Chapter 8 Excerpts from the interview with Gao Xingjian

Author: Chen Jun Caoxi finishing Editor's note: Gao Xingjian, a Chinese writer living in France, won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature.The following is a long conversation between his friend Chen Jun and him. Chen: Through this interview, I want to try to outline in our one or two generations, what is the spiritual legacy we will leave for future generations?I mean all kinds of connotations, from ideas, life experience, artistic creation, and even some views and personal experiences of the era I live in.So what I'm basically asking is this type of question, what are some of the things that have left a significant mark on you growing up in your life, whether it's in the form of emotions, or political setbacks, or just Betrayal in friendship.What are the connotations of these things as the turning point of your life?For example, if you recall your childhood now, how did you spend it?

Gao Xingjian: My childhood was very dreamy and longing. In 1949, if the Communist Party wanted to build a new China, everything needed a new society and the old society had to be buried.But I come from that society. I was ten years old in 1949, and I was born in 40 years. I once believed that I grew up under the red flag, and forgot my previous childhood experience.Thinking back now, that experience was very important. Chen: Where is your hometown? Gao: When I was born, my family was fleeing, and it was the period of the Anti-Japanese War.I was born in southern Jiangxi. My father worked in the Bank of China at the time, so he could be regarded as a public official.Looking back now, it was really a happy childhood, and I was lucky to have such a life.They didn't grow up under that kind of big collective, the motherland, or the red flag.Then I kept forgetting about this part.Our entire education process is to let you forget it, everything starts from scratch, and we want to bury the old society, the suffering of the old society that everyone has been aware of.But I didn't see much suffering.That has to do with my living environment.

Chen: Where did you escape from? Gao: I was born during the 40 years of fleeing. It was Ganzhou under the bombing of planes.I wrote about this in my novel.Ganzhou was where Chiang Ching-kuo was at that time, and it was regarded as a place with exemplary governance.Chiang Ching-kuo was regarded as an upright official in the Kuomintang at that time, and he managed it well.At that time, the Japanese stopped there.Then they started attacking and we started walking again.No matter how young I remember, I was in Taihe, and it was also in southern Jiangxi.Wherever the Japanese go, our bank will retreat first.Therefore, escape is a very happy thing for the remaining memories of my childhood. I can go to many places, and I feel very safe, and I don’t feel the horror of war.The only horrific memory of the war is the bombing by planes.Then after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, my father still stayed in the bank, and later lost his job.Later he worked as a reporter, in a private bank, and in a steamship company.Although my father was often unemployed, life in our family was quite good.Both my parents were born into poor families. For them, this life has been buried by a new life.So I'm also catching up on the tail end of my old life, but this old life is good for me now.

Chen: Before you were ten years old, if you had any education, what kind of education was it? Gao: Our family is very warm.This kind of family in our family disappeared after arriving in the new society, and the relationship between people of that kind also disappeared.Back then, everything seemed suave.My father’s friends were elegant in speech and dressed in suits and ties; my mother also loved church-style education.So our family is considered a middle class.My father's and mother's family used to be a big family. Although they fell into decline later, the legacy of their family is still there.They and their friends sang western songs, played the piano, and sang operas.After returning from studying abroad, the wives sing coloratura with foreign voices, and life is very fun.My parents organized a ceilidh at the time.The first time I performed on stage was when I was five years old. My mother asked me to arrange a show and let me go on stage with her.My mother was an actress in the Anti-Japanese Theater Troupe at the time, and after I married my father, for political reasons, my father would not let her engage in politics because it was too dangerous.The KMT did not like the anti-Japanese theater troupe at that time either.Later, my mother recalled and guessed that the Communist Party was working on the outskirts of their troupe.She's from the YMCA.

