"You're full of dangers right now. This is an alternative book, pay attention to this book, may be criticized by many people to attack, you have to be mentally prepared. Before the interview began, the book designer Zhu Yingchun said this with a meaningful smile.
Bug Poetry is truly an alternative book. The difference is that the language it uses is not any existing human language. Zhu Yingchun collected, rubbed, and then arranged and combined the imprints of insect bites, crawling, egg laying and even defecation that he saw in the studio Suiyuan Bookstore. Although it doesn't actually mean anything, it seems to be a nuisance.
"Danger" is false, but "criticism" is true. Zhu Yingchun's record and love of bugs has puzzled many people. The last "Bug Book" with bugs as the protagonist, while winning the title of "the most beautiful book in the world", was also criticized and even insulted, "Isn't this a waste of paper?" "What's the difference between this and a premium notebook?" In the book "Snail Slow", some readers even applied for returns, citing typographical errors: the first 6 pages of the book were exactly the same.
At first, Zhu Yingchun would care about these bad reviews and feel that he had done something to apologize to the readers. But over time, he found that no matter what he did, he was scolded, his face became more and more "thick", and he went farther and farther on the road of obstinateness, and the books in the "Bugs" series also appeared more and more. In the end, he calmly said, "When the design is not understood, I just want to sneak a smile." ”
Recently, the Beijing News reporter interviewed Zhu Yingchun and chatted with him about his story with the bugs.
Zhu Yingchun and kittens "cut cakes", Qian Chao photographed. As a famous book designer, Zhu Yingchun's books have been selected as "China's Most Beautiful Books" many times, and the most eye-catching of them is that he has created and designed many books related to "bugs".
Written by | Xiao Shuyan
01
"It has no meaning, so it can have infinite meaning"
Bug Poems: Poems of spotted flycatchers
The creation of the Bug Poem stems from the unfinished intentions of compiling the Bug Book.
In 2010, Zhu Yingchun rented an abandoned printing plant on the campus of his alma mater, Nanjing Normal University, and transformed it into his own studio, named "Suiyuan Bookstore". After moving in, he found that in addition to himself, there were many uninvited tenants: ants, spiders, snails, inchworms... He took the camera to take pictures of the "shadows" of these tenants, wrote them in his diary, and after the book was integrated, he had "Next to the Bugs".
"Next to the Bugs", by Zhu Yingchun, Hunan People's Publishing House, 2014
The camera captured the bugs, and they also captured the traces they left on the leaves, on the bamboo poles, all over the white walls. Zhu Yingchun stared for a long time, and suddenly saw the doorway: Isn't this a masterpiece of calligraphy and painting left by the bugs? ——The writing of the fly, the big seal of the earthworm, the brush of the wax cicada, the dot of the celestial cow, the scorched ink of the ladybug, the freehand of the snail, the flying white of the tsubaki elephant, the wild grass of the wasp... He sorted out the ink treasures of the bugs one by one, so there was the "Book of Bugs".
The Book of Bugs, by Zhu Yingchun, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2015
After the publication of the Book of Bugs, Zhu Yingchun was still not happy, which was like a huge library of font materials, which could be spelled out and composed. Why did you choose poetry in the first place? Because poetry "has both words and style, even if you can't understand the content, its form itself is beautiful... We can't read French poetry, German poetry, and Japanese poetry, but you will find that it looks good, and the form itself looks good. ”
When Zhu Yingchun visited Europe, he loved to visit bookstores, although he did not know french or German, and could only rely on the illustrations in the book and the temperament of the book itself to expand his rich imagination. Once, he was gustoing through a German book when a German friend who knew Chinese came to visit, and the friend told him mercilessly: "You took it down." ”
"It has no meaning, so it can have infinite meaning."
The previous experience of "reading the Book of Heaven" was transplanted by Zhu Yingchun into the "Bug Poem". With the mood of setting up riddles, he collaged the traces of the bugs into poems, and sent the poems to friends, uploaded them online, and also brought them to kindergartens to share with children, asking them to make "translations" for themselves.
