Lao Jia and I are colleagues, he is the editor-in-chief, and we have been colleagues for 21 years. Artistic aesthetics need to be a little distance, we are close, and the office is next to each other. It's too close, and many things can't be seen clearly, so it's dark under the lamp. I've attended too many of his seminars, but I don't talk at all, I just help with some of the conference. Today, because it's in this format, I'm not going to talk about it in the morning. Now this atmosphere is a bit like a meeting of our editorial office of "Meiwen", talking about things and telling the truth. I said three o'clock, because it was dark under the lamp, so I said nonsense.

First, let me talk about how he writes about people and things.

Lao Jia's writing is to write Chinese with Chinese minds. Our contemporary literature, studying foreign literature is too devoted, and it is not very much like Chinese literature. Naively or realistically imitating the writing of foreigners is not called internationalization, and it is difficult to reach the super-first-class level, and it is almost the same as "shadow literature". The powerful nations in the world all think and do things in their own way of thinking. Literature is the study of people, and Lao Jia writes about people like this. Of course, he didn't write well enough, at least a little short of what I think he should be up to. But all these books he has written over the years have been doing his best in this regard, creating literary works for the Chinese. Lao Jia writes things in the midst of changes, in an increasingly complex social state. Among his novels, only "Impetuous" is simpler, and so many later books are more and more complicated the more they are written.

How complex is the Chinese society we are facing now? Let me cite a few details, compare them, and analyze them.

Let's start with the big picture. We are now the second largest in the world economy, and we are quite strong economically. We had the Olympics, the World Expo, and the military parade. There are so many development zones, and there is Shenzhen speed. There are the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, the Strait Economic Zone, the Bohai Rim Economic Zone, the Guantian Economic Zone, as well as the development of the western region, the revitalization of the old industrial base in Northeast China, and so on. In 30 years, we have taken off the hat of poverty and backwardness and become Chinese with our eyebrows raised, which is very remarkable. These are the big aspects.

I'll give you a few more small examples, and look at them accordingly.

In today's rural areas, there are so many helpless children, called left-behind children. There are so many helpless old people, called left-behind old people. This is not only the case in backward villages, but also in moderately developed villages. And this is not an isolated phenomenon, it is not a small number, it already constitutes a huge group. An era is called a peaceful and prosperous era, and there is a bottom-line standard, that is, the old are supported and the little is taught. What is more worthy of pondering than this situation is, where are the people who caused this situation? In the cities, the scientific name is peasant workers. Left-behind children, left-behind elderly, and migrant workers should be included in the modern Chinese dictionary, but how should we annotate them? How should we explain this to our descendants? According to relevant statistics, the number of urban migrant workers is about 260 million, which is almost half of the European Union and 10 Taiwan. These populations are mobile, and they are the greatest uncertainties in our current society.

How did the Qin Dynasty come to an end? In addition to tyranny and harshness, there is another important factor, that is, the problem of displaced people. In order to encourage the common people to have sons, Qin Guo** formulated a land incentive policy, giving birth to sons to reward land, giving birth to daughters and nothing, and then there was not so much land, and this policy was invalidated. This was the cause of the Qin Dynasty's displacement problem. Today's migrant workers, as well as left-behind children and the elderly, have a larger population and a more complex situation. Economists and sociologists have big eyes, take a few glances at GDP, and turn your head to look at this side.

Let's talk about the river. According to a survey, nearly 50% of groundwater resources in China's economically developed and semi-developed areas are polluted to varying degrees. Groundwater is closely linked to soil, agriculture and forestry plants, which can explain the "poisonous rice" incidents harvested in many places in Hunan. In 30 years, the groundwater has been polluted, and it will take 90 years to recover. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, we have been a little heavy on two things, one of which is the management of major rivers. There are so many reservoirs and hydropower stations built on the Yellow River, and there is no need for future generations to comment on the merits and demerits of them. The Yellow River is now often cut off. In the lower reaches of the Yellow River, some neighboring villages in Hebei, Henan and Shanxi provinces often fight over water. The topic of the Yangtze River is also a bit heavy, and it is not convenient to say specifically, but some lakes along the Yangtze River have been sending out warning signals over the years. Large-scale manipulation of large rivers will lead to major ecological changes. Another thing we did too hard was that we dug up a lot of ancestral graves. It started from the Ming Ming Tombs, the emperors, ministers, and famous figures from all sides, and we are doing too much destruction work in the name of protection. What a joke the so-called "Cao Cao's Tomb" is, this is a joke of the ancestors. One year when I was in a small museum in Xinjiang, I saw a few dried corpses lying in a glass cover, and I wondered with emotion what kind of heavenly rules these people had committed back then, so that they would be violent corpses here a thousand years later. The legacy left by our ancestors is for future generations, not just for our generation. Now there's a buzzword called "sustainable development," which I think is an understatement, and how can our descendants survive when groundwater and aboveground water are made like this? Our generation should seriously think about a practical problem, how to be a better ancestor for our descendants.

