Wu Yaozong: I like the way I am dust

Singapore-born Hong Kong writer Wu Yaozong has lived in Hong Kong for many years and has not published poetry in Hong Kong; he has been active since his first poetry published in Ming Pao in 2013. In this edition, we will interview Wu Yaozong to talk about the origins and experiences of creation, talk about the process of communicating with Hong Kong poets, the recent "Eighteen Districts" poetry conference, and how to provide a variety of garden for Hong Kong writers to share creative ideas. The same edition of Hook Shen Shen's wu Yaozong, the late writer Ye Si, recalls how Chinese writers around the world made a relationship with literature in those years.

"Because of you, I like the way I am dusty" is from "Hiding in Greece with My Wife." Although the poem is written for his wife, it is actually very suitable to describe Wu Yaozong's personality of softness and inner rigidity, dusty and meticulous, easy-going with the wind, but lofty and far-reaching. On new year's day, a group of poets celebrated the New Year at the Tai Po Market Deli Centre. Saying that it is the year of the regiment, in fact, many people all met at the beginning of that day. Everyone present here, Chen Kangtao, Yingqiu, Guan Tianlin, Zhou Hanhui, Peng Liqing, the post-70s, the 80s, and the 90s, all have them. It was at that time that I met Wu Yaozong. When the cup and plate are in disarray, it is natural to read poetry and criticize it. The gun shoots the head bird, no problem, I read "Therefore the world does not belong to anyone": "I believe that fire has no soul /... / Even humans can not have / Because the soul itself does not exist / You must fight into the flames / Win back your soul". I remember that his doubts about the poem were that it explicitly stated that "fire has no soul", so why does the last paragraph refer to you having to "fight for/win back your soul from the flames"? Isn't that contradictory? He was really attentive, paying attention to the overall structure of poetry, and attaching great importance to the language of poetry. Everyone talked happily, Guan Tianlin also gave the "Body Night Cool as Water" to everyone, did you know that Wu actually said: "Don't send it, I bought it long ago." "I can't help but marvel at myself, who was born and raised in Hong Kong and has not yet bought, and this professor from Singapore has already read it, which can be described as close to the atmosphere." It was February 2015.

Wu Yaozong

A newcomer who has been writing poetry for many years

Born in Singapore, Ng studied in the United States and then came to Hong Kong to teach for ten years. At the age of fifteen, he was recruited by the newspaper to work as a student correspondent, similar to a juvenile journalist. In his spare time, he reports on school news and social activities, and earns money for pocket money. It was then that he met the editor of the newspaper: the poet Xia Xin. Xia Xin would talk to him about poetry and drink in his spare time. I started writing poetry. In 1988, under the pseudonym Wei Tongque, he published his first book, the poetry collection "Soft Heart". In addition to poetry, he also wrote prose and novels. Although Yun came to Hong Kong in 2006, his relationship with Hong Kong can actually be traced back to 2002. At that time, his collection of novels, "Cold as Fire", was prefaced by Yass. However, he was the first to publish poetry in Hong Kong in 2013. When asked about the reason for the investigation, he said that after all, he was not familiar with the road of life, and he had not yet understood the situation in the Hong Kong literary circle. And Hong Kong literature has its own style, and it is also about chance outside the door. He even laughed and pointed out that when he first came to Hong Kong, he also encountered a number of very unfriendly situations. However, he thought it was not a problem for Hong Kong. After all, human nature will inevitably be extra vigilant and reserved for strangers. This is a bit like the vigilance between generations, the times are different, the education is different, and the forerunners will sometimes have a slight reservation for the latecomers. The worst case scenario is naturally Tang Donated's "I. The Old Man's Violent Regiment: "Oh, brother, you have been a big soldier for two years as a cow and a horse, I think you must want to be a man in Zhou /-Speaking in good conscience, it is really cool to be a man, but his brother told me: /'Child, you must first become an old man / before you can become a man.' ’”

