Wang Zengqi (March 5, 1920 - May 16, 1997)
Someone asked me how I became a writer. I said it has to do with my love of looking around since I was a child. I was deeply moved by these shops and craftsmen, and made me smell a life of hard work, solidity, sweetness and bitterness.
Self-Reporting Home Page
Article | Wang Zengqi
Most of the characters in Peking Opera have a rather long monologue. Introducing one's own history to the audience, what happened recently, and what he is going to do is called "self-reporting one's family background". In the past, Western dramas rarely used this method. The first act of a Western drama often introduces the characters, introducing the characters to each other through other people's mouths. This is really troublesome. China’s “self-reporting of family status” is much easier. I took this approach to save trouble and trouble others.
Ms. Anne Curion of France plans to translate my novel. She was going to another city from Boston and had already booked a plane ticket. Hearing that I was going to Boston, I canceled my ticket so I could meet me. She spoke intelligently about her impressions of my novel. There is one thing that other reviewers have not mentioned and I have never realized. She said that there is water in many of my novels, such as "Da Nao Chronicles". Although there is not a lot of water in "Being Ordained", it is full of the feeling of water. I thought about it and it was true. This is natural. My hometown is a water town, a small city in northern Jiangsu - Gaoyou. Beside the canal.
To the west of the canal is Gaoyou Lake. The city's terrain is low, and it is said that the bottom of the canal is as high as the city wall. When we were kids, we used to play on the canal embankment, where we could overlook the rooftops of the houses below. Therefore, there are frequent floods. There are many rivers in the county. To get out of the city to the towns, most people take a boat. Almost every farmer has a boat. Water not only unconsciously became the background of some of my novels, but also influenced the style of my novels. The water is sometimes turbulent, but the water there is always soft, peaceful, and flows quietly.
I was born in 1920. March 5th. According to the lunar calendar, that day happens to be the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival. This is an auspicious day. China has always attached great importance to this festival. It's still like this. On this day, every family eats Lantern Festival, both in the north and the south. Thanks to this honor, I will never forget my birthday every year.
My family is an old-style landowner family. The houses, furniture, and customs are all old. In the entire house, only one of the three large rooms called the "Flower Hall" is bright, because the row of large windows facing south is made of glass. The rest of the room panes are covered with white paper. Until I was in high school, soybean oil lamps were still lit in some houses at night. There are probably not a few like this in the whole city (except in the countryside).
My grandfather was a "Bagong" in the late Qing Dynasty. This is a title slightly higher than that of "a scholar". It is said that one has to write particularly good eight-legged essay to be selected as a "Bagong". He has quite a lot of land, about two to three thousand acres, and he also runs two pharmacies and a cloth store, but he lives a very frugal life. He likes to drink a little wine, and the food and drink is nothing more than a salted duck egg, and one salted duck egg can last for two meals. After drinking, I would sometimes recite Tang poetry loudly alone in the room. He is also an ophthalmologist who treats eye diseases free of charge. Ophthalmology is an ancestral tradition in our family. He likes me better among the grandchildren. He let me smell his snuff. One time I kept hiccupping, and he suddenly called me over and asked me if I had done what he asked me to do. I thought for a long time, what did he tell me to do? I thought hard. He laughed heartily and said, "Don't hiccup!" He said this was the best way to cure hiccups. He taught me to read "The Analects of Confucius" and also taught me to write preliminary eight-legged essay. He said that if I were in the Qing Dynasty, I could definitely become a scholar (I was only thirteen years old that year). He rewarded me with a purple Duan inkstone and several very valuable original rubbings and copybooks. The preference of a grandfather in a feudal family for his grandson can only be expressed to this extent.
My biological mother’s surname is Yang. The Yang family is a wealthy family in this county. She died when I was three years old. She suffered from lung disease and had been living alone in a side house for a long time, isolated from her family.She wouldn't let anyone take me to see her. So I have no impression of her at all. I can only know what she looked like from her portrait (it is said that the painting is very similar). In addition, I dug out a pile of large regular scripts written by her during her lifetime from my father's studio. The handwriting was very delicate. From this I knew that my mother had read books. After marrying my father, she was still able to write a big letter every day, which shows that she still lived a ladylike life and didn't worry about rice and rice.
