Famous writer Liu Xinglong
Chutian Metropolis Daily reporter Wang Gongshang Photo: Chutian Metropolis Daily reporter Xiao Hao
On December 21, Liu Xinglong, a famous writer and chairman of the Hubei Provincial Federation of Literature and Literature, was awarded the title of Advanced Individual in the Theme Practice of "Going Deep into Life and Taking Root in the People" by the China Writers Association for leading the two major activities of "Humanistic Walking on the Yangtze River" and "Humanistic Walking on the South-to-North Water Diversion Project" sponsored by this newspaper.
There is no doubt that from the beginning of embarking on the road of literary creation, "going deep into life and taking root in the people" has always been the principle upheld by Liu Xinglong, and it is also the driving force behind the sustained strong momentum of his creation over the years. Liu Xinglong's characters who enter the gallery of contemporary Chinese literature are all the products of "going deep into life and taking root in the people", and the same is true of Mao Dun's award-winning novel "Skywalker".
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were millions of private teachers in the country, and this huge group of almost silent people, in an extremely difficult environment, shouldered the heavy responsibility of teaching more than 100 million rural primary and secondary school students, spreading modern civilization and knowledge to the most remote villages and fields. In 1992, Liu Xinglong wrote the novella "Phoenix Qin" for them with delicate brushstrokes and simple words, and countless readers were moved to tears by it. In 2009, Liu Xinglong once again told the story of the hardships and hopes of the private teacher group, and presented a tragic song that touched the world to these "folk heroes who walked silently on the land of China in the second half of the twentieth century". This tragic song is "Skywalker".
Where do the character archetypes for Phoenix And Skywalker come from? Recently, the famous writer Liu Xinglong (hereinafter referred to as "Liu") was interviewed by a reporter from Chutian Metropolis Daily (hereinafter referred to as "Chu") to elaborate on the origin of the character image of the novel "Skywalker".
Skywalker writes about the fate of private teachers
Chu: In 1992, you published the novel "Phoenix Qin", which made many people pay attention to such a group of private teachers, and this novel had a very big impact.
Liu: After the publication of the novel "Phoenix Qin", it has been adapted into movies and TV series, which have caused great repercussions nationwide, and the State Council has issued policies to solve the problem of private teachers. I've received a large number of letters from readers saying that they would like to see a sequel to The Phoenix. A former leading leader of the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, who wrote in Guangming Daily, also mentioned such hopes. But I didn't catch that craze.
Chu: What eventually led you to write Skywalker?
Liu: Actually, I have been quietly preparing. In the summer of 2008, I met a writer from the Great Northwest in Guizhou who told me that in his hometown, the rural teachers almost everyone had a copy of the Phoenix Qin, and the teachers who were too difficult to know what difficulty was read the book as a scripture. Soon after, I read an article by a colleague: In the Yingxiu Primary School destroyed in the Wenchuan earthquake, there was a teacher named Fan Xiaoxia, who married her husband and separated from different schools, and for fourteen years the couple often read "Fenghuangqin" and talked about "Fenghuangqin", while shedding tears of sadness and comforting herself with the protagonist of the novel. Fourteen years later, Teacher Fan Xiaoxia had just been transferred from the alpine teaching point to Yingxiu Primary School, and within a few days of being reunited with her family, she was killed by a major earthquake forever. These two events shook me deeply, and I felt that the time had come to write Skywalker.
Chu: Is Skywalker a continuation of your unfinished emotions after seventeen years of precipitation?
Liu: In the eyes of others, Skywalker was written seventeen years after the publication of Phoenix Qin, and here in my case, there is one thing in these seventeen years that has never been interrupted for a day, and her name is Growth and Growth. "Phoenix" only writes one piece of sentiment, which was originally moved, while "Skywalker" wrote about the fate of these people. In destiny, it is the comprehensive collision of history and reality, social life and individual souls, to show the long-term value of humble life in the vast world.
Their image comes from a group of people
Chu: There is a plot in Skywalker: the state issued a policy to regularize private teachers, but some officials in the county did not think so, believing that their teaching qualifications were not enough and they were not qualified to become public teachers. A leader was very angry and asked the cadres present, did you ever be taught by private teachers when you went to school? Those who have been taught, please raise your hand! Everyone was stunned for a moment, and most of the people at the meeting raised their hands.
Liu: Yes. Private teachers are a very peculiar phenomenon in China's rural society during the special period of change from the 1960s to the 1990s. It is a strange phenomenon, the real process is very tragic, these millions of private teachers, are flesh and blood people, their efforts and sacrifices have not received due attention.
Chu: From "Phoenix Qin" to "Skywalker", where is the realistic prototype of these private teachers?
Liu: Some people say that I used to be a private teacher. Actually, no, I'm just a student of many private teachers. After the epidemic this year, we ran to Huanggang Yingshan Father and Son Ridge Primary School, and the principal was very happy, and he took out a material and said that their school was the prototype of the Boundary Ridge Primary School in "Phoenix Qin" and "Skywalker". Actually, I've never met him. And because I came out of Ying Shan, several places in Ying Shan are believed to be the places where the stories in Phoenix Qin and Skywalker take place, and some of them I have never been to.
Chu: In other words, you don't recognize them as the archetypes of the characters of Phoenix Qin and Skywalker.
Liu: I haven't been a private teacher, but I've seen too many private teachers. I had a high school classmate, a labor committee member in the class, who was suddenly rumored to be married in his sophomore year of high school, and his classmates all looked at him with strange eyes. A few weeks later, he went back to work as a private teacher. Soon after returning home, he caught up with the village "double robbery", he was in the field, and when he rested halfway, he went to the pond to wash the mud, slipped under his feet, and planted his head into the pond and never got up again. I still can't forget the way he sat in the back row of me when he was reading. Years later, I met a garbage picker on the street in the county town, he was a retired private teacher, began teaching in his teens, was dismissed in his forties, and picked up garbage in order to support his family. I still vividly remember meeting him on the street and pressing the brim of his hat very low. Phoenix And Skywalker are not concerned with individuals, but with images distilled from a group of people.
They are folk heroes
Chu: In Liu Xinglong's Literary Memoirs, it is said: For people who are not familiar with the life of private teachers, there is no limit to personality charm.
Liu: Shortly after Skywalker won the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the director of the Creative Research Office of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps finished reading the book and called me, saying that in the process of his reading, my wife asked very strangely what book made him so old that he still took a towel and scratched his eyes from time to time. Later, my wife took the book and read it, and kept wiping her tears with a towel. Although there are no private teachers within the Corps, these private teachers in the book are really touching.
Chu: You call them "the folk heroes who silently walked on the land of China in the second half of the twentieth century."
Liu: This is an artistic statement. "Private teachers" is a history that no one can get around, and in terms of their contributions, they can be called "national heroes". In the second half of the twentieth century, in rural China, which was in dire need of humanistic education, most of the teaching whips were in the hands of private teachers, who tried not to make the countryside more ignorant. The persistence and spread of civilization must be a torch passed down from generation to generation, and in that era, it was the rural private teachers who took up this burden. At present, in some places, the solution to the problem of private teachers is "replaced" by rural substitute teachers. I hope that in the process of national development, the problem of substitute teachers can be solved as soon as possible.