Nie Meng: Associate Researcher of the Creative Research Department of the Chinese Writers Association, whose main research directions are literary theory and literary criticism. He has published more than 300,000 words of papers and commentaries in the Journal of Modern Chinese Literature Research Series, Contemporary Writers Review, Xinhua Digest, etc., and the articles have been included in the "Yearbook of Contemporary Chinese Literature" and other anthologies. He is the author of the review collection The Rings of fiction.
Hou Lei: A native of Beijing. Young writer, poet, Kunqu opera friend. Chinese Min University, he has a master's degree in literature and is passionate about studying the historical folklore and inscriptions of Beijing. He is the author of the novel "Huan Yang", the novel collection "The Man Under the Ice", "Jue'an", the poetry collection "The Feathers of the White Goose", the non-fiction literary trilogy "Sound and Color Wild Record", "Beijing Smoke Tree", "Yandu Strange Talk", the social science book "Tang in Tang Poetry", "The Great Song in Song Ci" and so on.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > cities and growth</h1>
Text/Nie Meng Hou Lei
Nie Meng: Let's start with specific works. First of all, I have a general impression, my reading order is basically like this, first the novel, "The Daughter of the Textile Factory", that is, the one that will be published in "Youth Literature", then the collection of essays "Beijing Smoke Tree", and then the collection of short stories "People Under the Ice". I don't know if my feelings are accurate, aside from the independence of the style, in terms of content alone, the "Beijing Smoke Tree" series is more like the background of your creation; the huge foundation is it, the background cloth is also it, the starting point is it, and the destination is also it. On this basis, there is the "Man Under the Ice" series revised in 2016, and the latest "Daughter of the Textile Factory". I wonder if your writing has a holistic plan, and is its idea close to what I envisioned?
Hou Lei: As you said. I published my first novel in 2010 and two books on Tang and Song poems in 2013, and I wrote everything at that time. Planning began with the publication of Female Drivers in 2016. Writing that Beijing is not only Beijing is hometown, but also because I like to study Beijing's human geography, historical relics, and pure classical environment, there is a process from "things" to "realms". When I was in college, everyone else was looking for a job, and my friends and I wandered around the ancient houses, temples, and even mausoleums outside the city, and we went to a yuan dynasty hall in the deep mountains and found that all but underwear was ancient, and even we were ancient.
First, we must be familiar with the geography of Beijing, the place names and changes of each place, which is space. Second, to understand what happened in each place, this is the time. Third, we must pay attention to what kind of people live in the interweaving of time and space, in the city circle, there are so many people who have spent so many years together, only to form the unique customs, personality, and way of thinking of Beijing people. This brings us to the fourth point, which explores human behavior. When you find out what the behavior of Beijingers has in common, you can talk about Beijing folklore and culture.
When I was initially obsessed with the first two points above, I didn't pay attention to people themselves, nor did I think much about people. What attracted me most later was precisely the inner world of people who could not be imagined in time and space, and the complex relationship between people and society. The most difficult thing to understand is the human heart. Pondering people is a positive thing, and only when you understand others can you help others and take care of other people's emotions. What I feel most guilty about is that there was a rough place in the past, and others were accommodating me, and I didn't know it yet. This is the warmth that the world gives me, and my gratitude to the world.
Nie Meng: It feels like "Beijing Smoke Tree" has constructed a flowing Beijing full of life, on which "People Under the Ice" and "Activists" have grown, and "Daughter of the Textile Factory" has grown; in fact, they do not have a prominent order, but symbiosis. Is this true? Just by saying the small words of these two periods, it seems that you can see a change in your writing perspective and intentions. The large perspective of "People Under the Ice" is relatively fixed, positioned in a specific time period. For example, "People Under the Ice" and "Activists" write about the fifties and sixties, "Underwater Eight Passes", "Young Sexy Huang'er", "Female Driver" are the stories of the eighties and nineties; stop at a certain period of time, and then patiently and carefully observe the lives and mental states of people in it, and write deeply. When you arrive at "The Daughter of the Textile Factory", you can clearly see the ambition of your writing, the time period is lengthened, the change is written, the change is written, and how the change of the times is manifested in people.
Hou Lei: Even if it is symbiotic, it is all in the same context. Ambition does not dare to say, I live more egoistically.
I like to imagine the past and reminisce about my childhood. The world of the past is vague and unclear. The alley opposite my house was demolished in 2000, and I was vague about it, but there was an air of that era in the blur, and that breath fascinated me. I remember my childhood because my grandmother, grandfather, and mother were all still alive at that time (my grandfather and grandmother died long ago). It seems that only the death of relatives and the demolition of the old garden will make people grow up rapidly.
