Su Tong | need a reason to write?

I feel like words are a lot like a moving body. For example, in athletics, we talk about explosiveness, we talk about rhythm, and I think in the process of writing, the words you witness move, it moves in its way, in its rhythm. So, at that time I really didn't think about the reasons for writing, for the most part, the real reason I wrote was the focus and fascination with sports.

Does writing need a reason?

Does writing need a reason? In fact, it's a very big question, and to say that is actually to say a very long answer sheet, I want to start with an incident that I encountered many years ago. Around the 1990s, a group of our writing friends attended a literary PEN club in Fujian. One day we had dinner and drank a little wine, and that day we didn't care who drank more and who drank less. However, when the banquet was about to end, we had a military writer here, who suddenly had a little state, suddenly cried, and everyone at the table was stunned. At that time, everyone's knee-jerk reaction was really interesting: some people said that he had lost love, but it was not right, he was more than 40 years old, so was it an extramarital love? It's all such speculation and thinking. Because he cried so hard and comforted him for half a day, the writer suddenly raised his head, his eyes full of tears, and said something? He said that I really didn't expect that I was this age, I had been mixing in society for so many years, how could I get mixed with you literati?

This is a very famous writer, and the subjects he writes about are all military aspects. After saying that, he threw us back into the room, and everyone at the table was stunned. I was also stunned. Why the stunned? Not emotional, because "drinking and spitting out the truth" is really a very accurate description. So, in one sense he was drunk, but in another sense he was not drunk, unusually sober. This writer is more special, a family of soldiers, brothers and sisters are all from the military, only he is a soldier, but wrote a novel. The greatest shock of that day was that I suddenly discovered at such close range a very harsh fact, a fact that came from a kind of contempt for the barrel of a pen by a man who was accustomed to the barrel of a gun, a contempt, albeit in such a way.

After this incident passed, I can't say that I had never thought about the meaning of writing before, but that incident gave me an opportunity or a stimulus, so that many times in the process of writing, I would think about the meaning of writing itself. I have been saying that there is a question that asks a lot of writers who are actually stunned, just ask such a simple question, a writer has written all his life, why write? When you ask him coldly, I'm sure the vast majority of writers will stammer. Why? Because this is not a simple question, you can't answer this question exactly with any one word, any set of words. So, in a sense, "Why write, you give a reason to write" is actually not a question, but an answer sheet, a very large answer sheet. To answer this questionnaire, I would like to start from my personal experience, we often say that literature fills everyone's life, but you don't comb through and discover it yourself. After I have written on my own for many years, I have reflected on my own life and even life, and I feel that it is a very literary detail. I was born in 1963, I was the fourth oldest in our family, my father was an organ cadre, my parents' salary was very low, at that time it was less than 80 yuan, not only to support this family, but also to support the grandmother in the countryside and the grandmother in the city.

Therefore, when my mother was pregnant with me, she didn't want it at all, and she had to beat it off. However, she was a worker, she was going to the hospital to do a miscarriage, at that time to be very strict leave, to find the manufacturer to ask for leave, did not expect the factory director to say: "Production is so busy, why do you still talk to me about this matter, do not approve." He said again, "Are you pregnant?" Pregnant and give us a flower of the motherland, it is a very good thing, not allowed to ask for leave. My mother gave birth to me in this "two-no-no" situation, and she was also quite obedient, and since the leader did not allow it, this child was born. In such a state, my life officially has a right. The reason why I say that life is a miracle, there are many tragedies and joys, 3 years after I was born, the Cultural Revolution began, my mother was a worker in a cement factory, the factory is also quite large, belongs to the Central Ministry of Building Materials Industry, this factory was very fiercely fought in the Cultural Revolution. Because the factory director was beaten, he was exposed to a lot of unwarranted problems, he was very fragile, he was beaten so much that one day he couldn't think of it, he ran to the water tower of the factory and hung on a pipe and died, and he couldn't find this person for several days. The deputy director felt very strange, and finally found the inside of the water tower, and when he pushed the door, he saw the factory director. The deputy director saw this and collapsed on the ground in fright. Who is this deputy director? Tell everyone, it's my current father-in-law. My father-in-law found the body of the factory director, which I only talked about after I married my wife, and I felt that life was full of literature, and in the flow of life, in the details, I really found that so-called literature was everywhere in your own life.

