It was probably the last summer of the late '70s, and the Guanzhong Plain was bursting with the most fascinating scenery of the year, and the resurgent Chinese literary scene was just as stirring up the creative desires of writers old and new as this natural scene. At that time, I went to a meeting of the Shaanxi Writers' Association, which had just recovered, and met Mr. Lu Zhenyue, until I went to his mourning hall this spring to light a stick of purple incense, and I couldn't suppress the tears that flowed anyway.

Towards the end of that meeting, Lu Zhenyue came to the house where I lived. "You are Chen Zhongzhong, right?" asked my name and reported to his family, "I am Lu Zhenyue, from the Literature and Art Department of Shaanxi Daily." I gave up my seat and poured water, especially to an old editor whose hair was already thinning older than me, because the first time I met, the more respectful I was. After he sat down, he didn't greet or be polite, but directly talked about his intentions, and asked me to write a novel for the literary and artistic edition of Shaanxi Daily: "I have read a few of your previous novels, which are very good, and they have a willow flavor." So I agreed. He also advised: "A page can only hold 7,000 words at most, so you should not exceed this number." "Then he took his leave, and simply took his leave.

I had just adjusted my mindset at that time. Three years ago, in the spring of 1976, the newly restored People's Literature invited me to Beijing to attend a writing pen meeting, and I wrote a novel adapted to the anti-"capitalist roaders" at that time and published it in the journal, which aroused a lot of repercussions. With the fall of "***" and the reversal of chaos in all fields, my great joy in the social and political field and the frustration in my writing formed a violent psychological conflict, and until the winter of 1978, I still fell into a real shame that I did not want to be forgiven. I remember that I was leading the battle project on the embankment of the Bahe River, and I lived with the comrades of the headquarters in a lonely tiled house under the earthen cliff on the bank of the river, and slept in the wheat straw shop with a big stove. It was during the intense construction process that I was forced by the spring flood to read two short stories that I still remembered, first "Window" by Mo Shen, a young writer from Shaanxi Province, published in "People's Literature", and "Class Teacher" by Liu Xinwu, who was later recognized as the voice of the Renaissance tide in the new era. Mo Shen is much younger than me, and Liu Xinwu is the same age as me, but they are both budding literary newcomers, and they are all eye-catching new seedlings that have emerged from the newly thawed soil of the literary world. Reading these beautiful novels, I could not help but think of my own frustration, and I fell deeper into shame, and I turned all my passion to the embankment project I was directing.

It wasn't until the fall of 1978, when the project was completed, that I was transferred to the Xi'an Suburban Cultural Center. I examined myself again and again and judged myself, but I decided to leave the grassroots administrative department and go to a cultural unit, to study and reflect in order to convert to literature. The suburban cultural center is in Xiaozhai and has two office buildings. One is in the small building of the Xiaozhai Club, where most of the cultural cadres and cultural leaders live; the other is where the old cultural center before the "*****" is located, all of which are bungalows, which have been dilapidated and dilapidated, and there are three or four cadres who live in a better house, and the grass in the courtyard is flourishing happily. I chose a vacant room in the southeast corner, removed a roll of bedding, and re-hung the reed foil of the half-roof that had fallen off by the migrant workers, and I pasted the black ink slogans on the wall with newspapers...... I sat down and read. Outside the window is a farmer's vegetable patch, where cabbage grows day by day, and green radishes grow on the beams of the cabbage field, which are also getting thicker and stronger. I read from morning to night, borrowing or buying, and I read all the novels that have been lifted from the ban in the library and the masterpieces that have just been translated and published abroad, although they have won the Nobel Prize, but are unknown to us. The purpose is only one point, to use real literature to expel and cleanse the non-literary elements of my artistic sensibility. Leaving aside the ridiculous principle of "three prominences" in literary creation, the theories and ideas of ultra-"left" literary creation in the past 17 years are not factors that belong to literature itself in the true sense, but non-literary factors that are imposed on literature. For the elimination of non-literary factors and the emergence of real pure literary factors, for writers, it is not possible to use administrative orders, only to read real literary works to eliminate them—the fake Li Kui can only rely on the real Li Kui to force him to disappear.

