Book Introduction
Title: Distant Sunflower Fields
Author: Li Juan
Publisher: Flower City Press
"Distant Sunflower Land" is a long essay by Li Juan, which was collected by the author in the column "Distant Sunflower Land" published in wen wei po pen.
The "sunflower field" is on the south bank of the Urungu River in the Altay Gobi Steppe, a barren land that Li Juan's mother contracted to cultivate many years ago. As always, Li Juan used her delicate and bright tone to record the people who worked here and the simple and different details of their lives:
Her industrious and optimistic mother, her elderly and sick grandmother, the big dog ugly and ugly puppy Saihu, the chicken, duck and goose, and the increasingly prosperous, but they were destroyed and replanted by the goose-throated antelope, planting and destroying the ninety acres of sunflower land...
A large part of the people who like Li Juan's writing are because of her sincerity.
The book portrays not only the tenacity and hard work of mothers and borderland people, but also their inner hopes and persistence, and also expresses concerns about the environment and doubts about survival. Presents an experience of existence that is completely exposed to the fragility of nature, but at the same time full of fun and dignity.
Appreciation of works
Li Juan's prose has an optimistic and open-minded nomadic spirit. In "Distant Sunflower Land", the field that people are worried about every year of poor harvests is not growing like innocent joy. Her writing is unique, transparent and wise, and frontier life is full of vitality and poetry in her pen.
——The award speech of the 7th "Lu Xun Literature Award"
For the emotions of nature, Li Juan chose to first praise nature passionately, she praised the earth, surprised that the barren land in the north can give birth to dates and grow passionate sunflowers. Praise the Creator for making this wilderness barren land endlessly vibrant, providing selfless service to the animals that grow here and to those who survive. It also praises the magnificent scenery of the wilderness depths that wander beyond the human world, which brings temporary peace of mind to those who have been abandoned here, and comfort to those who toil on the land all day long. She also lamented the great power of nature, which can easily threaten, but human beings can do nothing about it, so the author also carries a reverence for nature in his praise.
All the cultivated land on the land is closely clinging to the banks of this river, and all the roads are spreading close to the banks of the river, and all the villages dare not go far. Like iron filings clinging to magnets, like people clinging to the only fire in the cold night.
On the high ground on the banks of the Urungu River in Xinjiang, there is a large field of golden sunflowers, "I", "my" mother, new father, grandmother and poultry live in this quiet and vast wilderness, tenacious and tasteful life.
In the distant Xinjiang, there is an Altay grassland, where thousands of acres of sunflowers are planted, and whenever autumn comes, our sunflower fields are golden and brilliant, waking me up from my dreams countless times.
She is not afraid to talk about the earth, all things and people, the will and pride of man, the innocence of man and the greed of man, because she recognizes from the toil of her mother and the people of the border areas the continuation of history, what expectations the ancestors who decided to settle here a hundred years ago have, how the seeds have flowed in a hundred years, how the canals have been widened, the cultivated land has been overturned several times, and the crops have been born and destroyed. Here is no longer just "bright and cheerful" and "boundless loneliness", but also looking forward to history and human understanding, there is anxiety about the land and the future, Li Juan forged the thickness of her lyrical philosophy from this sunflower land.
Read more
On April 23, 2018, "Distant Sunflower Land" was selected as the 2017 China Good Book. In August 2018, the book won the 7th "Lu Xun Literature Award" Prose Essay Award. In June 2019, the book was selected as an excellent work of the "Five Ones Project" of the 11th Spiritual Civilization Construction in Guangdong Province.
Audio: Lai Xiumei | Editing: Pan Wei
Image from the web
Editor-in-charge: Huang Bingquan
Duty Director: Zhao Jun eel
Chief Editor-in-Chief: Lullivan
Submission email: [email protected]