After I knew this matter for many years, one day I went back to Suzhou, because at that time with the gas package, my mother-in-law saw that I came back, just to change a gas package, because it was the Spring Festival, so my mother-in-law had to do a lot of dishes, and the old feeling was that the gas was not enough. So, I went to the factory's ventilation station to change the big gas package. However, I couldn't hold it alone, so my mother-in-law helped me find a helper and said you helped us move back together, and he said there was no problem. Then I moved with the young man to my mother-in-law's house. After he left, my mother-in-law asked me, do you know who that young man is? He was the son of the factory director at that time. For a long time afterwards I was very sorry that I did not say thank you to him, I want to say thank you to the son of the factory director, of course I will not mention his father. However, such a thing is a miraculous aftertaste for me, that is, the so-called life is full of literature, and once it is expressed, the structure of your life is very compact, it is a long novel. That's the kind of recognition for me.

I feel that the beginning of my literary life, the so-called reason I gave for writing, the first one is related to curiosity. Love of literature, I think there are several prerequisites, love of literature is first of all love of words, love of fantasy, love of words and fantasy, in a sense is a sense of curiosity. I remember when I was very young, because it was the late stage of the Cultural Revolution, and I now know that the first literary interpretation of my life was slogan writing. There was a concrete floor at the entrance of the chemical plant, and I ran back from home and took a chalk to write "Revolutionary Committee Good", and others said that this little boy was really smart, and wrote such a revolutionary slogan, but this was just an illusion, in fact, the preference for words, this is only the first leaf of my literary fantasy.

When I was young, I had a disease, nephritis, which was not terrible, but it had a complication, which became a terrible disease. So, I couldn't do anything, I was 10 years old, sitting at home every day, my mother prepared a bamboo bed for me, that year's life is the deepest memory in my life memory, because it is on the verge of death, and the child does not know too much about his own physical problems, just feel a little uncomfortable. At that time, my mother was always crying outside, and she would not cry in front of my face, and I knew that it was related to my illness. So in this case, my parents told me that you can't go to school, you can only stay at home, and you have to take medicine every day. They all had to go to work, and there was no one to take care of me, only to take care of themselves. For that reason, I boiled the medicine myself, because nephritis everyone knows, urinating is particularly much, huangmei day is ticking rain, I feel that I am also ticking every day, I think the day is particularly difficult. I wanted to move, and I had the strength to move, but the doctors and my parents said I couldn't move. Later, I was really bored, so I looked for the "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" thrown by my father at home, but I couldn't understand it at that time, because it was traditional characters. But I read the words I knew, and my sister would occasionally bring me a few books, all about revolution. Where am I looking for the simplest word? On the wall of our house, because we had a very long corridor in our house, which was covered with newspapers, I remember that there was a newspaper called "Suzhou Workers and Peasants' Daily", I was really bored, so I squatted in the corridor, and there was no electric light at that time, so I opened the door and projected the reflection of the river into the corridor, and I could see the words on the newspaper. The words on the newspapers were very hollow, those with the background of that era.

Therefore, I think that my earliest contact with literature, to be precise, contact with words, my earliest fascination with literature is obsessed with words, and my fascination with words may also be related to my situation, or it may be a lonely life. So, in a big sense, I appreciate literature, because from childhood, words first became my friends, and it accompanied me. This is a very memorable thing for me, so I think the love of literature begins with the love of words.

There is another one that I am very impressed with, which is the so-called fantasy spirit. Because I think this is also a necessity, a must-have for writing. I remember very clearly, probably when I was in middle school, because I made cotton jackets in that era, and if I wanted to make a very formal cotton jacket, especially for adults, he didn't buy it in the store. My father was supposed to be on his 40th birthday that year, and my mother made a silk cotton jacket, so when the family had some work, she found a female tailor and invited her to the house to take care of her food every day. This seamstress lived on our street, and I had actually seen her before, probably in her 60s, wearing black all day. She carried a basket with her scissors, ruler, and other tools, which she had been drying for decades. One day this seamstress was doing it at home, and she threw the basket in our house, and as soon as I turned it over, I found that she had a yellowed pictorial in it, and I picked it up, and it was a pictorial newspaper on the beach that had been torn off by a third. When I opened it, there were several women in cheongsam sitting in a boat, going on a spring tour. I'm very interested in this pictorial, I'm not interested in beautiful women. I told the old woman, can you lend me this pictorial newspaper? She said no problem and asked me to bring her some old newspapers. For her, a pictorial was just a basket of things, and I collected that pictorial. I don't know why I was so interested in that old pictorial, I'm afraid it was a very special time, all the old things, the old social things, the yellowed things can't be seen, and when I occasionally get this yellowed thing I will be very serious about "learning".

