Lu Tianming Thirty years. My literary creation has gone through another thirty years. Is it "a wind and a moon", or "a cloud of smoke and rain", or "a vast expanse of waves"? When I was in the third grade of elementary school, I wrote a composition: "My Ideal".I said I wanted to be a "writer".I go to school early.I was seven years old when I wrote the composition.My father, who had been tortured by tuberculosis for many years and almost lost hope in life, saw my composition and said with great relief: "Okay. My son wants to be a writer too." His ideal when he was young Just to be a writer.But unfortunately, he is a "Juexin" character in Ba Jin's works, the eldest son of a big family, and finally succumbed to the pressure of life. And "consciously" gave up his personal ideals.

Three years later, he died.Still died of tuberculosis.He was only thirty years old when he died. For a long time before and after that, I didn't know that he ever wanted to be a writer, and I couldn't appreciate all the sadness in the sigh he uttered that night when he stood behind me who was writing the composition.Maybe when he was alive, he thought I was too young, so he didn't think that there was a need to tell me these things in detail. Another ten years later, I left Shanghai and my mother, and went to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to "fight against heaven and earth".My mother prepared my luggage for me.All that was packed was an old canvas box and an old bedroll.But she put some novels and poems published by my father when he was nineteen years old, as well as the diary he wrote during the Anti-Japanese War during his exile in Kunming, as the only "legacy" into my luggage.

That's when I realized how close I was to my father, a lifelong businessman.The literary dream of two generations and the struggling life of two centuries made me feel a lot of sadness and heaviness.Fortunately, I quickly threw myself into the great torrent of social change.I can live differently from my father.Although, I have also had tuberculosis (did my father infect me? I can’t tell), but I can no longer deal with it with the paleness and despair of a "old tuberculosis patient" and "only belonged to a big family" My whole life, to deal with my literary dream. The unimaginable hardship and barrenness of the Northwest Farm not only completely cured my tuberculosis, but also instilled in my heart the stubbornness and stupidity that men in Northwest China often have.Probably because of this kind of "stubbornness and stupidity", during the twelve years on the farm, I voluntarily gave up all kinds of life choices full of other kinds of temptations again and again, and persistently dreamed of literature in the Gobi desert.

In 1973, in my tenth year on the farm, I finally wrote the first "big work" in my life, a four-act drama "Sailing Thousands of Miles" with an educated youth theme.This work has attracted attention from all sides.Xi'an Film Studio will make it into a movie.Shanghai wants to publish it.Large and small theater troupes in Lanzhou, Beijing, Xi'an, Urumqi, Northeast China and other places put it on stage for performances.In fact, at that time, I only read three domestic scripts: "Huangshuzhuang", "Second Spring" and "Young Generation".I have only seen one drama performance, and it was "The Younger Generation" that always moved me.I watched it before leaving Shanghai.Later, in the warehouse of the farm mission team, I found a collection of Chekhov's plays and half a collection of Ibsen's plays.I remember reading them over and over again until I read them through.It is the kind of "reading with your head up" as Roland Barthes said, read a paragraph, raise your head to meditate carefully, "cut it, and because of obsession, restore it, and draw nourishment from it..." My stubbornness and Stupidity is also reflected in: when I write, I just feel that I have something to say in my heart, and I want to express something to the world.I want to yell.To shout out the voice that belongs to me.Living at the bottom for more than ten years, facing the world, I always feel that I have too many things to say and too many voices to say.I always feel that the world needs such a voice.This desire, this intuition, this impulse and yearning are extremely sincere and extremely strong.Even stronger than the incomparable impulse and yearning of first love.I don't care whether the "voice" that is called out in this way is the kind of "literature" defined by the current times or textbooks.Perhaps it was because of this foolish sincerity that my first "big work" really touched many people at the time.Later, it was also because of this work that I was spotted by a professional art troupe in Beijing, and my whole family was transferred to Beijing.This is how I started my professional creative career of more than thirty years.

But my real new life in creation began when the "Gang of Four" fell. The fall of the "Gang of Four" made it possible for me, who started during the "Cultural Revolution" period, to start a complete "transformation".For me personally and for my generation, this has a Hamlet-like "absolute meaning" in spirit: "To live or to die?" This is a big hurdle that must be crossed.When the spring of literature and art returns to the world, literary and artistic creation will return to its true meaning full of artistic personality.Due to the circumstances of the times, our generation once lost or neglected our self and artistic personality, but it is not easy to find ourselves again!It is also "easy said" to re-determine one's own artistic creation personality!We must wriggle and break free from the "old shell" that tightly wraps and binds us like a young snake transforming, and we must first dissect ourselves carefully with a sharp "scalpel".It is necessary to seriously re-understand yourself and know "people".And the most difficult thing in this world is to know yourself and the most complex and perfect "thing" like "people".He held a knife and cut his own skin one by one.It is to lick and eat one's own blood, so as to regain the power of new life.

