Dialogue》What (good) is there on Sancha Mountain? Zhu Hezhi and Gan Yaoming's novel Mountaineering ft. When the sun crashes in Ha'insha Mountain, becoming a real person

Text | Jiang Yani (writer). Photography | Xiaoshi

In November 2020, novelists Gan Yaoming and Zhu Hezhi, together with Bunun writer Salilang, followed the "Jiemaos Mountain" route to the crash site of the USS "Liquidator" B-24 in 1945 - Sancha Mountain (formerly known as Hajime). Insha Mountain). This journey witnessed the birth of important works by two important contemporary Taiwanese novelists. At that time, Gan Yaoming had just completed the novel "Becoming a Real Man" based on the history of the plane crash, and Zhu Hezhi was also starting to write "When the Sun Crashed in Hainsha Mountain".

Going forward in time, Zhu Hezhi and Gan Yaoming both received the National Arts Association's "Novel Creation and Publication Project" grant in 2018. It was not until after the announcement that they discovered that they both had the "Sancha Mountain Incident" as the theme of their novels. They did not change the course of the novel because of this, but chose to go to Sancha Mountain together, to the light and dark side of the historical mountain, and put the various common people and the voices of the times that they paid attention to into the novel.

At the beginning of this year, at the 2024 Taipei International Book Fair, Zhu Hezhi's "When the Sun Crashed in the Hainsha Mountains" was officially published. Gan Yaoming, who published "Becoming a Real Person" in 2021, was invited to have a conversation with him. How Sancha Mountain in Space became a novel of its own.

• Extended reading: 2021Openbook Good Book Award． Chinese Creation of the Year" Become a real person (minBunun)

➤A three-pronged mountain, the respective interpretations of two novelists

During the dialogue at the book fair, Zhu Hezhi and Gan Yaoming began to share their experiences during the five-day and four-night trip. Gan Yaoming mentioned that his earliest contact with Sancha Mountain was in the autumn of 2004. When he was climbing Jiaming Lake, he heard mountaineering coach Mr. Ou Yang talk about a B-24 bomber that crashed in Sancha Mountain not far away. All 25 members on board (including prisoners of war from various countries) were killed.

September 1945 was within a month of Japan announcing its surrender during World War II. During that almost administrative vacuum period, a rescue team composed of Japanese military police, Bunun, Amis, Han, and Pingpu people went up the mountain to search and rescue. This story stayed in Gan Yaoming's mind. He recalled his feelings at the time: "For me, it has an olfactory tension. I thought I should write about it and dig deeper. But after going down the mountain , I just put it in my mind and notes first." It wasn't until around 2018 that he officially started writing.

Zhu Hezhi learned about its history in detail before deciding to use Sancha Mountain as the theme of his novel in 2018. He felt that maybe the best time was then, "If I am not ready, too young, have read too few books, and have not climbed enough mountains... even if I encounter this material, I will not know how to use it. "When he encountered the story of "Sancha Mountain" in 2018, everything was in a state where he could explore it.

Zhu Hezhi, who first took historical novels as his creative starting point, paid attention to Sancha Mountain because of its peculiar time. He said: "On August 15, 1945, the Japanese Emperor Yuyin announced Japan's surrender (although he did not directly say the word surrender), and the government of the Republic of China came to take over Taiwan on October 25 of that year. This period of vacuum - — Or rather, during the window period — the events that happened attracted me.”

At that point in time, a lot of things that had been cancelled, things that had been forbidden, became available again. Zhu Hezhi quoted a saying that people said at that time: "After the war, people are free, and gods and ghosts are also free." This concept also became the key point of "When the Sun Crashed in the Hainsha Mountains". The Japanese were afraid that the shrines and gods they left behind in Taiwan would be retaliated against after their defeat, so they first used religious rituals to invite the gods back to heaven, which was called the "Ascension Ceremony." From then on, there was no longer a god on Yulingdai, just a piece of wood. At the same time, beliefs that were banned in Taiwan in the past, such as Mazu and Wang Ye, who had been hidden in wells and warehouses for many years, have also been brought out again.

Zhu Hezhi imagined the scene at that time: "It seems that after Japan's defeat, not only the exchange of political power, identity and culture, but also the exchange of gods, even the gods had to change hands." The special nature of this period became the first thing that attracted Zhu Hezhi The reason for writing. The diversity of participants in the Sancha Mountain incident from the plane crash to the search also reminded Zhu Hezhi of the world war and the microcosm of Taiwan's ethnic groups. The fractured time and ethnic groups, as well as the different cultures and spiritual beliefs of each person, all intersect through a plane crash... "When the Sun Crashed in the Hainsha Mountains" is located at the intersection of these fractures.

