Yuancun: Hello Mr. Chen! The news that your novel "White Deer Plain" won the 4th Mao Dun Literature Award has just arrived, and all the comrades of "Yan'an Literature" magazine are overjoyed and rush to tell each other. I was commissioned by Cao Guxi, editor-in-chief of Yan'an Literature, to first congratulate you and interview you about the award of "White Deer Plain".

Chen Zhongzhong: Gu Xi and Yan'an Literature are both old friends and good friends of mine. Thank you comrades and friends for your concern and support for me! You are the first reporter I received after "White Deer Plain" won the award, and I am happy to answer your questions.

Tomura: Are you surprised that your novel "White Deer Plain" won the 4th Mao Dun Literature Award, or is it already in your mind?

Chen Zhongzhong: Neither of these cases. I'm not surprised, and I shouldn't say I'm sure I'm sure of it. Because, I still know the award process of the previous Mao Dun Literature Awards. It should be said that a mature writer is very clear about what he has achieved and what he has not achieved in his work. That is to say, the overall idea of a writer at the beginning of creating a work reaches several percent to the final result of his creation, and the writer himself understands better than others in his heart, and the gains and losses are of course very sober. "White Deer Plain" is a family history to reflect the changes and development of modern Chinese society, and there are many works of the same theme, each writer integrates his own experience and artistic pursuit into his works, and makes his own unique and brave exploration. Naturally, I did my own exploration. A serious and mature writer should be able to look at all this objectively and calmly, without being arrogant or boastful. Because, artistic creation is a real thing, writing a book is to communicate with readers, one person writes, tens of millions of readers are looking at it, and strengths and shortages cannot escape the reader's scrutiny. As for the awards, as far as I know, all previous awards have to consider works of various themes, genres, and artistic techniques, so works that are not awarded are not necessarily not excellent. Therefore, the fact that "White Deer Plain" can win awards cannot be said to be in the chest. Of course, I'm very happy to receive this award. Because, winning the award shows that the readers and judges are an affirmation of my exploration and labor in creating "White Deer Plain", and it is also an encouragement for my future creation.

Tomura: The Mao Dun Literary Award has been held for four times, what do you think of each award-winning work, and how do you evaluate the value and significance of the Mao Dun Literary Award itself?

Chen Zhongzhong: The Mao Dun Literature Award has been held for four times, and it should be said that the selected works in each session are excellent novels of that year. Whether it reflects the breadth and depth of life, or the artistic form, we can see that the award-winning works have undergone great changes in recent years, and we can also see that our long-form creations are constantly moving towards a more mature goal, although it cannot include all the excellent works of all ages, but this does not affect our judgment of the efforts made by Chinese writers in the creation of novels through the Mao Dun Literature Award. As for the Mao Dun Literary Award itself, I think that the purpose and intention of Mr. Mao Dun, a literary master, to set up this award with his own manuscript fee is very clear, and it reflects the high hopes placed by the older generation of writers on the creation of novels and the later generations of writers. Its authority and influence are also affirmed, everyone not only pays attention to the works of the awards, but more importantly, stimulates people's attention to China's long-form creations through the awards. As a writer, I also pay close attention to the awards that are held every year. Because as a national literary award, only by selecting the best works published in different years (which is the common wish of all sectors of society) can it truly reflect the true level of novel creation. Therefore, the significance of the establishment of the Mao Dun Literature Award lies in the fact that it inspires Chinese writers to continue to create excellent works in the field of novels that can mark the level of novels at different stages, and also provides us with excellent reading models.

Tomura: The Mao Dun Literary Award is the most authoritative award for novels, so how do you understand the purpose of the award, which is to "reflect the spirit of the times"?

