2022 is the 80th anniversary of the birth of Chen Zhongshi, the author of "White Deer Plain". The People's Literature Publishing House has organized a series of activities to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Chen Zhongshi's birth. Recently, the first of a series of events - "I hand over my life to you" was held in Beijing. The event was held. Mr. He Qizhi, former deputy editor-in-chief of People's Literature Publishing House and former editor-in-chief of Bailuyuan, Mr. Hong Qingbo, former editor-in-chief of "Contemporary" magazine, and Xing Xiaoli, executive vice president of Bailu Academy, shared the story of Chen Zhongshi and "Bailuyuan".
It has been the sixth anniversary of Chen Zhongshi's death, and "White Deer Plain" is his work of "putting a coffin as a pillow". It has been 30 years since "White Deer Plain" was published. According to the Humanities Agency, at the beginning of its publication in 1993, the book was reprinted six times in a row within five months, with a total of 600,000 copies. At present, "White Deer Plain" has a print run of more than 4 million copies, and has been adapted in various art forms, such as Beijing Renyi's drama, Shaanxi Renyi's drama, dance drama, Qin Opera, and several versions of films and TV dramas.
The creation of "White Deer Plain" began in April 1986. Chen Zhongshi crossed the icy Bahe and took a bus to Lantian County to collect materials. After two years of conception and material preparation, the "White Deer Plain" began in April 1988. Writing, by January 1989, the real writing time was eight months, the first draft was completed, and then it took two years to revise, and finally the draft was finalized in March 1992.
In the sharing session, it was introduced that after Chen Zhongshi's manuscript was completed, the People's Literature Publishing House received the news of his completion and dispatched two editors to make a special trip to Xi'an to receive the 500,000-word manuscript from Mr. Chen Zhongshi. Later, Mr. Chen Zhongshi told his friends: At that moment, he seemed to have entrusted his life too. He returned home and waited for the arrangement of fate. He told his wife that if it didn't work, he would go home to raise chickens and never write again.
Later, as we know, the success of "White Deer Plain" in the market surprised Chen Zhongshi. The People's Literature Publishing House immediately re-signed the contract with Chen Zhongshi, and changed the original one-time word-count remuneration contract to an international royalty contract, which considered and protected the interests of the authors. For 30 years, People's Literature Publishing House has also been the sole owner of the exclusive copyright of "White Deer Plain".
During the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the publication of "White Deer Plain", Chen Zhongshi proposed that he should donate money to set up the "White Deer Contemporary Literature Editor Award" of the People's Literature Publishing House since 2013 to reward the People's Literature Publishing House in the field of Chinese contemporary literature. Editors who made outstanding contributions. This is the first time in China that a writer has set up an award for the editor with his own manuscript fee.
Chen Zhongshi was born and raised in the countryside. Enrolled in literacy in 1950 after liberation.
Chen Zhongshi went through the whole process of the people's commune. After graduating from high school and taking the college entrance examination, Luo Sunshan returned to the village and worked as a private teacher in the primary school jointly run by the three small villages and the agricultural middle school run by the commune. Later, he was borrowed to the commune to help work, and then transferred to the commune as a cadre for ten years. In the past ten years, he has been in charge of sanitation work in the commune, and established medical stations in every village; he has caught pigs, and fulfilled the requirement of one pig per household; he has also been in charge of vegetable planting, ensuring that the superiors have assigned to the urban section of the commune. Vegetable supply; they are often dispatched to a village with serious factional opposition or cadres who choose not to do it, ranging from half a month to half a year, to resolve conflicts and resume production.
In the last two or three years of working in the commune, he worked on three major projects. One was to run through a large irrigation canal that runs through most of the commune, turning dry land into irrigated land; In the past two months, 800 mu of sloping land was leveled and built into a stepped flat land that preserves water and fertilizer. Finally, an 8-li-long embankment was built for the Bahe River in my hometown, which solved the disaster of flooding and flooding the land. It still works to this day. More than 30 villages the size of the commune have been through many times. Until they settled in a commune by the Weihe River, the country began to implement the responsibility system, and the era of reform and opening up began.