But Wu Yaozong's situation is very different here. In Xinhua literature, Wu Naijian's pen is undoubted, but his identity in Hong Kong is not embarrassing. Liao Weitang said that whether he was in the mainland or Hong Kong, people could only see him as a newcomer. Literature is not a prominent study in Hong Kong, and even the term "Hong Kong literature" has only gained more and more attention around 1997. The concubine is unknown, and he has no time to go with people. Singaporean poets who are far abroad, unless they are researchers in this category, are really difficult to recognize. Look at a generation of poets after the 70s and 80s, Deng Xiaohua, Mai Shujian, Lü Yongjia, Ke Luo, more or less, the creation of more than one professor writing class. This gives them a convenient way to reach out to a group of young generations who love literature. On the other hand, Wu Yaozong, after coming to Hong Kong, for a long time taught night classes or research-focused courses, and at that time, colleagues jokingly called him "night special household". Students rarely create, and his literary causes with the younger generation cannot be discussed. No wonder the seniors and the younger generations all regarded them as newcomers.

Wu Yaozong has a keen eye, but his personality is tolerant and open-minded. In 2015, when he published his poetry collection "Living by Imagination" in Hong Kong, he asked Chen Ziqian, who was younger than him, to write a preface. His love for the younger generation doesn't stop there. "King Wen of Jin called Emperor Nguyễn Si thiồcial prudent, and every time he spoke to him, his words were far away, and he did not try to deny the character." Wu Yaozong is also the most cautious, but his sincerity is used to pick up gold in the sand, and every time he encounters a considerable poetry, he will spare no effort to promote it. He also began to compile a hong Kong post-80s poetry anthology, hoping to publish it in early 2017. At present, although the post-80s anthology, he believes that this promotion of good poetry is not to prove his aesthetics, but also because good poetry deserves attention. Under his needle-piercing line, he introduced young poets such as Xicao and Mimi to Taipei, and held poetry clubs with the Qi Dong Poetry Society and Taiwanese poets Yan Erin and Meng Fan. However, Wu Yaozong did not favor one over the other, and he also organized a series of "Lectures for Hong Kong Writers" at CityU. What is the purpose of compiling "Selected Poems of Hong Kong Post-80s Generation" and running the "Hong Kong Writers Lecture Series"? Wu Yaozong said to himself: "For the sake of 'profound'." 'Profound' is not just an adjective, but also two verbs, which refer to 'deep (going in)', and 'carving (out)', like carving, to go deep to carve out. During the Hong Kong years of my life, after the first six years of low-key chaos, I returned to literature to find things and things, people and moments that could be 'profound'. Of course, it can also be said from another perspective that it took six years for 'profoundness' to come to me, let me grasp it, and it led me into another realm and vision, whether it is literary creation or literary activities. ”

Good knife and hidden, chest in the hills

On the profoundness and the hard work of promotion, in addition to the poetry selection and lectures, it is necessary to mention the "Hong Kong Eighteen Districts Poetry Tour" initiated by Wu Yaozong. As the name suggests, it is necessary to travel all over the 18 districts of Hong Kong to hold poetry reading meetings. There are actually many poetry societies or literary groups in Hong Kong, such as the earlier Breathing Poetry Society, the Zero Point Poetry Society, and then the more recent Poetry Society and the Trouble Poetry Society. However, they either read poetry in the same style or gathered together to engage in publications, and the aesthetic orientations among the members were more similar. But the Eighteenth District is completely different, not a regular meeting, nor a gathering of people to compile poetry, but the opening of the clear will to promote poetry to the community through poetry reading. And what is more interesting is that the poetry styles of the people are different, just Zhou Hanhui, who likes to write grassroots grassroots, and Liang Kuangzhe, who jumps romantically with imagery, are in the opposite direction. Some of the members are the editors of "Character Flower", some are the editors of "Sound Rhyme Poetry Journal", some are members of "Writing Power", teachers, students, professors and even idle people such as me, after the 70s, 80s and 90s, all have. Three mountains and five mountains, reading poetry and working together, is itself a stirring of aesthetics and personality again and again.

