The Testimony of Time--Conversation during the interview by Kuangbiao Academy, September 22, 2022. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b1kVzTWbQctCo_bOjOdb6Ah1rj21zYWx/view?usp=sharing
The Testimony of Time
—Black and White and More
Kuangbiao Academy: I've been anticipating your new novel for two years, and I feel extremely honored to read this monumental work before its publication. I've been reading it intermittently for over a month during the intense summer heat since early July. My first question is: When did you begin writing this novel, and what experiences during the writing process can you share with readers?
Liu Jiming: I began writing this novel three years ago, but the idea had been germinating for five years. In winter 2018, while chatting with literary critic Liu Fusheng in Hainan, I mentioned my plan to write a new novel. This was the first time I revealed my writing plan to anyone. During the two years from conception to formally beginning writing, the novel's main characters and plot grew like a seed planted in soil, taking root and sprouting day by day. In September 2019, I was on an island far from Wuhan, where the vast, churning sea acted as a barrier, isolating me from all the clamor and chaos of reality. My mind experienced great liberation, and I realized that the seed taking root was about to break through the soil. In this state of mind, facing my computer, I embarked on a strange and difficult writing journey.
By April 2020, I had completed the first part—400,000 words in less than a year—writing faster than any of my previous novels. I struck while the iron was hot and quickly began writing the second part. But after writing less than 100,000 words, I suddenly hit a wall. The reasons were twofold: first, the rhythm of the writing itself became disordered, the characters and plot suddenly lost their sense of direction, causing me to doubt the entire work and even lose confidence in continuing; second, the COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 had spread throughout the country and the world. Wuhan, as the epicenter, was still under lockdown. Although I was far from the center of the epidemic, I saw all kinds of information from media and the internet every day—true and false, right and wrong—plus the waves of public opinion stirred up in Chinese and foreign discourse, making it impossible for me to remain detached.
During this period, an editor from the Writers Publishing House (the editor of "Human Realm") solicited my manuscript, so I sent her the completed first part. I titled the first part "To the Eighties." Soon after, the editor sent me a WeChat message: "I've finished reading your novel, and it's truly excellent—I haven't read such a moving work in a long time. However, I still have a few concerns: 1. Fei Bian is a fictional character, but does his name suggest someone specific? Are the titles of his works and his ideas too explicit? 2. Can we omit the names of the leaders mentioned in some plots? It would be very troublesome if it gets held up for review. 3. Can the discussion of the student movement be further simplified? In short, as it stands now, it seems to be pointing to something specific, and the issues and points discussed are quite sensitive. I feel this is too heavy a burden to bear."
I also sent the manuscript to "Harvest" magazine, which had published many of my works before. The editor replied: "This is a work with profound thought and plot structure. The author has brought his personal emotional experiences and numerous details from the 1980s into the work, giving it a vivid, intimate perspective at eye level. The work takes a humanistic stance on the ups and downs of China's path and people's destinies over the past century, neither avoiding nor sensationalizing. Many characters take the stage of the novel's world through multiple storylines, leaving behind their own joys and sorrows. As a realistic novel, it continues an excellent literary tradition since the 1980s, combining retrospection, reflection, questioning, and collision into a multi-voiced opera of the years, demonstrating the author's profound humanistic accumulation and writing skill..."
Although the opinions of the two young editors differed in perspective and had reservations about the "completeness" of the individual novel, they unanimously gave the novel high praise, which undoubtedly boosted my confidence, as I was in a state of isolation and hesitation. Therefore, in the second half of 2020, when I returned to Wuhan and resumed writing the second part, I suddenly rediscovered the exhilarating feeling I had when writing the first part, and completed the second part in less than a year. By then, the editor at the Writers Publishing House had submitted "To the Eighties" as a publication proposal. After completing the second part, I had a clear vision for the entire novel, so I abandoned the idea of publishing the first part separately and began writing the third part in September 2021. I finished the third part by mid-June this year, again taking less than a year. When revising the entire book, I suddenly felt that the original title "Human World" was not ideal, so I changed it to "Black and White."
Kuangbiao Academy: You once said that "Human Realm" would be your last novel, yet five years later, you've written this epic nearly three times longer than "Human Realm." Where did the motivation and inspiration come from? What are the main similarities and differences between these two works?
