Back to 80: My Literary Life

After Fang Minghua arranged the work, he went to the next room and met Lu Yao.

"Brother Lu, what do you want to talk to me about?"

Lu Yao hesitated before speaking: "Actually, it's nothing important. I want to ask you, what do you think about the disintegration of the Soviet Union?"

Fang Minghua was stunned for a moment, but still spoke.

"Of course this is a big deal, and it will profoundly change the current world political landscape. As for the reasons for the disintegration, there are long-term rigid economic systems and highly centralized political systems, wrong ethnic policies, Western countries' implementation of the "peaceful evolution" strategy, etc. These things were mentioned in the meeting of our Writers Association leaders yesterday, and the study documents issued above also mentioned them. Why do you suddenly ask this again today?"

"It was mentioned in the meeting, and I also read a lot of news reports on this. You know? When I saw this news in the newspaper, I couldn't sleep all night. A country that once produced great writers such as Gorky, Sholokhov, and Bunin disappeared just like that?"

"Well, the disintegration of the Soviet Union has little to do with literature. Russian literature is already very powerful. Before the Soviet Union, great writers such as Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Pushkin were born." Fang Minghua explained.

"Yes. That's true." Lu Yao suddenly changed the topic and lowered his voice: "Hey, do you know? Qin Bei, several old cadres have had problems, their wives and children have been separated, and their families have collapsed."

"I've heard about it, what's the matter?"

"The disintegration of the Soviet Union reminded me of the collapse of several old cadres' families. I plan to write a novel, starting with these families, exploring the relationship between life, family, and politics, analyzing the fate of a country, and writing a novel. The name is "Collapse." Lu Yao finally said.

"Brother Lu, this is a political novel." Fang Minghua smiled.

"Yes, I want to try it. I have been thinking about this problem these two days."

"Okay, but the reading class member seminar will be held soon. You are one of the members and you can't be absent." Fang Minghua wanted to remind him.

"Don't worry, it won't happen. I'm just starting to conceive now, and it's too early to really start writing. "

The two chatted for a while, mainly Fang Minghua listened to Lu Yao's conception of the new novel. Fang Minghua suddenly felt that it was a bit like "The Sheep's Gate" written by Li Peifu.

"The Sheep's Gate" is about the image of Hu Tiancheng, the head of Hujiabao who has "remained strong for forty years".

His courage to successfully control the villagers in his hands is closely related to his far-sighted management of the "human field"; he spent forty years to build a huge network of relationships from townships to counties, from provincial capitals to the capital, which ensured his power to call the wind and rain, and his glory of "only success and no failure".

It's just that according to Lu Yao's conception, the characters involved have higher power and rank. It is not about Hu Tiancheng alone, but several characters, from the liberation to the present, and the scale is grand.

"Brother Lu, I'm waiting to see your masterpiece." Fang Minghua finally laughed.

"It's still early, wait until the first draft is written, and you can help me take a look. "

Lu Yao chatted for a while and then left. Fang Minghua thought about what happened just now. She didn't expect Lu Yao to write a political novel.

On January 3, the first World Chinese Literature Award Reading Class Preliminary Review Meeting was held at Xijing Tangcheng Hotel. At the opening ceremony, in addition to Hu Cai representing the Qin Province Writers Association, the provincial leaders in charge of culture also came to the venue and delivered a passionate speech, welcoming more than 50 writers, editors, and literary critics from all over the country to gather in Xijing.

I hope that in addition to having a good meeting and selecting excellent works, they will have a good time and have fun in Xijing!

Qin Province TV Station, Xijing TV Station, Guangming Daily and Qin Province Daily and other media reported on this meeting.

On the second day of the meeting, the members of the reading class started to work intensively.

In 20 days, their task was to select five novels, five novellas, five short stories, five essays and five poetry collections from a large number of literary works as the finalists for the first Chinese Poetry Collection Award.

At that time, the jury members will select the best one from each of these five different types of literary works to become the winner of this year's literary award.

Since the call for submissions for the first World Chinese Literature Award, a total of 48 novels, 10 novellas and 10 short stories have been received. 101 novels, 187 short stories, 154 essays, and 65 volumes of poetry (collections).

It is also an extremely arduous task to select five works from so many works.

According to the selection rules, the members of the reading class will conduct the first round of voting based on the careful reading of the works submitted in the past few months.

The novel, poetry and prose groups will vote anonymously on the manuscripts of each group respectively. The literary works that receive more than half of the votes will enter the next round of selection, and the rest will be eliminated.

Then they will discuss in groups, and each will express their own views on a certain work, including its advantages and disadvantages, and then proceed The second round of voting will be held.

The works with more than half of the votes will enter the next round of selection. If the number of works of a certain type that have more than half of the votes in this round is less than five, all of them will be shortlisted works.

The third round of voting is based on the first two rounds. The works selected are ranked from high to low in terms of votes, and the top five are shortlisted works.

The preliminary review of the entire reading class is over, and the final review is the task of the 13 members of the jury.

Fang Minghua participated in the discussion as a member of the reading class of the novel group, including Lu Yao, Jia Pingwa, and Chen Zhongshi, while the other two members of the reading class of Qin Province, Bai Miao and Wang Yu, were in the prose and poetry group.

To be honest, in the past few months, I have been reading novels and my head is dizzy. I have written a thick book of reading notes.

Among the novels, Fang Minghua pays the most attention to four novels.

Liu Sifen's "White Gate Willow"

Yu Hua's "Crying in the Drizzle"

and Qi Jun's "Oranges Are Red"

and the short story "Fragrant Mountain" written by American writer Robert Oren Butler.

Historically, "White Gate Willow" won the next Mao Dun Literature Prize.

Although "Crying in the Drizzle" is not as good as Yu Hua's "To Live", he later won the French Literature and Art Knight Medal for this novel.

Fang Minghua thinks that "Oranges Are Red" is the novel with the highest literary value among the novels received by Hong Kong and Taiwan writers in this call for submissions, and is better than "Dumplings" submitted by Li Bihua this time.

As for Butler's "Fragrant Mountain", it is one of the few novels written by truly non-Chinese writers, and the content is also very interesting - a Vietnamese person's experience in New York against the background of the Vietnam War.

Fang Minghua wanted to see how far these four novels could go in these rounds of voting.