Back to 80: My literary life.

Chapter 921 A Romantic Generation

Time passed quickly and it was already spring of 2007. Fang Minghua was quite busy this spring.

Shortly after the Spring Festival, the art museum was officially opened to the public. A grand opening ceremony was held, inviting provincial and municipal leaders and cultural celebrities. The paintings and calligraphy that had been silent for decades in the Palace Museum and Fang Minghua's home finally met the audience.

Thousands of works by calligraphers and painters of the Republic of China, such as Zhang Daqian, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, and Li Kuchan, suddenly appeared in the public eye, shocking people both at home and abroad.

Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao commented: "The sudden appearance of the Xijing Art Museum has made the auction of paintings by Republican painters held at Christie's last year seem like a joke. The people scrambling for a Qi Baishi shrimp, Zhang Daqian's flowers and birds, and Li Kuchan's eagle are like cabbages, everywhere here."

It is said that after the opening of the Xijing Art Museum, the market prices of works by Hong Kong and Republic of China painters in Hong Kong and Taiwan plummeted. I wonder how many Hong Kong and Taiwan calligraphy and painting collectors gnashed their teeth and cursed Fang Minghua for not understanding the rules of the game.

But Fang Minghua doesn't care about that.

These paintings of mine are not for sale, whether they are worth one dollar or one million, what does it have to do with him?
Next was the third "Under the Banyan Tree" Original Online Literature Competition, which was held at the Qin Province Grand Theater. Rao Xueman's "The Little Demon's Golden Castle", Jiang Nan's "The Boy Here", and Xiao Shui's poem "The Wuyi Lane Carved on the Wall" won awards.

Fang Minghua attended the ceremony as an award presenter.

Next up was the 8th World Chinese Literature Award Ceremony, this time held in Xiamen. Works such as Jia Pingwa's "Qin Opera", Chi Zijian's "All the Nights in the World" and Singaporean writer You Jin's "The Sun Refuses to Go Back" won the best works of each category this year.

Fang Minghua still attended the ceremony as the award presenter.

After the ceremony, Fang Minghua did not rush back to Xijing, but instead spent two days in Xiamen with Jia Pingwa.

The two strolled along the White City Beach.

Not far away is the blue sea and blue sky, and the sea breeze makes it feel particularly cool.

"Minghua, have you been to Xiamen?" Jia Pingwa asked with a cigarette in his mouth.

"I have been here in 85. I was invited to Fuzhou to attend the third Golden Rooster Awards ceremony. Later, two students from Xiamen University's Gulang Literature Society invited me to Xiamen University to give a literature lecture, and I took the opportunity to visit Xiamen for two days." Fang Minghua replied.

"85? That was 20 years ago."

"Yes. Time flies. 20 years have passed." Fang Minghua was looking at the sea not far away. There were several young men and women playing in the water.

At the beginning, I had just arrived in this era and was in the prime of my life, but now I am almost fifty years old.

"Hey, Minghua, I remember you haven't written anything in these years?" Jia Pingwa suddenly said.

Fang Minghua smiled awkwardly.

Indeed, apart from writing a few scripts, Fang Minghua has not written any real literary works in the past four or five years. The last time he wrote was the semi-autobiographical "My Twenty Years of Literature".

In fact, apart from Fang Minghua, Lu Yao and Chen Zhongshi rarely published works, and only wrote short stories occasionally.

Later, someone asked Chen Zhongshi: "Why didn't you write any novels after writing "White Deer Plain"? "

As a result, Chen Zhongshi said: "You know nothing!"

Jia Pingwa, on the other hand, writes a novel in less than two years on average, and also inserts essays and prose in between, maintaining his strong creative energy.

Is it time for me to write something?

After returning from Xiamen, Fang Minghua started thinking about this matter.

Today, he stood on the rooftop on the third floor of the villa, looking at the scenery in the distance.

Last summer, he said goodbye to Nanfang Lane where he had lived for more than ten years and moved to a villa area called Qujiang Mansion. The villa has its own gate and yard, a small garden in front and back, three floors above ground and a basement. Although the whole environment is not as good as the manor in the United States, it is much better than the surrounding environment of Nanfang Lane.

Standing on the rooftop today, I can see tourists from Qujiang not far away, their steps are cheerful. This is the scenery every day.

But today, he saw a discordant figure inside, a hunchbacked old woman who was rummaging through something in a trash can.

Soon two men who looked like security guards came over and yelled at the old woman. The old woman quickly left with her snakeskin bag.

Fang Minghua vaguely remembers that in the early 1980s, this place was a dry depression surrounded by wheat fields and a small hill to the south. At that time, there were many scavengers who dug up garbage here to exchange for money to make a living, and no one cared at that time.

Fang Minghua suddenly remembered a sentence Jia Zhangke once said in one of his films: The times are rolling forward, and we cannot ignore those who are bumped into just because the whole country is running forward.

Otherwise, let’s write stories about little people who try hard to keep up with the times, or catch up, or fall down.

But it cannot and should not be ignored and forgotten.

Fang Minghua quickly came up with an idea in his mind.

Let’s start from the early 1980s, which is also the most familiar era.

It's about two very ordinary families and their interaction with each other. The two children, a boy and a girl, have a pure childhood friendship, but as they grow up, they have to face the separation of life.

The background is set in the textile city of Xijing, where thousands of textile workers live. From the glory of the 1980s to the layoffs and unemployment in the 1990s, one runs a small business locally, and the other goes south to make a living. Two pairs of families and two children each experience happiness and hardship, recording this era.

It tells the life stories of them and the various grassroots people around them from the 1980s to the first spring of the new century.

For the entire afternoon, Fang Minghua stood on the platform looking at the scenery outside, sorting out the characters' story lines in his mind.

After figuring out the entire outline, he suddenly realized that the story was a bit like Jia Zhangke's "Mountains May Depart" and also a bit like Wang Xiaoshuai's "So Long, My Son".

"Brother Fang, it's time to eat."

He was awakened by the nanny's voice in the yard. He answered and walked down from the roof to the restaurant on the first floor.

"Where is your sister Song?" Fang Minghua asked casually.

"Sister Song just called me and told me not to wait for her during dinner because she would probably be back late," said the nanny.

Fang Minghua couldn't help but shake his head.

He is almost fifty years old, but he still works so hard.

After dinner, Fang Minghua took his local dog Xiao Dou Miao for a walk around Qujiang Lake as usual, then returned to the villa, went up to his study on the second floor, turned on his computer, and prepared to write.

After making a cup of tea and pondering for a while, he opened a word document and wrote four words on a blank page: "A romantic generation".

Fang Minghua certainly didn't know that 20 years later, Jia Zhangke would make a movie called "The Romantic Generation", but she just thought that this term was very appropriate.

Struggle, pain, confusion, glory, desolation... these various words belong to the new generation in the 1980s.

It can be described as "romantic".

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(End of this chapter)