Composition is a way to dialogue with the world, a way to communicate with the world, a way to express the soul, and a way to tap the soul.

(○Student ● Yu Qiuyu)

○What advice do you have for writing for middle school students?

● I was thinking about a question just now: What is the whole deal with writing for middle school students?

I don't think of writing as the start of a career too early. Essay contests can only change the choices of a few. If you win an award, you want a career - if that's the case, I think it's a big deal. When the school teachers teach us to write well, they don't want to pre-train a group of writers in our young lives. Our country and society don't need so many writers, and having more writers is not necessarily a good thing. There are thousands of career choices we face, and we don't have to stick to one or make a choice too early.

In fact, in this era when literacy has become more popular, writing is first of all to practice a way of communicating with society and people, if you learn good writing skills, you will actually learn a good way to communicate with people, learn a way to talk to the world - this is an important beginning of a healthy life.

I have read Mr. Yang Chenning's article, and I have also read Mr. Lee Tsung-dao's article. I was amazed after reading it - how they wrote so well! If their prose is as good as the writers, the writers are already ashamed, because they still have such remarkable achievements in physics, and the writers do not, but their prose is better than many of our writers, what does this mean? - They actually acquired a way of dialogue and communication with the world, with others, and with life relatively early. No matter what kind of profession you are engaged in, this skill is an important beginning of a healthy life, and it is a way to tap and express your inner soul. A soul that is not excavated and expressed cannot be profound or broadened. The unexpressed soul cannot be constantly reorganized. To constantly express yourself is to constantly build your own soul. When you are impressed by a good way of formulating, it is actually the soul behind the language that makes you feel attractive, not its subject predicate that is attractive. We must learn to express our souls, tap our souls, and then better communicate and dialogue with the world.

The more profound person will move on to another level, seeing the composition as the starting point for the thinker. For example, if you are writing an essay now, trying to say something that no one else has said, and you feel happy and satisfied, it means that you have begun to enter the level of thinking, and you have to create a spark of thought that has never existed in this world, and you have to ignite it. Over time, when you have more knowledge, you become a good thinker. In order to think, you need to have more material to use as the raw material for your thinking. So, you become an observer. A thinker is necessarily an observer.

Composition is not just a predictable profession, a nod from a language teacher, a joy that can be passed on among classmates – not exactly. To sum up, composition is a way to dialogue with the world, a way to communicate with the world, a way to express the soul, and a way to tap the soul; Composition is more likely to make some of them a more conscious thinker and observer. Composition is a necessary quality for modern people who go beyond specific major choices.

○ Now there are many students like Han Han, who began to devote themselves to writing at the age of sixteen, seventeen, or even twelve or thirteen. What do you think of this tendency to write at a young age?

As a special phenomenon, it has a reason for existence, but we should not consider all the special phenomena in society as general. For example, there is such a situation in the literary world now, some writers have created some relatively special novels, and immediately some critics say, what if the novels are written like this! But how can novels all be written like that? I think there are some people who start writing at a very young age, and that's not a bad thing in a country with a lot of people. We want to tolerate the special. Han Han has dropped out of school to write—it is impossible for everyone to drop out of school to write, there will never be such a thing. There are some precocious people in ancient and modern times, both in China and abroad, who began to write at a very young age, and some writers lived to be eighty or ninety years old, but his best work is his debut novel at the age of 19. Of course, I am not saying that Han Han will definitely become a great writer in the future, and I have no malice to say that his best works must be written now, and he will not be able to write better ones in the future. I just think we should never take the special for granted. I don't know Han Han. If I read his articles, I might be able to have a cross-age conversation with him and see what he needs to read more and where he needs to be more fleshed out from my point of view. Maybe his article will surprise me. I have had such an experience, and it is true that the works of my classmates have brought me great freshness and impact.

○ Mr. Yang Zhenning said in an interview that no one in China has won the Nobel Prize in Literature so far, probably because some foreign literary critics think that China's literary creation methods are too conservative. In addition, with the development of mechanical civilization to this day, should literature get rid of the current status quo and sublimate into a purely spiritual realm?