This year, he just turned 40 years old and returned to his hometown. He stayed for 10 years and wrote short stories such as "Kang's Small Courtyard", "Bangzi Boss", "The Cellar" and "Mr. Blue Robe". "Mr. Pao" aroused the desire to create novels, and after two years of conception and four years of writing and writing, "White Deer Plain" was written.
Years later, Chen Zhongshi was still moved by the choice of the writing environment of the ancestral home in the northern slope of Bailuyuan, "Out of my special psychology, I wanted to find a quiet or even isolated environment to read the books and books I wanted to read. I have to read books that cannot be read, especially I need to cool down and revisit the life I personally experienced. I just passed the age of 40, the rural life I saw as a student in the first 20 years, and the rural life I directly participated in in the next 20 years. In the 20 years I have personally participated in it, I have had many direct feelings and experiences. Now I have jumped out of my specific life position. I no longer look at yesterday's life as a cadre but as a writer, and it can be said that the world is turning upside down. reforms taking place". This is a writer's return to his roots. For the first time, he examines his life, the land on which he grows, and the changing times with a sober rational spirit.
Chen Zhongshi later said: "Before the summer of 1985, I regarded long-form writing as a relatively distant thing. The main point is that in my sense of writing, the long-form novel is a daunting too big thing, almost It's something you can't even imagine."
In the summer of 1995, the Shaanxi Provincial Writers Association held the "Shaanxi Novel Creation Promotion Association". The reason was that the organizing department of the two consecutive "Mao Dun Literature Award" awards asked all provinces to recommend works for the competition, but Shaanxi Province could not recommend a single novel. Chen Zhongshi recalled: "I attended this meeting, and several friends expressed their willingness to write novels on the spot. What is certain is that Lu Yao did not return to Xi'an after this meeting, and stayed in Yan'an to sit down and draft the "Book" "Ordinary World" Part 1. In fact, Lu Yao had been silently preparing for the writing of this novel as early as the year before. I had a very short but clear statement at the meeting, and there was no novel writing yet. The slightest preparation, when the desire to write long-form writing occurs, without any consideration."
That is, in just a few months, "the coolness of autumn happened in the morning and evening, and when I sat down to write the long-planned novella "Mr. I was startled."
There is nothing concrete about this long novel at this time. "If I want to find the original image, it is the gatehouse of the original courtyard house with "Gongdu Heirloom" engraved and inlaid. I want to find out the mysterious story in this gatehouse."
In the following two years, Chen Zhongshi devoted his main attention and energy to Bailuyuan behind his ancestral house and Shenheyuan, Shaolingyuan, Fengqiyuan and Bailuyuan across the Chan River. Bronze original.
At the northwest end of Bailuyuan, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, his mother and his wife are buried; Emperor Xuan of Han is buried in Fengqiyuan; Shenheyuan is the place where Liu Qing lived for 14 years and completed the "History of Entrepreneurship" and finally buried his ashes; Tongrenyuan There is a legend that Qin Shihuang burned books and pit Confucian scholars, and the Han Dynasty moved the bronze figurines that he confiscated from the world's weapons and cast them on this road. From the northeastern end of Bailuyuan to Xiayuan, it is only more than 20 miles eastward along the Bahe River, which is Gongzhuling, where the 1.1 million-year-old Lantian ape-man skull fossil was excavated. On the bank of the Chan River under Pogen at the western end of Bailuyuan, there is a complete village where Banpo people lived in the Neolithic period.
The few remnants of the above-mentioned civilization process, which have long been indifferent, not only felt heavy for Chen Zhongshi in the past, but also felt confused and dazed. At this time, it was transformed into a perception: this road is only 20 miles east of Xi'an City. The ancient plain is basically synchronized with the long history of our nation, and it is not a paradise without isolation. Chen Zhongshi thought: When Qin Shihuang more than 2,000 years ago established the first feudal empire on the Xianyang Plain, which was only sixty or seventy miles away from this Daoyuan, when the last feudal monarchy disintegrated, this Daoyuan was a big village and a small village. How do the villagers live here? He vaguely realized how many wars, famines and plagues the people of this land had encountered over the past 2,000 years. With such a simple way of life as cotton cloth, how could the people on this land last for more than 2,000 years? Finding this answer will reveal the deep cultural and psychological structure of the nation. Chen Zhongshi fixed his inquiry here.
