Source: [Farmer's Daily]
Now I am no longer the same as before,
or I am no longer a native of my hometown in the simple sense,
But my hometown laid the foundation for my spiritual background,
gave me the confidence to face the world,
also provides me with a unique position and perspective to observe the changes in the times.
I am not a professional writer, but in recent years I have picked up my pen and wrote some novels one after another, and published two collections of novels, "Goodbye, Bull Demon King" and "Silent Man". Most of the stories written in the book are about hometown and childhood. Many friends have asked me, and I often ask myself, why do I write these novels?
I am mainly a researcher and critic of contemporary literature, but in my research, I gradually felt that it is difficult to organize the precious experiences and emotional fragments in life that cannot be reduced by grasping them from the perspective of rationality and theory. However, the form of novels provides the possibility to grasp these fragments more fully, so I picked up my pen and wrote them all the way. So, what are these undeduction-free experiences? It can be said that there are both experiences in the times, local experiences, and personal experiences.
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From the perspective of the times, as a post-70s generation, I have witnessed the process of reform and opening up with my own eyes, and experienced the vigorous vitality of the entire society in the 1980s, the social restlessness when the tide of market economy rushes in the 1990s, and the national carnival and pride when the New Century Olympics were held. After entering the new era, the confidence and confidence of the Chinese people, the earth-shaking changes brought about by China's rapid development over the past few decades have far exceeded the original imagination. From the current perspective, we can't believe that China at the beginning of reform and opening up, China in the revolutionary era, and even traditional China, it is hard to believe that China at that time was like that - so poor, so poor, so struggle and sacrifice, so backward and conservative, and today we are in a completely new world.
China's rapid development and drastic changes are what our nation-state dreams are, and it is also the struggle and sacrifice for countless ancestors. But for us who are in the specific historical process, it will also bring some problems, the biggest problem is the alienation of personal experience - that is, the world we are familiar with is slowly disappearing, and what appears before us is an increasingly strange world.
This is a good thing in many ways. For example, our material conditions such as food, clothing, housing and transportation are getting better and better, and we have more freedom and choices in spirit, but such rapid and violent changes will also bring about the shock of the subject and the fission of the inner self. It’s like a person walking too fast, but his heart is still in yesterday; it’s hard for us to imagine our daily life 10, 20, or 30 years ago; as Mr. Lu Xun said, we are all “intermediates of history” and a small link in the development chain of the times. And with the newer and faster development of the times, will we be eliminated by history? If that is the meaning of our life?
More importantly, the alienation of personal experience will also bring about the alienation of intergenerational experience. We grew up in the reform era and had not experienced the wars, famines and revolutions experienced by our parents, so it was difficult to enter their inner world. Children who also grew up in the new era have not experienced the 1980s, 1990s and early new century we have experienced, and it is difficult for them to enter our inner world. So we can never live like our father, and our children will not live like us. We are like reefs standing alone by the sea.
"No ancients are seen before, no comers are seen later." Those unique experiences of the times and precious life experiences can only be sealed in our memories. Of course, the alienation of personal and intergenerational experience is not absolute. After all, everyone has to face common life problems, but we should also face the inner stability problems brought about by the rapid development of society.
The novels in "Goodbye, Bull Demon King" and "Silent Man" are about me returning to the past era after realizing the huge difference between "the present self" and "the past self" to rebuild the organic connection and stability of my inner self.Most of the villages that appear in the novel are from the 1980s and 1990s, while the "I" that appears in the novel is the "I" of childhood and youth. I returned to my hometown and childhood in the form of novels, but in my writing about that time, place, and person, I also had the vision of the present me and the awareness of the present me.
2
Speaking of local experience, I was born and raised in Guan County, Shandong. At that time, I had no sense of hometown and awareness of local culture. It was only after I went to college that I gradually developed a sense of hometown and gradually deepened my understanding of Guanxian .
Our Guan County is located at the junction of Hebei, Shandong and Henan. It is deeply influenced by Confucian culture and is also a place where horses are famous. It was originally named "Guanshiyi" in Spring and Autumn . It belonged to Jin in the Spring and Autumn in the Spring and Autumn Warring States in Wei and Zhao . It has different ancestry. After the abolition of Pingyuan Province in 1952, it belonged to one of the eight counties under the jurisdiction of Liaocheng, Shandong. But when I was studying in my hometown, I didn’t care about the history of my hometown, nor did I feel the poverty, backwardness, conservativeness and remoteness of our place.