There is also the problem of our human ecology.

There is an old drama called "Removing the Three Evils", the protagonist has great skills and strong ability, but he is a village tyrant and runs rampant in the township. He went up the mountain to kill the evil tiger, went into the water to get rid of the dragon, and removed the two evils for the people, but he didn't know that he was the third evil. Nowadays, there are more such people in the society, and some of them are quite respected and have joined the CPPCC or the National People's Congress. In the old villages, there was basically a consensus on what should be done and what should not be done, and doing bad things and being a wicked person was despised by the majority of people. Today, there are "drug trafficking villages", "human trafficking villages", "theft and reselling bicycle villages", and "foot washing and massage villages", almost a village is a complete "industrial chain". The emergence of these "problem villages" exposes a big problem, driven by interests, the boundary between right and wrong is gone, and the basic moral bottom line is broken.

The deterioration of the human ecology is a great threat to our social progress, let's compare and look at a reality, we are now economically strong, the world economy ranks second, but is the credibility of Chinese's behavior and doing things ranked second? I think it is dangerous to rank in the top 20. How do we look at the "coal bosses" and "oil bosses" around us who are rich and misbehave?

Building a house is about laying the foundation. The foundation of the big house of society is the humanistic ecology. There is a basic code of conduct for people. The biggest harm of the "*****" was that it destroyed the traditional code of conduct of the Chinese, and in those years there was a slogan called "breaking the four olds," which referred to breaking old ideas, old cultures, old customs, and old habits. Old China was honored as the "State of Etiquette", and our ancestors had great rules in terms of behaving and doing things. There are rules for the people's clothing, food, housing, transportation, weddings, funerals, and neighbors. Seventy-two lines, each with its own rules. If we abolish all these things, will there be something better to replace them? In the past 30 years of reform and opening up, great economic achievements have been made, but how many of the kind and honest things in the traditional character of the Chinese have drifted away with the wind? Our economic edifice is so magnificent, but what is the foundation that supports it? We now have "learning from Lei Feng," "five stresses, four beauties, three loves," and "eight honors and eight shames." These things are good or a little simple. Now many people are talking about "lack of faith", I don't think it is a lack of faith, the Chinese have not had a main religion for thousands of years, but "entering religion with propriety", propriety is the rule, and we are now lacking in rules.

Our current social form is such a reality, brilliant, great, we have solved the problem of feeding more than a billion people, so that most people live a relatively good life, which is very great. But at the same time, there are such prominent hidden dangers, hidden worries and hidden pains. Social reality is so complex, a writer, a writer with a conscience and conscience, should write about our times responsibly in history.

The book "With a Light" is not only at the level of criticizing reality, Lao Jia is calmly presenting the current state of reality. This is a bloody book, but Lao Jia's style is thick, the language is vivid, and the white covers the ugliness, so it doesn't look so bloody.

Second, I would like to share my views on today's literary standards.

One hundred years ago, before the "May Fourth", in the early stage of the enlightenment of the new cultural ideology, Zhang Zhidong put forward a slogan, "Middle school is the body, Western learning is the use". It can be said that this is an ideological design for the future structure of Chinese culture, and this design is very remarkable. Now, 100 years later, how has this idea been designed?

I feel that this design has been twisted, and many things have become "Western learning for the body, middle school for use". Even in the field of understanding, the mention of "new thinking" has become synonymous with the West.

Our economy today ranks second in the world, and the criteria for this ranking are Western. Not only economic standards, but too many areas are at the mercy of others, industrial indicators, agricultural indicators, science and technology, environmental protection, education, and especially university education. Today's university professors can't say a few foreign names, so they will be regarded as unskilled. "Gutter oil" is kitchen waste, and we have recognized its harm. But in the lecture hall of the university, the "academic gutter oil" from abroad is being fried and fried in a hot way. Too many half-understood, ambiguous, scattered, and even contradictory things have become the treasure of our professors. Universities are places where standards are produced, and university education, especially in the field of humanities, is related to the national spirit and the foundation of the nation. What did the "May Fourth" college students do when they took to the streets? They opposed betrayal of the country and did not want to become foreign slaves.