My self-examination and self-selection were right in my feelings. Reading led me into the real world of colorful novels, and the non-literary factors were basically cleared out, and I felt that I was on the verge of belonging to the palace of real literature. Confidence was restored, shame was adjusted, and the desire to create was impulsive. To this day, I still remember the masochistic winter of reading and introspection in 1978, and every time I pass by Cuihua Road and see the beautiful buildings of the History Museum, I think of the house I once lived in and the vegetable patch outside the window, but now they are gone. After the Chinese New Year in 1979, I started writing novels again in that small house. It was in the midst of my new creative passion that I met Lu Zhenyue, who asked me for a manuscript.

I cherish Lu Zhenyue's manuscript very much, and it is also a continuation of that shame. The perception of me generated by that anti-"capitalist roader" novel is still the most sensitive factor in my nerves, so it is more of a feeling of gratitude to those editors who still ask me to write a manuscript. Therefore, I thought that I should try my best to write a novel and send it so as not to disappoint the eldest brother I met for the first time. However, a novel that is being conceived is relatively large, and the original plan for "People's Literature" is not afraid of being long, so he thought that after writing this short story, he would write it again for Lao Lu of Shaanxi Daily, and 7,000 words is a limit that cannot be broken. At this time, I received a letter from Lu Zhenyue, and the words on the letter cover and letter paper were written with a brush. The characters are very large, and although they cannot be called calligraphy for decoration and selling for money, they can definitely be called the brush characters of the literati who have learned kung fu. The content is to ask how the manuscript is written, and why I haven't seen the manuscript sent to him after a month. After reading it, I changed my mind and gave Lao Lu the short story that I was about to write that I originally wanted to write for "People's Literature", and the key was how to compress the larger length of the original idea to less than 7,000 words. In terms of structure, this short story is the most laborious of my short stories, and as far as the language goes, there is no room for empty words, or even counting the words while writing and stacking the pages. When I finished writing, it was exactly 7,000 words, and I was relieved, not to mention the content and expressiveness, the number of words first met Lao Lu's requirements. This is Trust.

The manuscript is written in my heart and is a little unsteady, mainly the content. This novel is about a rural grassroots cadre who has been wronged and treats the "enemies" of the past with a broad mind and a sincere attitude, and the contradictions are even very sharp. I was a little hesitant after writing it, because at that time it was the scar literature that was surging like a bitter water and angry tide, accusing the "***" of bringing disaster to the country and the people, and social life was also a universal emotion that had just aroused a strong reaction from all social strata to redress unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, and the new contradictions and social psychology of rural society were also very acute and complex around the contradictions of the "Four Cleansing" movement. Will the appearance of such characters in this novel cause misunderstanding? I couldn't make up my mind for a while, so I took the manuscript to my old friend Zhang Yuegeng and asked him to show it and grasp it for me from a more objective perspective.

Zhang Yuegeng still lives in a two-story simple living room in the "Xi'an Evening News", a large room without a partition, which is both a bedroom and a study, and also serves as a guest. Ding Shurong, a writer from the army, was already present at the meeting, and he was naturally very happy to meet him. When I had told the story, I took out the manuscript I had just written, and we read it continuously, thinking that my stated worries were unnecessary. Ding Shurong was very enthusiastic, saying that he was very familiar with Lao Lu, and he happened to go to Lao Lu to bring the manuscript for me. I handed over the manuscript to Ding Shurong, and I forgot whether I had a short note for Lao Lu. The next day, I went to the countryside to participate in the summer harvest.

From the day the manuscript was handed over to Ding Shurong, exactly one week later, "Trust" was published on the literary page of "Shaanxi Daily" on June 3, 1979. This is the fastest work I've published since I started my career. I heard the comments of the administrative cadres around me, and I did not dare to be completely gullible, thinking that there might be more encouragement. About half a month later, when I had just returned from participating in the summer harvest in the countryside, I received a letter from Lu Zhenyue, saying that the publication of the work had aroused widespread repercussions, and that I had received many letters from readers, and asked me to go to the newspaper office to read the comments on those readers' letters.

