Chinanews.com, Beijing, November 11 (Reporter Shangguan Yun) For writer Yang Zhijun, the past three months have been a bit busy. The Mao Dun Literature Award was announced, and his novel "Snow Mountain Land" was on the list, and countless interviews and congratulations poured in.

In the eyes of some people, Yang Zhijun at some social gatherings seems a little wooden; In the eyes of others, he is sincere and talkative, and he is enthusiastic about collecting style and accumulating materials. The secret code for this kind of character transformation is literary creation.

In an exclusive interview with a reporter from Chinanews.com, Yang Zhijun very frankly affirmed the positive impact of writing on himself: "In writing, I can get happiness. When my inner thoughts are expressed and extended through words, I feel happy. ”

"Snow Mountain Land" is inextricably linked with Yang Zhijun's hometown of Qinghai. In Qinghai, he spent decades, and every grass and tree here, and the hospitable herdsmen, have become lingering memories in his mind.

"Some of my first works focused on the relationship between man and nature, such as "The Great Lake Breaks", "The Collapse of the Lake" and so on." Yang Zhijun always wanted to give back to that land, and after years of accumulation and hard work, he finally wrote "Snow Mountain Land".

After the completion of this work, his tense emotions slowly relaxed, "Emotions are the driving force of writing, good or not, I at least gave an explanation of that period of life, and also an explanation for myself, so I don't have to worry about it in a short time." ”

For Yang Zhijun, the fact that "Snow Mountain Land" won the Mao Dun Literature Award means a kind of "recognition" and encouragement, "Writing is a comfortable area for me, allowing me to quietly face myself and face life alone." ”

If writing is a long journey, then Yang Zhijun is still moving forward, observing and experiencing life, and striving to become a "presenter" in writing.

A writing that comes naturally

The reason for writing "Snow Mountain Land" is not complicated. In Yang Zhijun's literary world, the accumulation of works depends on life, emotion, and filtering, that is, rational thinking. These preparations have always been in place in the past.

"My mother is a doctor. When I was a child, some Tibetans would come to our house for medical treatment, and most of them were my landlords when my father went to the countryside, or relatives of the landlords. Tibetans are very polite and bring a little gift every time they come. Yang Zhijun recalled.

These gifts tend to be some foods, such as ghee and highland barley fried noodles, which are now common. But Mr. Yang said that in the past, when life was difficult, it was the best thing Tibetans could come up with.

In his eyes, this kind of integration and mutual support between ethnic groups on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an everlasting phenomenon of daily life. It should be a good work to write about this feeling of blending water and milk. Later, he wrote "Snow Mountain Land".

The novel shows the changes in the traditional social form and life style of the Tibetan herdsmen in a panoramic way, tells the story of three generations of builders represented by "father and mother", and the themes of man and nature, man and animal, ecology and development run throughout.

In "Snow Mountain Land", in addition to the grand narrative, the goodness and beauty of human nature, the details of daily life, and people's joys, sorrows, and sorrows are also the objects of his writing. For Yang Zhijun, this is a natural writing.

From journalist to writer

Yang Zhijun was born in Qinghai, and when he was in his twenties, he went to Fuxian County, Shaanxi Province to serve as a soldier, and according to the regulations, he had to go to support farmers. He squatted in a production team, eating "pie meals" every day, and worked in shifts from one family to another.

Writer Yang Zhijun. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

Once, while sitting on the kang waiting for dinner, Yang Zhijun accidentally saw a tattered book, and the front and back covers were all gone. He picked it up casually and flipped through it, and found that it was a collection of works by the famous writer Zhao Shuli, and there was also "Little Erhei Marriage" in it.

"When I looked at it, it was all about rural life. I encounter similar things every day in the countryside, can I also try it, can I write a novel? "Yang Zhijun began to want to write, hoping to become a writer.

The gears of fate began to turn. Later, he joined Qinghai Daily and was sent to the Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Reporter Station as a resident reporter. At that time, life there was completely pastoral, and interviews were not conducted by car, but by horseback.

