That spring, I was going to leave

Author: Chen Ping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-11-01
Features: Today's critics have created young adult literature, but I believe those who can truly achieve greatness are those who step beyond this category. They do not compete with other young adult writers but with the masters in their minds, walking unswervingly on their own writing path without regard for success or failure.
The "80" writers refer to the group of young writers born after 1980. Han Han, Guo Jingming, Zhang Yuoran, Man Ning, Li Shazi, and Jiang Feng are a string of dazzling names that achieved success at a young age. The "New Concept Writing Competition," initiated and organized by the Menghua magazine, aims to encourage more young people to engage in independent creation using their own language and way of thinking. Many current "celebrity-style" 80 writers, such as Han Han, Guo Jingming, Zhang Yuoran, and Li Shazi, emerged from this competition.
This series is a collection of works by past winners of the New Concept Writing Competition, gathering a wealth of excellent novels, essays, and miscellaneous writings, most of which are newly written and exclusively selected for this publication. During the publishing process, it received comments and recommendations from renowned writers like Zhou Guoping, Yu Jie, and a group of Peking University professors. It is both a literary writing series and a record of youthful stories.
Currently, young adult literature is in vogue. Han Han and Guo Jingming have created astonishing bestseller miracles, turning the New Concept Writing Competition into a shining brand. Young writers have sprouted like mushrooms after rain across the country. Youth possesses many rights, and the literary dream is one of them. However, I must say that youth and literature are two different things. Literature is neutral to age—it does not ask whether it is youth or autumn, but only whether it is literature. In the realm of literature, youth, beauty, and returnees from abroad hold no special privileges, yet people often misunderstand this point.
If you are asked whether you play the violin, and you reply, "Perhaps I do, but I haven't tried," everyone knows you are joking. However, if you answer the same way about writing, both you and the listener will take it seriously. It was Tolstoy who pointed this out, and he remarked that anyone could hear how awful the music of someone who had never learned the violin sounded, but distinguishing between scribbled nonsense and genuine literary works required considerable discernment.
I have read some writings by young adult writers, and my overall impression is that they are hollow, fake, and repetitive. There are two types of young adult literary modes. One is fashion, where coffee shops, bars, and rock music are indispensable in the background, and the content mostly revolves around imagined love—from ambiguous love, lightning love, unrequited love, and heartbreak to polyamorous love and abnormal love. Due to their pale and unrealistic descriptions, readers can easily see that all these love stories ultimately amount to self-love.
The other is "coolness," where writers exaggerate their rebellious attitude or deliberately fabricate shocking plots. Their writing is uncontrolled, filled with meaningless sentences, and lacks the "genuine sentences" that Hemingway spoke of. What we see is a lack of substance in their tone, a lack of depth in their imagination, a confusion between fiction and imagination, and, in short, a complete misunderstanding of literature.
All these things are far removed from the real lives of ordinary people today, and even farther from the real lives of the authors, who, despite having youth, are still just ordinary people. As Tolstoy said, there is only a narrow path between mediocrity and pretentiousness, and that is the only right path. And pretentiousness is even more frightening than mediocrity. In my opinion, the reason pretentiousness is so frightening is that it is mediocre but insists on pretending to be unique, making it an untruthful kind of mediocrity.
Therefore, I approached this selection of young adult literature with preconceived notions. However, Li Shazi's self-introduction at the beginning caught my eye. "Writing is first a verb, then a noun," he said. This statement convinced me that he had not misunderstood literature—he knew that literature exists in the process of creation, not as a mere label to prove identity or as a lottery ticket with a chance to win. He was determined to write about his life as an ordinary person, lamenting, "This was once a vast world, but now it has become a new world."
With this understanding, I gained the courage to continue reading and happily discovered some works that aligned with my concept of literature, such as Zhang Yuoran's The Horse Leaping of Jino, Li Shazi's To the Tower of Guan, Chu Dai's My Knife, Yuan Shuai's Ximen Qing, Shi Qiping's Birds of the Cave, and Qian Hao's Across. I am only giving examples, of course, and there are other good works as well, but some still follow the young adult literary modes.
The works I liked share a common trait: they have genuine feelings. On this soil, whimsy, absurdity, humor, and strangeness are not paper flowers. For writing, the most important thing is to write about what you truly feel. The craft of writing is honed in the process, not outside of it. Therefore, I advocate writing about subjects you are truly familiar with, things you have actually experienced, without fear of being small in scope, but always truthful. This is an accumulative process. Once you reach a certain level, you will be able to handle larger themes with ease.
There is no such thing as young adult literature; there is only literature. Literature has its own tradition and standards, both of which are upheld by masters who still live within that tradition. For writers today, people can accurately judge whether they have been influenced by masters or are completely ignorant of tradition. If you truly love literature and not just follow a trend, I suggest you remember Hemingway's words. Hemingway said he only compared himself to dead writers because "most living writers do not exist; their fame is manufactured by critics."
Today's critics have created young adult literature, but I believe that those who can truly achieve greatness are those who step beyond this category. They do not compete with other young adult writers but with the masters in their minds, walking unswervingly on their own writing path without regard for success or failure.