Chen Zhongzhong: As the most authoritative literary award in China, I think it is natural that the purpose of the award is to "reflect the spirit of the times". As a writer who is the subject of literature, it is very important to truly reproduce the pain and joy experienced by the country and the nation in various historical periods through his own experience and understanding. He always closely integrated his thoughts and emotions and the focus of his greatest attention with the fate of the nation, not artificially approaching, but naturally paying attention to it. As a long novel of the era, it reflects the spirit of the times, reveals the spirit of the times, and reveals the mental state of the people of that era in the work, not only the smooth triumphant song, but also the pain, difficulty, and even the pessimism of some people in the process of struggle, pursuit and exploration. As long as the essence of that era is accurately grasped and expressed through its own different forms of artworks, it will reflect the spirit of the times from different aspects. This reminds me of a quote from the biographical writer Mr. Owen Stone, who said of Jack London in "The Sailor on Horseback": "He has always pressed his hot hand to the pulse of the times." "I think a person who is responsible for the past, present, and future of the country and the nation, if his hand does not press the pulse of the times, where does he put it? As far as I am concerned, I am afraid that my rough hand does not hold the pulse of the times. As you know, almost all of my short and medium stories in the past are works that focus on the changes in real life, and only "White Deer Plain" is written about history, but even "White Deer Plain" is a reflection of the development process of our nation in the past 50 years, and fully reproduces the various spiritual processes of people caused by the changes in the social order and human psychological order of that period, or in other words, I strive to show the historical process of our nation in those 50 years, and I am trying to pursue a historical truth. Therefore, I think the spirit of the times should be a broad concept, and in this sense, "White Deer Plain", as a historical theme, is also intended to reflect the spirit of the times. Thanks to the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the restoration of truth, my artistic concept has enhanced my understanding, especially with reference to past historical developments, and strengthened my view of the nature of society. If there is something commendable about "White Deer Plain", I think it is nothing more than that I have achieved the truth of historical life.

Tomura: After the publication of your novel "White Deer Plain", it was called an epic work by readers and critics, what do you think are the main characteristics of the epic quality of literary works?

Chen Zhongzhong: After the publication of "White Deer Plain", some readers and critics have said this, but whether a work is an epic work or not should be tested by history. From the perspective of epicness, first of all, a work should truly and accurately reflect the pulse and spirit of the times in the historical stage it reflects, and the value of history is the truth of life; on the other hand, the height of artistic pursuit should also be the literary level of that era. Therefore, epic works are not only a matter of length, but more importantly, the depth and breadth of the work itself. For example, "Sheep Fat Ball", a novel of only tens of thousands of words, you can say that it is a novella, or a short story, but it can be called an epic work; for example, "The Dawn Is Quiet Here" truly and vividly reproduces the real psychology of the Soviet people in that anti-aggression war during the Great Patriotic War, and I think it is an epic. It is generally easy to have the illusion that an epic work should be a large work of great length, but in fact, a small work can also be an epic work, and the key is quality and taste.

Tomura: Some people say that novels are "1) a symphony in literature, 2) an encyclopedia of social life, 3) a monumental article of an era, and 4) a secret history of a nation". What do you think, which statement is closer to your literary ideals and long-form creative pursuits?

Chen Zhongzhong: I think all four of these views can be valid. We can find specimens of these four statements when we read our traditional four masterpieces and the classic novels of Europe, America, Soviet and Russia, that is to say, the novel is not a prescribed category, the key is that the writer himself wants to write his novel into a symphony or an encyclopedia, or a secret history, the decisive factors are many, but the most fundamental factor is the inner spirit of the era that the writer is concerned about, and it is this spirit that determines the style of the work, and the writer's experience and feelings about that era stipulate the form of the work. My choice of "White Deer Plain" is because I have my own feelings about some things that others have not written about our nation in the course of history, or I have a new understanding and recognition of the rare parts of the national spirit. Therefore, I stipulated that "White Deer Plain" should develop in the direction of secret history, which naturally explains why I like Balzac's definition of fiction. The development of a nation is full of hardships and hardships, and it is necessary to constantly strip away its decaying things, and stripping itself is a painful process. The nearly 50 years of social revolution in the first half of this century in our nation can very well illustrate this point, judging from the process of overthrowing the imperial system, the warlord melee, and the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the separation is slow and gradual, and it is not like the American War of Independence, which can establish a new order with only one complete stripping, and each of our stripping is not complete, and for the upper strata it is a continuous change of power, while for the people it is a process of psychological and spiritual stripping, so the national psychology suffers even more. In "White Deer Plain", I try to fully reflect the various contradictions and conflicts and national mental journey of our nation in the process of continuous separation in the past 50 years. In our feudal system of thousands of years, many decadent things have deep roots, and some things have penetrated into our blood, and the best things and new things can only be repeatedly stripped away to establish their position.

Tomura: As far as I know, you have studied a lot of Eastern and Western long-form classics before composing long-form works, what do you think is the focus of identifying a good long-form work? Has our country's long-form writing since the new era entered a stage of classic writing, and can it be on an equal footing with the contemporary creations of the West?