Liu Jiming: When I first began writing "Human Realm," I was still quite young, lacking sufficient writing experience, and my personal artistic taste and thinking were deeply influenced by mainstream and even popular ideas. But because the writing spanned such a long period, it bears the spiritual and artistic imprints of almost every stage, so in "Human Realm," you can see the intersection of different values and aesthetic tastes, such as realism and modernism, elite and mass culture. The protagonists Ma La and Murong Qiu possess qualities of loneliness, contemplation, and detachment from the world, which are characteristic of Western modernism and images that were once popular in China's literary circles during the New Era. Its critique of reality and reexamination and inheritance of socialist traditions are like a meticulously planned match, with all moves completed within the discourse system formed since the 1980s. Of course, I don't deny the heterogeneity of "Human Realm" relative to the mainstream literary world; rather, I want to say that "Black and White" before you is more like an unexpected intruder. In other words, "Black and White" is actually the product of a direct encounter between the individual and reality. When I typed the first line on the computer, I felt like a soldier who had received orders to rush to the battlefield without sufficient ammunition. I was still very unclear about the overall structure and direction of the novel. I only knew from past experience that this work would far exceed "Human Realm" in length, but I didn't know exactly how many parts or how many words it would be. Many characters and stories only gradually emerged as the writing progressed, which is also why I came to a halt after completing the first part. In a sense, it wasn't I who wrote "Black and White," but the reality I was immersed in compelled me to complete this novel, giving me a sense of passivity, as if not writing it would betray everything I had experienced.
I fought an unexpected battle with reality without any preparation. Through that battle, I unexpectedly gained insight into many secrets of human nature. Previously, my understanding of the era's aspects was like observing the scenery outside through a layer of glass, somewhat like scratching an itch through one's boot. But now, the glass barrier in front of me has shattered, and I've directly touched the bottom of the era. It's like a spectator suddenly barging onto a theater stage during a performance, transforming from an audience member into a character in the play. Various familiar and unfamiliar characters and events took the stage one after another, revealing their true faces. Beauty and ugliness, good and evil, black and white, ideal and reality, loyalty and betrayal, faith and outcry collided with each other, dazzling and alarming. Therefore, when I began writing, I didn't need to rack my brains or face a wall to create fiction, but rather, like the folk shamans I saw in my childhood, I "invited" them from the real world into the novel through the astrology of language...
Kuangbiao Academy: "Invited them from the real world into the novel" is a vivid description. While reading "Black and White," I indeed felt that some characters seemed familiar. For example, Wu Bozhong reminded me of Wang Lin, the qigong master who was once famous a few years ago; Luo Zheng's experiences highly overlap with those of a real New Fourth Army veteran; Song Qiankun also reminds me of a certain old cadre known as a "liberal within the Party." Additionally, Li Xin, who was labeled a rightist, makes one think of a writer with a similar experience. Furthermore, some details in the novel, such as Wang Sheng and Gu Xiaole reading a novel about laid-off workers called "There" in the reform-through-labor farm library, and Tian Qingqing's female factory worker friend having the same name as the real-life worker Ah Ying, and directly quoting the poem "Lament for Severed Fingers" widely circulated online by old cadre Li Chengrui, as well as Provincial Party Secretary Chen Yimeng, who evokes a reformer from the 1980s, and so on. Despite this, we cannot simply equate them with real people and events—this must be the result of what you call the "alchemy of language"!
I've roughly counted that "Black and White" has over a hundred named characters, ranging from farmers to workers, generals, old cadres, university professors, rural teachers, lawyers, college students, provincial party secretaries, entrepreneurs, reformers, foreign enterprise representatives, singers, writers, economists, brokers, qigong masters, reform-through-labor inmates, and so on, covering every sector of Chinese society. The narrative timeline spans from the 1911 Revolution to the new century's first decade—a full hundred years. Whether in terms of the number of characters, the breadth and depth of social life depicted, or the time span, it far exceeds "Human Realm." Among the many characters, the most important are Gu Zheng, Zong Tianyi, Wang Sheng, Du Wei, Ba Dong, and Li Hong, with the novel's narrative centered on the coming-of-age experiences of these young people. From this perspective, "Black and White" seems more like a bildungsroman. Would you agree with this assessment?
Liu Jiming: Calling "Black and White" a bildungsroman is somewhat like calling "Dream of the Red Chamber" or "The Red and the Black" romance novels. Although I indeed devoted considerable space to writing about several young people born in the 1960s and 1970s, their growth journey from the 1980s to the early 2000s, their friendships, romances, and the ups and downs of their life trajectories in the tides of the era, my main intention was to explore and depict a broader social and historical landscape through them. For example, through the siblings Zong Tianyi and Gu Zheng, the novel brings out their grandparents, the early revolutionaries Zong Da and Anna and the revolutionary torrent of 20th century China they were immersed in, as well as their maternal grandfather, East Steel engineer Gu Zhizhen, and maternal grandmother, elementary school teacher Su Wanyun, representing the first generation of builders of the People's Republic; similarly, through Wang Sheng, the novel brings out his father, a hero of the Liberation War and a township brick factory director during the socialist construction period, Wang Shengli, and the enmity between his old comrade Luo Zheng and their old leader Song Qiankun spanning more than half a century; while through Du Wei's meteoric rise from a "self-employed photographer" to a photographer, chairman of the Mass Art Group, and chairman of the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the novel brings out the love and hatred between his maternal grandfather Zhan Datong, who participated in the 1911 Revolution, his mother "Miss Zhan," and "Yuan Ji Gong Grand Master" Wu Bozhong, a former Kuomintang military doctor turned itinerant physician, and so on. Beyond their own characters and images, just as in "Human Realm" where I sketched various characters and life scenes from urban and rural worlds through the protagonists Ma La and Murong Qiu, these characters also have certain functional significance in the narrative. The difference is that "Human Realm" only has two characters or two main narrative lines—Ma La and Murong Qiu—while "Black and White" has at least four or five characters and narrative lines. Each main line is like a folding screen; opening one screen means opening one world. You could say that "Black and White" is composed of screen after screen.
