Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 329 Becoming Your Own Coordinate System
"When I saw the familiar contents on the blackboard being wiped off one by one, I couldn't help but feel an inexplicable emotion in my heart. The rules of the competition are the criteria for us to enter this arena. It is like a beacon that illuminates our way forward; the list of previous winners is a symbol of glory and the goal of our efforts; those influential articles are our role models.

But now, all of this is blank. This blankness is like an unknown territory, waiting for us to explore. It makes me understand that all the rules, glory and past achievements are just constraints of the past. "

"This..." Zhao Changtian stared at the semi-final manuscript in his hand, speechless, with mixed feelings in his heart. If this kind of writing is measured by "student composition", it is undoubtedly good, even excellent.

From the introduction to the solution, to the presentation of the central argument, everything was well balanced and in order. If it were put in the college entrance examination, it might get a good score.

But this is the "New Concept Writing Competition", the "New Concept Writing Competition" that produced Han Han, Xiao Si, Zhang Yueran, and Jiang Feng! Even in the competition that hit rock bottom in 2005, the contestants who came to participate in the semi-finals would hardly produce such mediocre writing.

Could it be that Zhang Chao was right? When the enthusiasm fades, the real writing masters among the students will surely keenly discover that instead of competing with hundreds of thousands of people for a pitiful number of places in the semi-finals, it is better to use their talents to submit articles to literary journals or even serialize them on online platforms.

The New Concept Essay Contest is held once a year, and during the peak period, it is almost impossible to enter the semi-finals. Before the sixth session, the bait of special admissions to top universities was used to attract everyone; the last session was because Zhang Chao personally entered the game with his reputation and the influence of "Youth School" to attract everyone.

After several years of competition, the outstanding "student writers" have been "fished out of a dry pond", and a large number of the remaining ones have been swept away by "experienced workers". It is understandable that most of those sitting in the semi-finals now have mediocre abilities.

Zhao Changtian held his temper and gave this manuscript a mediocre score, and continued to turn to the following manuscripts -

“The contents written on the blackboard represent what we have in our lives. We have rules, honor, and knowledge. But when all of these are erased and become blank, I realize that life may need to be subtracted. We always pursue having more, but ignore that the more we have, the heavier the burden. …”

This article is slightly better, at least in terms of its critical thinking. However, the idea of ​​"subtracting from life" is a bit too much of a chicken soup for the soul - many inspirational books have been promoting this in recent years.

Zhao Changtian raised his head again and looked around, and found that most of the judges had frowns on their faces. There was no longer the relaxed atmosphere of last year when people were laughing and discussing whether the tofu pudding should be sweet or salty.

The scene of vigorous vitality and competition when the last jury chairman Alai said, "Since it is the 'No. 1 competition in the world,' then whoever wins the first prize will be the 'big winner in the world'?" is still vivid in our minds.

In just one year, has this place become the graveyard of the "New Concept Essay Contest"?
Commissioner Zhao... Advisor Changtian was already filled with frustration at this moment. He stood up, walked to the window, and looked at the competition venue downstairs. The crowd had dispersed, but the lights were still on.

In front of the blackboard, a figure was holding a piece of chalk, writing something on it slowly and slowly. The leftmost of the three blackboards was already full, and the middle one was also half written.

At this moment, a voice suddenly came from behind: "Come and take a look at this, it's well written!"

Zhao Changtian turned around immediately after hearing this. It was Yan Lianke. He was holding a manuscript in his hand and shouted rudely: "Finally, I saw a well-written one!"

Zhao Changtian leaned over and waited for a long time before the manuscript was handed to him. He opened it and saw a clear description:

"There was an unfinished letter in my mother's wooden box. The blue ink ended in a blank after the words "Seeing this letter is like meeting you." She said it was written to a close friend she lost when she went to the countryside at the age of sixteen. She didn't know the address so she didn't continue writing.

Now I understand that some words should never be written down. Just like the blank space on the blackboard at this moment, it is much like the letterhead of an old-fashioned letterhead - the previous model essays are registered letters that have been sent out, and what we should write is the unnamed letter that will remain in the mailbox forever. "

After reading just this beginning, Zhao Changtian felt relieved.

Compared with last year's excellent essay, although this passage still has a certain gap in the depth of its intention and the texture of its narrative, it already has the flavor of "literature" and is no longer just a "student essay."

This year's "New Concept Essay Competition Excellent Works Selection" has a few such articles, which is not too shabby. But I am afraid it is impossible to replicate the miracle of "Seeing People in a Cup" that shocked the world.

Returning to his seat, Zhao Changtian calmly flipped through the manuscripts assigned to him. After reading a few mediocre works, he finally saw a good piece of writing, which was a travelogue.

"On the hemp paper fragments in the Dunhuang Caves, there are always uneven blank spaces where the copyists put down their pens. Stein said that it was a civilization interrupted by war, but I see the calmness of the Tang people - they believed that words would be like poplar seeds, floating down to some spiritual oasis in the future.