At that time, in Shandong, my hometown was the poorest and most backward economy. When I was a child, I often ate sweet potatoes and corn. I could only eat dumplings or noodles made of wheat flour during the Chinese New Year and the holidays. But this was already very good compared to my parents' generation, at least I could eat enough. My mother once told me about her experience of begging for food in the famine era, and also about the children at home who had no food to eat. She couldn't say it when she returned to her parents' home. My uncle fed her half a bag of corn, and she carried her back home and cried while walking. It was not until the mid-1980s that we gradually had enough food.
I first came to Beijing, an international metropolis from the remote village in my hometown. My biggest identity anxiety comes from the countryside, not from the countryside. The huge difference between urban and rural culture and lifestyles has masked the differences between rural areas, but as time goes by, the question of "where to come from" has become more and more important, and I was able to re-examine my hometown.
By reading county and other local chronicles, I gradually realized that although my hometown in my memory was very poor, it was even poorer in the old society. Our place is the old path of the Yellow River. At that time, the soil erosion in the Yellow River area was severe, and the wind and sand were raging for many years. It was not until the founding of New China that it was large-scale planting of trees to prevent sand and digging rivers to build embankments.
When I was a child, I often heard from my family about who "dig the river", but I didn't understand what was going on. In my novel, I have written many times about the small river in the south of our village, but I never knew what the river was called. I remember when I was a child, I asked my father and he said it was called "Erganqu". At that time, I just thought it was not like the name of a river, which felt a bit strange. Later I learned that this "Second Canal" was a river dug by hand. It was not born, but was dug out by my father's generation.
For example, at that time, the most scenery I saw was poplar trees . In the county town, in front of the village, behind the house, and on both sides of the rural roads, there were poplar trees everywhere. This was also written into the novel and became a unique regional landscape. But at that time I thought this was just a natural scenery, but in fact it was not. Planting white-haired poplar is an important way to prevent wind and sand in our county. It was once identified as an aid project by the United Nations Food Programme. Our place has now become an advanced county in the country's greening and an important base for the cultivation of white-haired poplar in northern China. For this reason, our county has also set up a forest farm and a farm. This is also the prototype of the "orchard" in my novel where my father left home to work 30 miles away from home.
When I was in my hometown, I never felt wind and sand there, and I knew very little about the behavior of sand control . Although I didn't eat well at that time, I could feel the sky was clear and the clouds were white and the grass was green. Later I realized that the world of my childhood was not a "natural" world, but a new "world" after the changes of the world by my father. Such a new world is their ideal in an era of wind and sand. They have brought us such a new world to us through hard work. We grew up in it without knowing it, and we can't help but feel ashamed when we think about it.
On the other hand, each generation has its own mission, our fathers change the world, and my peers and younger generations are also continuing to change the face of their hometown. In 1983, our village set up wires and installed lights. I still remember the day when the wires were installed. In the evening of that day, every household had light bulbs installed and waiting for the wires to be connected to the network, the wireman dragged clips like crab glasses and climbed up and down a row of telephone poles. He followed the brigade cadres, behind the cadres was a group of adults, and we children also ran around and jumped around with excitement. When the electrician said, "The call is coming soon, you go home and have a look." We ran towards the alley.
When I got home, I kept pulling the light rope, and the switch sounded. Suddenly, the light bulb hanging on the roof turned on. It was a 200-watt light bulb, which was as bright as a little sun. I was shocked by the sudden light blooming in the darkness. I didn’t expect that the night could be so bright! This evening was an epoch-making night in our village. From then on, we bid farewell to the dim era of kerosene lamps. From then on, we gradually had TVs, electric fans, and the whole world that the electricity station changed and brought about.