Chen Zhongzhong: In the preparation stage for the creation of "White Deer Plain", in addition to other preparations, the artistic preparation was also quite serious. At that time, one of the people who studied my works a lot was Meng Wanfu of Northwestern University, and when he heard that I was going to write a long novel, he told me to pay attention to the structure, and he said that when you write a novel with such a large span, the structure is very important, and if you don't get it right, it will become "a bunch of meat when you lift it up, and a mess when you put it down", that is, a pile of meat without bones! Because, the novel I want to write has a large historical span, a large number of events, and many characters, and this kind of problem will occur if the structure is not good. So, I'm stressed. In this case, I have studied a lot of long classics from the East and the West, but the result of reading has relieved my stress, why? Because, I found that no work has the same structure as another work, even if the work of the same writer does not have the same structure, which makes me understand that any kind of structure is a writer's innovation, no writer can rely on the framework of others to contain the content of life he wants to express, any work is a new form of creation of the writer, that is to say, our own structure must be created by ourselves, if we are limited to using the form created by others to carry out our own writing activities, it is a repetition. Anyway, if someone else has used it, try not to use it, and if you have used it yourself, you can't reuse it. Only by bringing out a work with a new artistic style can we strive for its survival value. In response to some problems in the development of literature at that time, I consciously read some works. At that time, there was an unprecedented phenomenon that writers had to pay for their own books, and literature fell into a trough. I was writing this novel in the countryside at the time, and I couldn't escape the question that the literary depression must have something to do with the business boom, but not all writers could go to sea, and how writers could attract readers away from other cultural entertainments was crucial. At that time, the media was hyping up a writer named Shelton in the United States, and almost every one of his novels became a bestseller all over the world, and I thought, in a society like the United States, the commercial atmosphere must be stronger than ours, and there are more entertainment methods than ours, so why can novels still sell so well? After I found Shelton's works and read them, what moved me the most was that the stories and plots of his novels were very vivid, and at that time, a new artistic viewpoint was emerging in China's literary circles, proposing no theme, no story, There is no plot, etc., but Sheldon is the opposite, he occupies the book market with vivid stories, profound themes, and soon occupies the Chinese market, which makes me more determined that my long-form writing should have the vividness of the story, including readability. Because writers don't just write novels for critics, but more importantly for readers, you can't help but consider the reader's reading emotions. In order to attract readers, to attract readers by clever artistic means, not to be vulgarly pandering, the development of novels to the contemporary era, writers cannot but consider the effect of readers' participation in the whole literary activity.

Since the new period of novels, the subject matter has been very wide, almost every field has been involved in the writer, both in quantity and quality, it has indeed developed a lot, last year officially published nearly 700 novels, which shows that the momentum of the novel is very good, but readers and critics have high requirements for the novel, and there are not many works that have caused a wide sensation, which raises a question, the quality of long-form creation needs to be improved urgently, for which the country has also called for the production of high-quality products, as for whether a work has become a classic, it is difficult to judge in contemporary times. Contemporary people can feel the artistic power that is really exciting when the work comes out, but it cannot be said that it is a classic, and it needs to be tested by time. Any writer wants to devote his whole life to creating an immortal work, but whether it can be immortal or not has to be left to history to test, what a writer can do is to fully reflect his experience of life in his works, so as to reach a certain artistic height.

Tomura: As an award-winning writer, do you have a bigger goal, for example, do you hope that your future works will win international awards, and what meaningful work should Chinese writers do in terms of cultural inheritance and novel innovation?

