Writer Goes From Remote Village to World

By Sun Su

On the evening of November 2, 2008, the issuing ceremony of the 7th Mao Dun Literature Awards was held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang. Chi Zijian, a female writer from Heilongjiang Province, was one of the four winners of the top literary honor in 2008. Mao Dun Literature Awards, issued every three years, are awards named after Mao Dun (1896-1981), a prestigious novelist of the 20th-century China.

At the ceremony, Chi Zijian wore a white blouse with a delicate lace, in sharp contrast with the black suits of the three male winners. Winning this honor makes her a phenomenal writer. She has won Lu Xun Awards three times and Mao Dun Literature Award for a novel.

She was tranquil as usual. She expressed her wish to go back to an undisturbed life. She said, “An author needs a tranquil life in order to live and write. We writers do not write for prizes and prizes are not a cross on our back.”

This is exactly Chi Zijian I have known for more than 20 years. She would never lose herself in fame. She has been true to herself in everyday life and writing. It is this dedication that has enabled her to mature as a writer and go far from a remote village to the world.

She was born in the village of North Pole, presumably the northernmost village of China. Her birthday coincides with the traditional Lantern Festival. Thai is why in her village she is called Yingdeng, meaning the girls arrival on the Lantern Festival. Her given name is Zijian, after Cao Zijian (192-232), a prince and talented poet. The name suggests her fathers great expectations of his daughters future. She became a writer as her father wished, but he did not live to see her become a writer. That is probably why many of her early stories exude a whiff of sadness.

Her childhood years in the village definitely shaped her emotions and literary concepts. The happiness of her childhood smiles at every reader of her stories. She describes the vegetable garden of her grandfather; she mentions a whopping yellow dog which was her faithful companion in her childhood years, and she relates the fishing season on the river. Innocence and luminosity feature her early writings. The people under her pen are kind-hearted and brave. She presents a world little known to readers. Readers can feel the poetic charms of the life she reports in her writing and feel the noble personality of the author.

When Chi first appeared on the literary horizon in the 1980s, Mr. Zeng Zhennan, a famed critic in the 1980s, spoke highly of her in great excitement in his literary reviews. So the North Literature where I was working published a series of her stories. She studied at a creative writing course for young and published writers at Beijing University and took a graduate writing course at Northwest University. The advanced studies enabled her to write better. She won Lu Xun Literature Award for short stories twice, very rare for a writer her age.

After Chi Zijian graduated, she received many alluring job offers, but she chose to come back to her home province Heilongjiang. She goes back to live in her little village for a period of time every year, to breathe the crisp air, to watch the forests, the river, and the black-soil land. Many of her milestone masterpieces were conceived in the little village.

Chis aesthetics is widely recognized. Her poetic description of nature is a prominent signature of her writing. Many critics compare her with Xiao Hong, a female novelist also born in Heilongjiang. Both recapture nature in words. But some critics point out that the two differ. Xiao presents a purely realistic picture whereas Chi injects emotion and poetry into her presentation.

The crucial turning point of her life and career is a car accident that killed her husband. It plunged her into an abysm of darkness. It is writing that helped her out of deep grief. The disaster delivered her into a new world where she saw new dimensions of life. In addition to her signature tenderness and sadness, now she examines the world more critically and analytically in her stories. In “All the Nights of the World”, she looks into the misery of the world inhabited by the helpless people living in the shadow. In “The Right Bank of Argun River”, the first novel she penned after the death of her husband, she examines the destiny of an ancient ethnic group struggling in the process of a civilization. Critics notice her metamorphose initiated by the personal tragedy and observe her sublimation and compassion.

Chis works have been translated into foreign languages. She is a phenomenon under the microscope of many scholars of Chinese literature. She is invited to give lectures in foreign countries every year. And she has won many literary awards. □