I couldn't hold back in my heart, so I rode my bicycle around the road of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and went to Shaanxi Bao on East Street. It seems to be a subconscious, and I especially value the reader's reaction, and I want to hear the comments of readers from all walks of life and professions outside the literary circle, and this is still the case today. This should be the second time I have met Lu Zhenyue, and Lao Lu seems to me as casual as an old acquaintance. I remember the deepest impression I had when I first met him was that he spoke in a high voice and a big tone. This time, at his editing desk, not only did he still speak like this, but his laughter was also loud, and it seemed that it was not always in place to describe it with the words "cheerful". His emotions were excited, and it was a heartfelt relief that he had compiled and distributed a manuscript that had aroused universal repercussions. While telling me how Ding Shurong gave him the manuscript, how he felt after reading it, and how he hurried to process the manuscript to prompt him to appear in the newspaper as soon as possible, he frequently gestured with his right hand. I was deeply affected and moved. A professional editor, a dude who was at least ten years older than me, made no secret of his excitement, dancing and laughing loudly like a young man, giving me a strong impression of sincerity and enthusiasm without being naïve. He then took out a stack of letters from readers and handed them to me, and said with emotion, look at how many letters have come to talk about this work in the first ten days or so.

As I read the letters sent to the newspaper office from all over the province, I couldn't help but burst into tears. It's not just because of what kind things they say about one of my novels, it's more about how much I need their "trust" in me. Because of the bad influence caused by the novel that wrote against the "capitalist roaders", I tried to redeem it with new creations, to win back those readers who might abandon me, and to re-establish the sincere trust of me and my readers. Those ebullient letters proved to me the most basic of things, and it was the point that I was most humble and begged for fulfillment. However, there was a letter in which he commented on "Trust" in a disdainful tone, and even ridiculed me in a disdainful tone, saying that I had written novels that adapted to the trend during the "*****", and now I am writing "Trust" in reverse, and so on. I thought he was talking about basically objective facts, and he must have read a few short stories I had written in the past that focused on class struggle. Disdainful sarcasm is not the key to criticism, but it can also prompt me to further reflect on my life and literature. These letters were later sent three by Lao Lu Xuan, and I also saw them in the column "Author, Reader, Editor". Interestingly, fifteen or sixteen years later, I was hiding in a guest house in Weinan to write a few short articles on the occasion, and one night the manager of the hotel (guest house) came to talk to me and said that one of the three letters from readers who had been selected had written it. When he wrote the letter, he was working in the water conservancy bureau of a county under the jurisdiction of the Weinan Prefecture, and he was close to the grassroots villages, and he strongly felt that because of the harm caused to many innocent people and outstanding grassroots cadres by the expansion of the class struggle over the past several decades, new contradictions and antagonisms have emerged in the process of redressing unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, and even simple acts of revenge between individuals. He was very moved by the protagonist's compassion for the same kind of contradictions, and thought that it was a far-sighted way to resolve the artificial contradictions caused by the class struggle, so he couldn't help but write the letter. In fact, he just likes to read books and newspapers, and does not engage in writing, and after several job transfers, he is now the manager of this hotel...... It sounds really emotional.

What I still remember is that after Ding Shurong gave the manuscript to Lao Lu, I went to a production team in the northern suburbs of Xi'an to participate in the summer harvest labor. According to the habit of cadres going to the countryside at that time, bedding rolls were tied to the back rack of bicycles, and toiletries were contained in mesh bags on the front of the bicycles. After about ten days or half a month of going to the countryside and returning to the suburban cultural center, "Trust" has been published for many days, and I have not yet learned about it in the intense summer harvest labor. When I returned to the museum, I saw the page where "Trust" was published, the word "trust" was written by a calligrapher, and there were two sketches depicting the plot of the novel as illustrations, which were very concise and very bold, and I felt hot when I looked at it. This is the first time that I have published my work in the literary supplement of Shaanxi Daily, but it is not my debut, and there have been a lot of novels and essays published in magazines and newspaper supplements, so it is said that there should not be too much freshness. I couldn't help but feel "eye heat", which came from the mentality of the time and the difficulty of the study path in time and space. At that time, the state of mind was already as reflected and adjusted as described at the beginning of this article, and the publication of this novel undoubtedly gave me the most real and most urgent confidence in it. A deeper emotion came from a contribution to the "Shaanxi Daily" 18 years ago.

