Yu Hua and Jia Zhangke
Yu Hua is the third writer to be told in Jia Zhangke's film Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue, born on April 3, 1960 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. When he was three years old, the Yu hua family settled in Haiyan because his father, a doctor, transferred to Haiyan.
Yu Hua's home is connected to the hospital, so he has been playing in the hospital since he was a child. When his father was doing surgery, Yu Hua and his brother were always in and out of the hospital, sleeping in the hallway when they were tired, and the opposite of the surgery was the morgue.
Often in the middle of the night, Yu Hua would be awakened by the cries of lost loved ones.
The summer in Haiyan is particularly hot, and Yu Hua wakes up from a nap and can see the sweat leaving her body on the grass mat. Because at that time, there was no bathroom at home, so I could only go to the public toilet, and the public toilet was next to the morgue.
Yu Hua said: I took a nap in the morgue and it was very cool
Yu Hua recalled: The morgue was a cement bed, about the width of the Eight Immortals Table, very clean and clean. In my mind, the cleanest place in the world is not the lobby of the current five-star hotel, but the morgue I passed by when I was a child. Once I took a nap inside and it was very cool.
Many people think this is too incredible, actually sleeping in the morgue, but in Yu Hua's generation, this is very normal. Because they don't believe in ghosts at all, they are all atheists.
When Yu Hua grew up, he read a poem by Heine - death is a cool night. When he read it, he thought, this is how I felt when I took a nap in the morgue when I was a child!
Death is a cool night
In high school, Yu Hua began to be able to read some novels. But at that time, the novels were all preserved after the catastrophe, passed through the hands of many people, and when they reached his hands, they often had more than ten pages missing in the front and ten pages missing later.
After reading it, I don't know who the author is, I don't know what the title of the book is, I don't know how the story began, and I don't know how the story ended.
Yu Hua said that the experience of reading this kind of novel is that it doesn't matter if I don't know the author and the title, I can endure not knowing how the story began, but the only thing that is unbearable is that I don't know how the story ended.
After reading a book without a head and no tail, when the next book without a head and no tail comes, there will be an interval of 1-2 months in between. This time was particularly uncomfortable, because Yu Hua always thought about how the last book ended before going to sleep every night.
Later, there was really no way, Yu Hua made up the ending of those stories himself. Make up one, think it's not good, just make up another one.
Reading a novel without an ending is particularly uncomfortable
Yu Hua was in high school at that time, male and female classmates did not speak, and some girls were bolder than boys. A female classmate who was the school librarian at the time took the initiative to hand a note to Yu Hua. Folding the notes layer by layer, Yu Hua spent a hundred or twenty minutes carefully opening the notes, looking silly, not a wonderful word.
Instead, he accused Yu Hua of tearing up the borrowed book, but this time, forget it, forgive you, and next time if it is broken again, you will have to compensate.
Yu Hua said that this is the first time a girl has handed him a note, he understands it as soon as he reads it, at that time, a person who likes it will not directly write that I like you, love you or something, but find another reason to express it. At that time, the expression of love was very subtle.
In the few days after handing over the note, the girl always secretly looked at Yu Hua, and Yu Hua was a little nervous when she was looked at.
When Yu Hua decided to express to her that I was interested in you, she suddenly found that she had already passed, and the other party did not pay attention to him.
At that time, the expression of love was very subtle
After the resumption of the college entrance examination, Yu Hua took the exam for two consecutive years in 77 and 78 years, but he was not admitted and did not take the exam. Under his father's arrangement, he became a dentist for 5 years.
Yu Hua said that she did not like the job very much, and every day she looked at other people's open mouths — this is the most scenic place in the world. His real thoughts were– the world was so big, I wanted to see it.
One day, Yu Hua saw people in the cultural center walking around the street between work, and he went over to them and asked them, why don't you go to work? The other person said that we walked around the street to go to work.
Yu Hua thought to himself, I like this work a lot. I asked them how they could work at the cultural center. The other person said, writing.