Zhu Yingchun found that children especially like to read bug poems, and they used the mouth of bugs to say their complaints about their mothers, their love for their grandmothers, or their little wishes not to write homework; while Zhu Yingchun's friend, Dai Qingtana, the lead singer of the Haya Orchestra, composed a bug poem and sang it; another friend, actor Yu Entai, translated the sonnets of the twenty-eight-star ladybird in front of Xisai Mountain.
"Don't you think that sometimes after reading a long modern poem, you will be secretly annoyed, or better not to understand it?" Modern poetry that does not know what to do, tacky cadre-style antique poetry, is not as good as the bug poetry that I can't understand, I can give it my own imagination. ”
02
"Every word is the first half of a worm's life" So what is "poetry"?
"Poetry is all about being out of the blue." The golden-leaf Privet, which plants rapeseed, bamboo and Privet and likes to eat in the Garden Bookstore, is part of the poem; observing the bugs breaking cocoons, growing, laying eggs, and spending spring, autumn, winter, and summer together is part of the poem; the traces of the insects are intercepted and washed, dried, rubbed, and scanned.
"Bug Poem" Text: The Poem of Sang Tianniu
The conversion of a "letter" from a leaf to a computer screen takes at least an hour, but its production cycle is even longer. "It's been a very hard, but joyful process. First you need to plant vegetables, loosen the soil, water, sow, and fertilize; then you have to constantly look for the traces left by the insects in the leaves, observing the traces from small to large; then you have to wait for the insects to fly away, and wait for it to leave before you can quietly cut the leaves; then you have to wash the leaves, scan them, find the shape, and use the drawing software to cut them out; and finally classify, we are divided into two categories: 'Dun Thick Body' and 'Floating Body'. ”
"All words are not carved, not drawn, not made by computers, but grown, connected to life. Every word is the first half of a worm's life, because after writing, it forms a cocoon, turns into a butterfly and flies away. ”
Choosing bugs as their companions and objects of observation is no accident. Since birth, Zhu Yingchun has formed an indissoluble relationship with bugs. In the era of material scarcity, insects were Zhu Yingchun's earliest and only playmate.
Zhu Yingchun vaguely remembered that when he was very young, his parents had to work in the fields every day, leaving him alone at home, and his mother wrapped him tightly in the cradle, leaving only a head. As soon as the door closed, it was pitch black all around, and he cried in fright until he was tired of crying and quieted down, when he suddenly heard a voice from far and near: buzzing—buzzing—" It was a fly that flew up to my chest and then to my face, and I found it stroking my face with a pair of forelimbs. Through the faint light from the window, I could faintly see the two big eyes of the fly and I looking at each other. At this time, I felt that there was a living life to play with me, and I was not so afraid. ”
More than forty years after making friends with his first fly, Zhu Yingchun held a funeral for a fly that broke into the studio and crashed into a glass window. He felt sorry for the loss of an innocent life, helped the fly take a photo, sent it to the circle of friends, and asked everyone to write a letter for it. Overnight, he received more than two hundred pairs of salutations. He collected and sorted these links one by one. Finally, a grave was built for the little fly and a simple funeral was held.
Zhu Yingchun's mourning association for the fly set and a tomb for the fly
For Zhu Yingchun, flies have never been a pest. Growing up, he has realized that the so-called pests and beneficial insects are just a self-centered classification of human beings, "those that are useful to us are called beneficial insects, and those that are useless to us are called pests." If we look at it from the perspective of the earth, what is useful to the earth is beneficial insects, and what is useless to the earth is the pest, how should the person's damage to the earth be measured? ”
03 "Don't forget to open the window at the right time"
Ant is another bug friend of Zhu Yingchun. He set aside an entire week to track the footprints of ants and wrote a book called "Ant", which recorded the "insect trajectory" of an ant.