In 1961, the most difficult year of what would come to be known as the "Three Years of Difficulty," I was in my second year of high school, and the unquenchable hunger afflicted almost everyone, especially middle school students who were in their most physiologically active growth. In order to protect the students in this unfortunate era, the Municipal Education Bureau has taken extraordinary measures, canceling evening self-study, which naturally means canceling all homework, and implementing a "combination of work and rest" to deal with hunger. Teachers only need to complete the class without grading homework, students only need to accept the teacher's lectures and no longer do homework problems in any subject, and physical education classes that consume calories can not be abolished at all. I suddenly found that I had too much free time, and I was so unaccustomed to it that I naturally devoted all my spare time and energy to the hobby of reading and writing. My friend Chang Zhiwen, who also loves literature, and I found a way to save money and read new books. Every day after dinner, the two of us quietly slipped out of the back door of the school, walked to the Textile City shopping mall, which was about ten miles away from the school, and went straight to the bookstore. Leaning on the shelf column full of books, I pulled out the book I was reading yesterday and continued reading until about nine or half past nine, when the mall closed at about nine or half past nine, and I took one last look at the page number I was reading, closed the book and put it on the shelf and left the bookstore. At that time, there was no "smile service", and there was no etiquette of a concierge standing at the door and bowing down and saying "welcome", but she did not refuse people like me who had no money to buy books to read the books they were interested in. My friend and I walked back to the middle school founded by Mr. Sun Weiru on the bank of the Bahe River, and our exchange of reading experiences continued until the school gate. Before going to bed, drink a large bowl of salt water to lull yourself to sleep, because hunger has already stirred your stomach crazy. In the rapid movement of more than 20 miles, the dinner that was not full has already been digested. The amount of exercise and calorie loss from such an after-school activity may go far beyond doing homework and having only two PE classes a week.

Also in this relaxed period without the pressure of homework, I organized a literary club with Chang Zhiwen and Chen Xinyu, three literature lovers. Suffering from liking literature and always unable to find a way to create, the literary club was named the "Door Touching Group". The name alone shows that we were anxious and hesitant about the mood and mood of creation at that time. At the same time as the establishment of the Literary Society, it was decided to establish a literary wall newspaper, and the name was set as "New Sprouts", which is not without the meaning of a small lotus that has only revealed a sharp corner. This is a purely literary poster, not the kind of poster that commemorates major festivals. The novels, essays and poems published by "New Sprouts" must be written by the members of the literary club themselves, and of course students are also welcome to contribute.

In the inaugural issue, one of my essays, "Returning at Night", was published. Chen Xinyu encouraged me to submit this essay to the press, but I lacked the courage to submit it. My friend wrote it down and sent it to the Literature and Art Department of Shaanxi Daily. In less than a month, Xinyu came from home one day and excitedly told me that the newspaper had sent a letter. His excited expression naturally conveyed to me a certain hope, a certain eagerness mixed with luck. The content of the letter affirmed the strengths of the prose, but also pointed out the flaws, and the key word was for me to revise it and send it as soon as possible. It was only at this moment that I was really excited, and it seemed that I was really about to "touch" that sacred and mysterious "door". I quickly made the changes, sent it again, and began to wait eagerly and painfully for a letter to inform me of an almost undesirable message. Waiting to go to the school's newspaper reading column every day to read the "Shaanxi Daily" is naturally the third edition of the literary and artistic works. This was the first time in my career that I had waited for a submission, and for the first time I felt the eagerness and anxiety that was mixed with hope and disappointment. The miracle finally did not happen, and I squeezed out this emotion in the intense preparation for the college entrance examination that followed.