The beginning of the story of "White Deer Plain" hangs on the annual ring of 1911, when the Revolution of 1911 occurred. An unprecedented great change is about to unfold on this plain.
In the more than two years of preparation of materials, Chen Zhongshi saw the life forms of the people of Bailu Yuan a long time ago in the "County Chronicles" that were too rotten to be exposed: the gongs and drums in the good weather and the rainy year, mainly due to drought. The tragic scene of starvation and desertion in various disasters; the terrifying feat of the villagers driving out corrupt officials in a certain dynasty and a certain year, the shouts and tears of the people kneeling on the official road to see off a clean official moved the world.
Chen Zhongshi also searched for the final place of Lv Dalin, a scholar of the Song Dynasty who wrote China's first "Country Covenant" to educate the people. This is also the academy where "Niu Caizi" (the prototype of Mr. Zhu) sat in the academy to study; he looked for the establishment on Bailu Plain The ruins of the grain store of the first Communist Party branch. There are also stories from the old people in the village, including his own ancestors, among which there are many details of his life that make him secretly delighted... Various people and various events have induced fictional characters and plots, and put him in his memory. Some of the details of life are activated one by one.
In this way, while visiting and collecting materials, ideas inspired by imagination occurred simultaneously, the overall framework of "White Deer Plain" gradually took shape, and the characters and details were constantly enriched. In particular, he heard the people talking about his great-grandfather, who was very tall and his waist was always straight and straight. He walked past the village, and those who were breastfeeding their children in the streets and alleys under the gatehouse. All the women were so frightened that they ran back to their homes or hid in the village gates nearby. When Chen Zhongshi heard this image and details, he felt indescribable excitement and uncontrollable excitement. The image of a patriarch that he had begun to conceive before was still a vague and flat image, and he was instantly injected with vitality and presented a texture, and all of a sudden he stepped out in the village alley, ancestral hall and his gatehouse in the fictional Bailu Village; this At this moment, people's talents and temperament have almost reached the vividness and concreteness of the author's breath. At this moment, Chen Zhongshi copied the "Country Covenant" from the county annals, and it naturally melted into this person's blood.
One morning during the Qingming Festival in 1988, Chen Zhongshi sat on a sofa cut by a country carpenter in the humble study of his ancestral home, opened a large 16-kilometer hardcover book on his lap, and wrote " The first line of the draft of "White Deer Plain" is written in pen: "Bai Jiaxuan later took pride in marrying seven women in his life." At this time, the whole world has been simplified to the point that there is only one White Deer Plain left; this ancient land in geographical concept, It is also embodied as a person named Bai Jiaxuan - the last patriarch in "White Deer Plain", who adheres to an ancient "Country Covenant" and faces challenges from various forces; Luzi, who has considerable economic strength but violates the spirit of the township agreement Lin, is a potential opponent; Heiwa, who is rebellious by nature, and Xiao'e, who is by biological instinct, are absolutely intolerable by Bai Jiaxuan's psychological structure and character; Zhaopeng, who is consciously rebellious with new ideas, and his daughter Bai Ling , but he sighed in vain, this is him with a strong psychological structure, the only opponent who is difficult to show confidence; Bai Xiaowen, whom he relies on, has completely fallen and escaped, hurting him the most, but it can't disrupt his psychological order... Bai Jiaxuan It is Bailuyuan, who is supporting a plain alone.
It has been the sixth anniversary of Chen Zhongshi's death, and "White Deer Plain" is his work of "putting a coffin as a pillow". It has been 30 years since "White Deer Plain" was published. According to the Humanities Agency, at the beginning of its publication in 1993, the book was reprinted six times in a row within five months, with a total of 600,000 copies. At present, "White Deer Plain" has a print run of more than 4 million copies, and has been adapted in various art forms, such as Beijing Renyi's drama, Shaanxi Renyi's drama, dance drama, Qin Opera, and several versions of films and TV dramas.
Various versions of "White Deer Plain" over the past 30 years.