Just like the broken ribbons of the flying fairy in the painting of the Lotus Sutra, it is precisely because of the incompleteness that we can fill in our imaginations thousands of years later. The blank blackboard in front of me is the caves in the northern area of ​​Mogao Grottoes that have never been opened. We are not going to fill it up, but to gently knock on the door with the tip of the pen. "

Zhao Changtian was very happy. From the perspective of literature and science, this article is better than the one Yan Lianke just showed. Yan Lianke's article was limited to a small personal experience, while this one has the charm of a "great prose", connecting individual perception and historical thinking!

He excitedly gave the article a high score.

During the marking process, everyone's mentality had adjusted, so they could accept the general mediocrity and occasional brilliance of this year's contestants. The biggest surprise of this year came from a contestant who wrote in traditional Chinese characters - naturally, a Hong Kong student.

"The neon lights on the arcades of Portland Street are missing the "sparrow" in "mahjong", but the old man is still playing the Thirteen Yao. I often squat on the second floor of Mido Restaurant and look at the red rental paper on the outer wall of the building opposite - in the blank spaces torn by the wind, there are always old ladies writing "Heavenly Official Blessing" with white chalk. Mrs. Zhang's newsstand always leaves a blank space in the lower right corner of the Ming Pao supplement, saying that it is for lost cats, although in the past ten years it has only posted a notice to find an umbrella. The most interesting thing is that when the Cantonese opera Qingyi sings "fireworks will fade, music and singing will stop", she always drags out a three-beat blank after the word "stop", letting the aftershocks of gongs, drums and cymbals fill the stage. It turns out that this city is the best at playing fill-in-the-blank games. What is erased is not the trace, but a secret door left for the legend of the market. The blank space on the blackboard is like the intertidal zone of the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter. We should learn from the fiddler crabs and write fleeting lines of poetry on the beach at low tide."

Different from mainland students who like to use sophisticated language to talk about those "high-sounding" cultural issues, this Hong Kong student used extremely lifelike scenes to present the image of "blankness".

This kind of text has rich vitality and a real texture that can be touched with fingers, which made the judges very happy and they immediately submitted it to the chairman of the jury, Wang Anyi.

As a "Shanghai-style writer" of the new era, Wang Anyi is good at using dense life images in his works to present a rich reading experience, and he also likes this work very much.

All first prize works had to be scored again by the chairman of the jury, and Wang Anyi wrote down the highest score without hesitation.

At the same time, she breathed a sigh of relief. New Sprout magazine invited her to be the chairman of the judging panel this year, and she was also determined to promote the brand of Fudan University's creative writing master's program. She was the best recruitment advertisement.

With Zhang Chao's success, "writer classes" (creative writing) have sprung up like mushrooms in various universities in recent years. There are too many places to go but too few monks, so competition is inevitable.

Although this major is particularly special, with only a few talented students in each class, the question is who to attract - for example, Zhang Chao back then, not to mention one could be worth two, at least eight would be enough.

Yenching University and Yanshi University are still using his halo to recruit troops, and many new and promising talents in various places have been absorbed by these two schools.

Before, Wang Anyi was quite worried when he looked at the manuscripts that were flowing through his hands. He felt similar to Zhao Changtian. They both felt that they might have fallen into a pit this year. Now that he can see a few excellent works again, he can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

When I looked up, I saw that the clock had already pointed to 10 o'clock. There was a knock on the door, and when I opened it, it was Zhang Chao, carrying two large bags of midnight snacks, and behind him came Shuang Xuetao, who also had two bags of midnight snacks.

Wang Anyi hurriedly said: "Everyone, take a break and have a midnight snack." The judges put down their pens and manuscripts and stretched lazily.

Wang Anyi didn't rush to get the midnight snack, but asked with a smile: "Have you finished writing?"

Zhang Chao said, "I've finished writing. I haven't written with chalk for a long time. It's tiring at first, so I'm a little slow."

Wang Anyi said, "Wait a minute, shall I go down and take a look?"

Zhang Chao smiled brightly and said, "Okay, there's nothing to keep secret anyway. I'm going to show it to everyone anyway. Just don't laugh at me. I haven't written these little articles for a long time."

Wang Anyi walked to the window and looked at the three blackboards in the competition venue downstairs like Zhao Changtian did a few hours ago. At this time, he could vaguely see that the blackboards were filled with small white characters.

After being distracted for a while, Wang Anyi said, "This is what you are disappointed about."

Zhang Chao stood beside her and nodded, "Yes, it was such an obvious hint, but not a single student noticed it. In fact, I didn't have to be the 'late contestant'."

Zhao Changtian's angry voice came from behind: "Do you think everyone is a 'Sun Wukong' like you? Do you know what's going on after Bodhi Patriarch hits your head three times?"