Chen: My mother's first husband was arrested in 1956 for participating in a performance troupe during the Anti-Japanese War and writing articles. He was not released until the early 1980s. Gao: So they don't talk about these things much after 49 years, but this memory is very precious to me, so I have the experience of two societies.I have modern China, and then I have different experiences of Western society.Now I am completely living in Western society. Chen: What books did you read at that time? Gao: It should be said that it is mainly a fairy tale.I didn't go to school either, because I was fleeing refugees at that time, and my health was not very good, so basically my mother taught me how to read.At that time, my family had a lot of books, including many fairy tales, children's books, Andersen's fairy tales, Grimm's fairy tales... It can be said that it was a very Western-style education. At that time, the family still spoke English to each other, wore suits, and sang foreign songs. Song.

Chen: Where was your family when the Communist Party entered the city? Gao: Forgot.Fifty years later, our family came to Nanjing. One of my cousins ​​joined the New Fourth Army in his early years, and he looked for our family everywhere after liberation.His father's family was also a big family, a big comprador capitalist, and he married many concubines.Then his mother went to my father's house. He and my father were like brothers. Then he went to Shanghai to go to university, joined the underground party, betrayed his family, and joined the New Fourth Army.After 1949, he asked us to go to Nanjing. At that time, he was already a relatively high-level cadre in the Nanjing Military Region, so our family settled down in Nanjing.So our family is doing well under his protection.My dad was never in a political party, just always in the bank, never had a hard time, and they were naive, amazingly naive.After liberation, they want to reform their minds, but they are not enthusiastic. Although they will always try to be model workers in the future, they will never be able to join the party.It was only later that I found out that there were a lot of problems in their files, and they were all asked to explain themselves. In the end, things always happened like this... When I was a child, my family always had a warm, non-political family with a modern style. Ethos, a gentle, polite, educated, honest, and elder-like environment.Then I think everything in this style throws it away.The previous kind of interpersonal relationship is completely different from this politicized non-stop movement, people can't trust each other, and each other exposes each other.Later, I felt that my parents were so honest and pitiful, why were they so sticky and naive.My mother asked to reform herself, went to the farm, and finally drowned on the farm herself.My father was not dissatisfied with the anti-rightist movement.He was also very active and honest, and once he was a model worker; he held a small notebook and distributed leaflets.But every time a political movement comes, something will inevitably happen.When I was in college, everyone was wary of each other and would expose each other at every turn.At that time, I was living in a fantasy world like a novel, completely incompatible with the social reality at that time, but I had to try my best to guard against others.Now that I think about it, I was actually covering myself with a mask, using it to protect such a fantasy world, because the relationship between people is so tense, so we need to be careful.

Chen: What was the worst experience in your life? Gao: I've never had any bad experiences before, but it started once I got to college. Chen: Where did you study your books before university? Gao: My pre-university studies were done in Nanjing, in a church school.When I was in junior high school, some classes were taught in English.It is very similar to American-style education. It is very open, and the library is free to enter. Books are not so strictly controlled, and books before liberation can be found.So when I was in middle school, I had already read all the major works translated from the West.From the early classics, we have seen Tolstoy, Balzac and so on.However, I didn't find any of Hugo's books, so I read less of them in the future.Until the Anti-Rightist Movement, the school was very good, and there were no activities of the Communist Youth League.My foundation was laid there.My middle school life was like living a dream.In addition, I have a very good relationship with my classmates. Those classmates are all from intellectual families. The so-called senior staff are all left over from the Nanjing government.Because examinations were required at that time and admissions were based on merit, there were very few children from the poor.

But as soon as I arrived at the university, I immediately encountered the anti-rightist struggle, and only then did I feel the tension, terror and boredom among people.But I always live in a dream, so I spend all day in the library.At that time, I felt that the anti-rightist incident was really dogmatic and disgusting.And I started to learn to write when I was in college.But at that time, there was still some freedom to learn to read. If you put a book on the top and another book on the bottom, no one would expose you. The atmosphere has not yet reached that atmosphere, but gradually it will start.For example, when I fell in love, I was accused of going to the Youth League branch and the Party branch, so I couldn’t join the Youth League when I was in college.But I never thought about the Communist Youth League, I didn't even know it existed, but it already exists.

