Editor's note:

"Dating a Writer" is one of the permanent columns of the October School of Liberal Arts official account, and writers are regularly invited to be guests.

Sip a cup of tea and talk about a good book at the October Literature Academy located in Yousheng Temple in Yongdingmen Park. Talk about life, talk about literature, talk about life.

On the 12th of this month, at the launch ceremony of the second "Beijing October Literature Month", the October School of Literature launched the "October Signed Writers" program in order to achieve "publishing forward and integrating Creation", innovating the generation mechanism of literary works. Alai, Liu Qingbang, Ye Guangqin, Ning Ken, Guan Renshan, Hong Ke, Li Er, Qiu Huadong, and Xu Zechen officially signed as "October Signed Writers". The October Academy of Literature will conduct a series of exclusive interviews with these nine "October signed writers" in the next few issues of the "Dating Writers" column. In the last issue of "Date a Writer", we invited Ye Guangqin, a representative of Beijing-style writing and "October Contracted Writer", who shared her views on literature, Beijing and the world.

In this issue, we invited the famous writer Liu Qingbang to introduce Liu Qingbang and talk with Jia Guoliang, a special correspondent of the October Academy of Literature. In Liu Qingbang's novels, he built a literary world close to the earth and the people, where people are not ashamed of tears and are not afraid of suffering. Mr. Liu Qingbang used water to defeat all the heaviness of the world's collapse.

Writer profile

Liu Qingbang, a signed writer in October. Born in December 1951 in rural Shenqiu, Henan. Worked as a farmer, miner and journalist. He is the author of nine novels, including "Fault", "Poetry of Distant Places", "Songs on the Plains", "Red Coal", "Moonlight Everywhere", and "Black and White", as well as collections of short stories and essays, "The Man in the Kiln" and "Mei Niu Herding Sheep". There are more than fifty kinds of paintings, including "White Flowers Everywhere", "Sounding Instruments" and "Yellow Flower Embroidery".

The short story "Shoes" won the second Lu Xun Literature Award. The novellas "Sacred Tree" and "Squib" won the second and fourth Lao She Literature Awards. The novella "Going to the City" and the novel "Red Coal" won the 4th and 5th Beijing *** Awards respectively. The novel "Moonlight Everywhere" was nominated for the 8th Mao Dun Literary Award. He has won the "Beijing Literature" Award ten times; the "October" Literature Award five times; and the "Novel Monthly" Hundred Flowers Award seven times. The film "The Blind Shaft" adapted from his novel "The Divine Tree" won the Silver Bear Award at the 53rd Berlin Film Festival. He has won the first Moral and Art Award in Beijing.

Many works have been translated into English, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish and other foreign languages, and six foreign language collections have been published.

Liu Qingbang is currently the chairman of the China Coal Mine Writers Association, vice chairman of the Beijing Writers Association, a first-class writer, a member of the Beijing CPPCC Committee, and the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth national committee of the Chinese Writers Association. Committee member.

Movies turn the infinity of literature into limitation

Jia Guoliang: After the writer Marquez wrote his masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude", he has been preventing his works from being made into movies. His reason was that he wanted to maintain a personal relationship between his work and his readers. Your work "The Sacred Tree" was made into the movie "The Blind Shaft" and won a series of awards such as the Silver Bear Award and the Golden Horse Award. How do you view this personal relationship? Do you think adapting the work into a movie will destroy this personal relationship?

Liu Qingbang: Literary works and movies are two art categories. Literary works are written things with unlimited imagination. Once they are made into film works, they should become limited things. For example, when the literary character Lin Daiyu was reading "A Dream of Red Mansions", a hundred people had a hundred imaginations, all of which were different. However, once it was made into a TV series, Lin Daiyu's image was fixed. The process of adaptation is a process from infinite to limited in art, which is the limitation of film and television works.

