Back to 80: My literary life.

Chapter 608: Letter from Section Chief Jia to Fang Minghua
Fenyang is a very ordinary small county town located in the hinterland of Shanxi Province. In the county town there is a large courtyard called No. 5 Luluba Street, which houses 7 or 8 households.

Living in the slum are workers, farmers, and soldiers; some are hardworking, while others are lazy; some are kind and proud, while others are cowardly and poor; and some are arrogant, unreasonable, and shameless.

Jia Zhangke was born here, spent his childhood and adolescence here, and is now an adult.

He is 22 years old this year.

Other boys of this age have already graduated from college, but he is still struggling to get into college.

This is my third time taking the college entrance examination.

In his first college entrance examination in 1990, he applied for the Journalism Department of Nankai University. However, just like the movies he made later, there was no so-called "miracle" in his life.

Because of his poor math performance, Jia Zhangke failed in his attempt to get admitted, so he followed his father's advice: take the art exam because it would not require math.

So he set out on his own for the first time with 300 yuan for tuition and living expenses, and arrived at the first "far away" place in his life - the provincial capital of Taiyuan.

In order to apply for the Fine Arts Department of Shanxi University, Jia Zhangke entered a pre-exam class and studied hard. To make money, he painted signs for restaurants and screen walls for villages.

I also saw reproductions of works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir and Millet in airports, art galleries and foreign language bookstores in provincial capitals.

If he had continued on this path, Jia Zhangke might have become a painter, but an accidental reason changed his fate.

There is a "Highway Bureau Cinema" near his school.

Once he watched a movie.

What I saw through the camera was endless yellow land, silent people, and deep poverty.

He thought of the loess of his hometown, the faces, eyes, and expressions. Past life experiences kept knocking on him, and at that moment he felt himself awakened, and tears flowed down his face.

This movie is called "Yellow Earth"

From that moment on he decided: "I want to do this job, I want to learn from Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, and I want to apply to Yandian University."

In order to increase his chances of success, he consulted many people and decided to take a roundabout way out. He decided to bypass the more difficult directing department and apply for the literature department instead.

You should know that during high school, he was a literary young man who loved reading poetry, writing, and breakdancing. His novels were published in "Shanxi Literature". He and his classmates founded the "Shapai Poetry Society" and published three poetry collections. The first poem he wrote was titled "Kiss", and at that time he had never kissed before.

The Shanxi Writers Association even said that it doesn’t matter if you can’t get into university, the door of the Writers Association is open to you!

Jia Zhangke really didn’t pass the entrance exam. He applied to Yandian University for two consecutive years but failed.

This made the young man feel a little hesitant.

It's summer vacation now, and he hasn't gone anywhere. He has been locking himself at home all day, reading magazines.

Of course, it’s not “Story Club”, “Zhiyin”, “Yilin” and the like. He considers himself a literary youth and wants to read something more high-end.

What he watched today was "Yanhe", the "Yanhe" from the neighboring Qin Province.

He felt an inexplicable envy and confusion towards Qin Sheng.

This province's name is very similar to that of the province itself, and people from other provinces often cannot pronounce it clearly. Moreover, the province is separated by the Yellow River. Although they also eat noodles and are equally poor, their culture is extremely developed. In literature, there are the Four Horsemen that dominate the literary world, and in the film industry, there is the Xi'an Film Studio that leads the way. In the past two years, there has also been a Shengshi Film and Television Company that has produced several excellent film and television works.

Now he is reading a novel "Hello! Mr. Tree" by Minghua, one of the four great literary figures in Qin Province.

This is a story about a small person.

He suddenly felt that the place described in the novel was exactly the place where he lived.

Gray air, gray town, gray people.

And isn’t this Mr. Tree the one in the yard?
Although he never squatted on a tree for a single day, he was cowardly, poor, and concerned about his reputation, but deep down he was kind-hearted - isn't he the same as Mr. Tree in the book?

Jia Zhangke suddenly had an urge to bring this novel to the big screen and film it in the future!

But when I think about the fact that I can’t even get into the best literature department of Yandian University, I can’t help feeling discouraged.

So, he suddenly had an idea to write a letter to the author Minghua, expressing his boredom and distress.

In that era, it was very common for readers to write letters to authors, and Jia Zhangke himself was a literary youth, so he jumped out of bed, went to the desk, took out the letter paper and started writing, filling out several pages.

In my mind, I briefly introduced myself, telling about the problems I was facing and the confusion in my heart.

"I like movies and literature, and I yearn for the outside world. When I was a child, my father often took me to climb the top of the old city wall and look out at the endless desolate space outside the wall. He looked at the road and the passing cars with a different look than usual.

Later, as I grew up, I realized that there were two words in that look: sadness.

"One day, when I was in the second grade, I remember it very clearly. It was a Sunday morning and there was no class. I was sweeping the yard when a loud and deep voice cut through the silence of time and space, like a call."

"I didn't know what it was at the time, but later I asked my father, and he said it was the sound of a train whistle. When I entered junior high school, I got my first bicycle, and the first thing I did was to ride it to the next county, which was dozens of miles away, to watch the train. At that time, I also had a sense of direction in my life: to go outside.

Every place has its own trend. In our Fenyang, going to Tianjin to take the entrance exam for Nanjing University is a trend.

My father had such a dream back then, but it was a special period and he was unable to realize it due to his identity issues.

So, in the first year of the college entrance examination, I applied for the Journalism Department of Nanjing University without hesitation.

I failed the exam because my math score was too poor, so I followed my father's advice and studied fine arts and took the entrance exam for Shanxi Academy of Fine Arts. So I went to Taiyuan.
Fang Minghua received the letter a week later. After spending six days in Dalian, he took a ferry across the sea, then a train to Qingdao for three days, took a bus to Jinan, and then flew back to Xijing.
At this time, he was reading a letter from a reader published in "Yenching Literature".

After his novel was published, it was immediately reprinted in magazines such as "Yanjing Literature" and "Selected Novella", and a letter from a reader was also published.

"I am a high school student who likes literature. Unfortunately, I failed to get into college, so I took over my father's job as a factory worker. After reading this article "Hello! Mr. Tree", I suddenly felt that the characters in the novel, such as Erzhu, Lao San, and Gao Peng, were very different.
Aren’t they just my old classmates, old friends and old colleagues?

Our country seems to be developing too fast now. They are working hard and running forward quickly. Soon, I can't catch up with them at all and they are running past me. I am just helpless and watch them run past like this.

They go to college, even to graduate and doctoral programs, go abroad, work in public institutions and state-owned enterprises, become civil servants, and start companies. I can only feel the embarrassment of being at a loss in the workshop.

I can avoid kneeling if I provoke the "pigs" to get angry, but how much difference does it make? I say a few words of nonsense and everyone is happy, but who cares if I go to borrow a car? What else can I do if the village chief occupies my land except say a few harmless harsh words? I will sadly fantasize about overtaking on the curve, like a charlatan,
I read, write, create or take any other path, imagining that you will come back to see me in the end, just like the last charlatan, you who have left me far behind, come back to find me. I will try to maintain a little decency in front of everyone, and ask you not to expose me. "

Fang Minghua read it in silence, and then saw the letter from Fenyang, Shanxi.

(End of this chapter)