Chen Nianxi, a native of Danfeng County, Shaanxi Province. He has been engaged in mine blasting for 16 years. There are hundreds of poems, essays, and commentaries scattered in "Poetry Journal", "Stars", "Caotang", "Tianya", "Red Rock", "Prose" and other journals. He won the first Chinese Workers' Poet Laureate Award and published the poetry collection "Exploding Zhi", so he was invited to shoot the documentary "My Poems". Including the prose collection "To Live is to Shout" and "Dust". Later, he was well known as a "miner poet", invited to harvard And Yale and other American universities to speak, and appeared on the CCTV stage several times.
In the north in late spring, Chen Nianxi rode a motorcycle to listen to the Qin Cavity and rode on the winding mountain road. "This way home, riding for half a lifetime." He wrote this in his circle of friends. When the reporter dialed the phone, a slightly hoarse voice came in, as dry as loess.
Chen Nianxi, born in 1970 in Danfeng County, Shaanxi Province, is a 53-year-old mine blaster who worked as a mine blaster for 16 years. In the years when the miners made a living, fate brought him not only pneumoconiosis, but also a harder heart. In 2013, with a straightforward and concise text, he shouted into the sky with a poem "Exploding Zhi", which caused a shock in the poetry world:
"I don't dare to look at my own life / It's hard / Hyun Black / Sharp angles with wind pickaxes / Stone touches / It will bleed / I pass middle age at a depth of five thousand meters / I explode the rock formation again and again / Take this / Recombine my life"
"In the bones of the lowest, there are rivers"
Chen Nianxi wrote poetry relatively early, and began to contact poetry in high school; in the 1980s and 1990s, the door of the country was opened, and foreign ideological trends poured in, and every individual embraced the times with an open heart. When he was young, often because the experience of life was not enough, and his understanding of many things was not enough to support poetry creation, he preferred to call it learning and imitation. Despite this, today's Chen Nianxi occasionally sees those yellowed manuscripts in the drawer, but he still feels very green, energetic and spirited. "Although it was a stage of learning to imitate, that period of preparation was something that had to be experienced. It was not until the mine period that writing entered a life-oriented writing. ”
Provided by Chen Nianxi/Interviewee
In 1999, at the age of 29, Chen Nianxi ushered in the most precious gift of his life- the arrival of his son. However, the lover's health is not good, the family added another member, as the main labor force of the family, joy and worry intertwined with Chen Nianxi in order to maintain the family's source of income, had to stop writing poetry, turned into the mine, and worked as a demolition worker. Recalling this, Chen Nianxi told reporters: "In the nearly ten years of going to the mine, I almost stopped creating. Because of the environment of the whole mine, people have a strong sense of separation between reality and ideals. ”
"Life is not fairy tales and romance / Son / We are chased by three real whips / Dad is tired / One step is only three inches / Three inches is a year / Son / Calculate with your exact numbers / How far Can Dad go." Chen Nianxi - "Son"
Unlike the coal miners, Chen Nianxi has been engaged in the mining of metal mines. Most of the coal mining is located in the plains, which is larger; and the metal mines, because of their own characteristics, are mostly produced in the mountains and rivers, and the number is sparse and the population is not populated, so it has been working in some marginal areas. In the Qinling Mountains east of Mount Hua, at the junction of Shaanxi and Yu, due to the particularity of the geographical location, the large mountain that rises steeply from the plains on both sides has a completely different vegetation and the appearance of the vegetation on both sides is completely different from that under the mountain: the mountain is already full of spring, the mountain is still a pale yellow, the mountain is still autumn, and the mountain enters winter early.
"I have three tons of explosives in my body"
Climatic differences lead to different temperatures on and below the mountain. At that time, the workers who worked with Chen Nianxi did not have a shed, so they used colored strips of cloth to build shelters. "When the mountain wind blows, the colored strips of cloth will be blown over and lifted; in winter, the cold wind will break through the door and the whole shed will be lifted away." We didn't dare to get out of bed, and we would freeze to death when we got out of the bed. Chen Nianxi recalled this and coughed softly.
At the two kilometers of the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine in Shandong, they had to drink ten kilograms of cold water every day to make their bodies feel balanced. During that time in the mines in southern Xinjiang, travel and driving needed a compass to discern the direction, and to feel the four seasons by the temperature of the air, because there was no vegetation, and there was no green in sight, making people unable to distinguish the change of seasons. "My job is to dig the roadways, to find and mine in the mountains, to punch holes, to blast, to be thousands of meters deep in the mountains. Rock structures are complex, and geothermal, permeable, and collapse are common. Once in Henan, my brother and I were working in front of us, and halfway through the collapse, we were only a few seconds away from being stuck inside, which would cause oxygen to die. "On the other side of the phone, because his vocal cords have been stimulated by dust for many years, he speaks a little hoarsely.