"Ant", which records the "insect trajectory" of ants and other insects
"Ants are the closest, easiest to know, least harmful to people, and most worthy of learning and experiencing bugs," if you want to introduce a bug of your own, Zhu Yingchun first pushed the ant, "when we look at the ant, we can find a feeling that God looks at us: ants fight for a small grain of rice, fighting and fighting, although there is a larger piece of bread not far away, they have no way to know, just like humans." ”
The ants are busy and busy in order to survive, day after day, and zhu Yingchun also reminds zhu Yingchun of his past self. Before owning his own studio and becoming the "habitual winner" of the most beautiful books, Zhu Yingchun also experienced a ten-year high-intensity, fast-paced "hit worker" life, working as an art editor at Nanjing Normal University Press, responsible for the binding design of teaching auxiliary books.
The replacement of teaching aids is extremely fast, and Zhu Yingchun frantically receives goods every day, works overtime without life, and treats the office as a second home. "One day I was leaning against the door in the sample library of the publishing house, and when I looked back, I found that the shelves were full of teaching aids of my design. My life has become these things on the shelves, and these things, after the students have finished the exam, they will be torn off and thrown downstairs. ”
Design Poems, inner page
Ten years passed like this, until 2004, when his body sounded the alarm bell, and the doctor's diagnosis was that it was severely sub-healthy, and that the body organs would soon have problems in such a state. Zhu Yingchun began to reflect: "Is it important to make money, or is it important to let the heart get a perfect expression?" ”
So he made up his mind to quit his job, set up his own studio, and make a book that "let the heart get the perfect expression". Looking back on that experience, Zhu Yingchun realized, "A person's greatest happiness may be to do what he likes every day, and the things he likes can support himself." ”
Zhu Yingchun's studio with the garden bookstore, the door specially set up a traffic sign "slow"
Zhu Yingchun was next to the fence of the studio
But at the same time, "everyone's heart longs for freedom, but the pursuit of freedom is a process," even Zhu Yingchun, who has been teaching auxiliary book design for ten years before trying to break free, "when we must follow certain rules to run in the system and be busy, don't forget to open the window at the right time and look out the window." I have a curiosity, an insight, which brings a little looseness and fresh air to my boring life. ”
Therefore, the thing That Zhu Yingchun fears most is the loss of curiosity and imagination. Although the excess curiosity and imagination made Zhu Yingchun delay a lot of serious things.
"Snail Slow Swallowing", "slow" is a coordinate that Zhu Yingchun gave himself
For example, one day in 2014, Zhu Yingchun was preparing to leave for Shanghai to see Monet's exhibition, but when he opened the courtyard door, he found that the kitten "cut cake" jumped on the tree, he ran to the tree and raised his hand to take a picture of the kitten, only to be "lucky" hit by a pile of white bird droppings. Zhu Yingchun was not in a hurry, and watched the bird droppings dried on the black sleeves, leaving a bird with its eyes wide open and its mouth open, "more witty and expressionist than the famous rolling-eyed birds of the Bada Shanren." Zhu Yingchun, who has always been keen to collect the accidental traces of life, quickly returned to the studio, drew the shape of the bird droppings, and created his first "poop-shaped bird". Of course, Monet's exhibition did not go to fruition.
The poop-shaped bird, with the mythical color of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, is a strangeness from nature
After that, Zhu Yingchun Zheng'er Bajing began to collect and create "portable birds". Because he was attracted by the thousands of bird droppings outside the Louvre gate, he passed the Louvre three times and did not enter, and he was delayed by a serious matter.
"The Bird in the Shape", by Zhu Yingchun, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2017
But then again, what is "serious" and what is "unorthodox"? For designers, observing bugs is not serious enough, but Zhu Yingchun started from observing bugs and compiled five books in a row, even the jaw-dropping "impropriety" of collecting bird droppings can also become a serious book like "The Portable Bird". Perhaps, the so-called "serious things" are just more important things for themselves.
This article is an exclusive original article. Author: Xiao Shuyan; Editor: Shi Yanping; Proofreader: Xue Jingning. The inner text image was published with the permission of Zhu Yingchun. Without the written authorization of the Beijing News, it shall not be reproduced, and welcome to forward to the circle of friends.