My father is one of the smartest men I know. versatile. Not only is he proficient in epigraphy, calligraphy and painting, but he is also a gymnast who is good at the horizontal bar and a good football player. He also practiced Chinese martial arts. He has a studio, and in order to use colors accurately, he paints everything "white to the ground". He did not paint often in the rest of his life and was known as "lazy". In his studio, there are a lot of rice papers sent by people asking for paintings, and a red sign is affixed on them: "I respectfully ask for Dharma paintings, and give me a shout out ××". My stepmother sometimes reminded: "These pieces of paper, you should draw pictures for others." My father looked at the red sign and said, "This person is dead." Every spring and autumn day, when the weather is fine, he would open it Painting in the studio. I really like to stand by and watch his paintings, looking at the rice paper for a long time. First use one end of the pen holder or your thumbnail to draw a few lines on the paper to determine the layout, and then draw flower heads, branches, leaves, and ribs. After the painting is finished, look at it again, tidy it up, inscribe it, stamp it, nail it to the wall with nails, and look at it again and again. When he was young, he painted gongbi chrysanthemums. Can identify and express many varieties of chrysanthemums. Because he was born in the ninth month of the lunar calendar, and in China, it is customary to call September the chrysanthemum moon, so he has a special affection for chrysanthemums. Later I started painting freehand flowers.
His paintings, in my opinion, are very skillful. It's a pity that the station is located in a small county town, so I can't travel thousands of miles and see more of everyone's authentic works. He had never studied poetry, and most of his poems were written in sentences. He became a "scholar of one party" and his reputation did not spread far. What a pity!
He has learned many musical instruments, including shengxiao, flute, pipa and guqin. He plays Huqin very well. Our family has almost all Chinese musical instruments. Including suona and sea flute. The flutes and flutes he played were the best I have ever seen in my life. His hands are very skillful and his heart is very careful. My mother's underworld clothes (the Chinese believe that after death, people still live in another world - the underworld, so they make daily necessities out of paper and burn them so that the deceased can "receive them in the underworld", collectively called underworld utensils). He made it with his own hands.
He purchased various colored papers and pasted them on many sets, including clothes for all seasons and single-layer lint cotton. The "fur" is cut extremely finely, just like the real thing, and it can also be distinguished from sheepskin and fox skin. He can fly kites. One year, I killed a centipede - this is the most difficult kind of kite. I took my children to fly it in the wheat field. The centipede swung its arrows in the sky, as if it were alive. This is a day I can never forget.
He used the "old string" of the Huqin to play the centipede. I have never seen another person fly a kite with strings. He raised birds and crickets. He used a diamond knife to cut the glass into small pieces, and then glued the pieces together to make boats, pavilions, and eight-sided hydrangeas. He raised golden bells in them, a small golden insect that grinds its wings and makes a sound like a golden bell. . My father is such a smart man. If I'm not too stupid, it probably has something to do with the genetic factors I received from my father. The formation of my aesthetic consciousness is related to watching him paint since I was a child.
My father is a casual person, relatively compassionate, and can treat others equally. When I was a teenager, I drank with him and smoked together. He said: "We have been brothers for many years, father and son." His temper was also passed on to me. Not only did it affect my relationship with my family, children, friends and descendants, but it also affected my attitude towards the characters I wrote about and my attitude towards readers.
I went to elementary school and junior high school in this county.
Primary School is next to a Buddhist temple, and it turned out to be part of the Buddhist temple. I would go to the Buddhist temple almost every day after school to see the two generals Heng Ha, the four heavenly kings , Sakyamuni , Kasyapa Ananda, Eighteen Arhats , Nanhai Guanyin . These Buddha statues are vividly shaped. This is my sculpture art gallery.
From my home to the elementary school, we have to pass through a street and a winding alley. When I get home from school, I like to look around and look around at the shops, handicraft workshops, cloth shops, soy sauce gardens, grocery stores, firecracker shops, sesame cake shops, shops selling lime hemp knives, dyeing shops... I go to the silversmith In the shop, you can watch the silversmith carving out a small Arhat on a mold, in the bamboo factory, you can watch how the master turns a bamboo pole into a bamboo stick, and in the carmaker's shop, you can watch the carmaker use a hardwood wheel to turn out various shapes of utensils. , watching the lanterns being laid out... I never tire of it. Someone asked me how I became a writer, and I said it had something to do with my love of looking around since I was a child. I was deeply moved by these shops and craftsmen, and made me smell a life of hard work, solidity, sweetness and bitterness. The impressions of this journey have been deeply implanted in my memory. Many of my novels are about the personnel and affairs of this closed and faded town.
The junior high school was originally a Taoist temple and still retains a fish pond. There are flying beams (stone bridges) on the pool, a small building originally dedicated to Lu Dongbin and a small pavilion. The pavilion is surrounded by purple bamboo (bamboo poles are dark purple). This kind of bamboo is rarely seen elsewhere. There is a small river behind the school, and wild roses are blooming beside the river. The school is close to the east gate, and outside the east gate is the execution ground for murderers. I go to school and go home along the moat in the east of the city every day, looking at the willow trees, wheat fields and river water.