Kuangbiao Academy: "Black and White" is much more complex than "Human Realm" in both character creation and plot structure. Besides the volume of the work, it probably also relates to this structural approach you mentioned. The "folding screen" metaphor is very accurate and vivid. During the reading process, I felt as if a hand was continuously opening and closing one screen after another, making me feel like I had entered a linguistic labyrinth where one could easily lose direction. Reading this novel requires not only sufficient patience but also a clear discernment of this structural approach. This belongs to the technical aspects of writing, which ordinary readers might not be very interested in, so I'd like to discuss the characters in the novel with you.
Among the main characters, I'm most interested in Gu Zheng and Wang Sheng. It's evident that you put the most effort into these two protagonists in the work. Gu Zheng is the first character to appear, accompanied by scenes of university life in the 1980s, such as freshman orientation, literary societies, campus dances, lectures, teacher-student romances, etc. In fact, the main activities of the characters in the first part are centered around the university campus of the 1980s. Surrounding Gu Zheng, you not only narrate her family history in many passages but also tell the legendary experiences of her grandfather, father, and brother Zong Tianyi. In the first part, Gu Zheng is undoubtedly the female lead, but by the second part, Wang Sheng, who was originally in a secondary position, becomes the protagonist. At the beginning, you use two full volumes to write about Wang Sheng after his graduate studies, when he was sent to Niangzi Lake in the suburbs of the provincial capital for training, working as a normal school teacher, meeting the normal school student Tian Fang, until he was recognized as a talent by Du Wei, then director of the Mass Art magazine, and called back to the provincial capital. Throughout the second part, Gu Zheng does not directly appear; from the third part on, she reappears as a lawyer, and by then it's the beginning of the new century, a whole era away from when the events in the previous part took place. By taking on Wang Sheng and Gu Xiaole's case, Gu Zheng returns to the center of the novel. It's evident that Gu Zheng is a character you've put great effort into creating. I want to ask, as the author, how do you view Gu Zheng? In the work, besides the "functionality" you mentioned, does she have some deeper significance?
Liu Jiming: In my initial conception, Gu Zheng was only meant to appear as a foil to Wang Sheng. In other words, her functionality far outweighed her inherent significance. But as the plot progressed, the character gradually broke free from the original design and gained the power of self-growth. As you saw, in the first part, Gu Zheng is an introverted, quiet college student who loves literature and is lost in fantasy. She is very different from Li Hong in personality, yet they are inseparable. Compared to the extroverted, sensual, and world-desiring Li Hong, Gu Zheng has almost no gender characteristics, to the extent that some people see them as lesbians. This personality comes from her special family background: her maternal grandfather's status as a "traitor," her father's disappearance, her mother's drowning death, her brother's escape, and growing up in her grandparents' home—all of which shaped her sensitive and solitary character. As Gu Zheng herself finds puzzling, she is not suited to studying law and should have studied literature instead. In fact, her later experiences prove that she was not successful as a lawyer. But it is this unsuccessful lawyer who accomplishes a feat that can be called earth-shattering.
Kuangbiao Academy: This must be what you meant by the character "breaking free from the original design and gaining the power of self-growth." But from a reader's perspective, this actually conforms to the developmental logic of Gu Zheng's character. The trauma and shadow left in her deep heart by her family's misfortune have accompanied her growth process like a shadow. Her love for literature, her fondness for Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse," her almost instinctive hostility toward the opposite sex, make her deeply despise all ugly people and things. The novel mentions her disgust at her brother Zong Tianyi's abandonment of his wife Hong Xun, her dislike of Tang Fei and Du Wei—all of which prove this point. Like Murong Qiu in "Human Realm," Gu Zheng is a person with spiritual cleanliness, emanating an idealistic quality that is at odds with reality from the inside out. It is this character and temperament that leads her to part ways with the Dingjun Law Firm without hesitation, deciding to take on Wang Sheng's case, and together with Li Hong, jointly bringing down Wu Bozhong, Du Wei, and the corrupt group behind them. In this process, Li Hong played a crucial role. In the novel, Li Hong is only a secondary character with limited depiction, but due to her and Gu Zheng's "heroic deed," she suddenly becomes important, and her character becomes much more full and three-dimensional. Could you talk about this character?