What about our literary standards today? There is a fact that cannot be ignored: without learning from foreign literature, there would be no modern and contemporary Chinese literature. This kind of learning is not only about the writing method, but also about the thinking level, such as the concept of "novel". The old Chinese literature is called "novel", which is named based on the way of thinking, this literary form is not walking on the social road, it is a small road, it does not bear major social responsibilities, it is basically entertainment, and it occupies a "small" word. The old literati in China wrote poems and essays, signed their real names, and wrote novels, mostly under pseudonyms, because in the past, writing novels was not considered a cultural talent. Today's novels can walk on the main channel of reflecting on social progress and regression, which is the result of studying Western literature. But now there is another fact: if we take away the Western literary standards, do we have the standards of Chinese literature based on modern Chinese? If we really throw away Western literary theories, maybe some critics will not be very good at speaking and writing critical articles.

There is a master's student at Northwest University, and his graduation thesis is Jia Pingwa, and the core is to talk about the image of intellectuals in Jia Pingwa's novels. He came to me and said he wanted to hear what I had to say. Let me start by asking him to talk about the concept of "intellectuals". This student is quite serious, and the concept of "intellectual" is quite clear. I asked him to talk about the two concepts of "shi" and "literati" in Chinese, but he couldn't make it clear. I told him that there is a standard for traditional Chinese people: if you are good, you will help the world, and if you are poor, you will be good to yourself. Intellectuals are foreign words, and there is also a basic principle, whether they reach it or not, they must be concerned by society. There is a difference between Chinese literati and Western intellectuals in terms of their perception of this point. The prominent figures in contemporary Chinese culture have the side of reflecting on and discarding Chinese traditions, and the side of learning from the West. But are you sure they're going to follow the intellectual signposts that the West signs? The student said, "Then the article can't be written." I said that you have to write, this question is worth thinking about deeply, and this is also a great charm of Jia Pingwa's writing, which can be written from the difference between Jia Pingwa's characters and the image of "intellectuals".

The most remarkable thing about the Qin State and the Qin Dynasty is the establishment of standards. "The car is on the same track", unified weights and measures, unified calendar, although the "Zhuan calendar" is not very suitable, but China has a vast land, the calendar is messy, there are six kinds of summer calendar, Zhou calendar, Yin calendar, etc., the first month of each year is different, is this still called a unified country? "Book with the same text", unified writing. Can people's ideology be unified when they "do the same thing" and "burn books and pit Confucianism"? Is it wishful thinking for a piece of paper to wrap up a spark of sparks?

If a country is not going to run behind other people's ass in everything, then in some areas, it can follow international standards, and in some areas, it must have its own national standards. A few days ago, I read a news that the renminbi can be freely convertible in 2015. The free convertibility of the renminbi means that we are about to have our own financial standards. I don't know when our Chinese literature has its own standards for criticism.

Third, I would like to give Lao Jia a suggestion.

In the book "With a Light", there are more than 20 letters, which are written with a light to the person in your mind. Old Chinese literature talks about "writing the environment" and also about "artistic conception", and "artistic conception" shows the realm and depth, as well as the aesthetic height of the writer. There are so many old style poems in old novels, and they are used to show talent. A copy of "Dream of Red Mansions" gave rise to "Red Studies" because there is both literary talent and cultural talent in this book. Lao Jia has said many times in his articles that it is not enough for a novel to have only a story, and a novel cannot be written too much like a novel, which is his view of literature. These letters with lights and the stories told in the novel are two lines that do not interfere with each other. In my opinion, it is used to achieve artistic conception, and similar methods have been used in his previous novels, such as the dialogue between the man and the cow in "Waste Capital", and the out-of-body soul of the protagonist in "Tumen". Lao Jia's emphasis on this is what distinguishes him from other contemporary writers, which is different and extraordinary. But I think these letters, the things they talk about, are too beautiful, too clean. The kind of goodness inside is not the kind of Chinese "at the beginning of man, nature is good", not original, not chaotic. Perhaps this is exactly what the writer intended, and a light is a beautiful, clean light. I felt a little idealistic, and the power of these letters couldn't suppress the stories out there. The charm of "Red Studies" lies in the pursuit of things beyond the story. Perhaps the story of the novel "With a Light" is too powerful, complex and clear, cruel and tactful. In some places, people shed tears, and in other places, they make people laugh. And almost every one of these characters in the story is real, a person who has "disintegrated". What does "disintegration" mean? In "**", Chairman Mao stands on the tower of Tiananmen Square, in the whole of China, he is the only one who is clear, and the millions of people below are a group portrait, and everyone is blurred. Thirty years after the reform and opening up, this group disintegrated and became a real individual. One of the highlights of the book "With the Light" is the clear and vivid individuals. This is just a suggestion, say it out, for the editor-in-chief's reference.

Today's words are long, and when I fill out the form in the future, I will fill in the column of "what are your specialties?"