From the fifth grade of elementary school to the time I graduated from junior high school, I was taught Chinese by a Mr. Gao. Mr. Gao is very knowledgeable and he likes me very much. My compositions are "top" almost every time. Among the classical prose he taught, I was most deeply affected by several representative works by Gui Youguang, a great essayist of the Ming Dynasty. Gui Youguang writes about ordinary characters in a light style, which is kind and sad. This is very similar to my temperament, and the aftertaste of Gui Youguang still echoes in my current novels.
The high school I attended was Nanjing Middle School in Jiangyin. This is a school that was founded very early and has a history of more than 100 years. This school focuses on mathematics, physics and chemistry and despises literature and history. But I bought a series of poetry studies and used a brush to copy Song poetry after school. I not only practiced my calligraphy, but also got a glimpse of the meaning of the poetry. Most of the poems are lyrical, mostly about farewell. This is easily consistent with the unwarranted sentimentality that young people often have. To this day, my novels still contain a hint of sadness.
was in his second year of high school. The Japanese occupied Jiangnan and Jiangbei was in danger. I took refuge with my grandfather and father in a small nunnery in a village a little far away from the city. I lived in the nunnery for about half a year. I wrote about the life of a monk in "The Ordination". This work attracted attention, and many people asked me if I had ever been a monk. I have never been a monk. In this small nunnery, in addition to the textbooks I brought to prepare for the college entrance examination, I only brought two books, "Selected Novels of Shen Congwen" and "Hunter's Notes " by Turgenev. To put it a bit exaggerated, it can be said that these two books have determined my life. This gave me a relatively stable interest in literature and had a profound impact on my style. My father also read Shen Congwen's novels and said, "Novels can be written in this way?" Some people also say that my novels are not like novels, but they have their origins.
In 1939, I went from Shanghai to Kunming via Hong Kong and Vietnam to take the university entrance examination. When I arrived in Kunming, I contracted falciparum malaria and was admitted to the hospital. This was the first and only time I was hospitalized in my life. A high fever exceeding 40 degrees. The nurse gave me a cardiotonic injection, and I asked her: "Do you want to write a suicide note?" I was just able to drink a bowl of egg drop soup and wandered into the examination room. After the exam, I am not sure at all. God bless me, the results were released, and I actually got into my first choice: Department of Chinese Literature, Southwest Associated University!
I can’t become a linguist. What I am interested in ancient writing is only its artistic value - glyphs. I never learned the International Phonetic Alphabet. I'm not going to be a literary historian or an expert on literary theory. I take few notes in class and I'm often absent from class. I can only read some books randomly based on my interests and whatever I want. In the teahouse during the day. At night in the department library. So, I could only become a writer.
It cannot be said that when I filled out the application form for the Chinese Literature Department of Southwest Associated University, I went there for Shen Congwen. I was in a daze at the time and lacked any strong will. But "Shen Congwen" is very attractive to me. I thought about it before filling out the form.
Mr. Shen has taught three courses in total: writing exercises in various genres, creative practice, and the history of Chinese novels. I took them all. Mr. Shen admires me very much. Not only am I his disciple, I can be said to be proud of him.
Mr. Shen is really not good at giving lectures. He speaks in a low voice and has a strong Xiangxi accent, which is difficult to understand. His lectures had no handouts, were not systematic, and were just impromptu ramblings. He taught creation, and he said it over and over again: you need to stick to characters to write . Many students don't quite understand what this means. I understand. According to my understanding, what he means is: in the novel, the characters are the main and leading ones, and the rest are secondary and derivative. The author's heart should be close to the characters, full of sympathy, and sharing the joys and sorrows. Whenever the author's writing fails to stick to the characters, it will be false. Scenery is the creation of the environment in which characters live. To write about a scene is to write about a person, and the scene and the person cannot be separated. It is common for some novels to describe extremely beautiful scenery, but it is only the scenery in the author's eyes and has nothing to do with the characters. This sometimes even alienates the characters. That is to say, the author's narrative language also needs to be coordinated with the characters. He cannot use the language of intellectuals to write about farmers. I believe my understanding is correct. This may not be the only principle for writing novels (some novels may not focus on people, and some novels may only involve the author making comments), but it is an important principle. At least in realistic novels, this is an important principle.