3
actually changes are happening, but when we are in it, we don’t have a clear consciousness. After our village initially solved the problem of food and clothing in the early 1980s, it began to plant a large number of cash crops - in our place it is mainly cotton . If the bumper grain harvest makes the villagers full, then cotton gives villagers a savings and pocket money. The villagers started to build houses and buy bicycles and TVs. The whole village was filled with a prosperous atmosphere. The villagers' lives were getting better and better, and they felt more and more hopeful and promising. This process continued until the mid-1990s when I went to college.
htmlThe rise of the market economy in the early 1990s also impacted our small county town. Some people in our village are the first to introduce machines to process wood. Each machine employs more than a dozen people, purchasing, processing, drying and binding one-stop, promoting the rapid economic development in the form of individual enterprises. Many people in the village made a fortune and gained wallets. The village set off a second wave of rebuilding houses. Cement red brick structure floor houses replaced the previous red brick and wooden beam houses. Motorcycle and telephone installations gradually became popular, but some people in the village opened factories and some went to the factory to work. The traditional clan and ethical relationships were also greatly impacted by the market economy.Every time I go home during this period, I can hear a lot of stories about debt collection, stories of money and deception, and stories of mismatch between brothers and brothers in partnership. This can be said to be the early days of a village industrialization, reminding me of what Marx and Engels said in " Communist Manifesto " that "tear off the veil of warmth that covers family relations and turn this relationship into a pure money relationship", as well as novels by Balzac, Dickens and others in the 19th century, but China's national conditions have their own special features. The logic of " acquaintance society " is entangled with the rules of the market economy, and many unique and thought-provoking phenomena have emerged.
Since 2006, our village has entered a period of urbanization. The village seized the opportunity of building East Ring Road , promoted urbanization in the form of a collective village, and built a new residential community in the west of the village. There are more than ten residential buildings in this community now, and most of the villagers have moved to the community. Almost every family has a car, and their lives are no longer much different from those of the county residents. Of course, there are many stories in this process, such as stories about demolition, stories about going upstairs, stories about how to raise chickens, pigs and dogs upstairs, stories about brothers and sisters competing for building indicators, and so on. During this period, every time I go home, I feel that the village has been renewed and more beautiful, but it seems to be getting further and further away from the countryside in my memory.
During the Spring Festival of 2011, when I took a bus home, I found that a highway was built in our county, but I didn’t know which exit I got off. I called my nephew and said he asked me to come to pick me up in the nearest service area. After I got off the bus in the service area, I looked at the red sunset in the sky alone and couldn't help but feel a huge sense of vicissitudes.
In just twenty or thirty years, I have watched the loess road in the village become a highway, the crops everywhere become factories everywhere, people move from adobe houses to residential buildings, and people move from riding bicycles to driving cars. What a huge leap and change! It's like doing magic, far beyond our childhood dreams.
Of course, there are familiar people and scenery that have changed. The village scenery I am familiar with has disappeared, and the people I am familiar with have also become old, and some have passed away, such as my father, grandma, uncle and more elders who have watched me grow up. Their death has touched me too many emotions and memories, so there is no need to describe it in detail.
In 2007, in order to repair the East Ring Road, our old house was also demolished. I was on a business trip in Guizhou at that time, and my sister suddenly called and told me about this. I was stunned and couldn't speak. Somewhere in my heart, I seemed to have been stabbed with an injection. I felt like I had lost my "home" forever.
This old house was built by my father and sister. It is the place where I was born and raised, carrying all my beautiful memories, but suddenly, it disappeared like this. Since then, we bought a house for my mother in the newly built community, but every time I go home, I have to go to the former site of my old house to take a look. I always feel that this is my real "home".
The "home" I wrote about in novels such as "Goodbye, Bull Demon King" and "Silent Man" is my old house. This is just an ordinary farmyard, but it is particularly precious to me. Although this old house has disappeared forever in the world, it has always remained in my heart.
4
So far, most of my novels are about my childhood hometown and memories, and they do not fully express the above vicissitudes and great changes in their works, but these vicissitudes and great changes are the prerequisite for me to create these novels. It is precisely because my hometown has undergone such a huge change that the people and scenery I am familiar with have disappeared, so I cherish it very much and want to retain the scenery in my memory in the form of novels.
Our village is just an ordinary small village on the North China Plain . Although it has huge changes, it is just a small corner of the great changes in the times and China. If there is anything special, it is that our traditional culture here has a profound influence. I have also written in my novel that the tomb of Confucius' Hikong Hikong Hikong is in our county.Hikong Mencius left a famous saying for all time when he passed by my grandma's village, "Wealth cannot be lustful, poverty cannot be moved, and power cannot be defeated. This is called a real man."