At that time, the pictorial was actually a popular performing arts company in Suzhou that organized a group of actors to travel. This pictorial, which I recall now, was brought about by this pictorial for the first time, because it brought me a dependency and made me start to think wildly. Of course, this is the whims of all youth. When I think about it now, I am writing about women's lives, and I guess it is related to this pictorial newspaper, which is slowly fermenting.

It was a very peculiar experience. Probably in 1971, I now remember very clearly the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Paris Commune, when cable broadcasts were broadcasting to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Paris Commune. Because at that time our radio station was celebrating in a very solemn form, it was a message about the revolution. And a few of our children gathered on a patio in a courtyard opposite our house to pestering a young worker at the time, who knew many stories. So, I remember very clearly that we sat down in the courtyard and said to the neighbor's big brother, "Fan me." We would fan him very diligently and he would tell stories. They were listening to the background of the Paris Commune, about the passionate story of the revolution, and we were listening to a story of "The Green Corpse," which in the '70s had a small manuscript, and that such a name alone had great temptations for small children—corpses, and they were green. So, this is something I remember fondly from my own teenage years.

In my own background of growing up, there are some things related to literature that I have just said. There is also a tone that I have always felt is directly related to my writing, this relationship is the tone of writing, I have always felt that writing has a tone, this tone has been difficult to describe, but it has a tone and rhythm. I have always felt that when I was a child in the streets of Suzhou, there was a sound that had a great influence on me, and that sound was the sound of Suzhou pingtan in the air on the streets of Suzhou. But I think Suzhou Pingtan is soft, Suzhou Pingtan is very casual, very slow, very leisurely a rhythm, Suzhou singing is very slow. The opening credits I captured in the novels are the rhythm of the books on the radio, because the creation of Suzhou is very strange, and every story has such a point, but after decades of artist processing and acting, it has been greatly transformed. Sometimes a long story takes more than ten days to tell a story, and it is not impatient to say it there. So, I think it has a lot to do with my writing.

My own real creation probably started in college, probably in the '80s, which was supposed to be a golden age, and I started writing at that time, naturally with the idealism of that era. For example, many people have asked me questions today, asking me why I write, why do you write, have you written before? Would you still write if tomorrow told you about an earthquake, or a global destruction? If this extreme question is placed in the 80s I can't answer, because the 80s is such an atmosphere, you are a young person, you should write, not to write is not you sick? It was in this state that one was in my own hobby, and the other, in the 80s, when young people were writing was a special group, especially in the Chinese department, and it was at this time that I began to really write.

From poetry writing to big novels, it lasted my entire college life. What's really interesting about my college life is that I've always felt that the reason I wrote had something to do with one word—movement. People will wonder, why do you mention sports? I think one of the very peculiar phenomena I had when I was in college was over-energy. I have to report to the basketball court of Beijing Normal University every day, no matter whether it is windy or rainy, whether there is a companion or not, I must go every day at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I now feel that I have a desire in my body called exercise.

On the other hand, after I finish exercising, I have to write every night. To sum up now, I feel that my body is obsessed with movement, and my heart is obsessed with another kind of movement—the movement of words. I always felt that in college, my intense pursuit of literature was actually a movement of words, so I went from writing poetry to novels. On the one hand, I am manipulating my body so that it is always in motion, and at night I am manipulating the text, letting the text move under my hands continuously, and I feel that the text is very much like a moving body. For example, in athletics, we talk about explosiveness, we talk about rhythm, and I think in the process of writing, the words you witness move, it moves in its way, in its rhythm. So, at that time I really didn't think about the reasons for writing, for the most part, the real reason I wrote was the focus and fascination with sports.

Whether the state of the word in different genres is to let it run or let it jump, I think it's undiscovered pleasure for a writer. I found this pleasure and fell into it all at once. Now that I think about it, I still insist on my ——— of writing may not be my personal discovery, first of all, the sense of movement of the text itself is the reason why I have always been fascinated by literature in my college youth, and I have always insisted on it.

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