I spent a whole year completely sinking into a steel factory to live.I follow workers in three shifts every day, in spring, summer, autumn and winter, day and night, in order to regain the sense of existence of ordinary people, and to re-understand the world in front of me from the standpoint of ordinary people, so as to get rid of the old self.At the same time, I read a lot of new novels and new theoretical works that I could find.And wrote two novels, one is to use it to review how people of my generation lost themselves, so as to bid farewell to the past calmly.Then I wrote that again to establish my new creative orientation.Learn not to look at anyone's face, and only create based on your own spiritual feelings and perceptions.Looking for a creative style that completely belongs to the man named "Lu Tianming", trying to make a voice that only the man named "Lu Tianming" can produce.It took me almost four years to take this heavy but necessary step to find my creative self.I was almost forty years old then...

If you don't transform, you will be castrated. "To live or to die?" Looking back now, the reason why I can persist in writing down is still due to my most original creative motivation: to say what I want to say to the world.At the same time, it should also be attributed to one of the most authentic life motivations: to regard the world as one's own responsibility.I know very well that our generation has a lot to sum up and have to correct.However, we are fortunate to have obtained such a source of heat that has gathered and cemented together from the times, closely combining literary creation with the destiny of the nation and the needs of the people.That way, no one can stop a man from making his voice heard.Like every generation of young people, we have done some wrong things, but many things we are driven by our true feelings in our hearts.Wrong, we should also be responsible for ourselves.Our souls are real and fully open to history.I have always firmly believed that literature must belong to the people, and it should and can play the role it can play in the course of history.We cannot expand the personalization necessary for literary creation to the point of extreme personalization and privacy, let alone think that literature is only divorced from reality and society, and does not talk about its social function and the public at all. Its sublimation can only be done if you read it right.This is also the main reason why I decided to realize the second return of my own creation—return to reality and return to the public after realizing that Chinese contemporary literature inevitably began to weaken and pale after the mid-1990s.It made me resolve to use my literary creation to participate in this change at a critical moment in the historical process of great social change in China.Even if this kind of writing has been neglected by some avant-garde "theoreticians", it will not shake my determination to continue to realize this second return.The most typical of such works is "Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee".These works are serious, heavy, and simple, without any fashion elements and fancy personality, but they have aroused extremely strong repercussions among the public. The reprints have reached hundreds of thousands, and they are still being reprinted. , not only received in various collections, but also adapted into TV dramas and stage plays.When the TV series made of them were broadcast, the highest audience rating reached 39%... Even so, I don't think they are perfect.I don’t think they are perfect, not because they have been neglected by those “theoretical authorities”, but by my literary feeling and the true meaning of literature. I always believe that the literary creation of a writer and a nation, The sign of real maturity should be recognized by one's own people and also have a creative breakthrough in the process of literary history.Chinese literature was produced on the soil of China, and if it is to play the role it can and should play in the course of China's history, it cannot avoid the reading acceptance of our public.It should be both profound and easy to read, both literary and popular, not only full of deep metaphysical meaning, but also full of contemporary life, not only the unique personality charm of the writer and the tension of independent thinking, but also covering the times. And the breadth and depth of history... I know I'm nowhere near that goal, but I'm going to keep trying.My "Thriller in High Latitudes", including the recent creation, are all attempts to move closer to this goal.I am accumulating experience and lessons in this area bit by bit.I must take another big step forward to make my creation really close to this goal...

These years, I often ask myself late at night: Tianming, are you changing?Have you changed?Yes, I am changing.I have changed.I am constantly changing.An inescapable sense of mission prevents me from repeating myself and standing still.I must be changing.But I haven't changed.I ask myself not to change.What remains unchanged is that I hope that I will always be able to appear in the Chinese literary world as a "hot-blooded youth", appear in my own creations, always pay close attention to it, and fully integrate into my own country and nation. The people of my country are fighting for a better future. Although the old age is approaching and the old age has fallen, I will definitely age irreparably... aging day by day...

Last year, I went back to my hometown Nantong once.I went to visit my father at the cemetery.A sixty-year-old son went to sacrifice his thirty-year-old father.Looking at his extremely young, thin, melancholy, intelligent, and helpless expression on the extremely simple and rough cement tombstone, I choked up.What should I say to him? "Father, your son has finally become a writer." This seems to have been said thirty years ago. "I will continue to write until I have said what I want to say in my heart." This seems to be inaccurate. As long as you pay attention to the fate of the people, is there a moment when you can finish what you want to say? "I know that I haven't written the best work yet, so I will work tirelessly." After decades, is it still necessary to express this attitude to my father?The 30-year-old father has long understood his 60-year-old son: he has only one goal in his life's efforts, which is to write a better work at all costs.The literary dream of two generations.Two centuries of survival efforts.Me and my sister, me and my son, me and my writer friends, me and my dear readers, me and all the living Chinese, the common people of China, my mother, my brother, my relatives and Non-relatives... We have never given up, and we will not stop here. For the dream of a strong country for two generations, and for the road to revival in those two centuries... I will continue to write with my inherent stubbornness and stupidity, Regardless of what others may say!