At that time, I felt lucky to have written a novel and published it as a book. It was not until the People's Literature Publishing House and National Literature magazine held a seminar on this novel in Beijing that I heard several literary predecessors of this nation say that this novel was the first novel created by Hui writers in the history of Hui literature. On July 1th, 1988, Guangming Daily reported on the seminar: "Comrades attending the seminar thought that this was the first novel written by Hui writers in the history of Chinese literature, which reflected the real life of Hui people, with simple style and youthful lyrical poetry." To tell the truth, this first part, while comforting me, is more pressure and spur.
Because there is no such book in the stacks of People's Literature Publishing House, I found an old book from the Internet to keep the information, and paid a price many times higher than the original book. The reason why I haven't applied for a reprint is that I want to make appropriate revisions in some places in the book. Because I have been busy creating the latest works, this matter has been stranded again and again.
Not long ago, when I had time to revise this work and read it completely as someone else's work, I found that although I was not satisfied with it, the survival information of the people at the bottom from the special historical period and living situation, especially the very unique details they showed, their enterprising spirit, tenacity and tolerance, the local natural scenery and folk customs at that time, and the mighty torrent of the times, still shook. And most of these come from the rural life I have experienced. This is probably one of the reasons why this novel can still be recognized by readers and critics.
That life was not a "deep life" of some creators, but a life full of survival confusion and life crisis, which was mixed in various contradictions. When I was a teenager, I was a farmer. Later, although I had a formal job, many farm work at home was inseparable from me, the head of the family, and even various rural affairs related to it would entangle myself.
I have done all kinds of farm work, including digging ditches, opening canals, driving Xiao Lv carts and old ox carts, and even driving ox carts or bridling them like cows or horses, and transporting soil and fertilizer to farmland more than a dozen miles away with the villagers who help and pull ropes.
because of the low income in the production team, when I got engaged and married, even my clothes, even the so-called bridal chamber, were temporarily borrowed from relatives or people in the village. When the contract responsibility system was implemented, the action plan of the production team where my family was located failed to wait for the approval of the superior, and it was carried out in an urgent situation. Some farmers in Xiaogang Village, Anhui Province were very eager to work hard. At that time, I assumed the role of "accountant".
After being allocated to a dozen acres, almost half of them were in farmland ten miles away. Unwilling to fall behind, I also bought half an old mule with the manuscript fee of my novella "Moonlight Pear Bay"-the other half was raised by selling rice. I remember that a catty of rice could only be sold for 27 cents at that time. When CCTV broadcasted the TV series "Moonlight Pear Bay" adapted from my novella, there was not even a black-and-white TV set at home. I took my wife and children to watch it at the ordinary members' home in Zhuangzi. Up to now, I still clearly remember how scared I was when I knocked on someone's gate.
I heard that once, a publication held a seminar in Beijing, and the person in charge of the meeting asked, "Why didn't Cha Shun from Peking University Writers Class come?" The person who knows the situation immediately replied: "He asked for leave to go back to his hometown in Ningxia to cut rice!" All the people at the meeting were surprised and sighed. In fact, it's nothing. Even the expenses for me to attend the Chinese Department of Ningxia Education College, the undergraduate course of writing major of Lu Xun College of Literature and the Peking University writers' class are mostly high-interest loans borrowed from my hometown credit cooperatives and advance payment from the publishing house.
I deeply feel the difficulties of farmers' survival, the surprises, benefits and excitement brought by the reform and opening-up policy, but I also deeply feel that it is not easy for farmers to really embark on the road to wealth. This work can be said to be my refining and pouring out of my previous rural life experience. It shows my life by portraying characters and deducing various relationships between them. It is also my deep concern, independent thinking and ardent hope for the future and destiny of China, a big agricultural country.
Many insights and emotions in the works are endowed by hardships; Many words in the works are some voices at the grassroots level; Some characters in the works seem to have made me write like that. Therefore, I want to thank life, especially the rural life that once left me at a loss and overwhelmed me. It is they that give me hard-working quality, tenacious will, tenacious perseverance and diving temperament, and they also enhance my literary IQ and aesthetic taste.
As for why I write about ethnic subjects, I am mainly familiar with this kind of life. Because my creative base and the root of my life are in this environment. Another point is that the sense of responsibility is always urging me to do so. In fact, this is also the need of our multi-ethnic family. If we go to a bigger place, it is also the need of the big world of mankind. In my opinion, literature is not only the best way to enrich people's life experience, survival experience and spiritual world, but also the best way to communicate people, ethnic groups, ethnic groups, emotional worlds between countries and various cultures. It is also the best way to "travel" economically, simply, pluralistic, magical, rich and elegant, and to appreciate the inner world of characters.
It is my past life and all kinds of insight and sense of responsibility that force me to treat my creation meticulously. Especially standing on the height of today's literature and aesthetics, when I look at and ponder this work carefully, I feel that there are places where I should polish and better display my creative skills. I have done my best in the plot, characters and the ideological depth of the whole work, including the sense of culture, history, aesthetic pursuit and scene, as well as the possibility of easy reading and endurance of the language. I hope readers can like it.