Chen: How did you come up with the idea of ​​learning French? Gao: I think I was basically in a dream before I went to college, and now I think back, it was even more in a dream when I was a child.However, I encountered reality, wow, I just knew that reality is like this!So I took a defensive attitude. I have been journaling and writing since I was very young.It was very accidental that I learned French in college. Because of my family and surrounding environment, I felt that the most noble thing was science, and the three universities I should go to were Tsinghua University, Peking University and Jiaotong University.Back then, our middle school was built with Boxer indemnity.All students admitted to these three universities will have their names engraved on a circle of marble in the gymnasium.This school has a history of one hundred years, so the names of previous students are engraved on many.Of course, I also want to study science and engineering, because that is the most promising.My ideal at that time was to be a physicist or a mathematician.I was good at math and liberal arts, but I had absolutely no idea about politics.According to the college entrance guide, I want to be admitted to the School of Drama as a director, but the requirement for applying for the exam is that I must be 30 years old, and I have to work in three groups for more than two years to be eligible, so I have no chance to act.I have acted with my mother since I was a child, and the door is closed. My mother, me and my brother act together, and my father is the only audience.My mother can make plays or make up a small program.In the Acting Department of the Drama Academy, the requirement for boys to apply for the exam is to be 1.7 meters tall. I am 1.68 meters tall, with a difference of two centimeters, so I don't even qualify for the exam.Then I think I should just be a writer, but the Chinese department of the university is to train teachers, editors and reporters, and I don’t want to be a writer right away.Look at how naive I was.In addition, I visited Nanjing University at that time, saw the masters of the Chinese Department, and saw the Siku classics displayed by them. It was different from the literary influence I wanted to leave behind for thousands of years. I think this is not what I want. .The only possibility is to study foreign literature, which is the only thing close to me, and painting.

I have been drawing since I was a child, and I once wanted to go to the Academy of Fine Arts.My painting teacher was the earliest member of the National Artists Association, and won the oil painting creation award at the National Oil Painting Exhibition.At that time, these teachers were hired with high salaries and stayed.Our painting teacher also has his own studio in the school.I started painting oil paintings in junior high school, and I didn't even know how to paint oil paintings at first.When he was painting, I didn't tell him, just watched from the sidelines to see how he adjusted the colors, and then I went to the library to find books on how to paint oil paintings.I have been secretly painting oil paintings, he never knew.After high school, there is no drawing class.When graduating, the teacher will meet with the parents with suggestions for further studies.One day, he came to our house. As soon as he entered the house, he saw my oil paintings hanging all over the room. He expressed his emotion and said that it was very impressionistic.I was flattered because I didn't have any academic training, but I painted very bright colors, boldly smeared up.I didn't see any impressionist paintings at the time.My art teacher has many classmates who are teachers at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and they all got out of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. "It will be no problem for me to recommend you to take the Central Academy of Fine Arts," he said.