Unconsciously, we have changed from children to fathers, fathers to grandparents, and grandparents gradually walked away silently. The next generation grew up playing with their phones, and those are the reasons why I became obsessed with writing about the past.
Nie Meng: So "Beijing" is the first keyword of your writing, isn't it an exaggeration to say that? In fact, I just mentioned the foundation, the starting point, and so on, and I also want to express this layer of meaning. As can be seen from your various expressions, your writing has a strong purpose, that is, to write about Beijing. The novel's prose revolves around Beijing. It makes your text look "integrated", the logic is neat, and it has the meaning of digging a deep well. But at the same time, you also said that writing about Beijing is just for self-examination, don't forget which hutong you came from. This softens this apparent "purpose" again, and includes a lot of things with a sense of belief and emotional destination. Can you tell us about your motivation and original intention of writing in Beijing, and how you have concretely realized it in your works?
Hou Lei: Mainly because I have not lived in other places, not even living in buildings, which is a pity; I would like to go to other places and live a different life.
Writing about Beijing is not that I want to understand what to tell you, but I don't understand many phenomena. For example, everyone knows that knowledge and culture should be respected, and women should be respected, but why are there so many anti-intellectual, disrespectful things happening to this day? For example, many drug advertisements first say that patients are physically rotten and angry, and then use their drugs and immediately participate in the Olympic Games. Why is that?
When it comes to writing about women, it is still because of the fate of my grandmother, grandmother, mother, etc. My grandmother was born in the second year of the Republic of China (1913). When I was a child, I thought: In that era, those old ladies in the hutongs who had no culture could have how many happy things could be done every day? Is it to stir-fry more meat dishes in the evening, or to listen to a commentary in the conversation box? Women's inner world is always a matter outside the thinking of patriarchal society, and most male writers still write about women from a male position.
These are the questions I'm thinking about, and when I think a little bit about a problem, there will be bigger and more problems facing me, so writing is also a solution to personal whims.
Nie Meng: You said in an afterword: "The ancient and modern cities of Beijing have coexisted for a long time, and few cities can have such a sharp contrast and contrast." Beijingers after the 80th century have also gradually completed their personal growth in the past memories. "In my opinion it's a good angle and incision." The city and "my city", the history and current situation of the city, my cognition of living in it, my retrospectiveness, my limitations, my growth, these together provide too much space to speak of.
Hou Lei: Yes, the things of the previous generation have not been clearly explained, have not been understood, have not been preliminary conclusions, and even if they should be reflected, they have no courage to point fingers at the present. Different people have different youths, Beijing used to have "Xinjiang Village" and "Zhejiang Village", in the 1990s Beijing was popular to eat Cantonese cuisine, there were several Cantonese restaurants, Sanlitun had various song hall nightclubs, Xiushui Street had a grandfather... Very few works come to write about them from a social point of view.
I have read some books on urban studies, sociology, and cultural anthropology, and have been trying to write about Beijing with new ideas and methods.
Nie Meng: From the perspective of urban experience, I was pleasantly surprised when I read the collection of essays. It is as if the Beijing hidden behind the novel suddenly jumps out and appears in front of the eyes like a giant screen; and this presentation is a diachronic, multi-faceted presentation, wonderful and familiar. I read that you wrote a lot of things in the manuscript, such as sound, heating, bathing, practicing stalls, taking photos, etc., and reading it all the way, I repeatedly encountered the objects around me. My family lives in Andingmen, five minutes out of the door is the West Gate of the Temple of Earth, there is a time every day guarding the old shop of Guijie Tongle to eat hemp, I did a card in the Changhong Cinema of Longfu Temple, and then the studio closed down, and the money could not be returned, these are the routes and things that I am particularly familiar with; but I am only familiar with them in the sense of survival and life, and I have not seriously explored their past, origin, and history, so in a sense, your prose is also a kind of supply to me.
I noticed that you put a special emphasis on spirituality, and you said, "Above our heads, perhaps thousands of meters in the air, there will be a spiritual city of Beijing suspended." So what is the figurative image of this so-called "spiritual Beijing" in your writing? Is it something above the solid daily life of the ordinary people in the thousand-year-old city? I feel that in addition to "Beijing", "ordinary people", "hutongs" and "life", these are also the core concepts of your writing.
Hou Lei: "Spiritual Beijing", the answerS I give at different ages and moods are definitely different. It may be the personality temperament and way of thinking of Beijing people, and people are caused by the way of thinking and the way of life and the three views.