Liu Jiming: Li Hong initially appeared only as a foil to Gu Zheng, and the description of her was also relatively simplified and stereotypical. But she is quite representative of female college students in the mid-to-late 1980s: passionate, romantic, open, avant-garde, stylish, with a strong artistic temperament, like the protagonists in Tie Ning's novel "The Red Shirt Without Buttons" and Liu Xihong's novel "You Cannot Change Me." But Li Hong was not inspired by such literary works but comes from my life experience. Like Gu Zheng and Li Hong, I also completed my university studies in the mid-to-late 1980s. East River University in the novel is based on my alma mater, Wuhan University. In fact, Li Hong combines the shadows of at least two of my female classmates. Some of the details, such as Li Hong reciting poetry in a low-cut, backless nightgown in the dormitory, were scenes I saw when visiting a female classmate's dormitory, and that poem "The Bedroom of a Single Woman" was a representative work by the once-famous female poet Yi Lei in the 1980s. Including the teacher-student romance between Li Hong and Lang Tao, this was almost a fashion in university campuses in the mid-to-late 1980s. Despite this, Li Hong is still quite different from these types of female students. What distinguishes her from the same type of female college students is not her personality but her experiences. Li Hong's father was a director of a state-owned enterprise at the department level, and she grew up in a privileged life. Additionally, she was beautiful, had a talent for recitation, and had a natural star quality, quickly becoming the president of the literary society in college and a figure surrounded by admirers. If fate hadn't intervened, she would certainly have had an enviable future. But near graduation, her father was sentenced for corruption, becoming a sacrificial lamb for interest groups, and Li Hong's fate underwent a dramatic change. Not only was she abandoned by Lang Tao, but she was also released from her contract with a central-level news organization she had already signed with, and finally had to go to a "diploma mill" radio station as a broadcaster without official staffing...
Kuangbiao Academy: Li Hong's fate is indeed sympathetic. At the end of the first part, when I saw Gu Zheng watching her leave the East River University campus alone, boarding a public bus and gradually disappearing from her sight, my eyes became a bit moist. At that time, I didn't know that Li Hong would become a Count of Monte Cristo-like avenging goddess.
Liu Jiming: Not only did you not know, but when I finished the first part, I also thought this character would not appear again. But in the second part, she reappeared, from her brief romance with Ba Dong, to later becoming the mistress of Zhang Xiaobo, a high-ranking cadre's son, and the manager of a nightclub, and then becoming Wu Bozhong's assistant—it seemed not like my deliberate arrangement but like a fate she chose for herself.
Kuangbiao Academy: When Li Hong appeared in the second part, she had changed her name to "Xu Ke." Her role in the nightclub was similar to that of a courtesan, but from the moment she set foot on Phoenix Island and became Wu Bozhong's assistant, she became increasingly mysterious and ambiguous. On one hand, she deftly maneuvered between Wu Bozhong and Du Wei, like a veteran of social circles; on the other hand, she always wore all black, and when she met her former lover Lang Tao again, she was cold as ice, like a stranger, as if carrying some special mission. Until later, when she handed over the evidence of corruption she had collected about Wu Bozhong, Du Wei father and son, and the forces behind them to Gu Zheng, ultimately triggering the Phoenix Island case, did Li Hong's true face surface. This plot arrangement is somewhat like reading a suspense novel. The role Li Hong played on Phoenix Island reminds one of the late Qing Dynasty official spy Ren Ban'an, who changed his name to infiltrate the key positions of the court to collect criminal evidence against political enemies, eventually bringing down his opponents. What impressed me most was Li Hong and Gu Zheng's secret meeting at Niangzi Lake, rowing on the lake while pouring their hearts out, especially Li Hong's frank confession of her true feelings, an internal monologue of over 10,000 words, every word dripping with blood, moving the reader deeply, bringing to life a contemporary version of an avenging goddess...
In "Black and White," besides Gu Zheng and Li Hong, other female characters such as Hong Xun, Meng Fei, Song Xiaofan, Hong Yanbei, Tian Fang, Tian Qingqing, and Cheng Lei also left unforgettable impressions on me. If we were to analyze them one by one, it would probably require a dedicated article. Next, let's talk about the male protagonist of the novel, Wang Sheng. If Gu Zheng is the female lead in the novel, then Wang Sheng is clearly the male lead. This character's personality is somewhat similar to Gu Zheng's—introverted, stubborn, fond of reading, not very sociable. At first glance, he seems a bit like Ma La in "Human Realm," but Wang Sheng doesn't have that persistent idealistic spirit that Ma La has. In some sense, he's even a quite "pragmatic" person. Is my understanding correct?