Every time Mr. Shen goes to the city (in order to avoid Japanese air raids, he lives in the countryside in Chenggong near Kunming, and only goes to the city for two or three days when there is class), I go to see him. Return books, borrow books, and listen to him chatting with guests. When he went to the streets, I went with him, visiting consignment shops and secondhand stalls, buying Gengma lacquer boxes and ham mooncakes. When he was hungry, he went to the shop opposite his dormitory to eat a bowl of rice noodles with an egg. Once I was very drunk and sat on the roadside. He thought I was a sick refugee, but when he saw it, it was me! He and a few classmates took me to the dormitory and drank a lot of strong tea before I woke up. One time I went to see him. I had a toothache and my cheeks were swollen. Without saying a word, he went out and bought me some big oranges.
I majored in Chinese literature, but I spent most of my time reading translated novels. The more fashionable figure in the General Assembly at that time was A. Gide and later Sartre. I started publishing when I was twenty. The foreign writers who have greatly influenced me are Chekhov and the Spanish writer Assoline. I like Assolin very much. His novels are like streams covered with shadows, quiet and lively and flowing at the same time. I read some of Virginia Woolf's works and snippets of Proust's novels. There was a period in my novels that were clearly influenced by the stream-of-consciousness method, such as "Little School Bells" and "Revenge."
After leaving university, I taught for two years in a middle school run by a classmate from Lianda University in the suburbs of Kunming. "Elementary School Bells" and "Revenge" were written at this time. There was no place to publish it at the time. Later, Mr. Shen sent the "Renaissance" to Shanghai. Mr. Zheng Zhenduo opened the manuscript and found that it had been eaten by beetles and had many small holes.
In the early autumn of 1946, I traveled from Kunming to Shanghai. After being introduced by Mr. Li Jianwu, I taught in a private middle school for two years. He left in the early spring of 1948. In the past two years, I wrote some novels, which were compiled into "Encounter Collection".
came to Beijing and was unemployed for half a year, and later worked in the History Museum. The showroom is on the Meridian Gate Tower. There are not many cultural relics on display and there are only a few tourists. Among the staff, I am the only one who lives in the hotel. The room I lived in was said to have been the room where Jin Yiwei stayed. To prevent fire, no electric lights were installed in the Forbidden City at that time, so I went to a garage sale and bought an ancient kerosene lamp with a white porcelain cover. Reading under the lamp at night, I don’t know where I am. As soon as Beijing was liberated, I signed up to join the work group going south.
I originally wanted to follow Si Ye all the way to Guangzhou, accumulate life, and write some vigorous works. He didn't want to go to Wuhan so he was left to take over the cultural and educational unit, and later he was assigned to be the deputy teaching director of a girls' middle school. A year later, I returned to Beijing and worked at the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles. In 1954, he was transferred to the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Research Association.
From 1950 to 1958, I worked as an editor of literary and artistic publications.He has edited "Beijing Literature and Art", "Rap and Sing", and " folk literature ". I am very passionate about folk literature. The rich imagination and peasant humor of folk tales, the freshness of metaphors and the exquisiteness of rhythm in folk songs amazed me. But my affection for folk literature was severed. In 1958, I was mistakenly classified as a rightist and was sent to work in an agricultural science research institute outside the Great Wall for nearly four years.
these four years are very important to me. I worked together with agricultural workers (that is, farmers), ate the same meal, and slept in a large dormitory at night, with a big bed (pillows next to pillows, so lice could freely crawl from the bed of the person in the east) In the westernmost bed). I have seen more realistically what is going on in China's rural areas and Chinese farmers.
In early 1962, I was transferred to the Beijing Opera Troupe to work as a screenwriter, where I have been until now.
I started publishing works when I was twenty years old. I am now sixty-nine years old. I have been writing for a long time. But my writing has always been in fits and starts, so the amount is very small. After I turned sixty, I heard someone call me an "old writer", which I felt very uncomfortable with. First, I don’t quite realize that I am a writer; second, I don’t feel that I am old. I have gradually become accustomed to in the past two years. What can I do? Age is not forgiving. Du Fu's poem: "There are more and more people sitting here." Nowadays, every time there is a banquet, I am often invited to the banquet. I have published several books, which have some influence. Besides, it would be a bit pretentious to say that I am not a writer. What kind of writer am I?