● Your question contains several small questions. Mr. Yang Zhenning said that our literature as a whole is relatively conservative in its artistic approach, and there is a lack of innovation in its creative methods, which I think is probably the case. This is different from your writing, it is a different category. Our overall approach to creation – not just the way we think – lacks innovation. Innovation is very important in literature, in art, in science, in any field. We learn the basic norms of composition in middle school, and we need to understand the traditional expressions of Chinese language, but if you really want to become a writer in the future, you have to understand that you have to be a creator, and you must not repeat the way people think and express themselves. Due to many historical reasons of Chinese culture, the innovative spirit of Chinese culture is far from sufficient. I know the history of China, and I know that China's creative momentum began to weaken after the Tang Dynasty – the Song Dynasty was okay – and then it weakened quite a bit. Of course, there are some exceptions, but the creativity of society as a whole is declining. After the reform and opening up, all aspects of society have developed relatively well, but it is obviously far from enough to re-arouse the creative momentum in the field of cultural thinking, and Mr. Yang Zhenning's criticism is certainly correct. He is a patriotic scientist, and there are comparisons between Western culture and Chinese culture, and there are comparisons from high vantage points, so I trust his judgment more. Not only culture, but we need innovation in many aspects, including technology.

As for whether literature should get rid of secular life in such an era of rapid technological development in the current era of rapid technological development, I don't see it completely. It is important for culture to pursue the sensual communication of the spirit, and this cannot be separated from our secular images. If we completely get rid of the actual state of our lives and only think very abstractly, it will conflict with the perceptual direction of literature, because literature is not a metaphysical existence after all, and it cannot be separated from sensibility. A large part of this sensibility has to do with our worldly life, with our footprints. Writers will encounter a difficulty: they need to be able to satisfy themselves at the spiritual level, impress readers, and form the commanding heights of the social spirit; At the same time, it can't be separated from the many perceptual images given by society. Constantly groping between the two, constantly coordinating, constantly searching for their intermediaries, may be the work of all those who are engaged in literature.

〇 The ancients said: "Read 10,000 books, travel 10,000 miles." "You've been to many places in the world. How do you think these places inspire you? Which place is most interested in and impressed by the culture?

● My purpose in walking these paths is not to write. I have already said in the preface to "A Thousand Years of Sighs" that it is not worth it to go so far just to write a few articles. It was almost the adventure of life. Besides, I've already written so many articles that there's no need to take such a risk just to add a few more. I walked these paths in fact seeking images that most of us Chinese had not witnessed with our own eyes. These are images that our ancestors have not seen, our peers have not seen – and I have seen them. My vision, my thinking, may be similar to that of many Chinese. My experience was actually a collision between the Chinese living entity and the unfamiliar cultural scene. I am very interested in such a collision. Every day on "Phoenix TV", I tell everyone about the impact I felt. That has nothing to do with the article. If you write it down, there may be half-understood sentences. Of course, I also write, and the purpose of writing is to tell everyone how I feel, not just for a few articles.

That's why I said in "A Sigh for a Thousand Years" that my writing of this book is different from my previous writing of "Cultural Journey": "Cultural Journey" can be changed over and over again; After I finished writing the articles in this book on the same day, I sent them back to Hong Kong by satellite, and immediately published them in major Chinese newspapers and periodicals around the world, so there was no time for revision. What just happened in the afternoon, you have to write it out in the evening, and after you write it, you have to read it in the newspaper the next day. This is a very special state of writing - that is, it is completely different from composition, you have no information at all, and you can't have time to change the words, and "A Thousand Years of Sighs" is on the tires and steps word by word...... Write it out. This state can hardly be said to be an essay in the general sense. I follow these paths, and the main way of expression is my lens language, and then my written language. Therefore, this priority should be reversed - not for the sake of composition, composition is a by-product.

As for you asking me which place I feel the most, since I'm not here to write prose in general, it's certainly not the place with the best scenery that I feel the most. In fact, I felt the most about what I was surprised and never thought of. I have been teaching for so many years, and I have told my students many times about some places, saying how this place is, and when I go to the local area, I see that it is not right! This will give me a deep stimulation.