These core concepts are precisely where I have been thinking about it and can't sleep. I used to see people in the alley who were screaming and screaming, well, that was a reckless person; someone was cursing and grinning, that was a rude person; someone was crying and crying, that was a bitter person; someone was jumping and jumping, it was a child; someone was particularly caught by whom, that was a different kind... But then I tried to pay attention to their respective sorrows and speculate on their inner world, and I realized that I was wrong; so many people worthy of attention in the world had not been paid attention to, and stories worth writing had not yet been written.
Nie Meng: Such an advantage is that there is a sense of hilarity. I don't want to use the words "fireworks" to describe it, but it feels more appropriate to feel that the bustling "lively feeling" is more appropriate. Usually when we talk about Beijing, there will be a lot of topics of large volume and weight, such as history, culture, capital, and so on. These are, of course, important and are the first few of the city labels. But in fact, the most concrete life of the people who live in it, and everything related to it, is the core element that makes a city truly alive. I personally like "The Sound of One Day's Goods", using sound to grasp a city; the structure of "Shangshu Longfu Temple" is very clever, starting from the archway and the uncle chatting, going back little by little, many anecdotes slowly added in, until hundreds of years ago; "Beiping Photo Gallery" is the most attractive, you can almost write a long story. Moreover, I feel that the image of the narrator in these essays is more impressive to me than in the novel.
Hou Lei: I am very conflicted, not only because I love the "sense of hilarity", but sometimes I write out of hatred. People will find their own balance in life, but I can't find it well. For example, I wanted to write that everything was ready, and suddenly something came to disturb me. This unbalanced, contradictory, repressive, rebounding, twisted place prompted me to write.
Beijing's culture is negative, uncivilized, overly conservative, and on the "pre-modern" side. Everyday life is sometimes too mundane, too cumbersome and noisy. I advocate the modern home, men and women do less housework, to technology, to the housekeeping company, or to live a minimalist life.
Nie Meng: The idea of doing less housework is cool.
It is said that in your writing, there are many things in the past, some old stories, some of the most ordinary details of life, many of which I have heard for the first time. When I watched "The Daughter of the Textile Factory" before, I would be very curious and interested in the image of Haiyan, and then I read the prose and read it and gradually realized that this curiosity and interest would eventually be transferred to the writer. Can you tell us where these old stories and details of yours come from, and what kind of life experiences and backgrounds underpin them?
Hou Lei: Mainly from three aspects: historical archives, oral accounts of predecessors and my poor life memories. When there is a problem, I often ask my predecessors for advice, especially the logic of people's lives in the past.
The image of Haiyan in "The Daughter of the Textile Factory" has the figure of my mother. My mother was not in good health, she retired from illness around the age of forty and has been in a state of recuperation. I always took her everywhere with my father, and her illness affected my writing. When I was a child, I was once pessimistic, but then I felt that when people face unavoidable disasters, they must face them rationally and scientifically, let people live longer, more comfortably, and more dignifiedly, and minimize comprehensive losses. After my mother's death, I wanted to get out of my grief and start a new life as soon as possible; but it was a hidden pain, secretly stabbing you in some place you were defenseless.
The inner throbbing will stay with you for the rest of your life, and writing may not necessarily alleviate it.
Nie Meng: I'm sorry to remind you of your sadness. Pain points and healing are too heavy topics. Everything will be fine.
Back to what I just said. From a writing point of view alone, it feels like the experiences, stories, and pasts you present in the text do not constitute too much constraint on you, they provide you, and you maintain a younger and more receptive and adaptable perspective to see and tell them. When you write old stories, you feel that you have a strong sense of age, and when you write about new things in change, you feel "Well, this is a young man". You say that you are not willing to overwrite old memories with new memories, which I agree with, not necessarily to argue about the advantages and disadvantages, not to make multiple choice questions. Therefore, the old things you write have modern thinking in them, and modern things are permeated with the heritage and accumulation of the Four or Nine Cities, which is very rare.
Hou Lei: Thank you. For those old stories and old topics, the elders have written, but we must write more; because the times have changed, the writers have changed, and the writing is different. Reading and walking can broaden horizons, and thinking will approach the truth of the world, but most people dare not or are unwilling to look at the truth. If you only see the legs of an elephant, no matter how much you think about it, it is also a leg.
Literature leads me to growth, and it makes me a late-maturing or unripe person.
Originally published in Youth Literature, No. 2, 2021 ,"City"
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Jing