Back to the beginning of creation: "If it doesn't work, go home and raise chickens"The creation of "White Deer Plain" began in April 1986. Chen Zhongshi crossed the icy Bahe and took a bus to Lantian County to collect materials. After two years of conception and material preparation, the "White Deer Plain" began in April 1988. Writing, by January 1989, the real writing time was eight months, the first draft was completed, and then it took two years to revise, and finally the draft was finalized in March 1992.
In the sharing session, it was introduced that after Chen Zhongshi's manuscript was completed, the People's Literature Publishing House received the news of his completion and dispatched two editors to make a special trip to Xi'an to receive the 500,000-word manuscript from Mr. Chen Zhongshi. Later, Mr. Chen Zhongshi told his friends: At that moment, he seemed to have entrusted his life too. He returned home and waited for the arrangement of fate. He told his wife that if it didn't work, he would go home to raise chickens and never write again.
Later, as we know, the success of "White Deer Plain" in the market surprised Chen Zhongshi. The People's Literature Publishing House immediately re-signed the contract with Chen Zhongshi, and changed the original one-time word-count remuneration contract to an international royalty contract, which considered and protected the interests of the authors. For 30 years, People's Literature Publishing House has also been the sole owner of the exclusive copyright of "White Deer Plain".
During the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the publication of "White Deer Plain", Chen Zhongshi proposed that he should donate money to set up the "White Deer Contemporary Literature Editor Award" of the People's Literature Publishing House since 2013 to reward the People's Literature Publishing House in the field of Chinese contemporary literature. Editors who made outstanding contributions. This is the first time in China that a writer has set up an award for the editor with his own manuscript fee.
Chen Zhongshi in the countryside
From farmer's son to professional writerChen Zhongshi was born and raised in the countryside. Enrolled in literacy in 1950 after liberation.
Chen Zhongshi went through the whole process of the people's commune. After graduating from high school and taking the college entrance examination, Luo Sunshan returned to the village and worked as a private teacher in the primary school jointly run by the three small villages and the agricultural middle school run by the commune. Later, he was borrowed to the commune to help work, and then transferred to the commune as a cadre for ten years. In the past ten years, he has been in charge of sanitation work in the commune, and established medical stations in every village; he has caught pigs, and fulfilled the requirement of one pig per household; he has also been in charge of vegetable planting, ensuring that the superiors have assigned to the urban section of the commune. Vegetable supply; they are often dispatched to a village with serious factional opposition or cadres who choose not to do it, ranging from half a month to half a year, to resolve conflicts and resume production.
In the last two or three years of working in the commune, he worked on three major projects. One was to run through a large irrigation canal that runs through most of the commune, turning dry land into irrigated land; In the past two months, 800 mu of sloping land was leveled and built into a stepped flat land that preserves water and fertilizer. Finally, an 8-li-long embankment was built for the Bahe River in my hometown, which solved the disaster of flooding and flooding the land. It still works to this day. More than 30 villages the size of the commune have been through many times. Until they settled in a commune by the Weihe River, the country began to implement the responsibility system, and the era of reform and opening up began.
A still from the movie "White Deer Plain", the wheat harvester on the White Deer Plain.
Chen Zhongshi has always been in love with literature. When he was working for the family since he was a child, his father taught him "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness", "Xue Rengui Zhengdong", and "Bao Wenzheng Dao Guzheng Chen Shimei". In the second grade of junior high school, he wrote his first novel on the composition text. His interest and expertise made him transferred from the commune to the Baqiao District Cultural Center. In three years, he published more than 30 short stories and features. At the end of 1982, he was transferred to the creative group of the Shaanxi Writers Association and became a professional writer. But as a professional writer, he not only did not move his home into the city, but moved back to his remote hometown.This year, he just turned 40 years old and returned to his hometown. He stayed for 10 years and wrote short stories such as "Kang's Small Courtyard", "Bangzi Boss", "The Cellar" and "Mr. Blue Robe". "Mr. Pao" aroused the desire to create novels, and after two years of conception and four years of writing and writing, "White Deer Plain" was written.