Lack of funds, no precedent, but Wu Yaozong is to make some contact, everyone works together, from Kwun Tong Gongsha to Meiwo Beach, one after another by everyone out of nothing, reading poetry and discussing poetry. If it were not for the fact that he had received a lot of help and gathered people and attached himself to the crowd, it would have been really difficult to judge. Later generations, in all, Cai Yanpei, Guan Mengnan, Huaiyuan, He Di, Zheng Danyi, Luo Guixiang, Pan Guoling, Liao Weitang, Cao Shuying, Li Haoqian, Shi Chengyin, Lin Xicheng... It is difficult to write, it is difficult to record.

The same poetry club, also from other places, the "Eighteenth District" and the North Island international poetry night can be described as different. Most of the poets invited by Kitajima are famous foreign poets, and in the obscure auditorium of the Shek Kee Creative College, Hong Kong readers can be described as eye-opening, and they can see the poets from all over the world for two consecutive nights. In particular, the Burmese poet Zeyar Lynn, Chen Kangtao, Yingqiu and I can be regarded as the first time to appreciate the charm of poetry recitation. After the International Poetry Night, we took him to Temple Street to eat seafood, and Chen Kangtao and Yingqiu still ran back to CUHK at night to read poems with Zeyar Lynn until late at night, a time that I will never forget. Reading poetry is not only reading, rhythm, weight, standing, eyes, the focus, even pauses and silences when reading, are all part of reading poetry.

The sea is full of rivers, and the collection sentences are hanging

The International Poetry Night is an unprecedented event. Wu Yaozong inherited his ideas, but the opposite way, North Island based on the international, but also came to the third session to have "Hong Kong Night", Wu Yaozong took root in the local area, went deep into the folk, and invited Hong Kong poets to be the mainstay. And the International Poetry Night, basically the poet read it. The eighteenth district is not the case, the previous poets have read it, young people can immediately ask for advice and questions in the discussion time, young people can read it, and the forerunners can also comment and encourage. I think literature was originally "dictatorial", and poetry was even more so. Its dictatorship is not in this world, but in the author's own aesthetic. The meaning of poetry is not to popularize, but to pursue absolute meritocracy, and to obstinately act magnificently, exhausting all its forms, either delicate or rough and willful, and ending with the secular pronouncement of high and low. On the other hand, Wu Yaozong brought together the first to learn and then learned, and various aesthetic personalities speculated and experimented in the reading, and reviewed and improved in the discussion. Obviously, it is a lonely road, and Wu Yaozong has this ability to make people realize that "virtue is not lonely, there will be neighbors", and every poetry meeting has it, which is where his personal charm lies. "Since I have returned, the doormen are close to each other." He was a person who played both the role of teacher and disciple at the same time, and he was really busy.

Wu Yaozong said that his aesthetic of poetry is relatively conservative, and he believes that poetry should be as wen Yiduo said, and it is necessary to dance with iron shackles to show the poet's grasp and exploration of language. Some people jump and jump without knowing why, and some jump more and more charming. Like a haiku, it should be composed of five, seven, five, three lines and seventeen tones. Haiku must have a seasonal phrase, i.e., a seasonal phrase for spring, summer, autumn, winter and new year. If the basic requirements of haiku cannot be met, it should not be "haiku" from the cloud. Although Yun is conservative, he is always open to poetry. Another example is image poetry, as long as the author believes that this form can best express the emotions of the moment, it is enough, there is no need to excuse it "occasionally", and there is no need to avoid it. "Form is the mindset, and writing poetry can't always be repeated." When it comes to whether a poem needs to have a line, it must cross this threshold to be called poetry. He said, "That's language. ”

Indeed, the language of poetry must be concise, precise, and unexpected. He pointed out that this does not mean that I want everyone to write the same kind of poetry, and the most important thing about poetry is a hundred flowers. Writing must be free, otherwise literature will lose its vitality. You can believe in one idea, but you can't let faith stifle other possibilities. He looked at me meaningfully and said, "Just like you, you don't want to write your style everywhere hong hui and everyone, as long as there is a Wu Yaozong in the poetry world, otherwise this means that everyone can learn what you want to learn, where is the personality of poetry?" All kinds of writing styles are acceptable, as long as they are well written. "He looks at diversity because it's about the mind and the instrument." In the literary world, if you only look up to it, look down on it, it is too boring. "But, what a wrong. I would ask everyone to write poetry in an emotional tone, I think that poets must adhere to their own aesthetics, must cross the threshold to be poetry, I use wind and backbone to examine poetry, only responsible for poetry and my own aesthetics. Wu Yaozong is a hundred rivers, on behalf of the other party's aesthetic to comment, so he can always appreciate the other party's thinking, which is where it is. And look at Wu Yaozong's "Hanging":