Chen Zhongzhong: As a writer, whether it is a domestic award, an international award or a provincial award, as long as you give an award, it is a good thing, it is a magazine's award, and it is also happy, because it is an affirmation of the writer's labor and an encouragement to the writer. As for international and domestic awards, there is a big difference. There are many international awards, but the real authority is the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in recent years, two or three newspapers have invited me to participate in the discussion of whether Chinese writers should win the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I have declined them. It is not that I do not participate in the discussion. Today, for the first time, I would like to confess to you my views on the Nobel Prize. The previous award-winning works of the Nobel Prize in Literature are the excellent works of the best writers from different countries and nationalities, but we should also see that the award-winning writers of the past ten editions are very different, and the one that impresses me the most is the writer Marquez, who has had a wide influence in the world, and reading the works of other writers, I deeply feel that there is a big difference from the artistic height achieved by "One Hundred Years of Solitude". If Marquez is used as a yardstick, then it is quite difficult for Chinese writers to win the Nobel Prize, and if we want to compare with the few novel writers who have won awards in recent years, I think there should be Chinese writers who can win the Nobel Prize. It is generally accepted that there is too much difference between Chinese and English and other languages, and there is a lot to lose when translating Chinese into English, and there are too few works that can be translated into English. When I visited Italy that year, I only translated one of Deng Youmei's books, The Smoking Bottle, and the names of Chinese writers were very unfamiliar there. As for awards, it's not just that whoever wants to get it gets it. Almost all the award-winning writers were surprised when they received the award from the Royal Swedish Academy, and from their surprise, we can see that none of the writers thought of it in advance or looked forward to it. Then, Chinese writers should not think about the Nobel Prize in Literature all day long, let alone write for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which hinders the artistic development of writers. If one day, a Chinese writer really wins this award, it is also worthy of our pride. But we must maintain a good creative mentality, fully grasp our own experience, and form our own artistic style, because winning the award itself does not mean anything. In terms of novel innovation, we have not yet created a new genre that has had an international impact, and the only thing that belongs to us is the chapter hui novel, which is our heirloom, and it has also produced great works, such as the four famous novels, which also have diversity in subject matter. However, in terms of the development of novels, the most free and most varied is Russian literature, which has had a wide influence on European and American literature, Japanese literature, and the literature of other parts of the world. And after the tricks, it is possible that there will be art forms that truly belong to us to be created by Chinese writers.

Tomura: After "White Deer Plain", you are in a period of relative calm. Some people predict that after a period of recuperation, you will have a more perfect masterpiece coming out, and some people say that "White Deer Plain" is the pinnacle of your life's creation, and with your age and physical strength, I am afraid it is difficult to surpass the overall level of "White Deer Plain". What do you think of it yourself?

Chen Zhongzhong: First of all, I think that people who hold this view are concerned about my work. I myself have heard such discussions after the publication of "White Deer Plain", which shows that everyone is concerned about my creation. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to our readers and friends. Let me give you a brief overview of this period. It has been four years since the publication of "White Deer Plain", and these four years have also been the four years since I assumed the leadership responsibility of the Shaanxi Provincial Writers' Association. After "White Deer Plain", I met the provincial writers' association, and I was elected as the chairman of the Shaanxi Provincial Writers' Association, and when I took office, the situation of the writers' association at that time was not satisfactory, the economy was tight, the electricity bill was lacking, the car stopped, the office wall was sunken, the roof collapsed, etc., since I held this position, I couldn't watch everyone live in such a predicament. As a result of these specific tasks, the office building of the Writers' Association is about to be built, the medical conditions of the veteran writers have also been improved, and the various departments of the Writers' Association have basically formed orderly work. On the other hand, in the past four years, we have also tried our best to grasp the construction of Shaanxi's young creative team. The older generation of writers has spent a lot of effort on the construction of a contingent of writers of our generation, so the responsibility of supporting and building a contingent of younger writers in Shaanxi falls on the shoulders of our generation. Therefore, the Writers' Association has held two long-form creation seminars and a youth creation symposium, and has given support and encouragement to the creation of Shaanxi writers through the association's two publications, "Yanhe" and "Novel Review". In 1994, there was also a symposium on essays, and the response was very good. At the same time, after the completion of "White Deer Plain", my emotional adjustment to novel writing was not optimal, that is, I seemed to have lost some kind of passion for fiction. Readers have high expectations of me, and I can't write lightly without full creative passion, so as not to disappoint them. So, I haven't even written short stories in the past few years, but I have only written some essays and essays, and I have published two collections of essays. Of course, there have been some gains in the past few years, and I have also gained some experience of urban life by presiding over the work of the agency and improving the working conditions. In particular, I lived in the city and got to know some businessmen and people from all walks of life, which gave me some new feelings, but this feeling has not yet reached the level of forming a work, so I don't dare to write in a hurry. Whether the future creation is a masterpiece or not, whether it will surpass "White Deer Plain", I don't think about this question at all. This is a law of artistic creation, and for me, "White Deer Plain" has become history, and there is no need to compete with it. I remember that after "White Deer Plain" came out, I had a conversation with the critic Li Xing, Li Xing asked this question, and I told Li Xing that I would never be on the original of "White Deer Plain" again. Today, I still give you these words. I just respect my own life experience and artistic sense. What kind of work can be formed in the end, then write what kind of work to dedicate to the reader. I don't repeat others or myself, as long as I have the value of independent survival, as long as I really achieve the goals I have experienced and pursued, I feel gratified, because they are all my children.

(Originally published in Yan'an Literature, No. 6, 1997)