Written in the spring of 2013, Chen Nianxi, who was working in Nanyang at the time, received a call from home that her mother had advanced esophageal cancer. "At that time, the sky was already warm, and the peach blossoms that spread all over the mountains were particularly beautiful; the spring in Nanyang came earlier than home, and the peach blossoms planted by the mother at home should also bloom, but the peach blossom planters had to leave." I sat alone by the mine, confused, looking back on my life like a dream. Infinitely miserable, he wrote this poem.
Sixteen years of miner career, Chen Nianxi has traveled all over the barren mountains and mountains, and experienced the line of life and death. In countless lonely and boring days, he filled his time and heart with writing poetry.
In 2016, he went to the United States with the crew of the documentary "My Psalms" to exchange ideas and gave a speech at Yale:
"Not long ago, during that cervical spine surgery, three pieces of metal were implanted into my cervical spine. These delicate parts, said to have been produced in the United States, may have been some ore that was seen by my explosion, taken to distant America, turned into medical supplies, and then crossed the ocean to become a part of my body, and now I have brought them here again. If metal could talk, what kind of story would it tell? ”
"If there is the longest cry, it is my poetry"
Today, Chen Nianxi is no longer engaged in manual labor due to physical reasons. In his spare time, he writes about various local manuscripts and does the work of a freelance writer. But for him, writing is also another kind of miner's work, to have discovery, to dig deep, but also to persevere. "Life is still the first, compared with life, writing is not what, the ancients should also do what, fight wars, wander the world, works were born from it." 」
In 2019, due to ecological relocation, Chen Nianxi moved from the mountain to the county seat. Although there is a small relocation house in the county, in order to save the cost of living, the lover still stays in his hometown. Growing vegetables and planting land in the mountains greatly ensures that grain can be self-sufficient; Chen Nianxi occasionally brings some grain from home to the county seat. Because the county has a network, most of the time is spent on the completion of the publishing house to write the book. When there are occasional bottlenecks in writing, he goes for a walk in the mountains and seeks answers in nature. Because Chen Nianxi needs to constantly send books to his readers from various platforms, the transportation of the county is more convenient for running express delivery one after another. In order to let readers get the book earlier, he tirelessly walked a hundred miles to ride a single ride, riding a motorcycle from his hometown to the county town to send express delivery.
Provided by Chen Nianxi/Interviewee
He has always been puzzled as to why his work is mainly aimed at university students and intellectuals. He always believed that he and them had a wide generation gap, and every time he filled in the delivery address, he found that it was from various universities and institutions in the north and south of the tiannanhai. Later he figured it out, "Those who can resonate with literature are sensitive people; perhaps these people are not engaged in particularly difficult and tiring work, but these people are far away from their hometowns, everyone is uprooted, although life is different, but everyone is full of vicissitudes, it is precisely the vicissitudes of my works that resonate." ”
Chen Nianxi's son is still attending college in the provincial city, mentioning his son who is about to graduate, chen Nianxi hopes that he can go to the big city outside to work hard. "The children of this generation have no survival advantage in returning to their hometowns."
"I take this opportunity to recombine my life"
In addition to writing on the case, Chen Nianxi's daily activity is to go outside and take a walk. Perhaps because I was born in the countryside since I was a child, every time I walk on the mountain road, many questions in life will be answered at this moment. The northwest is vast, but powerful. "I still have many ideals, go to Gansu, go to Xinjiang, and go back to the road of working before." Maybe looking back at that experience with the mentality of an observer, looking at the people and landscapes that have changed over time, what happened, will also give yourself a new accumulation of literary creation. The so-called literature is to present life, to present people.
"My writing is one of those forms, finding a little balance for myself. Or do I hope that people, such times, or future generations, know that there is such a group of people engaged in such work, their destiny, their state, their lives. Chen Nianxi told reporters that in addition to the pressure of making a living, the current life is still relatively leisurely and free compared to before. His tone was slow and calm.
Chen Nianxi's poetry is coarse and warm metal. Miners and poets are miners, both looking, both contributing to the world. Social development needs resources, literature needs poetry to break and open the way, to open up language and ideas, to break the rigid parts.
Provided by Chen Nianxi/Interviewee
Spring is gentle and powerful, and spring is a season for reading poetry. There is a line in the movie "Death Poetry Society", "We read poetry and write poetry because we are part of human beings, and human beings are full of enthusiasm." Medicine, law, commerce, and engineering are noble ideals and necessary conditions for survival. But poetry, beauty, romance, and love are the reasons for our survival. ”
Producer: Liu Lijun
Planner: Xie Jiangtao, Zuo Zhihong, Gao Chunming
Coordinator: Lin Shaojuan Liu Jie
Written by: Aoyi news reporter Jiang Dan
Design: Zheng Baiqi