As if thinking about where the train tracks are (Lo mou, "The Fox")

Let the air be dyed the same color (Huang Yuying, "Reincarnation")

From time to time, there is your ordinary name, like you live (Zhou Hanhui,"The Last Day")

Often just a bunch of walking shapes (跂之 "Like Death like Life")

Conspiracy for a piece of orange peel (Song Zijiang's "Pineapple Bun")

If despair is a case (Guan Tianlin's "Diagnosis Letter to Multilaterals")

Echo stings the moon fishing man (Huang Runyu,"In the Well")

Let's go. I can get my whole thing back (Hong Hui, "If I Were Free")

I've never been worthless (Wu Yaozong, "Narcissus")

Need to use such a rain to drench (screen puzzle "Withered Glory")

The master who repairs clocks and watches does not know how to repair sounds (Ping Fanren," "Tonight Ujie Road is Quiet")

They feel the value of dampness in the middle of a rainy day (Nishicho, "New Garbage")

Writers with wet shoulders squeezed in (Yuan Zhaochang's "Eulogy to Shengxun")

Harvest the Anger (Guan Mengnan's "Two Small Poems")

Flocks of big snowbirds flew out (Cai Yanpei's "Thoughts")

Just the bow pulled can no longer be retrieved (Zeng Ganxian, "Mockingbird")

The collection of sentence poems can best reflect the characteristics of Wu Yaozong's eclecticism. The collection of sentences in "Hanging" is the poetry of the first Eighteenth District Poetry Society, which is taken from the works of many people and combined into poems. Collected sentence poems have matured as early as the Song Dynasty Wu Yaozong wants to compose a collection of verses from the poetry society, first of all, he must deeply ponder the poems, to wu Cunjing, if you can not substitute for each other's aesthetics to think, it will be difficult to achieve. The sentences of the whole poem are taken from the poems of many people, such as Guan Mengnan, Yingqiu, Zeng Ganxian, etc. Like Guan Mengnanduo writes about the hardships of life and pursues plain sentences. As for the reflection, it is better to use dense imagery as a poem, with a grand idea. Zeng Ganran's poems are self-evident and emotionally intense. The collection of sentences of different styles into poems requires reorganization, synthesis, and welding of different rhythms and cares, and Wu Yaozong can be said to integrate different verses into a piece. "Hanging" becomes a poem that expresses involuntariness and no feelings.

The imagery of the poem is very fluid, the atmosphere is desperate, and the gesture is decisive. If you think that the collection sentences are just a combination of good sentences of various poems, it is a big mistake. Sometimes the set sentences have to take into account the meaning or rhythm and give up the good sentences, otherwise the beginning and the end will be unbalanced. The whole poem may not be a good sentence of the original poem, but it is quite impressive. Through the collection of sentences, Wu Yaozong not only gives the poems of the Eighteenth District a completely different appearance, but also absorbs the benefits of different poets in the process of similar imitation deliberation, so that his poetry will not be extinguished for a long time and innovate.