But I myself would like someone to make my literary works into movies. Because movies are a powerful means of communication nowadays, it is equivalent to giving wings to literary works, which can fly further and all over the world. I think "Shenmu" benefited from the film adaptation. Although it has been picked up by many selected magazines before, its audience is still limited after all. After being adapted into a movie, it won more than 20 film awards around the world. It spread very widely at once, and the novel was translated into English, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and other languages. This has to be said to be due to the spread of the movie.

"Sacred Tree"

Good novels are all "liberal"

Jia Guoliang: When I read your works, I felt two completely different Temperament: One is a very soft temperament, such as your "Mei Niu Herding Sheep" and "Shoes". The other is a particularly cool temperament, such as "Sacred Wood" and "Red Coal". How do you control these two temperaments in writing?

Liu Qingbang: My writing has been summarized by critics into two styles. My works about rural areas have more soft elements. Because I have been away from the countryside for decades, I can only look back at my hometown when writing. This kind of looking back is a distanced look back. It is easy to imagine my hometown as an idyllic poem, with the beauty of a custom painting. Most of my short stories have this kind of temperament.

I think writing novels is nothing more than two attitudes: one is aesthetic and the other is critical.

So these cool novels are mostly based on a critical attitude. Most of them are about coal mines, and life in the coal mines is inherently grim. Because of its criticism of reality, it appears to be stronger, or cooler.

"Black and White Men and Women"

These two modes have to be written alternately. Sometimes if you always write these cool and tense things, it will easily become very stressful and tiring. In order to adjust, I will write some soft novels to neutralize it. Writing is actually a kind of practice and a spiritual need. Therefore, these two styles can actually be combined. Of course, I prefer the kind of gentle novels, because good novels are "liberating", they can make people's souls leave the body, let their souls fly, and make people lose their mind. Another novel with a strong sense of reality, it is actually "catching" and won't let you go until you continue reading.

"Honesty" means listening to the call of the soul

Jia Guoliang: Among your rural-themed works, in addition to those particularly soft and pure masterpieces, there is also a type of works that write " Ugly". For example, "The Foreign Woman", the novel writes about the phenomenon of rural prostitution. Is your attitude towards rural areas full of complexities?

Liu Qingbang: Yes, I still have a close connection with life in the countryside. I go back every year to pay attention to the reality in the countryside. I always find some ugly things, so I can't help but want to write about these ugly things through my works.

Not only short stories, but also my novel "Songs on the Plains", which covers the three years of the Great Famine. It is called the first novel to express the three years of China's Great Famine. There is also a novel "Yellow Mud Land", published by October Literature and Art Publishing House. It criticizes the "mud nature" of the national character. By writing about the entangled and framed nature of yellow mud, we criticize the bad nature of our national character. These works all question reality, reflect on history, and carry heavy historical and social content.

Jia Guoliang: When you encounter something particularly beautiful, you can’t help but praise it, and when you encounter something ugly, you can’t help but criticize it. This reminds me that when you talked about your own style before, you had a a unique expression. You say your style is an "honest" style. Why do you use "honest" to summarize your creative outlook?

Liu Qingbang: Writers write from the individual and from the heart. Every time they write, they write about themselves. When writing about yourself, you must first find your own heart, which must be an honest heart. A writer needs to listen to the call of his own heart and be true to what he feels and thinks, which means he must keep his own nature, not follow the crowd or follow the fashion, and insist on independent thinking under any circumstances. This is my understanding of "honesty".

Jia Guoliang: Baudelaire said that writing in any era is a combination of eternity and contemporary nature, and writing must maintain contemporary nature. China is now in a period of huge transformation, and urbanization has become an irreversible trend. In the context of urbanization, how do you think traditional local writing can maintain its contemporary relevance?

