"I am rediscovering my hometown with words, rediscovering the land, rediscovering the peasants. Through the writing of the hometown, I rediscovered myself, rediscovered literature, and rediscovered the writer's relationship with the hometown and the land. Writer Chen Yingsong recently published a new work "Tianlu Bay", in a recent interview with reporters, he passionately combed through the breakthrough writing for him.
Return to your hometown and write about change
"TianluWan" is the latest novel by Chen Yingsong, winner of the Lu Xun Literature Prize, which takes the forty years of reform and opening up as the background of the times, writes the long and arduous entrepreneurial history of the peasants in the Jianghan Plain to achieve poverty alleviation through struggle, and reproduces the great transformation process of contemporary Chinese countryside in a panoramic way.
Chen Yingsong's hometown of Gong'an County, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, is known as the "First County of Jiangnan Grapes", and there are more than 100,000 mu of grapes and 50 or 60 varieties in the local area. There was no history of growing grapes here, but in the late 1980s, several farmers tried to grow grapes, breaking the assertion that grapes were not suitable for growing grapes south of the Yangtze River, rewriting textbooks and becoming a miracle and myth of fields and land. "Tianlu Bay", a contemporary vernacular novel that revolves around the grape industry in his hometown, contains Chen Yingsong's feelings for his hometown, for the land, and for agriculture.
Talking about the origin of writing, Chen Yingsong said that in recent years, he has returned to his hometown more often, and a joke by the local leader has touched him: "Teacher Chen, you have written so much About Shennongjia, why don't you write about your hometown?" Chen Yingsong replied that he could write, but he could not find a breakthrough, although his feet were on the land of his hometown, but the pen was far away. However, he decided to go deep into the fabric of his hometown and try this time to write.
For Chen Yingsong, the local grape industry inspired him to write. Grapes were a blank in his childhood impression, he said, and it was only after many years of entering the city that he tasted them for the first time. In "Tianlu Bay", the grape eventually became the background of the writing, and the introduction, planting, processing and output of the grape all had the special meaning and connotation given to it by the times. "It should be said that my inspiration comes from my hometown and also from life. The purpose of writing this book is to record the history of reform and opening up in the Jianghan Plain of Hubei Province over the past 40 years, and the development process of the grape industry from scratch. ”
Praise the land, praise the peasants
"In this novel, I can sum up my mood with these eight words: praise the land, praise the peasants." Chen Yingsong said.
In the depths of Chen Yingsong's memory, the countryside used to be a kind of farming life that worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, with adobe houses, mud roads, faces facing the loess and back to the sky, and endless labor, picking dung, digging ditches, hoeing grass, planting seedlings... There is nothing that is not a heavy coolie. But in "Tianlu Bay", the image of backward farmers no longer exists, and readers can see the image of new farmers who dare to explore and innovate. Chen Yingsong said: "For writers, fieldwork is an essential skill, and only when you really walk in the fields and in life can you truly perceive the awe-inspiring qualities of farmers." ”
"In fact, when I was in Jingzhou in 2009, I found that almost overnight the countryside had been mechanized, and farmers no longer needed hoes, sickles and cattle, no weeding, no need to plant seedlings and cut grain, everything was handed over to machinery." Chen Yingsong believes that the clever, shrewd, and knowledgeable peasants have emerged, and modern, advanced, and fashionable new rural areas have blossomed everywhere. This novel, which uses grapes to string nostalgia, is also a tribute to witnessing the changes of the times in a small place.
Since 2019, Chen Yingsong has really gone deep into various parts of his hometown, interviewed a large number of farmers, and found more in-depth discoveries. He said that unlike some people in the city who are keen to play mahjong and square dance, local farmers continue to learn the most advanced agricultural technology, including the operation of agricultural machinery, the use of various fertilizers and pesticides, and the mastery of various cultivation techniques. Some of their unassuming peasants even have an annual income of several million yuan, and their houses are much more beautiful than those in the city. Finally presented in "Tianlu Bay", the spiritual world of the farmers in the Jianghan Plain has undergone tremendous changes, and each grape has witnessed the development of modern science and technology and the firm confidence of smart farmers, which reflects the promising future of modern agriculture.
Back to basics, pure expression
Chen Yingsong began writing "Tianlu Bay" in 2020, and after two years, this novel, set in the grape industry, depicting the feelings of two generations of farmers about the land was finally born. "I use realism to describe the reverence and gratitude to the peasants."
Chen Yingsong went to Shennongjia in 2000 to hang up his post, and since then he has lived in Shennongjia 800-mile mountains and strange mountains for more than 20 years, and is famous in the literary world for the Shennongjia series of novels, "Shennongjia is my second hometown, and it has slowly become my spiritual hometown. ”
For writing the "first hometown" Jianghan Plain, Chen Yingsong frankly said that "Tianlu Bay" is an "outlier" in all his works. In the past, he wrote the Shennongjia series of novels, wrote about the poor life in the alpine mountains, and wrote about the mysterious and magical critical realism themes. And this "Tianlu Bay", which originates from nostalgia, originates from the field, and has a story development spanning thirty or forty years, is completely a pure expression, and it is completely colloquial, life-oriented, and regionalized in writing. Each of the characters in the book even has an archetype that carries their character traits. Chen Yingsong said: "Through this way of writing, I want to tell you that the peasants are indeed the greatest people in our time. ”
"Writers' creations are actually very stubborn, and there is always an inertia." Chen Yingsong frankly said that it is difficult to change the style, style and color of previous novel writing, "If I say that in the past I wrote bitter land, now I am writing sweet land, from bitter to sweet, I slowly found the feeling." Chen Yingsong said that it is precisely by using another brushwork and technique to write that the territory of literature will be so broad.
In summarizing this writing, Chen Yingsong said more bluntly: "In the final analysis, writers really still have to go deep into life, go to life, walk, and discover. In Chen Yingsong's view, it is not enough for dragonflies to walk around in a little water and floating light, but also to really go deep into the mountains and rivers, deep into the fields.
In Chen Yingsong's view, the hometowns that many writers have written about in the past are mostly nostalgic hometowns, and they are the perception of their past lives and hometowns in childhood and youth. "No matter what changes have taken place in their hometown, they still stubbornly believe that the hometown at that time is called the hometown." He believes that this is because some writers are diaphragm with reality, do not go deep into real life, or stay in the study, stay in the city, and imagine their hometown in a very distant place. "I have always believed that only by writing about my hometown with my feet dipped in the mud of my hometown can I understand and write about my true hometown in the present."
"Only by using words can writers rediscover their homeland and rediscover their relationship with the land." Chen Yingsong said that when you rediscover the relationship between writers and the land and get closer to your hometown, you will find that this hometown is more lovely, and this land is even more lovely.