The electric fire burst out of the brakes

In terms of creation, Wu Yaozong rarely regards himself as a former teacher, and whether he considers himself a "Hong Kong poet" is actually not a key question. He said: "You ask me if I think I am a Hong Kong poet, but I would like to ask you, do you think I am a Hong Kong poet?" After all, he himself is a person who lives by imagination, and his focus is not on identity, but on the language and imagination of literature. In fact, outsiders have always been an important part of Hong Kong poetry. For example, in "Xiao Hong's Tomb Pankou Zhan", the author Dai Wangshu is naturally a mainland poet, but this poem is clearly written in Repulse Bay, and the history of Hong Kong poetry without this short poem is doomed to be incomplete. Huang Canran's "Lamentations" and Cao Shuying's "Golden Snow" are all examples. In fact, when outsiders arrive here, they always have to spend more effort than ordinary people to get the recognition they deserve. In an interview, Wu Yaozong expressed great admiration for Liao Weitang's contribution to this place, "Hong Kong With Ghosts", which takes all parts of Hong Kong as the object and yongshi lyrical. The other is "Floating City Narrator Dreamer", which is not only a biography of many important literary authors in Hong Kong, but also an excellent poetry criticism and prose. However, judging by his associations, writing, and lectures, why didn't Wu Yaozong quietly cultivate Hong Kong poetry? Looking at "Living by Imagination", there is no shortage of poems written in Hong Kong, such as "Return to the Tai Po Street Market Scene", "Words Related to Mong Kok", "The State of Water - We Are on July 1st", "The City Gate Opens - Listening to Liao Weitang Talk about Poetry", "The Ground Is Cut Off - The New Northeast Struggle". The poet's concern and identification with Hong Kong is discussed in detail in the Chen preface. What is even more unexpected today is that his poetic style should have matured and fixed long ago, calm and solid, but he can innovate everywhere, and watch "Life is no different, including stones": "The moment of electric fire bursting out / Forever leaving the stone / An unyielding spirit monkey makes a big fuss / At the end of the day, in the micro-grip of five fingers, he flips the bucket / and subdues the demon / mythological story, Contrast with the countless rocks / Killed / Cities with different heads / Mountains are uprooted and conquered / Some castrated and then open a tunnel / Let busy and non-busy iron beasts come and go / Life is no different / Stones are afraid of twisting and torturing / They are eager for the storm to throw / They can return to the original place / They always remember people / and the blood sea of the blood created by God 's hand / To be repaid a hundredfold"

Whether it is experience, or age, or identity relationship, Wu Yaozong's poems are still self-conscious even if they are extremely exciting. But this song is a completely different style. "Electric fire bursts out", the whole opening sentence is already full of explosive power. Although "an unyielding spirit monkey makes a big fuss" feels a little old-fashioned, the more the poetic emotion becomes fuller, and the allusion to the stone monkey is insignificant to the later stage, and the poetry can be described as gradually entering a better state. The so-called rock can be the people, which reminds me of the iron heart of the upper person. To make a persona means that the meat eater does not see people as human beings at all. The whole poem uses words to become more intense, "iron beast" and "castrated", focusing on describing the suffering of stones like driven livestock. Wu Yaozong shows the advancement of his profound poetry in this poem, and the stone in the third paragraph not only "returns to the original", but also requires mankind to repay the price, curse mankind, and always remember that man "has a deep hatred with the blood sea created by God's hand / to be repaid a hundredfold". This sentence can be said to be the key in the whole poem, and the rebellious personality of the poet is fully seen. The stone must not only avenge people, but also challenge God, and ask God and man to pay off the "blood sea and deep vengeance". This attitude is a common way of writing by poets of previous generations, which is more like a bloody teenager. It is not enough, what is even more valuable is that there is no lack of empathy in the whole poem, "Life is not different / Stones are afraid of twisting and torturing" These two sentences suddenly show Wu Yaozong's meticulousness in the whole poem, and in the acceleration of the breakthrough, the timely turn is also the way to breathe and retract.

A cross-examination of Hong Kong poetry

Wu Yaozong not only has the courage to experiment, but his desire to make breakthroughs has consciously or unconsciously supported the younger generation. For example, Zhou Hanhui is good at writing grassroots life in the form of endowment and white painting. His poems are highly narrative, and he also likes to describe different scenes in detail, and his poems are notoriously longer. His poems are suitable for reading, but not necessarily for reading. On the night of Hong Kong at the International Poetry Night, Chow Han-fai naturally read his style. The problem, however, is that his poems are actually longer and more difficult to read than he thought. It is said that after he finished reading it, Liao Weitang, who was in the same scene, laughed and asked, "You didn't think your poems were so long, did you?" "It was the Night of Hong Kong at the International Poetry Night, when the Eighteenth District Poetry Society had not yet been born. However, the eighteen-district poems again and again will allow Zhou Hanhui to constantly figure out the strategy of reading aloud. He would certainly stick to his style, but he started to make modest adjustments. At the poetry meeting when I read poetry in the bookstore, at the beginning I was still walking on the old road, but I read it halfway but suddenly enlightened, I clearly remember that he became free, poetry is a look, but when read out, it can become spoken at the right time, and surprises are everywhere. After all, the International Poetry Night belongs to international poets, the atmosphere is open, but it is not enough, our eyes are open, but we lack the opportunity to try.