After finishing high school and losing the college entrance examination, I returned to my hometown in the initial pain of having no choice but to be selected by the commune as a private teacher, and this is when I really started my amateur literary creation. In the spring of the following year, I revised "Night Return" again and submitted it to "Shaanxi Daily" again, and soon a letter came, affirming the strengths and hinting at the shortcomings, and still asked me to revise it and send it again. Once again, I was in anticipation. After a long wait, I finally couldn't bear it anymore, and took the opportunity of the school to hold some activities in Xi'an, and found the "Shaanxi Daily" with its office located in Dongdajie. I hesitated at the door of the newspaper office, unable to think of how to speak when I entered the newspaper's literary and art department, and the thick fog of inferiority and shyness could not be removed. I finally walked in, saw a few editors sitting at a few desks in the art department, and I asked the one at the door. None of my essays are in the hands of the editors present, so I speculate that it must have been in the hands of an editor who had gone to the countryside to exercise, but it would take him about half a year to finish his work. The kind editor very sincerely hinted to me that if I could send any manuscript, I would definitely give it to the editorial department. Since I didn't explain the essay, I definitely can't publish it. When I walked out of the deep courtyard of the "Shaanxi Daily", my direct feeling was that the "door" was still far away, and any luck that was easily "touched" was naturally dispersed, but it was relaxed, and of course the inferiority complex could not be resolved. I still can't tell if there was Lu Zhenyue among the editors present at the time, because I hardly dare to look at anyone else except for talking to the editor who also doesn't know his name. Standing at the door of the Shaanxi Daily, looking back at the arched gatehouse and the people hurrying in and out of the gate, I still couldn't help but feel ashamed of my inferiority. It was the first time in my life that I walked through the door of a newspaper to inquire about a study I had submitted, and the memory I left behind is indelible. When I was invited by Lao Lu to his office to read the readers' letters, what swelled up in my heart was the memory of the complex psychology when I first entered more than ten years ago. I talked to Lao Lu about this, and Lao Lu laughed and said that he had no memory, and there were too many amateur authors from all walks of life who came in and out of the art department at that time. I still can't figure out who the editor who wrote twice to encourage me to revise and resubmit, and each time he wrote without his name, only with the signature of the Ministry of Literature and Art. It wasn't until the spring of 1965 that I broke the original framework of this essay, re-conceived and re-wrote, and changed the name to "Night Over the Quicksand Ditch", but I didn't have the courage to vote for the "Provincial Newspaper" and changed to the "City Newspaper", which was soon published in the literary supplement of the "Xi'an Evening News". This was my first work to appear in a newspaper, and it took four years, two revisions, one rewrite, and five postings before it could be published. While I am grateful to the editor of the Xi'an Evening News who published it, I am also grateful to the editor of the Shaanxi Daily who wrote to me twice to encourage me to revise it. In the long process of revising this prose, I was "touching the door", or the initial exploration, and the long process of revising and publishing this debut novel was actually a microcosm of my basic literary practice at the beginning of this unforgiving career. When I talked to Lao Lu about this, in addition to the emotion of the arduous journey, there was also a desire for psychological compensation, and I thought that the editor who wrote to me twice would be best to appear in this office at this moment, and I would extend my most sincere greetings and thanks to him. Those two letters were the first letters I received from a newspaper editor in my career. Lao Lu also sighed.

The July issue of People's Literature reprinted "Trust". At that time, the "Novel Monthly" and other selected periodicals had not yet been established, and "People's Literature" had a special column that reprinted the excellent works of various publications, with about one or two articles per issue.

In the first spring of the '80s, the editor of People's Literature wrote me a letter informing me that Trust had won the 1979 National Award for Outstanding Short Stories. At that time, the award was judged by readers' voting, and as soon as the results of the vote count came out, the top 20 were determined. I immediately told Lu Zhenyue about this, and he was as happy as I was. Looking back now, whether it was me or him, it seems that at the time I didn't think this award was too great, but later I felt more and more that this kind of national award was really amazing. The first is that this kind of award is regarded as a kind of symbol, and the evaluation of professional titles, promotions, salaries, and so on have become a piece of hardware; second, the competition for this kind of award has become more and more fierce, and the annual short story award alone has abolished the method of readers' voting and replaced it with a vote by the judges, and there are rumors that non-literary factors affect the award. I am not detached from the literary world, nor am I indifferent to fame and fortune, I never say anything indifferent to fame and fortune. I still think that the literary world itself is a vanity fair, and you can't be indifferent unless you leave. The essence of the problem lies in what means to increase "popularity" and obtain "profits", and the only reliable way can only be to come up with works with one's own unique feelings, that is, to use literary factors to achieve the purpose of literary creation, and any non-literary factors cannot achieve long-term results. An award for a short story of less than 7,000 words cannot determine the development of my future creation, and the future has just begun. Not only am I not very confident in my future creative development, but I am still confused by my inferiority. Because any writer who can be remembered by us does not rely on a small short story to forge his literary achievements and prove his literary talent, this is the ABC of literary history. When the notice of the award came, my heart did not move at all, my farmer's wife had a heart attack for more than a month, and I had to accompany her to the hospital to see a doctor, so I asked for leave and was absent.

As the first national literary award of the Renaissance in the new era, the Short Story Award, this is the second award, and the award ceremony is very grand, and I saw the news in the newspaper. One day after that, I took my wife, who was slightly ill, back from the city to see a doctor on my bicycle, walked to a village seven or eight miles away from my home, stopped a car, and walked out of Xiao Yunru, a literary critic from Shaanxi Daily. They drove to my village and pounced, and bumped into it when they turned back. He said that the leaders of the newspaper's literature and art department attached great importance to the award of "Trust", and it was rare for a work as a supplement of the newspaper to win an award in the whole country, and asked me to write a short article on his acceptance speech, and Lao Lu entrusted him because he was unwell. Later, I wrote a creative talk entitled "I Believe in the Ideas of Liu Qing's Three Schools", which was the first time I had written an article about creation since I started writing.