In "Becoming a Real Person", Gan Yaoming also observed many identity transformation issues at the end of World War II: "During World War II, Taiwanese people regarded the United States (and their bombers) as murderers, and all the people in the country regarded the war as murderers. Fear and fear both project America into a demonic myth. So I thought, if at such a moment, two people suddenly have to turn around and face each other, this is the tension of the novel for me."

And that moment of meeting and rendezvous happened in "Becoming a Real Person". According to the plot of the book, not everyone was killed in the plane crash. In fact, one American survived. So when the rescue team went up the mountain, how would the Japanese and Taiwanese face such a legendary devil?

Gan Yaoming tried to use novels to interpret the hidden parts of history, but he also understood: "The process of interpretation will have blind spots, and everyone can only see a small area of ​​things near him or her." He said: "So I read When writing "When the Sun Crashed in the Hainsha Mountains", I regained the inner flow of emotions when I wrote "Becoming a Real Man", and returned to the very spiritual moment of writing - it turns out that this story is interpreted from another angle. , there are richer places. If you have heard of or are interested in this history, you can watch how the two of us interpret the same piece of history."

➤Multiple writings from different standpoints

Zhu Hezhi said frankly that when "Becoming a Real Person" was published, because his novel had not yet been completed, he only read Gan Yaoming's novel once and put it away, fearing that it would be affected by it. His initial thoughts after reading it were: "This book is very touching, but I finally felt a little more relieved, because the direction Yao Ming wanted to write was different from the direction I planned to run, and I could develop my story with confidence. "

It was not until "When the Sun Crashed in the Hainsha Mountains" was finally written and published that Zhu Hezhi read "Becoming a Real Person" again carefully before the conversation, and discovered: "First of all, I feel ashamed. A lot. The answer that I couldn't figure out was right there. Of course, it was because when I was writing the novel, I stipulated that I couldn't peek at the answer. The second discovery was that Yao Ming and I had something in common, such as our mutual understanding of The myths of the aboriginal people all have resonance and ideas.”

Gan Yaoming talked about the many characters in "When the Sun Fell on Hainsha Mountain", and was particularly impressed by the description of the Japanese. Comparing the two, he said: "Actually, when I wrote "Becoming a Real Person", I also wanted to write it from a Japanese point of view at the beginning, but it was a little difficult for me. I think what's great about Wazhi is Yes, he wrote it from the point of view of a Japanese policeman, "Kido Yachiba". He did not write this person poorly, nor did he write him well. He described how the Japanese went up the mountain to face the aborigines. , written in a way that is suddenly soft, suddenly hard and high-pressure, and very profound." Gan Yaoming believes that this must be a perspective that can only be restored after accumulating enough historical investigations, which is admirable.

Zhu Hezhi divides the story into three lines in the novel: Japanese, Bunun and Han. He believes that his writing method is actually very simple: "When I write about Japanese people, I think that I am Japanese. If I keep writing like this, when I deal with their conflicts, I will understand that there is no absolute good and evil, black and white."

Zhu Hezhi looked at the differences in beliefs and cultures. For example, the Bunun people believe that after death, a person must be buried in the house, because a person must return to the place where he was born to be perfect, and his soul will return to the spiritual world of his ancestors. But from the perspective of modern society, the Japanese think this is very unhygienic and uncivilized, so Japan banned it. Similarly, the Bunun people also believe that if a person dies outside, the body cannot be moved or taken home. It can only be left there, and that place becomes a place filled with evil spirits.

So in the novel, the Japanese police just wanted to send their dead relatives back to their hometowns, so they frightened the Bunun people. One person thinks: "How did you bring the evil spirit back?", and the other person thinks: "I am doing a good thing for you!" Zhu Hezhi tried to present this in the novel through multiple writings from different positions. : "In fact, many things are just tragedies caused by different cultural atmospheres."

➤The boundaries and dangers of “history” or “novel”

After leaving the book fair, in the evening, Zhu Hezhi and Gan Yaoming went to a nearby coffee shop and the conversation continued. The topic came to the definition of historical novels, and whether the two believed that their works fell under the framework of "historical novels".

Zhu Hezhi first responded from his own writing: "In the past few years, especially starting from "Nan Guang", I have consciously wanted to explore the boundaries of historical writing." Zhu Hezhi's last work was "" published in 2021. "Nanguang" describes the life of photographer Deng Nanguang (1907-1971) in more than 140,000 words.

Different from the past, Zhu Hezhi's autobiography of "Nanguang" uses a set of experimental writing techniques. This language was first used in the trial draft of "Sancha Mountain Incident", and then Zhu Hezhi put it aside and jumped out to complete "Nanguang". He said: "The experiment was considered a success. I took this language back to write about Sancha Mountain, and there were good and bad things. The good part is that I achieved the set goal, but when I wrote Sancha Mountain, I was pulled back a little by historical elements. That way of writing made me hit a wall."