The 18th District Poetry Festival held by Wu Yaozong is a precious opportunity for hong Kong poets, especially the younger generation, to test their aesthetics and instruments. Crossing oneself to others can be described as this righteousness. What he promotes is not only the poetry club, but also the interrogation, enrichment and renewal of the aesthetic of the endowment in Hong Kong poetry. As an outsider, Wu Yaozong not only seeks from the forerunners, but also always faces the learning of the future, and is more deeply involved in Hong Kong literature than many Hong Kong poets, and in turn influences Hong Kong poetry, which is of great significance. "Born in China, obeyed the orders of Chinese, / You understand this truth very late, / Just like as a Chinese, you are very late / You only discovered that you are a Chinese poet." ／...... / Younger poets talk about your words and deeds, / Not because you need to be forgiven by them. (Excerpt from Huang Canran's "Chinese Poets")

During the interview, Wu Yaozong asked, have you read Huang Canran's poem? He said, "In fact, this poem can tell my situation very well, although I was not born in China, but the Chinese language can not escape." In the same Chinese language, Huang Canran, can write a series of poems, deep and broad "Lamentations", but can write a clear and accessible "Chinese Poet", and then even translate the selected poems of Cavafis. Therefore, it is important for me to understand who you are, and furthermore, how to use your characteristics. Chinese poets can be a weapon to help you clarify your identity, or a burden to make you fall. There are many outstanding Chinese poets, and there are more obscure and mediocre poets. "Chinese Poets," I value more: "Younger poets talk about your words and deeds, / not because you need to be forgiven by them." "Everyone always meets younger poets, never escaping the comments of others. It can be said that everyone has their own role. But people can't be ashamed of their role. Wu Yaozong chose a path to Hong Kong, to Hong Kong poetry. His creation, work, wife and daughter, and friends are all in Hong Kong, and he not only writes poetry, but also builds eighteen stages for Hong Kong poets, saying that he is a poet and he is also a literary curator. The post-80s generation is a poet who is younger than you. Indeed, younger poets are not here to forgive. We are here to experience the dedication you have delivered, to work with you. This response is probably a year late, but it fits. "I believe that the flame has no soul", the flame can be a moral test, but also can be Chinese, we must use the wind and backbone, use Chinese poetry to chinese language, and force poetry to a higher and farther end. "For the soul itself does not exist / You must fight into the flames / Win back your soul". Although Wu Yaozong has dabbled in novels, essays, and poems, during his time in Hong Kong, he has obviously worked hardest in poetry and has the deepest karma with Hong Kong. He came to Hong Kong like dust, sometimes buried in the depths of seven years, not flying for seven years, and sometimes he rose with the wind and exchanged winds with others like dust. I believe that Hong Kong literature will always remember the name Wu Yiu-chung, and as a poet, it will write down the name Wu Yiu-chung.

Born in Singapore in 1965, his ancestral home is Zhao'an, Fujian. Bachelor of Arts and M.A., National University of Singapore; M.A., Ph.D., University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Former Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese, National University of Singapore. Pen name Wei Tongque, in 1995 to the United States abandoned. He moved to Hong Kong in 2006 and taught at the City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Chinese modern and contemporary literature and Hong Kong literature, and his academic works include "Narrated, So Exist: An Argument for Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature" (Beijing), and edited the collection of essays "Spiritual China: Literary Quest after 1976" (Shanghai) and "Contemporary Literature and Humanistic Ecology" (Taipei). Since the 1980s, he has published poetry collections "Soft Heart" (Singapore), "Lonely Self-Made Storm" (Singapore), "Half Existence" (Taipei), "Living by Imagination" (Hong Kong), the novel collection "Beautiful On Earth" (Singapore), "Cold as Fire" (Hong Kong; Taipei). He has won the first prize of the 1994 ASEAN Rotary Youth Literature Award, the 1998 Singapore Youth Arts Award, the 2010 and 2016 Singapore Literature Awards, and served as a judge of the Singapore Golden Pen Award, the Tertiary Literature Award, and the Hong Kong Chinese Literary Creation Award. Actively promote Hong Kong literature and launch the "Hong Kong 18 District Poetry Tour". His fifth collection of poems, "The Rest of the Ice and Snow Gives Us Wisdom", and the compilation of "Poetry Earthquake Belt: AnThology of Hong Kong's Post-80s Poets" are being published.