Liu Jiming: Wang Sheng and Ma La actually have quite a few similarities. For instance, they were both born in the 1960s (Ma La in the early 1960s, Wang Sheng in the mid-to-late 1960s), both experienced socialist and revolutionary cultural influences in their adolescence, and both had a communist-believing "spiritual father" figure—Ma La's brother Ma Ke and Wang Sheng's father Wang Shengli. In their youth, due to adolescent rebellion and the influence of the zeitgeist, both unwittingly wanted to break free from or even betray their spiritual fathers. Ma La found Lu Yongjia, who advocated liberalism, in normal school and followed him into business, while Wang Sheng grew spiritually distant from his father after entering university and even changed his name from Wang Cheng (given by his father after a hero) to "Wang Sheng" to draw a line with his past. He took Professor Lang Yongliang, who had been labeled a rightist, as his life mentor, hoping to gradually enter mainstream society and become a member of the elite class through academic efforts. He later became the deputy editor-in-chief of the Mass Art Group, which could be said to have achieved his life goal. Similarly, both Ma La's and Wang Sheng's lives experienced dramatic turns: Ma La was imprisoned because his mentor Lu Yongjia died of AIDS and his company was caught smuggling, while Wang Sheng was sentenced to three years for reporting Wu Bozhong on behalf of his deceased friend Zong Tianyi and was sued for defamation. The difference is that after Ma La was released from prison, he returned to his hometown, Shenwang Island, led his fellow villagers to organize cooperatives, and inherited the unfinished cause of his brother Ma Ke, while Wang Sheng, although he underwent a severe life baptism in the reform-through-labor farm and began to draw strength from his father's generation and childhood memories under Luo Zheng's influence, his thinking was still in a state of confusion. He hadn't found faith again like Ma La, returning from the individual to the people, becoming a consciously active intellectual.
Kuangbiao Academy: From the beginning, I felt that the character Wang Sheng looked familiar. After your explanation, I suddenly realized that he is indeed very similar to Ma La in "Human Realm." Upon further reflection, it's not just Wang Sheng, but the entire novel seems to be an extension and expansion of "Human Realm." In this sense, "Black and White" is like a sister work to "Human Realm." A critic once said that in "Human Realm," the protagonist Ma La is a character still in development. The same is true for Wang Sheng in "Black and White." But at the end of the novel, when Wang Sheng completes his sentence and is released, Gu Zheng, Liang Tian, and Tian Qingqing go to the farm to pick him up, which seems to suggest that Wang Sheng will also embark on a new life path with them. In this sense, "Black and White" completes the theme that was left unfinished in "Human Realm."
Xiang Jing once pointed out in an article reviewing "Human Realm": "The characters in the novel are all animated by a sense of aestheticism and idealism, making one unsure whether it's real or dreamlike. All the stories and plots may be real and can be verified in ongoing contemporary life. But the characters often make one's mind wander; the life paths they easily cross (such as Ma La's studies and entrepreneurship) might be insurmountable chasms for characters in 'Ordinary World.' These elites with innately great intelligence and emotional quotients, even after experiencing failures and setbacks, their idealistic spirit doesn't seem to grow from the land they love, but comes from some kind of heaven-sent gift and destiny..." "Human Realm" mostly describes good people with an "idealistic spirit," and one can hardly see a "bad person"; while in "Black and White," although you also wrote about some equally idealistic good people like Wang Sheng, Gu Zheng, Luo Zheng, the old principal, and Tian Fang, you also devoted considerable ink to describing some bad people, such as Du Wei and Wu Bozhong, who left deep impressions. Why did this change occur?
Liu Jiming: As some critics have pointed out, my early creative works, such as cultural concern novels, focused on revealing people's spiritual situations, and my mid-period writing about the grassroots focused on the real sufferings of the working people at the bottom of society, but the revelations about specific human nature were not deep, being relatively idealistic or idealized. But in recent years, my "encounter battle" with reality has not only deepened my understanding of the era's aspects to an unprecedented level but also given me a deeper grasp of the dark side of human nature, which is why characters like Du Wei and Wu Bozhong appear.
Kuangbiao Academy: Among the many characters in "Black and White," Du Wei is a thorough "bad person." From the first part where he follows his "adoptive father" Wu Bozhong to Pi Town to open a clinic, he gives the impression of a gloomy, licentious "bad youth." Later, when he enters East River University to study photography, the image of a calculating, opportunistic, and snobbish person emerges. Sheishui Nongfu said that Du Wei is "skilled in accidents, opportunistic, avaricious by nature, unrestrained yet ambitious, and for the sake of making a name for himself and gaining benefits, he uses any means necessary, regardless of right and wrong, black and white, truly taking pragmatic philosophy to its extreme." Can you talk about how you crafted this character?