When I was young, I was influenced by Western modernism. Some of my works were very "ethereal" and even difficult to understand. These works have been lost. Some people said that they could be found by looking through old newspapers and periodicals, and advised me to collect them and publish a book. I don't want to do this. It is too naive and too far away from the people's sufferings. My works in recent years have become more and more plain. At a symposium held by the Beijing Writers Association to discuss my works, I gave a brief speech titled "Return to National Tradition, Return to Realism." This can generally be said to be my current literary stance. I don't reject modernism. Whenever someone denigrates the modernist tendencies of young writers’ works, I often defend them. I still occasionally write some works that are difficult to say as pure realism, such as "Epiphyllum, Crane and Will-o'-the-Wisp", which is a novel that is objectively narrated on the whole and sometimes contains fragments of stream of consciousness, but it is not easy for critics. aware. My seemingly ordinary works are actually not that honest. I hope to be able to blend the strange with the ordinary, incorporate foreign elements with tradition, and be neither modern nor ancient, neither Chinese nor Western.
I realized early on that I needed to combine modern creation with traditional culture. I think it is a flaw in literature in the 1950s after the founding of the People's Republic of China that it is out of touch with traditional culture. ——Some people say that this is a "rupture" in Chinese culture, which is a bit serious. Some critics say that my works are influenced by the thoughts of Lao and Zhuangzi from more than 2,000 years ago. This may be because a book that was always on my desk when I was teaching middle school in Kunming was "The Collection of Zhuangzi". But what interests me greatly about Zhuangzi is mainly his articles. As for his thoughts, I still don’t know much about him. When I think about , I am most affected by Confucian . I think Confucius was a very humane person and a poet. He can lose his temper and swear. I like "The Analects of Confucius·Zeng Xiran You Gong Xihua Sitting Attendant" very much. He asked the four students present to talk about their aspirations, and finally asked Zeng Xi (point).
"Point, what are you like?"
The drums are beautiful, clang, and they are composed without the harp. They said to each other: "It is different from the writings of the three masters."
The master said: "What's the harm? Everyone talks about his ambition."
said: "In late spring, the spring clothes are ready, five or six crowned people, six or seven boys, bathing in Yi, dancing in the wind, chanting and returning."
The master sighed and said, "I am here."
This is It's really beautifully written. Zeng Dian's super-utilitarian, spontaneous and natural thoughts are the ultimate beauty of the realm of life.
I like Song Confucianism's poems very much:
All things are contented when they are calm and contemplative,
The good times of the four seasons are the same as those of others.
To put it more realistically:
suddenly felt that the business in front of him was full,
should know that there are many suffering people in the world.
I think Confucianism is about loving others, so I call myself a "Chinese-style humanist".
My novel seems not to pay attention to structure . In a short article about novels, I said that the principle of structure is: casual. There is a writer who is slightly younger than me. Whenever he talks about novels, he always talks about the importance of structure. He said: "I have been talking about structure all my life, but you said: Whatever!" I later added a sentence in front of talking about structure: "It's easy to work hard", and he agreed. I don't like novels with too obvious structural traces, such as Maupassant , such as O. Henry. I tend to say "Wenwen can't", that is, there is no fixed method. I really yearn for what Su Shi said: "Like flowing clouds and flowing water, it has no definite quality at first, but it always goes on what it should do, and always stops at what it must do. It is natural in literature and science, and full of gestures." My novels are called "prose culture" in China. novel. I think prose culture is a (not the only) trend in the development of short stories in the world.
I attach great importance to the language , perhaps too much. I think language has content. Language is the essence of the novel, not external, not just form or technique. To explore an author's temperament and his thoughts (his attitude toward life, not his ideas), we must start with language and always be immersed in the author's language. Language is cultural. The language of the work reflects the author's entire cultural accomplishment. The beauty of language is not in each sentence, but in the relationship between sentences. Bao Shichen's discussion of Wang Xi's words seems to be uneven, but it is like an old man carrying his young grandson, looking forward to the affectionate ones, and the pain and itching are related. That’s what good language is all about. Language is like a tree, with sap flowing inside its branches. If one branch shakes, hundreds of branches will shake. Language is like water, it cannot be cut. The language of a work is an organic whole.
I think a novel is a joint creation between the author and the reader. The creative process is complete only when the author writes and the readers read. The author cannot know everything and write everything. Leave room for readers to ponder, think, and add. Chinese painting pays attention to "planning white and treating black". Bao Shichen believed that the characters should have characters above, below, left and right. People in the Song Dynasty commented on Cui Hao's "Changgan Song" that "there are words everywhere without words". Short stories can be said to be "blank art". The solution is simple: don’t say anything if you can’t say it. In this way, the capacity of a novel will be larger and more information can be conveyed. With a little less of yourself, you can win a lot more of others. It's shorter, but actually it's longer. Less is actually more. This is a great deal.
My article "Reporting Your Own Family" is really too long.
March 20, 1988
Issue 7, 1988 "Writer"