This year, the Literature and Art Department of "Shaanxi Daily" launched the "Rural Theme Novel Essay Competition", and Lao Lu wrote me a letter to encourage me to apply. I have been assigned from the original suburban cultural center to the Baqiao District Cultural Bureau, and have been promoted to deputy director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau and deputy director of the Cultural Center. In order to avoid trivial distractions, I lived in the cultural center of Baqiao Town and devoted myself to reading and writing. After receiving Lao Lu's letter, I wrote the short story "The First Knife", and I understood the limit of 7,000 words without a warning. This novel was also appreciated by Lao Lu, and it was reported at the fastest speed of the week. Since then, a number of letters have been received from readers, and three articles have been selected. This is a novel about the family contradictions and the psychological conflicts between the fathers and sons that have just emerged in the rural areas where the responsibility system has just been implemented, and it is understandable that it has aroused the general attention of readers. Although I was awarded the highest award at the end of the essay competition, I was also very sober and lively, and I couldn't dig deeper. However, my reflections on rural economic reform were triggered by this chapter, which led to the completion of my first novella, Early Summer.

In 1982, my first collection of novels, The Village, was published, and it was natural that Lao Lu was indispensable on my list of books to give. This collection contains three novels that he wrote with encouragement and encouragement, and they are of special significance at a critical time in my creative development. This winter, I was transferred to the professional creation group of the Provincial Writers Association. After gaining complete control over time, I immediately felt that I had reached the ideal state of my life: professional creation. Almost at the same time, I decided to simply return to my hometown, calm down completely, go to study, go back to the savings of 20 years of working at the grassroots level in the countryside, and write my own novels. Especially in reading, it is necessary to make up for the knowledge gap and mental emptiness that failed to accept the specialized study of the Chinese department of the university, and it is necessary to see the grand view of art created by famous Chinese and foreign works, go deeper into the real art world, and figure out the original connotation of real literature, so as to completely eliminate non-literary factors and additional loads imposed on literature for various purposes, and get closer to the original meaning of real literature. I remember that I went to Shaanxi Daily to tell Lao Lu about his plan to return to his hometown, and he still sighed in a high-profile manner, and sincerely said that writing is not good by being lively, and you have to come up with good goods.

Returning to the old house of the ancestral home, there is a short adaptation period. It is very pleasant for me to occasionally find the village by literary friends and editor of the manuscript, including many of the latest news and anecdotes in the literary world. Occasionally, I received a letter from Lao Lu, which is still a brush with an obvious personality of an old cultured person, or an inquiry or an invitation, which is very warm to read. After the novella "Early Summer" was published in "Contemporary", he received a long letter from Lao Lu, saying that he liked this novel very much, not entirely because of "The First Knife". When this novella won the "Contemporary" literary award, I told him the news, and Lao Lu patted the armrest of the simple sofa like a child and sighed loudly, which seemed to verify his reading feeling. He said that he had seen the catalogue of the advertisement of Contemporary, and that he had gone to the newspaper sales department of the post office to buy the magazine, and that after reading it, he had written me the long letter. In 1986, when the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House published my first collection of novellas titled Early Summer, I rushed from the countryside to Xi'an and found Lao Lu's house. At that time, he was retired and lived in a bungalow house on Tanshi Street. When I gave me this collection, he flipped through it and said that he had read most of the novellas included in that collection. He told me that he had to read my work whenever he found it in any magazine, and that he would find it himself whenever he heard that I had published a novel somewhere. He candidly said that his feelings about those novels, the many aspects of good and regret, were far from the depth of the conversation he had when "Trust" or "The First Knife" was published. This time, it was an important contact for me to understand Lao Lu more deeply. I was genuinely touched by this dude. He has retired, he no longer deals with me for newspaper supplements, and he pays attention to my work and the development of my writing, at least out of a pure concern about an author with whom he has dealt, just that he has liked the work of this author and has worked hard, just that he likes this author himself, but he hopes that the creation of this author he likes will develop more healthily. This is enough, it is enough for me, the author who has been helped by him, to experience the sincerity of being praised in the world, enough for me to re-understand the good intentions of being a professional editor of Chinese literature, and if I have not forgotten this at any time, I believe that my tail will be clamped tightly, and enough for me to understand that creation, which is an obvious sign of personal labor, actually has the power of a richer society to urge people to struggle. Bid farewell to Lao Lu and return to his ancestral home, and the book "Early Summer" will be classified as yesterday's yellow flower. I have to use a new art form to give a professional literary editor like Lao Lu a topic to talk about when we meet, including more readers who still like my novels. Friendship in the true literary sense gives me this kind of impact.