wen. Hong Hui

literature. Voice: Yes: There are still people trying

In 1989, I went to Singapore with Li Oufan, Zhang Dachun and Jiang Xun as judges of the Literary and Art Award, stayed for a few days, talked about literature and art, and also had the opportunity to contact the local literary and art circles. I was going to Singapore for the first time, and before that, I didn't know much, but I knew that the "China Student Weekly" also marketed New and Ma in the 1960s and 1970s, I also saw the works of Hong Kong and Taiwan published in "Banana Wind", some predecessors in the early Hong Kong literary and art circles had sent to Xincheng, and some youth publications in Singapore, such as "Snail", had also sent me gifts.

The first time I set foot in Singapore, I was not in a good personal mood at the time, and I did not have much of a tour, but I still left a good impression on the individuals I came into contact with in the literary and art circles. Our imagination of a place often comes from a lot of hearsay materials, and we will not be able to clearly distinguish it until we really touch it. We were talking about it on the podium, and when we stepped down, we still wanted to know what the local writers and readers thought. We don't know much about the big literary and art policies, but the feeling I get from individual contacts is that there are still people working hard inside and outside the academy, in the writing and theater worlds. The young author group also has their own enthusiasm and vitality, and Wei Tongque is one of them.

Fast forward more than a decade, and I had the opportunity to revisit Singapore because I attended the Shaw Film Symposium hosted by the National University of Singapore. Exploring the old traces of Shaw in Singapore reminds me of Singapore and Hong Kong, broadly speaking, all Chinese-populated cities, which are inextricably linked. I met the young poet Wei Tongque at the National University of Singapore, who is now a successful Dr. Wu Yaozong! Since the last meeting, he has completed his studies abroad, completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington, and returned to teach at the National University of Singapore to continue his research and creation. How fast time flies! It's really emotional and gratifying. When we talked about the depressing situation and tried to construct different visions, Yaozong listened modestly, but really broadened his horizons and walked out of his own way.

Emperor Yaozong invited me to write his new preface, and I was happy to obey. One is to commemorate a period of karma that we have known in the past, and the other is to affirm some qualities that we want to affirm. From Hong Kong and Taiwan to Singapore and Malaysia, in recent years, there have been some young scholars who are engaged in both academic research and creation. When engaged in academic research, rigorous and solid, when it comes to creation, but it can be imaginative and creative, this balance of intellectual and perceptual, is a valuable quality, and it can often give students more inspiration in teaching.

I also think of the question of Chinese literature in a broad sense. Yaozong's attempt at miniature novels has his background in Singapore, his response to Hong Kong and Taiwan literature, and his gradual broadening of his vision and the gradual maturity of his skills before and after going abroad. He used Chinese characters, and it was from his own path that his own sensibility (which I would call a style of gentleness and sharp criticism) added a new chapter to the genre of Chinese literature, expanding the scope and enriching the range. In general, the mainstream discussion of Chinese miniature novels (or small novels and palm novels) seems to emphasize the story, condensed bridges, and surprising endings. If we don't focus on stories, and also look at attempts such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinxin, and Ma RuYaozong, wouldn't it be more possible to broaden the discussion of this genre? I think in the current discussion of Chinese literature, we need more people to break the narrow regionalism, more cross-cultural and cross-regional comparison reference. We write in different cities with Chinese, and in fact, we are happy to hear new voices from different cities, which will change and enrich the face of Chinese writing in the long run.