Sometimes there was no road, so he rode his horse and walked slowly, and the grassland seemed to be endless, and he didn't know how far he would go before there would be a home. When I came across a herdsman's tent, I stopped for a night, asked them about their production and life, and accumulated manuscript materials.

"Maybe it's been a long time since I've seen people outside, but the herders are very welcoming to me. After living for a while, I became familiar with it, and it was natural to perform a face-to-face salute or a head-to-head salute when I parted. This kind of harmonious relationship makes him feel warm every time.

At that time, the grassland was vast and sparsely populated, and it could take a long time to get from one house to another. Yang Zhijun sometimes thinks that maybe this is also the reason why people on the grassland like to party, because daily life is really lonely.

He was fond of small animals, having raised abandoned bar-headed geese, yellow-billed jays, and pikas on the grasslands. Those memories with emotional warmth, integrated with the vast grassland, blue sky and white clouds, laid a solid foundation for Yang Zhijun's subsequent writing.

Writers are witnesses

An experience at work allowed Yang Zhijun to speed up the pace of his writing journey.

Writer Yang Zhijun. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

"At that time, 36 farmers were fishing in Qinghai Lake, and they were accidentally in distress, and then the temperature plummeted and the ice floe froze, and they were rescued by a rescue team sent by the government." As a reporter, Yang Zhijun was sent to the front to cover the situation and witnessed almost the entire rescue process.

After the press release was written, Yang Zhijun felt that there was still a lot to write, including the psychology of the people in distress on the ice, the difficult rescue process, and the relationship between man and nature. These thoughts were put into his novella "The Great Lake Breaks".

Since then, he seems to have become more and more comfortable writing, and gradually wrote the "Wasteland Series of Seven Volumes", the non-fiction literature "No Man's Tribe" and "The Journey of the Outlaws", as well as a number of Tibetan-themed novels including the "Tibetan Mastiff" trilogy, etc., to build his own literary world.

Relying on the habit he developed as a journalist, Yang Zhijun will record his inspiration at any time, sometimes it is a very fragmented keyword, sometimes it is a simple plot or character expression.

After writing a passage, he has to read it aloud, and if it goes well, it means that there is no big problem with the language, "If there is such a paragraph that I can read very smoothly without revision, I feel very proud." ”

Although he later left Qinghai, he did not have any sense of strangeness there, and if there was no accident, he would go back every year for a period of time, as long as half a year, or as little as a month or two, to visit relatives and walk around.

"A lot of new things are constantly emerging, and getting material is one thing, and emotional continuity is another. Especially for writing, the writer is a witness, and it is a very fortunate thing to be present, and it is also a must. He said.

Literature has no end

Yang Zhijun has always attached enough importance to literature, and many meetings can be postponed, making more time for reading, thinking and writing. He enjoys the process of being alone even more, so much so that he leaves the impression of "woodenness" on others.

Writer Yang Zhijun. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

In those social-style meetings, the overly lively occasions sometimes make him feel at a loss, "I rarely use the Internet, I don't like to post on Moments, and I am very unfamiliar with the topics or Internet language that others talk about, and I am not interested." ”

Whenever this happens, he often can't answer, so he can only choose to be silent. At some noisy dinners, he couldn't even think of some usual polite words, and he couldn't say toasts, which seemed awkward and lonely. Writing, on the other hand, is a field that he feels comfortable with.

Therefore, when he goes to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to collect style, when facing the life and people he wants to understand, he will become another person, enthusiastic and talkative, and he must understand the cause and effect when encountering problems, "I have to put myself very low, like flowing water, flowing in a low place." ”

He doesn't care about other people's labels on him, and he doesn't pay much attention to what others think and say about him. "There have also been criticisms of my work. It doesn't matter, I'll write the next one and answer with a good work. ”

For Yang Zhijun, winning the Mao Dun Literary Award means a kind of recognition, "Literature knows no bounds. I am a person who has been learning to write all my life, looking up to the peaks and constantly climbing. Winning the award will make me more stable and confident. ”

Everyone's definition of happiness is different. As long as he writes, Yang Zhijun's happiness will arise spontaneously, "Since writing is a way for me to pursue happiness, it will inevitably accompany me all the way." (ENDS)