Years later, Chen Zhongshi was still moved by the choice of the writing environment of the ancestral home in the northern slope of Bailuyuan, "Out of my special psychology, I wanted to find a quiet or even isolated environment to read the books and books I wanted to read. I have to read books that cannot be read, especially I need to cool down and revisit the life I personally experienced. I just passed the age of 40, the rural life I saw as a student in the first 20 years, and the rural life I directly participated in in the next 20 years. In the 20 years I have personally participated in it, I have had many direct feelings and experiences. Now I have jumped out of my specific life position. I no longer look at yesterday's life as a cadre but as a writer, and it can be said that the world is turning upside down. reforms taking place". This is a writer's return to his roots. For the first time, he examines his life, the land on which he grows, and the changing times with a sober rational spirit.
The rural stage in the movie "White Deer Plain".
The original image: The gatehouse of the original courtyard house with "Growing and Reading Heirlooms" inlaid with carvingsChen Zhongshi later said: "Before the summer of 1985, I regarded long-form writing as a relatively distant thing. The main point is that in my sense of writing, the long-form novel is a daunting too big thing, almost It's something you can't even imagine."
In the summer of 1995, the Shaanxi Provincial Writers Association held the "Shaanxi Novel Creation Promotion Association". The reason was that the organizing department of the two consecutive "Mao Dun Literature Award" awards asked all provinces to recommend works for the competition, but Shaanxi Province could not recommend a single novel. Chen Zhongshi recalled: "I attended this meeting, and several friends expressed their willingness to write novels on the spot. What is certain is that Lu Yao did not return to Xi'an after this meeting, and stayed in Yan'an to sit down and draft the "Book" "Ordinary World" Part 1. In fact, Lu Yao had been silently preparing for the writing of this novel as early as the year before. I had a very short but clear statement at the meeting, and there was no novel writing yet. The slightest preparation, when the desire to write long-form writing occurs, without any consideration."
That is, in just a few months, "the coolness of autumn happened in the morning and evening, and when I sat down to write the long-planned novella "Mr. I was startled."
There is nothing concrete about this long novel at this time. "If I want to find the original image, it is the gatehouse of the original courtyard house with "Gongdu Heirloom" engraved and inlaid. I want to find out the mysterious story in this gatehouse."
In the following two years, Chen Zhongshi devoted his main attention and energy to Bailuyuan behind his ancestral house and Shenheyuan, Shaolingyuan, Fengqiyuan and Bailuyuan across the Chan River. Bronze original.
At the northwest end of Bailuyuan, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, his mother and his wife are buried; Emperor Xuan of Han is buried in Fengqiyuan; Shenheyuan is the place where Liu Qing lived for 14 years and completed the "History of Entrepreneurship" and finally buried his ashes; Tongrenyuan There is a legend that Qin Shihuang burned books and pit Confucian scholars, and the Han Dynasty moved the bronze figurines that he confiscated from the world's weapons and cast them on this road. From the northeastern end of Bailuyuan to Xiayuan, it is only more than 20 miles eastward along the Bahe River, which is Gongzhuling, where the 1.1 million-year-old Lantian ape-man skull fossil was excavated. On the bank of the Chan River under Pogen at the western end of Bailuyuan, there is a complete village where Banpo people lived in the Neolithic period.
Bailu Village Scenic Area
Anecdotes and anecdotes about this emperor or that emperor on the plains, horses, outings or hunting are still circulating in Bailuyuan. When the great poet Wang Changling lived in seclusion on the plain, he planted vegetables and went down to Bahe to catch fish. He also sang poetry. Go further, take a small boat from Baqiao in the east of Chang'an City, and go upstream along the Ba River under Bailu Plain to Wangchuan in the Qinling Mountains, leaving behind a splendid song through the ages; Liu Bang escaped from the shadow of the sword at Hongmen Banquet and returned to Bailu Plain. On, Chen Zhongshi guessed that he might have climbed the path next to his pigsty to the original station.The few remnants of the above-mentioned civilization process, which have long been indifferent, not only felt heavy for Chen Zhongshi in the past, but also felt confused and dazed. At this time, it was transformed into a perception: this road is only 20 miles east of Xi'an City. The ancient plain is basically synchronized with the long history of our nation, and it is not a paradise without isolation. Chen Zhongshi thought: When Qin Shihuang more than 2,000 years ago established the first feudal empire on the Xianyang Plain, which was only sixty or seventy miles away from this Daoyuan, when the last feudal monarchy disintegrated, this Daoyuan was a big village and a small village. How do the villagers live here? He vaguely realized how many wars, famines and plagues the people of this land had encountered over the past 2,000 years. With such a simple way of life as cotton cloth, how could the people on this land last for more than 2,000 years? Finding this answer will reveal the deep cultural and psychological structure of the nation. Chen Zhongshi fixed his inquiry here.