Three years ago, Zhu Hezhi actually completed the story, but he was not satisfied, so he dismantled and rewrote the entire structure, and it became the "When the Sun Crashes in Hainsha Mountain" that we read now. This process of repeatedly polishing language and historical stories also made him realize: "I am really used to looking at things from a historical perspective. I use the context and structure of an event to construct my narrative. Even My concern with the relationship between people and the influence of crowds on crowds is quite historical."

And Kam Yaoming has gone from "Killing Ghosts", "Pangcha Girl" to "Becoming a Real Person". Although he has never been defined as a "historical novelist", his stories have never been far away from history. In this regard, he said: "It is a bit difficult to just define the word history. Most of our so-called traditional historical novels have the idea of ​​a central thread, and this idea returns to the so-called historian's point of view. I think This point of view is not the path that novelists want to take. History has its own inevitability, but historical novels are completely parallel time and space, and they even use infinite gaps to travel through the so-called history."

Gan Yaoming cited novelist Wang Jiaxiang's "The Wind in the Sea" as an example. It is certainly considered a historical novel, but many of the Siraya stories it describes have no written records and cannot be defined as traditional history. Therefore, Gan Yaoming chose to think this way: "I feel that the more we explain what historical novels are, the more we limit the possibilities of historical novels. From the direction of modernist novels, we can give historical novels more possibilities. This is why I was reading " The most amazing thing about "Nang Guang" is that it is not written in a traditional historical novel, but in a modernist novel."

For Gan Yaoming, "Historical novels must have infinite possibilities. Novels should be the great denominator, and history is only part of its numerator." Of course, he also understands that history has its inevitability. When writing, he often wants to Create a more authentic historical atmosphere. He said that when he wrote "Killing Ghosts", he had already realized one thing: "Readers may not be very interested in the history you write, because historians will definitely understand history better than novelists. Novelists can exert That is, within the imaginative boundaries of the novel, the historical space is expanded.”

Therefore, Gan Yaoming did not add any annotations in the book "Killing Ghosts". The only annotation is to tell readers in bold letters that if you are interested, just go to Google. He believes that the relationship between history and novels is: if you want to understand, go and read it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it. It will have no impact on the entire novel. "I use the so-called history as the background, but the historical background of the novel still exists. I will still fully explore the details, language and atmosphere of historical life."

Zhu Hezhi felt the same way. He added his views on "historical novels": "When I first started trying to write novels, I knew exactly what historical novels were, and I was sure that what I wanted to write was historical novels. But then Over the past two or three years and these two works, I have become less and less aware of what a historical novel is. To me, its definition has become increasingly vague." He admitted that all he can do now is try to expand his writing scope. The boundary, as to whether the work will be defined as a historical novel, is no longer his task now, or in other words, it is not something he can decide.

Zhu Hezhi said: "For a while, I wanted to get rid of the "historical novels" thing. But then I felt that no matter what, I would just write it in my own way and keep trying, and the evaluation would be determined by others." As he sees it, , there has been an explosion of historical novels in Taiwan in the past 15 years. In fact, behind it is the penetration of historical consciousness into non-historical writing. For Zhu Hezhi, everything can eventually return to a common concern of the writer.

Of course, there are dangers in writing history. When Zhu Hezhi wrote "Promised Land", he received comments that the novel "imagined the aboriginal people as a Han Chinese". This made him reflect on his over-reliance on anthropological surveys and documents left by Japan, but on the contrary, he ignored the indigenous people's own beliefs and lifestyles. He paid more attention to this when writing "When the Sun Crashed in the Ha'insha Mountains". "For example, I went directly to the Bunun life camp and experienced it with my body. Because of the tradition of the aboriginal people, they do not emphasize learning in the way of modern knowledge systems, but use body memory to practice. I use my body Learn from them."

Returning to the original intention of his creation, Zhu Hezhi originally hoped that through novels, people who had suffered in history and could not express themselves would be heard. "Their voices have disappeared, and the task of the novelist is to speak for them and speak out for them." He said seriously: "As a novelist, the responsible attitude is that you have to write cautiously and keep letting people know. Get close to the core and try to write it as completely and profoundly as possible. And constantly question yourself and ask yourself whether you have crossed the red line? Are there misunderstandings, over-interpretations? Or even wrong perceptions, etc."

Regarding the dangers of historical novels, Gan Yaoming further analyzed, not just history, but all writing: "When I finished writing "Becoming a Real Person", I also asked Bunun friends to help me see if there was anything wrong. But for me, writing novels is not just about opinions, writing novels itself has risks, and this risk lies in whether the author is well prepared for his own writing."