I was very excited, but my mother objected.My mother said: "Painting, what kind of painting? What about the Great Leap Forward, what kind of propaganda posters supporting socialism?" At that time, it was not like painting a portrait of Chairman Mao later.I said what is there, there are Western and Soviet paintings.My mother said: "The painters are all poor, and they live in poverty in the pavilion. You have good grades in all subjects, and I have no objection to what you do. The only thing is painting. You have to listen to me this time." There has always been such a thing in our family, which is very important to my later growth, that is LIBERAL, extreme liberalization.I can discuss with my parents how we spend our money this month and spend it together according to everyone's needs.We can discuss everything.We don't have the pressure of the patriarchal system in ordinary Chinese families.So I can do anything.My parents never worried about me because I wasn't the troublemaker kind of little naughty kid who ate and drank and smashed other people's windows.Because whatever I do, including learning music and playing the piano, nothing will affect my homework.But my mother said: "You must listen to me on this matter. I have never opposed you to do anything. Don't learn that art. I don't see a future as an artist. Others, you can do whatever you want." Later, I listened to my mother and gave up painting.So what should I learn? I learned French completely by accident, probably because of my childhood personality, I can do whatever I want.At that time, I was reviewing the college entrance examination with a few students with good grades.At that time, they were quite arrogant, and Peking University had no choice but to take liberal arts; if they wanted to take science and engineering, they would not go to anything other than Tsinghua University.We had a lot of self-confidence at that time, and we all counted the math competition questions in the Soviet Union.But suddenly a very small topic stuck me, and I didn't even come out after two classes.At that time, our school was still very free. Everyone was preparing for the college entrance examination. Because they were good students, they did math in Chinese class. As long as you didn't speak, the teacher didn't care about you.He clearly saw that I was doing math problems and ignored me, so I didn't even do two lessons.It was May at that time, and the flowers on the campus were all in bloom, and the flowers rolled into balls and rolled into the classroom. I remember this scene very clearly.I suddenly felt that it would be too boring for me to spend my entire life doing this science with just one pen and one piece of paper.I was just following others blindly, thinking that studying science is good because it has a future.So I started thinking about what kind of life I wanted to live.I think I should be either a writer or an artist.Even so, I put down the question in hand, and said to the two students who were doing the question with me that I will not participate in your review.The two classmates were very strange and asked me what was wrong?I said I'll tell you when I think it over.Then, I spent the whole afternoon soaking in the library. When I arrived at the library, I flipped through books and magazines, and read all the books related to what I wanted to do.Flipping through the pages, I suddenly came across a magazine published by the International Communist Party in Prague at that time called >, which was quite open, and it happened to have a serialization of Ehrenburg’s >, the earliest serialization, which was fifty early s.There, I read about the lives of Parisian surrealist painters and artists, poets and writers at the turn of the century in Parisian bistros.I think that kind of life is so interesting.There is a very romantic passage in the book: At that time, these so-called painters in Paris painted on the street during the day and uttered their wild words at night, and they didn't have much money, so they lived in groups.One day, a poetess, very young, very poor.Put her own child on the counter of the bar and tell the proprietress that she went out to buy something, and she never came back.So, the proprietress took the child around and asked who was his father, but no one could tell.Later, the proprietress decided to adopt the child.In the future, each of the frequent guests will consciously donate a little to support the child.This moved me very much, but I can't explain why.Because of this alone, I decided that I would study French.From the day I got home, I put aside all the science stuff and started preparing for the liberal arts college entrance examination.As a result, the School of Foreign Languages ​​recruited students ahead of schedule, in June, before the national unified examination.I took the test, and the result was admitted before the list was released.Before I got to school, I didn’t know what I would do in the future. Only after I got there did I know that it was to train translators, and it might be better to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Our school was the only school open to foreigners at that time, and Chen Yi, then the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was the dean.I saw that those translators followed foreigners like a child, and after the first grade, they asked the school that I would drop out and change schools.But I don't know what school to change to, because there were not many writers in the school at that time.Later, I had a classmate at the National People's Congress, so I went to see that school, listened to him talk, and felt that it was not bad there.So I officially proposed to transfer, regardless of the severity.The school management treated me like a child and said to me very friendly: "If you drop out of school, don't even think about transferring to another school. You are fooling around."At that time, I thought that studying was very boring. Except for the intensive reading and speaking of foreign languages, I felt very boring.At that time, the political