Chinanews Client Beijing, August 25th (Reporter Shangguanyun) Writing, publishing books, accepting interviews... Yang Benfen is 80 years old this year. Recently, because of the publication of the new book "Autumn Garden", her life began to change slightly .
She is not a professional writer, "Autumn Garden" is the first book she published. On Douban, many readers gave it four or even five stars. All this was not in Yang Benfen's expectation, and now she feels "like a dream". She is not writing for publication and publication, but wants to leave "evidence of living" for her mother who has passed away for many years.
Record mother's life
In terms of length, the story of "Autumn Garden" is not long, it describes the rough fate of the heroine Qiu Garden as a wife and mother.
Yang Benfen. Photo courtesy of Zhang Hong
After Qiu Yuan got married, he settled in a rural village in Hunan with her husband Yang Renshou. Her husband was a scholar with a very kind heart, but died in poverty and illness.
Middle-aged lost husband, Qiu Yuan gritted his teeth and raised four children alone, and suffered a lot. She once lived in Hubei with her children, and remarried to a local brigade secretary who was widowed in order to settle down. Just as life became stable, the youngest son drowned accidentally.
After the death of his second husband, Qiuyuan, who was over 60 years old, returned to Hunan and spent the last years of his old age with his two sons. At the age of eighty-nine, Qiu Yuan accidentally fell and broke his hip bone, and died two months later.
"The prototype of Qiuyuan is my mother Liang Qiufen." Writing this book, Yang Benfen didn't want to complain about the hardships in life, but wanted to leave the traces of his mother in the world.
She wrote in the preface of "Autumn Garden": "I know that the story told in "Autumn Garden" is like a drop of water and will eventually flow into the long river of human history."
Writing in the kitchen
A lot of this novel to commemorate his mother was written by Yang Benfen in the kitchen.
"After retiring, I went to Nanjing to help my second daughter with the children and do housework by the way." The second daughter, Zhang Hong, is a writer and has a lot of books at home. Yang Benfen would find a few books from time to time, "I see many writers writing about their mothers, so I think I can write them too."
At that time, she didn't know how to use a computer, so she started her initial writing on a pile of blank paper. Usually, most of Yang Benfen's time is occupied by housework and taking care of his granddaughter. Therefore, when he is busy in the kitchen, he writes a few lines on the needle.
The kitchen in my daughter's house was transformed from an enclosed balcony, but it was four or five square meters large and could not fit a writing desk. Yang Benfen found a small bench, sat on it, and took a taller square bench as a table, and the manuscript paper was spread out on it.
"I'm a impatient person. I think of a picture and I want to write it down immediately. There is braised pork and soup in the pot, so I lie next to the stove and write." Because the writing is about personal experience, Yang Benfen almost does not exist. The "bottleneck" in writing.
The super memory has also helped her a lot, allowing her to remember some scenes and details clearly after decades, and restore the life scenes of the year as authentically as possible.
"Autumn Garden". Image courtesy of publisher
When I was about to leave Nanjing, the first draft of "Autumn Garden" was basically completed. Out of curiosity, Yang Benfen easily weighed the pile of manuscript paper, which weighed eight kilograms. There is also the weight of her own tears in it, "I can't help crying if I write and think of my mother."
The first reader is a daughter
In the process of Yang Benfen's writing of the book, his daughter Zhang Hong was both the first reader and the "editor". She typed the manuscript word by word into the computer, and posted chapters after chapters on the Internet forum, named "Mom's Memoirs."
Will people be interested in the experience of an ordinary person? Zhang Hong said that the result was something she didn't expect—many people followed this post and wrote emotional messages.
In Zhang Hong’s eyes, his mother, Yang Benfen, is a very old-fashioned person, self-effacing and caring about other people’s feelings. “Mom is grateful to everyone who left a message. She thinks that every message should be answered, otherwise it would be rude and left out. ."
Seeing that his daughter didn't have so much time and energy to reply one by one, Yang Benfen decided to "learn computer". After learning to type, he asked his daughter to write down the steps of going online and follow them step by step. When she can post and reply to netizens by herself, this kind of communication brings her great happiness.
Yang Benfen once guessed the reason why others like "Autumn Garden": I am an ordinary person, and the things I have experienced may have been experienced by many people, and it is easier to resonate.
"I don't think I am a writer"
After "Autumn Garden" became popular, many media sent interview invitations, and Yang Benfen seriously mentioned his greatest regret in his life almost every time, "I didn't study well."
Yang Benfen (right) and his mother. Photo courtesy of Zhang Hong
She has longed to read and study all her life. But when I was very young, I had to maintain a family's livelihood with my mother, helping to sew clothes, accommodating shoe soles, and bringing younger siblings. I haven't been able to go to school when I was 11 years old. Watching my peers in the village go to school, I feel as uncomfortable as a cat scratching.
After adulthood, most of life is still struggling for livelihood. She has done a lot of work: farming, cutting herbs, working as a worker... almost never had any intersection with words. However, the dream of reading has never been extinguished. In the county where she lives, as long as she hears who has a novel in hand, she must find ways to borrow it.
Zhang Hong remembered that when they were very young, Yang Benfen said, "You will go to university in the future." Later, at Yang Benfen's insistence, all three children in the family received higher education.
"I don't know how to play poker or mahjong, so I only like to read written things." Sometimes, Yang Benfen doesn't think he is a writer, but he will continue to write. "I don't have much time in the world, just Do something you like." (End)