Back to 80: My literary life.

Chapter 522 521 Director of the Chinese Prose Society
The Chinese Prose Society is not a copycat organization. It was founded in 1984. It is a national first-class literary group and a national professional literary group. It accepts business guidance from the China Writers Association. Jia Pingwa is a member of the society. He became famous for his essays such as "Shangzhou Chulu" and "Shangzhou Youlu" and became one of the directors of the society.

This year's president is Lin Fei, a famous scholar and writer in my country who has made many achievements in Lu Xun research, prose theory and prose writing.

Fang Minghua received the letter, thought carefully for a long time, and wrote a reply.

The general idea is that I am very happy to join the Chinese Prose Society, but due to my lack of qualifications and abilities, I am afraid that I will not be able to serve as a director of the society. I implore President Lin to select other outstanding writers.

Fang Minghua has his own clear understanding.

I estimate that this "Cultural Journey" I wrote will have about twenty-five or twenty-six articles. It is enough to publish it as a collection of cultural essays. I must not repeat Yu Qiuyu's mistakes.

Some people in later generations commented on several of Yu Qiuyu's books as follows:
"I was quite shocked when I read Cultural Journey. Later, I read Notes from a Mountain Dwelling, which added a touch of aftertaste to the shock. Reflection on Chinese culture is still valuable. Later, I read A Sigh of a Thousand Years and Borderless Traveler, and I felt that they were just flattering foreigners. There was no point. And the same stuff was repeated over and over again. I fell in love with it at first sight, and I fell in love with it again and again. But after reading it a third time, it became boring."

Moreover, this kind of essay is prone to errors in historical facts (i.e. cultural flaws) and is criticized. It is said that someone published a book pointing out more than 120 errors in the book "Cultural Journey", which is certainly nitpicking.

Isn’t it related to the fact that Yu Qiuyu was too high-profile after becoming famous?

You should keep your head clear.

I may continue to write essays in the future, but they may not be cultural essays.

Although Fang Minghua repeatedly insisted on refusing the position of director, the personal reply from Lin Fei, president of the Prose Society, was also very interesting. He quoted the comments of the famous critic Lei Da on four essays written by Fang Minghua in the Literary Gazette:
"We are now in an era where the development of contemporary Chinese prose is facing a new crossroads."

"Before this, there were two important literary events: the re-evaluation of Yang Shuo's prose and the completion of Palladium's Random Thoughts. The accumulation of literary thought changes has been completed, and what is urgently needed next is works that have both the independent personality of the writer telling the truth and the artistic and aesthetic characteristics of prose. Fang Minghua's prose appeared under the requirements and call of such a literary era."

Mr. Lin wrote a reply letter personally, and Fang Minghua had no choice but to accept it.

Ok
I have also gained another title as director of the Chinese Prose Society.

Fang Minghua spent the entire month of May and June looking up information and writing articles.

Fang Minghua originally wanted to finish writing it as soon as possible, but then he received a notice.

According to a notice from the Chinese Prose Society, as one of the directors of the society, he would go to Zhengzhou to hold a prose writing seminar.

I was just elected as a director of the Prose Society, and I was notified to attend a meeting?!

Fang Minghua was really helpless.

Not going?
Isn't this simply a lack of respect for the chairman of the society?
Go ahead, there will be many literati there anyway.

This is common sense. Fang Minghua has to go out for three or four meetings every year. The management is not strict in this era, so a meeting can also be a trip.

The Prose Society held a meeting. In addition to Fang Minghua, the other director from Qin Province was Jia Pingwa, and the two of them went together.

The meeting place was Zhengzhou, not too far from Xijing, and the two of them each carried their travel bags and boarded the train heading east.

The journey was long and boring, but luckily we were in a sleeper berth, so we just laid there and chatted. "Minghua, although this essay writing seminar didn't specify what to discuss, as far as I know, the discussion will focus on the cultural essays you wrote. The appearance of your essay collection is like a spring thunder, shocking the essay world."

Jia Pingwa's words are a bit exaggerated, but they illustrate a fact.

In the 1980s, the highlight of literature, novels and poetry made rapid progress and achieved remarkable results, but prose was relatively dull, with creative achievements far inferior to those of novels and poetry, and less social impact. There was a lack of young prose talents, and the concept of prose was too broad.

Influential collections of essays include Random Thoughts by Bai Jin, Broken Memories of Yunmeng by Chen Baichen, Six Notes from the Cadre School by Yang Jiang, as well as essays by Sun Li and Ding Ling.

Basically, it is about recalling the past and reflecting on history.

Until the rise of cultural prose.

In fact, there is another person who cannot be ignored here, that is Jia Pingwa himself, who is also a master of writing essays.

Now Fang Minghua heard Jia Pingwa say this and smiled and said: "Brother Jia, don't just talk about me, talk about yourself. I admire your writings "Shangzhou Chulu" and "Shangzhou Youlu" very much."

"What I wrote is out of date, out of date." Jia Pingwa shook his head.

I don’t know if it was out of modesty or if he really felt that what he wrote was outdated, but since then, Jia Pingwa rarely wrote essays, but instead wrote one novel after another.

Yes, in this era, novels are what people pay the most attention to because of the Mao Dun Literature Prize.

We set out at noon and arrived in Zhengzhou in the afternoon, where we stayed at Zhongzhou Hotel. It is said that before the reform and opening up, this place often received Chinese and foreign guests, and there were sentries standing guard. However, it was opened to the public in the late 1980s and the sentries disappeared.

In addition to the directors of the Prose Society, the conference also invited editors from magazines such as Jia Baoquan, editor-in-chief of Tianjin's "Prose", Chen Xianfa of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, Zhang Ruoyu, editor-in-chief of Zhengzhou's "Prose Selections", and Guo Lihong of Guangzhou's "Essays", making it a relatively large conference.

Just as Jia Pingwa said, at the meeting, all the delegates praised Fang Minghua's essay highly, and some even believed that cultural prose poems were the future direction of prose development.

"Now, please invite Comrade Fang Minghua, director of the Prose Society, director of the China Writers Association, and vice chairman of the Qin Province Writers Association, to come to the stage and talk about his creative experience. Everyone is welcome!"

There was warm applause from the audience.

This was not a difficult task for Fang Minghua. He had given a similar report in the West Auditorium a few months ago. However, this time, the audience were people in the prose world.

Fang Minghua's brain is clear.

"I would like to thank all the leaders and colleagues for their affirmation of my collection of essays. I am also happy to share with you the creative concepts and techniques of cultural essays, but I believe that cultural essays are not the future development direction of essays, or rather, they are just a branch of the development of essays." Fang Minghua expressed his views clearly.

"Cultural essays have their own flaws. I have already explained this problem in the article "The Heart of Calmness: Theory and Practice of Cultural Essay Writing" published in the magazine "Yanhe", so I will not repeat it here."

"I will first talk about my superficial personal views on the direction of the development of prose in the 1990s."

(End of this chapter)