atmosphere was getting stronger and stronger, but it was not as strict as it was later, and it was getting tighter gradually.At that time, you don’t have to go to class, and you don’t have to go to major classes, as long as you register as soon as you arrive. I came to Beijing when I was seventeen.My main college life was unhappy.Most of my college time is in the library, it's like a dream. Chen: Does the surrounding environment not have any influence on you? Gao: In fact, it will come right away. What is the anti-rightist movement, what is the heart-to-heart movement in 1958?Because the shadow of my past life is still there, I always hope that I can live easily, so my conscience has a particularly strong resistance to those things.I think some things are simply nonsense, like standing on other people's roofs and shooting sparrows for a long time, and then waving the pole and shouting everywhere.So I have a lot of complaints.It was because of these complaints that I was considered a person who could not join the regiment.Also, I often publish Some weirdness, but it's not a political weirdness, because I don't understand politics, and I don't care about politics.At that time, "Song of Youth" was very popular, and the Youth League branch organized studies. Whether they were members of the League or not, all young people had to read it and discuss it.However, I couldn't even read three pages.I said to them: This book is nothing.Such remarks were not considered counter-revolutionary at the time. But I have witnessed how they criticize the rightists.The first political education for our freshmen entering the school is to participate in the fight against the rightists in the upper grades.We are just attending, and we can't get in the mouth.At that time, I just thought these students were so pitiful.They were called up one by one. Chen: How big is your department? Gao: Our French department is not big. There are only more than one hundred students in each grade, and there are only two or three hundred students in total.These rightist students disappeared later and were escorted away after the meeting.There are about ten people in this group.We didn't know where they all went at first, but we found out after a long time that they were all sent directly to labor camps. At the beginning, I didn't receive any criticism, just a small criticism in class because of my remarks.From then on, I felt that I should be careful with what I said, and felt that it was strange that the students around me were so actively moving closer to the party.People are so active in reporting their thoughts to the party branch and the Youth League branch, but because I have never reported it, I am considered dark-minded by others.Then, because I fell in love with a girl in the same class, she reported what I said to her, including my complaints about "Song of Youth".Later, the party branch came to talk to me.That's how I know they're in charge Hold some of my situation.They wanted to probe my state of mind at that time and gave me some warnings.Because I was prepared, so fortunately nothing went wrong.From then on, I didn't say anything anymore, and I didn't make friends in class anymore. Chen: What about your romantic relationship? Gao: Of course not.Then I organized the troupe.The troupe was inactive for two years.We are a small troupe, but the school shows are very popular.Everyone's acting is good, it's something from Chekov, and it's quite foreign.Because there was no anti-revisionism at that time, Renyi also performed it.Later, the Latin American play "Center Dies Before Dawn" was arranged, which is a revolutionary and third-world play.The school had nothing to say about this, but they still talked to me later. Chen: What is your role in this troupe?how many people?Are you involved in acting yourself? Gao: I organized this troupe with another junior classmate, called Overseas Drama Club.There are only five or six of us who really rehearse together often.I worked as a director in the middle, and I also acted in Molière's play, which was performed in French.Because this is an unorganized activity, we later found out that because we don’t have any members in the group, and the school didn’t organize it, we call it an unorganized activity.In fact, the school has its own theater troupe, like a propaganda team.It's just that the things they do are getting more and more boring. They are making great leaps all day long, such politicized and propaganda things as live newspapers and dramas.When we first went in, they did perform a few plays like Cao Yu's "Thunderstorm", but they stopped after that.Later, because we set up this non-organized theater troupe, the school asked us to stop activities.For me, the troupe has already done it, and I am completely immersed in writing plays and novels by myself. Later, I organized another group of old middle school classmates who were admitted to Beijing. It happened that our grades were still very good. Two of them were from Peking University, and one was from the School of Geology. A party was held in Zizhuyuan outside the school.We all write something, and some of us write poetry.We have no scruples when we are together, we can talk about everything.It was at that gathering that I first talked about using surrealist creation as an example to write things, and then everyone exchanged works for viewing.Of course, I didn't want to publish it, I just looked at each other and talked about it. One of my friends talked about Khrushchev and his secret report. Because he is good at foreign languages, I read them in foreign languages.Later, I also looked for it.I saw some rehabilitated situations in the Soviet Union at that time. One of the artists was shot because of formalism.I was thinking, people can be shot because of the crime of formalism, so isn't it dangerous for us to do this? Due to my artistic precocity, I am very disgusted with this kind of political propaganda.Because of this, I started reading in French.Our more formal gathering was that in Zizhuyuan. Afterwards, there was no gathering, and