Liu Qingbang: I don’t think there is any outdated problem in writing about rural areas. The object of writing and the materials used for writing are not old or new. The question of "how to write" is actually more important. For example, the facts about the three-year famine I mentioned just now include life under the contract responsibility system after the reform and opening up. Even though so long has passed, it can still be written about, and it still has value worth exploring. Literature is often a state of memory, a kind of looking back. At the same time it is something spiritual and eternal. It is completely different from news. News requires timeliness, and the newer the better. Novels don’t need to be so trendy.

But novels also have the mission of recording the times and preserving the memory of our nation. Therefore, we still need to pay close attention to contemporary life. Once you pay attention, you may not necessarily write it out immediately. We need time to settle and refine it. But there is no doubt that we must maintain enough enthusiasm for contemporary life and always be in a state of discovery, so that we can continue to write works.

Writers need to "bend down"

Jia Guoliang: I know you once worked as a reporter. After the Pingdingshan gas explosion accident in 1996, you wrote an article of nearly 20,000 words. He also wrote the documentary work "Compassion of Life". In 2013, he went to the Daping Coal Mine in Henan Province to go deep into life, interviewed many families of miners who died after the mine disaster, and published the article "Collection and Mining". What impact have these experiences had on your creative concepts?

Liu Qingbang: The impact of "Compassion for Life" on coal mines across the country was beyond my expectation, and I was very shocked. Until now, coal mines across the country still use this work as a safety education textbook. After new miners arrive at the mine, in addition to learning new technologies, they also need to read this documentary work of mine. Even when I went to the mine, they knew I was the author and wanted to toast me. I was very moved. There is a saying that if you go to Luyao in northern Shaanxi, someone will take care of your food, and if you go to the coal mine and pick up Liu Qingbang, someone will take care of your drinking. It is because of the influence of this article "Compassion of Life".

This reportage has had a broad, deep and lasting impact on coal mines across the country. When I went to the coal mine, the miners mentioned this work to me, and many of them burst into tears after reading it. I didn’t dare to go back and read it again. Once I read it, I would burst into tears. This work gave me an inspiration.

We sometimes say that literature serves the people, but this seems to be a big statement and a false statement. Through this work, I know that it is not the case. To serve the people, when you go to the mine, you serve the miners. You wrote what they were thinking and thinking thoughtfully, and they were indeed moved and welcomed. So, this "service" is valid. Based on this understanding, I feel that "serving the people" requires writers to bend down and act in a down-to-earth manner. I think writers need this concept.

Jia Guoliang: Last year, your short story "Be Careful" published in "People's Literature" still continued the theme of "Sacred Tree" and "Black and White Men and Women", writing about the suffering of the lower class people that you have always worried about, survival situation. This theme has been going on for decades, why do you persist?

Liu Qingbang: I haven’t written this novel for decades, but I finally wrote it last year. This is a heart-wrenching and expensive novel. Why? Because what I write about is my little brother. This is a sore point in my heart. What I wrote was the process of his life slowly withering away. Sometimes I feel that after writing more than three hundred short stories, I am almost done. Looking back, I thought, oh, there is such an important short story that I haven’t written yet, so I just wrote it.

Language is connected with breathing

Jia Guoliang: Your novels are very particular about the language. A language is very "literary", such as "Xiangqi". One kind is very "quality", such as "Sacred Tree" and "Mei Niu Herding Sheep". To sum up, your language can be described as "gentle and gentle". Many critics also think that you are a writer who attaches great importance to language. What do you think of the language in novels?

Liu Qingbang: I attach great importance to language. I think Wang Zengqi is right. He said that writing novels is about writing language. Language is a novelist's special skill. Only if the language is good can the novel be written well. If the language is not good, you can vote down the novel.

Good language is personalized, spiritual, and flavorful language, with the temperament of a writer, which is formed through long-term practice. Language is connected with the writer's breathing. Through the breathing of words, language will form an aura. The language of good writers has such an aura. You can read the flavor of Lu Xun and Shen Congwen without looking at the name. Language also needs to be defamiliarized. Do not use clichés, use less idioms, and try not to use fashionable language. Use more common language. These languages ??must carry your own unique emotions and unique discoveries. Over time, you will develop your own language style.