The beginning of the story of "White Deer Plain" hangs on the annual ring of 1911, when the Revolution of 1911 occurred. An unprecedented great change is about to unfold on this plain.
The villagers in the domestic drama "White Deer Plain".
Bai Jiaxuan and BailuyuanIn the more than two years of preparation of materials, Chen Zhongshi saw the life forms of the people of Bailu Yuan a long time ago in the "County Chronicles" that were too rotten to be exposed: the gongs and drums in the good weather and the rainy year, mainly due to drought. The tragic scene of starvation and desertion in various disasters; the terrifying feat of the villagers driving out corrupt officials in a certain dynasty and a certain year, the shouts and tears of the people kneeling on the official road to see off a clean official moved the world.
Chen Zhongshi also searched for the final place of Lv Dalin, a scholar of the Song Dynasty who wrote China's first "Country Covenant" to educate the people. This is also the academy where "Niu Caizi" (the prototype of Mr. Zhu) sat in the academy to study; he looked for the establishment on Bailu Plain The ruins of the grain store of the first Communist Party branch. There are also stories from the old people in the village, including his own ancestors, among which there are many details of his life that make him secretly delighted... Various people and various events have induced fictional characters and plots, and put him in his memory. Some of the details of life are activated one by one.
In this way, while visiting and collecting materials, ideas inspired by imagination occurred simultaneously, the overall framework of "White Deer Plain" gradually took shape, and the characters and details were constantly enriched. In particular, he heard the people talking about his great-grandfather, who was very tall and his waist was always straight and straight. He walked past the village, and those who were breastfeeding their children in the streets and alleys under the gatehouse. All the women were so frightened that they ran back to their homes or hid in the village gates nearby. When Chen Zhongshi heard this image and details, he felt indescribable excitement and uncontrollable excitement. The image of a patriarch that he had begun to conceive before was still a vague and flat image, and he was instantly injected with vitality and presented a texture, and all of a sudden he stepped out in the village alley, ancestral hall and his gatehouse in the fictional Bailu Village; this At this moment, people's talents and temperament have almost reached the vividness and concreteness of the author's breath. At this moment, Chen Zhongshi copied the "Country Covenant" from the county annals, and it naturally melted into this person's blood.
One morning during the Qingming Festival in 1988, Chen Zhongshi sat on a sofa cut by a country carpenter in the humble study of his ancestral home, opened a large 16-kilometer hardcover book on his lap, and wrote " The first line of the draft of "White Deer Plain" is written in pen: "Bai Jiaxuan later took pride in marrying seven women in his life." At this time, the whole world has been simplified to the point that there is only one White Deer Plain left; this ancient land in geographical concept, It is also embodied as a person named Bai Jiaxuan - the last patriarch in "White Deer Plain", who adheres to an ancient "Country Covenant" and faces challenges from various forces; Luzi, who has considerable economic strength but violates the spirit of the township agreement Lin, is a potential opponent; Heiwa, who is rebellious by nature, and Xiao'e, who is by biological instinct, are absolutely intolerable by Bai Jiaxuan's psychological structure and character; Zhaopeng, who is consciously rebellious with new ideas, and his daughter Bai Ling , but he sighed in vain, this is him with a strong psychological structure, the only opponent who is difficult to show confidence; Bai Xiaowen, whom he relies on, has completely fallen and escaped, hurting him the most, but it can't disrupt his psychological order... Bai Jiaxuan It is Bailuyuan, who is supporting a plain alone.
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