Chapter 133 The big tree of life is evergreen

I am grateful to the judges for awarding this year's Mao Dun Literary Award to me and several other respected colleagues. Personally, it is not peaceful for me to receive this honor.There are, no doubt, many friends who deserved this honour. Winning an award does not mean that a work is completely successful, because the achievements of a writer must not only be evaluated from a realistic perspective, but also from a historical perspective. Against the background of various contemporary social and artistic trends, it is an extremely severe test for a writer to write a multi-volume novel completely according to his own aesthetic ideals.Your determination, confidence, will, passion, and endurance may all be swept away by the storm, and your spirit may collapse at any time.The difficulty I had at that time was that some even completely opposite artistic viewpoints criticized you at the same time, and I had to walk hard in a crack.Among the thousands of difficulties to overcome, you must first overcome yourself.

However, I never felt the isolation of labor.Many colleagues and critical friends have given me the support and thorough understanding I will never forget.More importantly, I deeply understand that if the work just obeys a certain artistic trend and wins applause from a few people but is ignored by the majority of readers, then it is really painful.Most works can only stand the test of history if they can stand the test of contemporary people.The kind of nobility that despises the general intelligence of contemporary readers and declares that the work will only shine in the future is very convincing.Therefore, in the process of writing, it is always cherished by me to maintain a close connection with the vast number of contemporary readers.To write this way or that way is not to take into account what the experts will say, but to try to figure out what ordinary readers will feel wholeheartedly.At all times and in all over the world, the failures of all works are finally pointed out by readers; what to accept and what to reject are also decided by them.I recognize the great power of professional art criticism, but I respect the judgment of readers more.

Artistic labor should be the most honest labor.I believe that any false sound in the work may be hidden from the critic's ears, but the reader can hear it.As long as the majority of readers do not abandon you, the flame of artistic creation will not be extinguished in your heart.The big tree of people's life is evergreen, and we can't help singing for it when we perch on its branches. As the son of a farmer, I am particularly concerned about the conditions of this village in China and the fate of the farmers.Needless to say, it was an intensely emotional concern. "Why do I often have tears in my eyes? Because I love the land deeply..." (Ai Qing) Yes, the hundreds of millions of ordinary but great people living on the land have created our history, and in a very large To a certain extent, it also determines our real life and future direction.The look that searches them for scabs is a shallow look.Regardless of being a politician or an artist, only by not losing the feeling of ordinary workers can we grasp the mainstream of social life and history and make the work we do have real value.In my works, there may be criticism, exposure, and deploration, but there must be no tribute.We can only comprehend the great state of life and the great state of art from the working people who have worked hard to create a great life and great history without data, not from some new and old philosophers.

Ordinary World is a thing of the past for me.The six-year labor of creation is not worth mentioning compared with the hardships of the laborers in the book to create their lives.However, I would like to deeply thank the "Flower City" Literary Magazine Society and Xie Wangxin, "Yellow River" Literary Magazine and Shan Quan, the Central People's Broadcasting Station and Ye Yongmei, and especially thank the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Company and Li Jinyu, the responsible editor of this book. The passion and generosity of publishing, airing, and publishing this book brought the stories back to the people who made them.