Jia Guoliang: I have noticed a phenomenon. Several writers who were born in the 1950s and are still active in the literary world like you, such as Mr. Mo Yan and Mr. Jia Pingwa, all pay great attention to writing folk culture in their creations. . For example, the paper-cutting folk custom mentioned in Jia Pingwa's new work "Ji Hua", the tradition of eating blood onions, and Mo Yan's attention to folk opera. And you also have such works, such as "Sounding Instrument" and "Yellow Flower Embroidery", which are also rooted in folk culture. Why are you paying attention to folk culture?

A photo of Mr. Liu Qingbang and Mr. Mo Yan

Liu Qingbang: I am very interested in folk culture. Folk culture is part of the cultural gene of our Chinese nation. The roots of folk culture are very deep and worth exploring. In fact, I have written more than ten novels of this type, such as "Shoes", which is about the custom of an unmarried wife making a pair of shoes for her fiancé. Such as "New Guest", "Rite of Spring", "Yellow Flower Embroidery", "Fetal Catching", "Tail", etc. These folk cultures have a sense of ritual that makes people feel beautiful. Our classical culture and our folk culture pay great attention to rituals and are worthy of admiration and promotion.

Jia Guoliang: How do you feel about becoming a contracted writer of the October Academy of Literature?

Liu Qingbang: I participated in the unveiling ceremony of the School of Liberal Arts in October a year ago and made a speech. After that, under the arrangement of the October Academy of Literature, he became the first writer to go to the writer's residence in Kathmandu, Nepal for exchange and writing. I have always been willing to participate in the activities of the School of Literature, and I am very happy to be a signed writer of the October School of Literature.

Mr. Liu Qingbang’s writer’s residence in Kathmandu

Jia Guoliang: What are your expectations and prospects for this October Literature Month?

Liu Qingbang: October Literature Month is very helpful in activating literary creation in Beijing and promoting the development of Beijing culture. I think October Literature Month and October Literature Academy are both very important. I used to make proposals in the CPPCC and always called for the establishment of a liberal arts college. Now my appeal has paid off, and two liberal arts colleges have been built in Beijing, the October Liberal Arts College and the Lao She Liberal Arts College. My consistent view is that if Beijing wants to build a cultural center, it must first build a literary center. Building a literary center requires a combination of soft and hard measures. Software refers to writers and works. The hardware is the introduction of Liu Qingbang, a literary institution in Beijing, and its facilities. Including the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Writers Association, Literature Museum, Theater, October Literature Institute, October Literature and Art Publishing House, etc., these are all hardware.

October Academy of Literature is a good piece of hardware. In the future, it will play an important role in cultivating writers, promoting writers, as well as literary promotion and literary exchanges. It is an important carrier in building a Beijing literary center.

Mr. Liu Qingbang’s signature

Interview notes

The phone was connected and Mr. Liu Qingbang’s voice came.

I suddenly had a feeling: the characters in his novels suddenly became brighter. The perceptual knowledge of his works was at that moment integrated with the texture of the writer's voice: soft, emotional, compassionate, and warm. The writer's voice reveals something of the spiritual secret of his work.

In the dozens of minutes of interview, Mr. Liu Qingbang expressed his literary views in a calm and thoughtful manner. What he built was a literary world close to the earth and the people. Human breathing is clear, and so are the scars on the land. In this world, people are not ashamed of tears and are not afraid of suffering. The more we get to the end, the more deeply I understand the mystery of "using softness to overcome hardness": the softer you are, the more you can bear the heavy without being broken. And the softest thing is water.

Mr. Liu Qingbang used water to defeat all the heaviness that collapsed in the world.

Written by: Jia Guoliang, a master’s student in modern and contemporary Chinese literature at the School of Liberal Arts, Beijing Normal University.