Liu Jiming: Actually, we can't simply consider Du Wei a "bad person." The definition of good and bad people varies depending on one's value stance. Du Wei indeed concentrates a strong gangster and merchant spirit—such as being profit-driven, opportunistic, ambitious, unscrupulous in his climb upward, taking personal achievement as his only life creed, etc. This type of person has been common in Chinese society since the 1980s and 1990s. Of course, specifically regarding Du Wei, besides the nurturing of the social soil, his family background also plays a role. Du Wei's father, Du Fu, was originally a vegetable farmer in the suburbs of Chuzhou, but due to his exceptional cunning and skill in attaching himself to the powerful, he won the favor of Zhan Datong's daughter, Zhan Rong, of the Dajiang Photo Studio, and eventually claimed the Zhan family's property, becoming the owner of the Dajiang Photo Studio. Du Wei grew up in such a family, but he didn't know that Du Fu was only his nominal father, and his real father was Wu Bozhong, an itinerant physician who made and sold snake medicine, claimed to be a descendant of Empress Wu Zetian, and could treat difficult cases such as infertility. Wu Bozhong's influence on Du Wei's personality formation far exceeded that of his nominal father, Du Fu, who committed suicide by drowning. Later, Wu Bozhong relied on trickery and deception to become the famous "Yuan Ji Gong Grand Master," and Du Wei, after graduating from the East River University photography class, was recommended by the old East River Province leader Song Qiankun to become the chairman of the Mass Art Group. The father and son, with Phoenix Island as their stage, performed a series of dramas with magical color.
Du Wei embodies a kind of individualism or desire-ism aesthetics taken to the extreme. We have seen this in classic works such as Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" and Balzac's "Lost Illusions." It's just that Julien Sorel and Lucien lived in nineteenth-century France, while Du Wei lives in China at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Kuangbiao Academy: Speaking of Wu Bozhong and Du Wei, what impressed me most was that when Wu Bozhong learned that their secrets on Phoenix Island had been "betrayed" by Li Hong, in order to keep his promise to "Miss Zhan" and save Du Wei's promising future, he resolutely chose to commit suicide. From this perspective, he can be considered a good father. As you can see, the boundary between good and evil is sometimes difficult to distinguish, and when creating characters, you fully respect the complexity of human nature. This complexity is also fully reflected in other characters such as Ba Dong, Hong Taixing, and Luo Zheng. They, along with Wang Sheng and Gu Zheng mentioned earlier, can all be considered "typical characters in typical environments." Typical characters in typical environments was once an important concept in classical Marxist literary theory, but in the view of Chinese contemporary literature since the 1980s, it seems to have become outdated and antiquated. Despite this, in your own creative work, especially in novels, you still pay great attention to creating typical characters with depth and thickness, such as Shen Futian and Zhen Yinnian in "Rivers and Lakes," Ma La and Murong Qiu in "Human Realm." In "Black and White," besides the protagonists Wang Sheng, Gu Zheng, and Du Wei, another unforgettable character is Song Qiankun. Sheishui Nongfu wrote in an article: "Song Qiankun, while being an old revolutionary, is actually a opportunist deeply hidden in the revolutionary ranks, with deep class imprints. Such people are highly representative—they were opportunists in the revolutionary years, capitalist roaders in power during Mao's era, and then became representatives of so-called open-minded old cadres in the reform and opening-up period. Historical development finally revealed their true colors, that is, people who are 'true at both ends.' Such people were as numerous as fish crossing a river in the revolutionary ranks. This character creation has truly typical significance..." Do you agree with his understanding of this character?
Liu Jiming: Sheishui Nongfu's view is very accurate. Song Qiankun is not only a character with considerable typicality, but one whose prototype is not difficult to find in reality. Song Qiankun's complexity also lies in the fact that his motive for joining the revolution initially had obvious opportunistic colors, with a deeply rooted individualism and elitism complex. He was once wooed by the Kuomintang intelligence service as "one of their own" and was suspected of betraying the East River Bureau leader Zong Da and military secrets, for which he was reported by his subordinate Luo Zheng for most of his life. Moreover, during the long and intricate process of the New Democratic Revolution, socialist revolution, construction, and reform, his class attributes were repeatedly activated. His life's ups and downs were all related to these attributes, haunting him like a ghost, from which he could not escape until death.
Kuangbiao Academy: After finishing "Black and White," besides the characters mentioned above that left deep impressions on me, the love descriptions in the novel are also unforgettable. In your previous novels, there wasn't much content about love, and even when occasionally touched upon, it was written very briefly. Some critics even believed that you are a writer who is not skilled at writing about love. For example, in "Human Realm," the love between the protagonist Ma La and Murong Qiu, Ma La's unrequited love for the cultural station librarian Hong Xia, and the quasi-Platonic feelings between him and Murong Qiu, are all written in a hazy, ambiguous way. In "Black and White," you seem to have increased the proportion and intensity of love stories, such as Wang Sheng and Tian Fang, Lang Tao and Li Hong, Song Xiaofan and Li Xin and Bai Wen, Zong Xiaotian and Gu Ying, Zong Tianyi and Hong Xun and Meng Fei, Ba Dong and Li Hong and Hong Yanbei, Liang Tian and Tian Qingqing, Gu Xiaole and Cheng Lei, Wu Bozhong and Miss Zhan, etc., all leaving more or less, lighter or deeper marks in the novel. But unlike many works in today's literary market that attract readers' attention by extensively describing and selling sex, the love in "Black and White" is not written for the sake of writing, but is inseparable from the formation and development of the characters' personalities. Among them, the love between the protagonist Wang Sheng and Tian Fang is especially touching. Could you talk about this specifically?