So Yu Hua began to write novels. Before that, he had pulled out more than 10,000 teeth.
Stop pulling teeth and go to work at a cultural center
When I first started writing a novel, Yu Hua didn't know how to write it, and she couldn't even use punctuation. What to do? He found a short story and wrote it while studying.
Yu Hua was very ambitious, and no matter how well he wrote, he submitted articles to "People's Literature" and "Harvest", and after returning, he sent them to "Beijing Literature" and "Shanghai Literature" with a slightly lower grade, and then returned to lower grade publications, and finally even sent to magazines in Luliang City.
At that time, the postman gave Yu Hua the rejection letter, and instead of knocking on the door to him, he threw it in from outside the wall. Therefore, as long as he hears a "click", Yu Hua's father will say: The rejection is coming.
Yu Hua's psychological quality is good, take the rejection slightly lost, and then open the rejection letter to see where it was returned, and then find a magazine lower than it to send.
The rejection is coming
The Emperor does not live up to his bitter heart. One night in November 1983, I was about to leave work. Yu Hua received a long-distance phone call from Zhou Yanru, the actual editor-in-chief of Beijing Literature at the time, asking Yu Hua to go to Beijing to revise the manuscript. Yu Hua's first reaction at that time was: Who gave me the travel fee and accommodation fee?
Zhou Yanru edited particularly well, said, young man, you can rest assured, road expenses, accommodation costs, we help you out, you come to Beijing to revise the draft, we also give you subsidies.
Yu Hua hung up the phone, said nothing, took a long-distance bus to Shanghai the next morning, went directly to the railway station to buy a station ticket, and stood all the way to Beijing.
When we arrived at the editorial department, Zhou Yanru told him about the revision, saying that your manuscript was well written, that is, the ending was a little darker, and in our socialist country, there can be no such gray thing.
Yu Hua said, Teacher Zhou, do you mean that you want me to change it to a brighter point? Zhou Yanru said, yes. Yu Hua immediately bargained and said, then after I change the light, can you help me publish?
Zhou Yanru said, as long as you change the light, I will publish it to you. Yu Hua said, as long as you publish it to me, I can give you light from beginning to end.
Zhou Yanru said, your child is really, you just need to end the light, the front should not be bright, because the front is not gray.
It can give you light from start to finish
Yu Hua changed it in one day!
When Zhou Yanru introduced Yu Hua to other well-known writers, he said that this child was particularly intelligent and only 23 years old, and asked him to revise the draft and change it in one day, and some other writers could not change it well in half a month, a month, or two months after we lived here.
Yu Hua thought to himself, Isn't it just a bright ending, what's so difficult?
After Yu Hua finished revising the draft, he wanted to go back, and Zhou Yanru said to him, it is not easy for you to come to Beijing once, you have fun. So Yu Hua played in Beijing for a month and played the whole of Beijing. In the end, there is really no place to play, and it is time to go home.
Before returning home, the newsroom not only reimbursed him for travel expenses, but also gave him a subsidy of more than 60 yuan (two yuan a day). Yu Hua went home with eighty or ninety yuan in his pocket, and for the first time in his life he felt that he was particularly rich. When the train stopped in Shandong, Yu Hua got off the train and bought four roast chickens for his father.
For the first time, he felt that he was particularly rich and bought four roast chickens for his father
After Yu Hua returned home, the whole haiyan was sensational, and the county leaders attached great importance to it, saying that this was the first person in our county to go to Beijing to revise the draft since the founding of New China.
In early 1988, Yu Hua suddenly received three letters of engagement within a week, one of which was sent by October. He put the three letters on the table in turn and showed them to his father, who asked him what he meant after reading them.
Yu Hua said, this is called famous! From random submissions to others to invite papers, your son is finally famous.
Later, someone asked Yu Hua, what is it like to be famous?
Yu Hua said that the feeling of being famous was when the three letters came, and then there was no more.
Even if he later wrote "Alive" and was adapted into a movie by Zhang Yimou, he no longer felt famous.
Finally famous
@Spring Thirty-Three