Gan Yaoming took his work "The Summer When General Winter Came" as an example. He wrote this book from a female perspective, so women will pay more attention to how men understand them. He said: "I think the so-called cross-ethnic and cross-culture are full of risks, but in that journey full of risks, can writers reduce the risks a little lower? This is the work we have to complete ourselves."

For example, in "Becoming Real People", there are passages describing same-sex emotions. Some people think that how can certain ethnic groups and characters be described as homosexual? Gan Yaoming responded with his own writing philosophy: "I think it can be explained this way. Going back to one of my favorite things in novels, I am writing the history of common people. I am not writing about how common people live in the atmosphere of big history. It doesn’t really need to fit into the larger historical narrative.”

Faced with the risks of writing novels, Gan Yaoming shared his feelings: "I think the lack of risks means that there are no challenges in writing novels. Writing itself actually has to endure a lot, and there is no safe route." People who write novels have to accept it. Its lethality. After Gan Yaoming finished speaking, he jokingly asked Zhu Hezhi, "Can you still hold on?" Zhu Hezhi replied with a smile: "I'm still afraid of being scolded!" But he accepted it calmly: "But it's not necessarily a bad thing. When we keep writing, we are actually constantly confirming where the gaps are and where the boundaries are. , even how the boundary has been moved by us."

➤The novelist’s retreat and disengagement

The conversation between Gan Yaoming and Zhu Hezhi started with the inspection of Sancha Mountain, and as if fulfilling an agreement, they always talked about that journey again. Gan Yaoming said frankly that when he went to Sancha Mountain, he found that it was different from what he imagined. "But I have finished the novel. I think it would be great if I went to Sancha Mountain to have a look. I don't want to change the novel anymore. When I get home, I just feel like I went for a walk. It would be nice if I could take a walk. . ”

It does not matter to Gan Yaoming whether the four machine guns left behind by the US military in the literature are found, or how many fragments can be seen. But at that time, he thought that if Zhu Hezhi, who went up the mountain together, didn't see it, he would definitely regret it. Unexpectedly, the next day they relied on general intelligence and luck to discover the cave where the gun was hidden.

Zhu Hezhi recalled the scene at that time: "We were walking around at that time, and it seemed that we had reached a possible hiding place for guns, so I stopped and half-jokingly wanted to say that I could sense nature. Of course, I did not have any psychic ability. At that time, I sincerely Tell the spirits in the mountains that we are here to bring your stories to the mountains and share them with everyone. If possible, please let us find these four guns."

As Zhu Hezhi said, "the pulse of the story" may start to connect with him here. He recalled that journey. At that time, Gan Yaoming had finished writing "Becoming a Real Man" and was in a state that he called "retiring from the world" in the novel and Zhu Hezhi called it "sangong". "When we went up the mountain, I hadn't started writing yet. It was considered a field trip. But I felt that Yaoming was in a very special mood when he was on the mountain." Zhu Hezhi deduced that from his past reading experience Such mood: "Because I like Yao Ming's "Boncha Girl" very much. When I read it towards the end, I had a very deep feeling, as if the author was saying a long farewell to the world he created. . ”

Without thinking for too long, and without saying yes or no, Gan Yaoming only told us: "I still remember the time when I finished writing "Boncha Girl" very clearly. It was December 19, 2014, at 10 o'clock in the morning. "

Just like Zhu Hezhi said about the feeling of "not wanting to finish it", Gan Yaoming believes that the moment the novel is completed, there are still many complicated feelings: "I think it is completion and also farewell. The novel should have its life, but that life I was so closely connected with your body in the beginning, that’s why I said this long farewell, it’s very much like retreating from heaven.”

Zhu Hezhi also talked about how when he wrote his first novel "Zheng Sen" (a total of 600,000 words), because he was used to conceiving the content of the novel while driving to work, the day after the novel was completed, he suddenly panicked, as if he could not drive. . He understood: "Because when writing a novel, you are fully immersed in the world you created. When the novel is completed, it will take some time to exit from that state." In Zhu Hezhi's writing experience, this is A process of "dispersing one's strength". Whether the exercise goes smoothly or not has a great impact on the novelist's physical and mental health, just like a speeding car has to get rid of inertia, and an actor needs to get out of the play.

Now, the two writers have finally come down from the top of Sancha Mountain, but they are always on the way to the next novel. When facing the novel, they still retain their original enthusiasm and momentum. Gan Yaoming said: "Why do I keep writing? It's very practical. In addition to it giving me a stable financial foundation, more importantly, writing novels allows me to explain the whole world."

Zhu Hezhi used "myth" to answer creation: "Writing novels is a way for me to understand history outwardly, and it is an inward self-exploration. Although novels are actually a product of Western modernity, the paradox is that , we also use modernity to restore enchantment. We re-create myths in novels to support and comfort each other."● ( Original text on Openbook official website on 2024-03-20)