Liu Jiming: Wang Sheng is a person with an introverted character, a pure heart, and sensitive self-esteem. Although he fell in love with Tian Fang the first time he saw her in the normal school's folk teachers' class, constrained by his personal character and teacher status, he didn't express his feelings directly. The relationship between them developed rather slowly. For instance, having students watch the movie "Phoenix Piano" and write reflections, visiting Phoenix Island for home visits, taking the opportunity to meet her when Tian Fang went to the county town to buy teaching materials, writing letters to Tian Fang, etc., were all ways Wang Sheng expressed his feelings to Tian Fang. Tian Fang was also an introverted and shy girl who loved the career of a rural teacher and maintained an inseparable love for her homeland, Phoenix Island. Her initial feeling for Wang Sheng was only a student's respect for a teacher, but as Wang Sheng continuously revealed his intentions, the seeds of love also gradually sprouted in her heart. If things had continued to develop this way, the love between the two would probably have had a perfect ending. Unfortunately, shortly after Wang Sheng left Niangzi Normal School and returned to the city, Tian Fang drowned on her way back from teaching students on Jianjiao Island due to a tornado. A beautiful love story was abruptly ended. This left an unhealed wound in Wang Sheng's heart, and his later voluntary assumption of the school expenses for Tian Fang's niece, Tian Qingqing, was largely out of remembrance for Tian Fang.
Kuangbiao Academy: What a pure, beautiful, kind, and self-sacrificing girl Tian Fang was, yet you arranged such a tragic ending for her, which easily reminds one of "Human Realm," where the pure and beautiful love between Ma Ke and Murong Qiu was also terminated due to the unexpected death of one party. In "Black and White," many "good people" also have ill-fated destinies, full of tragic colors. Besides Wang Sheng and Gu Zheng mentioned earlier, there's also Luo Zheng, who was once an excellent Communist intelligence officer. After the Kuomintang intelligence service sabotaged the underground organization, and his fiancée Bai Xue died with the military district hospital and provincial committee organs in an attack by the Returning Home Corps on Phoenix Island, he suspected his superior Song Qiankun of leaking secrets and betraying. After liberation, he reported Song Qiankun's issues to relevant departments multiple times, for which he lost his position at the provincial newspaper and was arrested and imprisoned. In his advanced age, he was injured and hospitalized for seeking justice for the displaced people of Phoenix Island, leaving the world with resentment. Similar experiences also include Wang Sheng's father Wang Shengli, the old principal who led the residents of Phoenix Island to petition and died in a stone house next to the Martyrs' Cemetery, the agricultural team leader "Old Guo" of the reform-through-labor farm who lost everything due to a watch, and Li Hong, who, to avenge her parents, did not hesitate to change her name and identity, acting as an undercover agent to collect criminal evidence against the corrupt group... These people are upright, hate evil as an enemy, and most hold the simple belief that "justice may be late, but it will not be absent" and that good is rewarded, evil is punished, and they paid a heavy or even lifelong price for this belief—isn't this too cruel?
Liu Jiming: In this world, beautiful things are always fleeting. Love is the same. Beautiful love goes hand in hand with human virtue and always ends in tragedy. Upright and noble people are always subjected to hardships. In real society, the so-called contest between justice and evil is not like TV dramas and movies where justice always triumphs with a "happy ending." There's nothing strange about this. What's strange is that many people are always blind to such injustice, acting like numb spectators from Lu Xun's writings. As long as this "injustice" hasn't befallen them, they try their best to avoid it, cover it up, or even assist the tiger and go with the flow. This is the real reason why injustice occurs repeatedly and justice is delayed in being upheld. In this regard, "Black and White" reveals not "too much cruelty," but still far from enough.
Kuangbiao Academy: After the publication of "Human Realm," some critics believed that the novel's greatest contribution was "replanting the tradition of thinking about social issues and exploring life paths into contemporary Chinese literature," thereby "restoring the function of literature as a form of thought." In "Black and White," this feature is more prominent and intense. For example, Wang Sheng and his mentor Lang Yongliang's reflections on the relationship between people and politics, the biography of Zong Da he had been writing that remained unpublished even at the end of the novel, Song Qiankun and Wu Bozhong's secret discussions about "time and situation," Chen Yimeng and the old leader's discussions about reform, college students like Liang Tian and Tian Qingqing studying Engels' "The Condition of the Working Class in England," and the debates about "new thinking" and "shock therapy" in Hong Taixing's family salon in the 1980s, etc. Additionally, the novel's several protagonists, from the 1970s and 1980s to the early new century, underwent dramatic transformations in their life paths with societal development. Some became wealthy merchants spending lavishly, some became lawyers, some gained undeserved fame through opportunism and climbed to enviable positions, some became sacrificial lambs for interest groups, and some took the path of pleading for the people, upholding justice, and pursuing truth. Like the protagonists in the old film "Big Waves Sift the Sand," under the influence of the revolutionary tide, they either parted ways or became enemies, staging one after another life drama that makes people sigh.