Confucian culture has been deeply immersed in thousands of years, and has a complete set of rules for father and son, husband and wife, teacher and student relationships. It emphasizes propriety, righteousness, integrity and shame, family culture, and ethical order. Although it has experienced the impact of revolutionary thought in the 20th century, it still has many legacy.
When I was growing up, the women in the village still did not go to the table. Now, I still have to "kowtow" to the elders in the village during the Spring Festival - I have learned about the customs of various places, and it seems that the only one who really "kowtowed" now is ours, but in the past two years, it has decreased due to epidemic prevention and control and other reasons.
Such a "traditional" countryside will inevitably trigger severe ideological conflicts in the process of rapid modernization. The communication rules and living habits formed in the long agricultural civilization are also fission under the impact of industry and information civilization. Since the reform and opening up, the villagers' family consciousness, human attitudes, fertility concepts, economic concepts and other aspects have undergone tremendous changes. The stories that occur here not only have the contradiction between "tradition" and "modern", but also the contradiction between "modern" and "postmodern", and the contradiction between "tradition" and "postmodern". They are complicatedly mixed with rich contradictions from different eras and levels, which are far more exciting than the classic European novels of the 19th and 20th centuries, but they are still to be discovered and refined.
I have been away from my hometown for more than 20 years and have lived in Beijing for more than my hometown. I have not personally participated in the huge changes in my hometown later. However, I have also learned about the changes in my hometown from the experiences and narrations of my family and friends, and staying away from my hometown also gave me a certain distance to observe and think.
My personal experience is very simple, but it also contains rich content of the times. I went from a poor rural teenager to college, went to a doctorate, and worked in literature and research that I liked. There was my personal struggle and pursuit, but it was also thanks to the reform era. In this process, I not only saw the vicissitudes of my hometown, but also the huge changes in Beijing.
When I first came to Beijing, the Third Ring Road was just built, and the subway only had Line 1 and 2, and Haidian was just a town. The ticket to the Summer Palace for is only two yuan, and the monthly ticket is four yuan. The scenery of Beijing City is still very simple and plain, just like the street scene filmed in the popular "I Love My Home" at that time. But in a blink of an eye, Beijing has changed. Not only has the Sixth Ring Road built long ago, the subway is well connected, and Haidian Town has become a street next to the Fourth Ring Road. Tickets for the Summer Palace are expensive, and the appearance of Beijing is even new, with skyscrapers and the newly built airport is smooth, flat and vast. A brand new international metropolis stands in front of the world.
Hometown has undergone a tremendous change, Beijing has undergone a tremendous change, and I am also changing in it. I have transformed from a rural boy to a small intellectual. My inner self is constantly deconstructed and reconstructed by new life experiences and books, containing rich and complex internal contradictions. Now I am no longer the me of the past, or I am no longer a native of my hometown in the simple sense, but my hometown has laid the foundation for my spiritual background, gave me the confidence to face the world, and provided me with a unique position and perspective to observe the changes in the times.
In "Goodbye, Bull Demon King" and "Silent Man", I returned to my hometown again and again spiritually, where is the source of my life, retaining the precious memories of my life. Although I am small and ordinary, I can also reflect the vicissitudes of the times from a certain level, and draw courage to face the future from the past, just like what I like most now is the ordinary food from my hometown, just like in the novel I still seem to be that young man who has not experienced the world.
About the author
Li Yunlei, born in 1976, from Guanxian, Shandong Province, PhD in the Department of Chinese at Peking University. Currently working in "Selected Novels". China Modern Literature Museum invited researcher and member of the Youth Committee of the China Association of Literature and Art Critics. He has written review collections "Reaffirming the Ideals of New Literature", "New Era Literature and Chinese Story", etc., novel collections "Goodbye, Bull Demon King", "Silent Man", etc. He has won the Feng Mu Literature Award, the Mao Dun Literature Newcomer Award, the 2008 "Youth Critics Award", the October Literature Award, the "Southern Literature World" Excellent Paper Award, the "Contemporary Writer Review" Excellent Paper Award, the 2020 "Han Zi'ang" Youth Critics Award, the "Woodpecker Cup" Annual Excellent Work Award of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, etc.
Author: Li Yunlei
Producer: Du Lanping Editor: Liu Zika Li Yining Liu Nian
This article comes from [Farmer Daily] and only represents the author's views. The national party media information public platform provides information release and dissemination services.
ID: jrtt