(The title was prepared by the editors, and the article was originally "Cold as Fire." Preface to the first edition of Miniature Novel 2002, published by Aoki Shoya in 2002)

wen. Also

literature. Read more: Anger gushes and sublimates

As the saying goes, the poetry of scholars is contained in the flow, and the flow and surprise of Wu Yaozong's poems are also hidden in the implications. Reading this collection of poems, what impressed me most was that as a mature poet with a poetic age of twenty or thirty years, and having been creating in an academic atmosphere, he was still able to break through self-stereotypes and release the desire, arrogance and even naughty and sharp experiments in poetry, which made him get rid of the restraints that are difficult for ordinary college poets to get rid of and swim in the ocean of joy of words.

This change cannot but be attributed to The fact that Wu Yaozong moved to Hong Kong in 2006. Like many local poets younger than him, he naturally became a poet who shared the fate of Hong Kong, not a guest poet or hermit poet he had seen in history. In his tribute to Yass's "The Teller of the Hong Kong Story", he connects two split sentences of "igniting them" and "igniting us" to imply inheritance and the determination to join the ranks of Hong Kong storytellers.

Before Wu Yaozong came to Hong Kong, he was already a "modernist" poet with quite mature skills, and it can be seen from his previous published works that he was familiar with the history and techniques of modern poetry, and he also consciously followed a "formal" and "classic" path of sincere writing, but the real breakthrough appeared in the more world-entering work "Living by Imagination", where the original cultivation technology gushed out as if it had hit a valve and flowed freely. It can also be said that the poet Wu Yaozong was freed in the body of the Hong Kong man Wu Yaozong, freedom comes from the sense of crisis of the unfree city in which he is located, and the concentration of many poems related to the political reality and people's livelihood contradictions in Hong Kong in recent years has become his most open-ended works, such as "The State of Water" written about the "July 1st Parade", a series of "anger" that interrupts the normal sentence and then suddenly sublimates into "anger flows from the bucket room to the streets to form / Tears of the earth" is the expression of this kind of poetry freedom.

It cannot be denied that in most of the works in the poetry collection, the pride and rebellious heart in Wu Yaozong's bones are still more or less neutralized by the rhetoric of Ya Tam. I see a phenomenon common in contemporary Chinese poetry, where the truly arrogant poet is afraid of what is said and has to be low-key or "dignified", in fact he does not want to hide his talents, but the old rules from the eighties college poetry still bind him - when he is "rational".

This contradiction can be seen from time to time in Wu Yaozong's poems, and his smooth middle-class life and pure aesthetic training drive his poems to set sail in a certain constant sense of beauty, which is not surprising, but the wonderful thing is the ensuing breakthrough, from the superficial wind and snow to the naked satire of reality, from the traditional low-back contemplative breakthrough to the postmodern provocation with a playful gimmick. This contradiction is sometimes deliberate, it is faithful to the changing identity of the poet, and it also constitutes a charm of the poet's self-expectation. Wu Yaozong's poems have a sense of moderate humor, sometimes like a shear, sometimes like Eliot, and are gentlemanly. His sense of humor comes from his familiarity with literary history, and he uses the classics to hand, but does not forget to refine the sentences, and finally all the elements are arranged neatly and neatly in the poem.

Needless to say, as a poet from Singapore, it is unfavorable in the field of writing in Chinese, and the name Wu Yaozong is still a newcomer to Taiwan and Hong Kong (not to mention the mainland), although he has long been a family of his own, with rich poetic experience and clear poetic pursuits. However, it can be assured that the poet himself has a firm self-knowledge, as the second half of the poem "Discrete" confesses: "I know the price of late arrival / to keep the pain of the night / fortunately poetry / not eager to queue up / and I / the amount of food is small / the family is all over the world", "the family is all over the world" is a very big pride, in Cantonese colloquialism, this is a kind of "dark inch", the person who can so boast of himself is a person with a wide realm, naturally let us expect him.

(The article was edited and abridged, and is excerpted from Liao Weitang's article "The Flow of Poetry".) The title is prepared by the editors and the article is provided by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council)

wen. Liao Weitang