Literary critic Lu Taiguang once said that "Human Realm" is an "elephant" of a novel. Compared to "Human Realm," "Black and White" is not just an elephant but a dinosaur. Perhaps because of this vast volume, when reading "Black and White," I had a feeling of not knowing where to "take a bite." This is a completely different feeling from reading "Human Realm." "Human Realm" is divided into two parts, centered around Ma La and Murong Qiu respectively, with relatively simple storylines and character relationships. "Black and White" has three parts and nine volumes, with a much more complex structure. Several character stories and threads unfold, advance, sometimes separate, sometimes overlap. Some plots seem unrelated to the main thread but actually have a close internal connection with the characters' destinies. This grand, expansive narrative style is reminiscent of 19th-century romantic and critical realist novels like Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" and Tolstoy's "War and Peace," possessing a magnificent atmosphere. In 2008, in a speech at Shanghai's "Oriental Forum, City Literature Forum," you said: "The strangeness and contradictions of contemporary life, its unprecedented complexity, compared to the era in which Balzac and Tolstoy lived and wrote, is more rather than less. Truly outstanding writers, especially novelists, should still be able to provide a holistic vision through their descriptions of this world. This is also an effective way to let novels participate in contemporary social processes and public spiritual life." So, my question is, have you realized your ideal of the novel in "Black and White"?
Liu Jiming: What is an ideal novel? Every writer has their own standard. Balzac said that the novel is a nation's secret history, but I prefer to say that the novel is the testimony of an era. The writer is not only the compiler of a nation's secret history but also a witness to the era. As the "heavy genre" of literature, the ideal novel should faithfully record the era it is in, preserve the truth and reject falsehood, refusing to be obscured, distorted, and castrated by various dominant and popular discourses. Of course, for truth, people of different value positions have different understandings and perspectives. Therefore, not only the so-called official histories and unofficial histories, but also novels, what they tell is not equivalent to absolutely objective history and reality, but a reflection of the author's subjective stance. There is also no such thing as absolute objective truth in the world. For example, writing about the land reform and cooperativization movements of the 1940s and 1950s, the landlord images presented in Zhou Libo's "Hurricane," Chen Zhongshi's "White Deer Plain," Hao Ran's "Sunny Days," and Mo Yan's "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out"—which narrative would you say is closer to the truth? Therefore, when people choose a certain angle to enter history and reality, they are also choosing a way to understand and approach the truth. "Black and White" is the same. I don't know if I've realized my novel ideal in this work, but one thing is certain: I've faithfully recorded everything I've seen, experienced, and thought about. In this sense, it's not just a novel, but a testimony of time.
Kuangbiao Academy: After the publication of "Human Realm," it was nominated for the Lu Yao Literary Award and ranked on "Harvest" magazine's 2016 annual novel list, being hailed as "a pioneering work of new socialist literature." In the afterword to "Human Realm," you also said: "I have written the most important work of my life." Five years later, you finally completed "Black and White," a massive work of 1.2 million words. After reading the manuscript, Sheishui Nongfu highly praised it: "'Black and White,' with its magnificent structure, seamless layout, vivid and full characters, progressively advancing plot, thrilling events, constitutes a naturally formed, profound and vast narrative, worthy of being called the pinnacle of contemporary Chinese realistic literature, a visualized history of contemporary Chinese social development. Its birth has set a new beacon for people's literature." My final question is: Has "Black and White" surpassed "Human Realm" in your heart? As the author, what do you most want to say?
Liu Jiming: Whether "Black and White" has surpassed "Human Realm" is irrelevant. They are like two children I have nurtured with all my heart and have equal importance in my heart. As for whether it has reached the height that Sheishui Nongfu mentioned, that needs time to test. I speculate that under the current circumstances, its fate will not be better than that of "Human Realm." But regardless, as a writer, I have fulfilled my mission.
I've said that this novel is my "unexpected harvest"—without the experiences of recent years, there would be no "Black and White." For me personally, it's a summary of my nearly forty-year literary career; for the literary world, it's a belated farewell work, although for me, this farewell happened five years ago or even earlier. What's gratifying is that I've created an artistic world richer, broader, and more complex than "Human Realm." When I wrote the last word and realized I was about to say goodbye to the characters in the novel, I felt reluctant to part with them. I created them, and they created me. I became one of them and experienced tremendous joy. For a writer, this is undoubtedly the best reward, once again proving that "social life is the only source of literature and art" is an irrefutable truth. Therefore, I want to say: Thank you, life.
September 22, 2022