Program" (International Writing Program). Today's evening party was a welcome party, which was specially washed for us by the "International Writing Project". And Nie Hualing is the soul of this group, and this International Writing Project (IWP) was founded by her.

Speaking of "IWP", it is very famous in the international literary creation community. It is a writers' exchange and creative institution established in 1967 at the University of Iowa. Its function is to raise funds to recruit new writers with potential from various countries, and to communicate and create here for a short period of time. In this way, writers tend to get good writing training to create better work. The founders of this institution were Nie Hualing and her husband, the American poet Paul Ingres (1908-1991). It was a bold innovation at the time, and no one expected it to have that much impact. The first International Writing Project invited 12 writers from all over the world. After the success of the first phase, their program received more social support and Aida gave them more convenience. For more than 50 years, more than 1,500 writers from more than 150 countries have been invited to participate in the program. In the early 1980s, Chinese writers Ding Ling, Xiao Qian, Wang Meng, Bing Xin, Ai Qing, etc. were invited to visit here, and later the accomplished writers Mo Yan, Wang Anyi, Yu Hua, Bi Feiyu, Zhang Yueran, etc., all participated in the writing program here. Nie Hualing, a native of Yingshan, Hubei Province (now Guangshui City, Hubei Province), graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages of National Central University (the predecessor of Nanjing University) in 1948 and published her first article " Amoeba " under the pseudonym "Far Away" in the same year. In 1964, he lived in the United States, applied to work at the "Writer's Studio" in Washington, D.C., and later taught at the University of Iowa, engaged in writing and painting at the same time, and was known as the "Architect of the World Painting Organization" and "the first person of the World Literary Organization" for founding the International Writers Writing Program.

I remember the first time I read her work "The Lost Golden Bell", when I was doing the annotated editing and publishing of "The Complete Works of Lu Xun" at the People's Literature Publishing House in 1980. This book was published by the Humanities Society. It was the first Nie Hualing work I read. Since I read it in the early days of reform and opening up, I felt a fresh wind blowing in my face at that time, and I was deeply impressed. I mentioned it to her, and she said it was her work from the 1960s. I said, yes! But the mainland didn't open until the '80s, and we didn't read her book.

Nie Hualing talked to me about her teaching career in the United States. She said: "I had just come to the United States to teach, and I was the first Chinese writer to talk about Lu Xun. However, the students said they could not understand it, even though I provided them with the best English translation of the time. I explained it to them, but they still said it was difficult to understand. I know that after translating Chinese works, it is difficult to understand how the original work tastes. So, I came to the conclusion that for American students to read Chinese literature, they must read Chinese. I told them, you're going to read Chinese. The translator can't convey that taste anyway. So they went to learn Chinese. "I listened, isn't this a tragedy of translation? But on second thought, her words made sense. After all, translation can only convey a general meaning, and as a literary work, the taste between the lines of the words is difficult for foreigners to appreciate. When Snow presided over the translation of Lu Xun's works, he felt that Lu Xun's works were lengthy and wordy, and others could imagine it. Lu Xun wanted to convey some foreign flavors in his translation, and he was said to be a "dead translation" and a "hard translation", which shows that translation is really a thankless task. That is to say, the exchange between different cultures must also start with language.

Nie Hualing asked us about the situation on the road, and everyone greeted each other for a while before taking a seat. It was a large long table, and twenty or thirty people sat around the long table. Nie Hualing sat in the middle of the master seat, and I was arranged to sit on her right side. It looks like a Western-style feast. However, the dishes that came up were all Chinese dishes, but they used Western-style tableware and Western-style processes. I couldn't help but be a little surprised. Nie Hualing said, "Don't look at this as a Western way of eating, it's actually Chinese food." It's Westernized Chinese food. "It reminds me of lunch that day. When we came out of the airport, the driver and tour guide Pete deliberately took us to a Chinese restaurant to eat, probably afraid that we were not used to eating Western food. However, I don't know how, eating Chinese food abroad, it feels like it's all a taste, as if it's all made in the same restaurant. Some people say it's because of the material, some people say it's because of the feeling. I think that chinese who have been abroad for a long time and miss the taste of the motherland can naturally taste it from eating Chinese food, and those of us who have lived in China for a long time want to taste the local flavor of foreign countries. In fact, throughout the whole trip to the United States, we were almost all arranged to eat Chinese food, we were not satisfied, once or twice, and could not help a few people to go out to change the taste. Thinking of the situation of Chinese literary translations that Nie Hualing said about abroad, I thought, isn't Chinese food abroad equivalent to translated Chinese works? To understand the true foreign flavors, you should also eat pure foreign meals, even if they are not necessarily appetizing.

The next day, all day, we were doing academic exchanges at the University of Iowa, and Ms. Nie Hualing did not attend. In the evening, the meeting ended successfully, and we were leaving Iowa for Chicago that evening. Christopher, the current head of the International Writing Program, spoke for us at the university's conference center, which was attended by the guests and some of the university's staff. Shortly after the reception began, Ms. Nie Hualing was accompanied by her daughter. She told everyone, "My house caught fire yesterday!" Seeing everyone's shocked faces, Christopher told everyone: Mr. Nie was unable to attend the meeting during the day today, and now he is late, this is because her house caught fire last night. What's going on? It turned out that Nie Hualing had lived alone in the university city since the death of her husband Ingres, and although her daughter was near Iowa, she did not want them to live with her, so as not to drag them down. Last night she was partying with everyone, because she was very excited, she forgot what was cooked on the stove when she went out, and as a result, the things cooked on the stove burned and caused an explosion. The neighbor knocked on the door and did not open, quickly called the police, even the fire truck came, made a big false alarm. She didn't know it until she got home. Fortunately, it is not very serious. One day today, people at the school were helping her deal with this, so she couldn't attend the meeting. Everyone listened, surprised and relieved. I didn't expect that she was so old that she actually lived alone, did not want to be taken care of, and only had one hourly worker to help clean and take care of the housework once a day. The person who wrote the plan this morning was afraid that everyone would be worried, so he didn't tell you. However, Mr. Nie said that he was broken, and said lightly: "Nothing, it is already fine." Yesterday, I was in too much of a hurry to go out to attend a party with you. Now it's all right. ”

It turns out that this is still related to us! Fortunately, it was not a big deal, otherwise I really couldn't afford to wait.

It's not too early, we're going to say goodbye, and someone proposes to take a group photo. Everybody said yes. Therefore, Mr. Nie Hualing was invited to the middle, and everyone took a photo. We reluctantly waved goodbye to Mr. Nie and the others and stepped into the vast night.