Zhang Chao looked back at him and said with a smile, "I think some of them have thought of it, but no one dares to actually write it on the blackboard."

Wang Anyi gently stroked the bracelet left by her mother - it was a gift from her mother when she changed her career to writing - and said: "My mother once told me that it is better to break the tiles and keep the jade intact than to break the jade and keep the tiles intact. But children nowadays dare not break either the jade or the tiles."

The conversation by the window also attracted the attention of other judges. Yan Lianke came over with a bowl of tofu pudding and said vaguely, "Thinking of it but not daring to do it is worse than not thinking of it.

If you are smart but don’t have courage, you won’t be a good writer.”

Wang Anyi said leisurely: "Are we expecting too much from these children? After all, they are only eighteen or nineteen years old. Think about what we were doing when we were eighteen or nineteen years old..."

Halfway through his speech, he suddenly caught sight of Zhang Chao, who had a smirk on his face, and quickly said, "Except you! When we were eighteen or nineteen, we didn't know what literature was."

Zhang Chao was just about to show off, but was held back by Wang Anyi's words, and suddenly felt blocked.

Zhao Changtian smiled and said, "It's fine for others to say so, but your mother won't agree with you saying so."

Wang Anyi's mother is Ru Zhijuan. To this day, there is an article of hers called "Lily" in the high school Chinese textbook. The style is fresh and elegant, and she is an outstanding writer who narrates the revolutionary war from a female perspective.

Wang Anyi smiled when he heard this and said, "When I was eighteen or nineteen, I really didn't have a dream of becoming a writer. At that time, I had just been admitted to the art troupe and was playing the cello..."

Yan Lianke finished his bean curd and continued, "You can still play the cello, at least it is an artistic activity. I am farming at home, facing the loess and back to the sky..."

Before he finished speaking, another voice rang out from behind him: "You are still at home. We had it hard. We went from Hebei to Northeast China as educated youth. That's the Great Northern Wilderness. During the coldest time of winter, we had to bring a stick to go to the toilet outside..."

Several people turned around and saw that it was Xiao Fuxing. He had just finished eating fried dough sticks and soy milk, and his face was flushed. As a Chinese teacher, he could be considered "the most familiar writer to primary and secondary school students in China" - because his works were selected as reading questions too often.

But he seems to be most famous for a composition he wrote when he was in the third grade of junior high school called "A Portrait", which was carefully criticized and revised by Ye Shengtao sentence by sentence...

Looking at these senior writers who were chatting animatedly, Zhang Chao suddenly realized the biggest difference between him and many young writers today - that is vitality!
When Ru Zhijuan wrote "Lily", she might not have expected that her daughter would take up the banner of root-seeking literature; when Xiao Fuxing was breaking ice to get water on the frozen soil of the Great Northern Wilderness, he could not have imagined that he would become a reading nightmare for tens of millions of middle school students.

Not to mention Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Jia Pingwa... these backbones of contemporary Chinese literature, almost none of them aspired to be a writer since childhood.

But when they were young, they wrote texts that were more energetic and more confident than young writers today.

"Let's go and take a look at your 'entry'!" said a judge at this time.

Zhang Chao came to his senses and found that everyone had basically eaten supper and was in high spirits - but they obviously had no interest in returning to their seats immediately, and instead walked towards the window.

Zhang Chao smiled brightly and said, "Okay!"

A few minutes later, the judges and Zhang Chao all stood in front of the blackboards. The three blackboards were densely covered with words, and the first sentence made everyone concentrate and think -

"When the blackboard returned to a blank, you saw the panic of losing your coordinates, but I saw the deepest dilemma of Chinese literature in the past three thousand years."

The judges looked at each other, and all felt the strong pressure in Zhang Chao's words.

"The compilers of the Book of Songs deleted 90% of the ballads. Confucius said "Think without evil", but in fact he defined the course of civilization. The Eight Great Masters of Tang and Song Dynasty innovated the literary style, but it became a new shackle in later generations. The New Culture Movement smashed the classical Chinese, but the freedom of vernacular Chinese soon fell into a different rut. Every effort to break the rules will eventually solidify into new rules. This is not the reincarnation of literature, but the cowardice of human nature - we always create idols and kneel down at the feet of idols.

What I erased today was not the rules of the competition, but a mirror that reflected my fear. Those previous winning works should have been steps, but you used them as cages. When the blackboard was empty, the real question emerged: after losing all reference points, do you have the courage to become your own coordinate system? "

"Because all great literature is essentially a subversion of tradition."

Zhao Changtian did not finish reading the article, but turned around silently, leaving only a pale, thin back.

Zhang Chao is not a "late contestant" in the "New Concept Composition" competition, but a "mourner"; this article is certainly not a sentimental chicken soup article, but a manifesto and an elegy.

(End of this chapter)