it was just a gathering in twos and threes, which lasted for a while.We often discussed all kinds of things together, and often said wildly: "The literature and art promoted by those people is simply bullshit, what is it?" Although we did not go very far at that time, we were discussing the group of literati in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and before the October Revolution.I started to notice Brecht, who was also Marxist-Leninist, but Brecht was still controlled.These are all seen in the internal data.The elder brother of one of my classmates is the director of Qingyi, and I saw the first batch of gray and yellow books from him.The yellow book is relatively thick, and the gray book is about social sciences, including a philosophy book by Russell.In French, I also read the "Modern" magazine edited by Sartre, and some things from the French Communist Party.in the University No one else understands modernism, so I have absolutely no one to talk to, only my classmate from Peking University is good at English, and we talk a lot together.We talked about Stalin and de-Stalinization, rehabilitation and Beria's evil.We didn't dare to act rashly, just talking nonsense below, and we couldn't stand our pediatric education.We did not mean to deny the revolution at that time. I read a lot of original Marxist-Leninist works very early on, like Lenin's philosophical notes, which I read in college.At that time, the philosophy class taught dialectical materialism, which was too childish, so every class, I would sit in the back row and read Lenin's philosophical notes.At that time, I felt that Marxism-Leninism was still interesting.Besides Marxism-Leninism, I also read Kant and Hegel.The first volume of Hegel's Aesthetics had just come out, and I paid for a copy myself. Because of these, I suddenly remembered that one day in the first year of high school, when I was chatting with my classmates about family life in the past, I discussed a very profound philosophical issue.It was after the two of us had just finished playing the violin, under the touch of music, I suddenly pointed to an ink bottle and asked him what color it was?He said it was blue because it had blue black written on it.I said, I also agree that it is blue, but is the blue I see and the blue you see the same blue?We all use the same words, but we feel differently.The question then is, do people Can you communicate?In fact, I already had some philosophical thinking in middle school.We have "Popular Philosophy" at home, so we know some "I think, therefore I am" such as Fichte, Berkeley, and Descartes.At that time, because of "I think, therefore I am", I felt that this feeling only exists for me, which led to a sense of fear, because the feeling cannot be communicated.In this way, those theories and dogmas that seem reasonable can be doubted.My latent suspicion developed further when I was in college, but it did not develop to negate materialism. I only felt that idealism was very thoughtful and could be discussed.I started discussing philosophy with one of my original classmates, and exchanged many letters, but luckily none of these things were discovered.We often wonder, what is the point of being alive?What exactly is this existence?What is the meaning of this fear that exists between me and others in society? The problems discussed in academia are boring.I remember the discussion on aesthetics. There was an article written by Yao Wenyuan that was quite hateful. Later, I wrote a long article criticizing him. It was not a criticism, but I clicked him.In fact, he is not worthy of criticism at all, for example: red is revolutionary, and the standard of aesthetics is objective.And I pointed out: there is no objective standard for aesthetics.I took the example of tragedy and discussed Chernyshevsky.Later, I actually sent this article out.But at school, I don't talk about it with others, just my request Good middle school classmates talked.My classmate also had his own opinion. For example, he thought that Mayakovsky's "The Bathhouse" was more profound, and he felt that he should write such things if he wanted to write.Of course, we also wrote some poems, which belonged to the kind of modernist tendency, so that we planted the seeds of later generations.At that time, we were already anti-rightist, and anti-revisionism started again. We knew that these things should never be discussed outside.At that time, the Soviet Union was doing a lot, and started the second anti-Stalinization.I tried to find the newspapers published in France at that time to read.Many of these newspapers are also leftist, and some claim to be Marxist, including Sartre, who is also an ally of Marxism.But these newspapers and periodicals revealed a lot about the encounters of Russian literary writers, so I also came into contact with the French Communist Party, including the works of Aragon.Of course, I couldn't find the original of Aragon's works, but there were five volumes of "The Communist" translated, and almost no one read it, only the first volume was read, so I read all five volumes.The Communist was already very modernist at the time, although I wanted to find something more advanced than that.Their Communist Party is completely different from the Communist Party in our mainland.I also learned about the labor movement in Northern Europe, and I didn't expect there to be such an original approach, which is very attractive.I also found some of Gorky's early plays very interesting. For example, his "Summer Guest" made me feel that revolution and art cannot be brought together. "Summer Guest" is quite decadent.Then I watched some very marginal things, and the one that impressed me was a work called "Wild Duck".I don't know what it is going to say, I don't think it has anything to do with my life in China, but I feel that there is something in it that attracts me.From then on, I thought I was going to do that, to do a play like Brecht.In this way, I spent most of my time in my heart at that time, read a lot of books, until the assignment of work.