In "A Sigh for a Thousand Years", I said that this "sigh" is a lot of exclamation, and what surprised me was particularly deep. And the more knowledge you accumulate, the more surprises you will be. Surprise is a reversal or correction of your original knowledge; If you don't know anything, you won't be surprised. In Portugal, for example, I am amazed every day. The poorest countries in Europe are now Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland. Of these countries, I think Portugal is the one that is even further behind. Why am I surprised? I am amazed that they have occupied our Macau for so many years! The emperors of China didn't know that they were so poor! Due to the underdevelopment of information, I don't even know it at all! The Portuguese occupation of Macau was not the same as the British occupation of Hong Kong. The British occupied Hong Kong through the Opium War - we lost the Opium War, they occupied it, and at that time our country was no longer strong; Portugal occupied Macao, everyone knows that it was the Ming Dynasty - the Ming Dynasty was a very spirited time for China - the Ming Empire, and then experienced the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong in the early Qing Dynasty. Kangxi and Qianlong were so eloquent, but they had no idea that Portugal, which occupied Macau, was such a small country, not only poor, but also suffering from the largest earthquake in European history, suffering from plague, and half of the people died. When Napoleon occupied them, the entire court fled to Brazil, and we didn't know it. So I was surprised. In the age of underdeveloped information, we always regard our opponents as too powerful.

○ There is an article called "Ruins" in your "Cultural Journey". How did you come up with this article? Do you think that ruins are necessary for the evolution of human civilization?

● If human beings want to evolve, they must have a kind of transcendence of the past history and culture, and transcendence is a certain degree of negation and a certain degree of abandonment. But we can't completely abandon it, because history appears at our feet, on the territory of our lives, and the longer it passes, the more people are willing to review the footsteps of our ancestors. Therefore, this kind of place that has to be abandoned by us, and has to make us linger and remember deeply, is called ruins. The special meaning of the ruins is deep: it is a negative proof of our progress, and at the same time it is a very gentle proof of the toil and footsteps of our ancestors in a positive way. So the ruins are of great significance. I would very much like to preserve a little more cultural ruins. In Chinese vocabulary, "ruins" doesn't seem to mean very well, and we don't like it. In fact, keeping a little bit of this kind of thing seems to occupy a little space, and it doesn't look as beautiful as a high-rise building, but it can let future generations know how our country and nation came to be, which is very, very valuable. I once watched a television program about a command on the losing side of a war in the Northeast, but it was completely gone. At that time, I thought, it would be nice if this command was kept. I saw a much older Great War Headquarters in Europe, which was very well preserved, and there were many people who visited it, which made people very emotional. In Greece and Rome, as you walk, you will find a place next to a tall building that has been blocked with a rope, and a sign is erected next to it that explains what this place was 2,000 years ago - although it is only broken bricks, but everyone will face it with great respect. There are too few such places in our country. I hope that our young students here will become people who will work hard to preserve the cultural ruins of our nation - it is not our shame, but our pride.

○ Middle school students are now encouraged to study ancient poetry. I would like to ask you to share your views on the students' study of ancient poetry.

●Ancient Chinese poetry is the cultural code that Chinese culture can be passed on from the previous generation to this generation, and from this generation to the next generation. Although the superficial meaning of this cultural code can be understood, the rhythm, rhythm and expression of the code cannot be directly accepted and continued immediately by the current means of acceptance. It can only be superimposed and continued through primitive learning methods such as memorization, and after it is integrated with life. Therefore, I am completely in favor of middle school students reciting some selected ancient Chinese poems.

When I went to the Shakespeare Theatre in England, I saw a lot of secondary school students sitting in the theatre and the teacher telling them to memorize Shakespeare's famous plays. The language used in English is different now than it was in Shakespeare's time, and we know that Old English was used at that time. The reason why human beings need culture is not just for the sake of practicality in the present - culture also has its spiritual dimension. The reason why we call some people cultural people is because cultural people have a cultural personality, and cultural personality needs the transmission of cultural code, which is not entirely practical. Our current classmates don't write ancient poems very much, and they don't use classical Chinese to write letters, but its way of conveying rhythm and rhyme is undoubtedly our cultural heritage. Just like when we see the terracotta warriors and horses, and see those exquisite cultural relics such as tripods and jue in the Forbidden City, we will have a sense of cultural identity, a sense of identity in the face of thousands of years of splendid national culture. Of course, memorization also has a small effect, that is, it is also very good for improving our language skills. But I think it's secondary, and the first is a mystical identification with the big concept of Chinese culture.

(Based on the recording of the "Meeting between Mr. Qiu Yu and Middle School Students" held by "Contemporary Student" magazine, and approved by me.) ）