When I heard that Lao Lu was sick, I was shocked that I found his new home on a summer evening. I learned that he had a disease that is difficult to cure with today's medical standards, so I asked Zheng Wenhua, who is good at photography, to take a group photo. We've been together for twenty years, and we haven't even taken a group photo, I don't care about this kind of photo, he doesn't care about this form of thing, we've met many times in the past twenty years, but no one has thought of taking a group photo. It was the first time I went to a nearby fruit shop to buy fruit. In the past 20 years, I have been to the editorial office where he works and his home many times, and I have never brought a single gift, not a box of cigarettes or a bottle of wine. At that time, I didn't seem to be interested in this set, and I didn't have this kind of awareness, as if holding this kind of thing would embarrass both him and me. He is sick now, he is a sick person, and according to my psychology and habits, it is customary to visit the sick and bring fruit. He was in a wheelchair and could not sit on a soft sofa because of bone damage caused by his illness. He said he had been out of the hospital for a long time and was in stable condition. He was thinner than ever, his face was still good, he still had the red color of his old days, and he did not show much of the tiredness and melancholy of a serious illness on the surface. He still speaks in a loud and loud voice, almost without any change or difference from my previous impressions, perhaps because of his natural strength. I talked to him about his condition, but he asked more about my current work and writing, which was not without regret, and even inspired me to leave Xi'an quickly and find a new place to study and write. He was so emotional about his deep understanding of me, it was not easy to write to this extent, and it would be too much loss to waste time...... Yunyun. I was speechless, and I didn't want to tell him about my distress. I've heard the same sentiments from many of my friends, but I don't want him to do it for me anymore. I tried to talk to him in a light-hearted way, including reminiscing about our past anecdotes, and he laughed out loud and happy. I left him my five-volume Anthology, which I had just published, and he asked if "White Deer Plain" had been included. I said that all the major works were included. He said that he had already read "White Deer Plain", and constantly sighed about the reading feeling from his compilation of "Trust" to "White Deer Plain". When I went out, he still encouraged me to look down on everything, to look down on everything, and to make two more books, it was not easy to get to this extent......

I received a letter from Lao Lu, and I knew it by looking at the big calligraphy on the small envelope. When I opened the envelope, I found a page of his short note and a clip-and-paste article from a newspaper, which was a short essay on "White Deer Plain" that he published in the "Shaanxi Daily". My heart sank, I read the text message and then the short talk, and I was silent for a long time and didn't know what to do. He has reached the advanced stage of bone cancer, what kind of pain he endured, he still has to write such a short article, and he still has to express his views and opinions on the fact that the book "White Deer Plain" won the Mao Dun Literature Award. By then, the excitement about the book and the award had long since passed, and I was no longer giving media interviews on the subject. In the five years since the publication of the book "White Deer Plain", I have seen many critics, writers, journalists and readers, long or short, long or short review articles, I have listened to them calmly and calmly, but this short article by Lao Lu suddenly pushed me into the waves of emotion, and I can't regard it as a "review" in any case...... This is the last letter I received from Lao Lu, the kung fu is so old that the pen is strong!

This spring, I received a call from Lao Lu's family, and it was the bad news reported by a choked female voice. When I arrived at Lao Lu's house that night, I could only face a photo wrapped in black veil. I stood in front of the spiritual table and my legs trembled, looking at the high-spirited and bright face in the photo, tears poured out at once, and I wanted to call Lao Lu and finally choked up. His wife told me that the set of Collected Works, which he had given me, had been planted on the table with a bookcase, and had not been stuffed into his bookshelf until he died. Again I burst into tears, but I couldn't say anything.

Walking on the East Street at night, the colorful neon lights are the new appearance of this ancient city. It seemed to be drizzling in the sky, and I walked awkwardly. In my novel, Bai Jiaxuan's life sigh, which I praised and criticized, poured out of my heart: The best literary editor in the world has passed away!

November 9, 1999 in Liquan