Hong Kong column． Taiwan Literature Award - Comparison of the cultural ascending ladder and mechanisms of the two places: Record of conversation between Deng Xiaohua and Huang Liqun

( Original article published in Functional Words·Intangible )

Organizing｜ Han Qichou

黃｜黃麗群鄧｜鄧小樺

Preface

Capital cities are all about efficiency, and everything goes up and down. It is not easy for literature to survive in this city, but it has its own savage vitality. Literature, as an industry, will form very different operating logics in response to different regional characteristics. Whether it is relying on the mechanism of the commercial market or relying on a stable selection system, countless excellent works have been produced.

Deng Xiaohua and Huang Liqun, two writers with rich media and publishing experience, recently had a conversation at Taipei Enclave Bookstore about "Literary Cultivation Ecology in the Cities of Taiwan and Hong Kong" and discussed Hong Kong's column culture and Taiwan's (mainly single article) literary awards. How did the mechanism become the ascending ladder of the author's career in the past? Now that the old authority has disappeared, writers face the borderless Internet culture, and what challenges will the literary ecology face?

Hong Kong Column Culture: Literature and art are fostered in a place of commerce

Deng: What is the column? It is a small square, with a fixed eight hundred words per day. You cannot write more or less. If you cannot write three hundred words today, your square will be missing a corner; then you write a thousand words, and the two hundred words How to stuff it in? It’s impossible for the people in the copy picking room of the newspaper to help you fill in the papers. You will jam the entire production line, and the troublesome writers will be kicked out. (Column) is just a grid. The publication time and word count are fixed, and sometimes the content is too. Literature is a bit freer, but if it's a doctor's notes, then assume that you have to write about doctor-related things, right? So the anchor of your career is: if you keep writing like this and have a large number of readers in newspapers, it will become an identity for you.

In Hong Kong, a place where literature is relatively weak, if it is a more commercial media, they will think that columnists are higher than writers. Serious literature is relatively peripheral, and the public may not have read your works; but if you say you are a columnist for a certain daily, they can guess your popularity based on the price of your royalties. It will probably be after 2010, with the rise of the so-called literary youth, that social consensus will change. In the past, in Hong Kong, writers were a problematic and somewhat questionable identity, and poets did not exist at all. They were almost considered madmen or beggars. In the 1950s and 1960s, the city with the most newspapers in the world was actually Hong Kong, not New York, Washington, and Paris. In such a small city, if a newspaper wants to support its size, it needs a large number of columns. At that time, if you wanted to relax, you had to buy newspapers. Seniors who write columns will tell us not to write so seriously, because people read columns so that they have something to talk about at the dinner table. Nowadays, most people talk about things on Facebook or Dcard, and the column’s function of “talking after dinner” has been replaced.

Let me talk about the situation in the 1950s and 1960s. Columnists were very prestigious. For example, I invited Liu Yichang to write a column, and sales immediately increased. Liu Yichang was a very important writer in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s. His book "The Pair" is a pre-text of Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love". Liu Yichang was originally in Shanghai, but he fled to Hong Kong during the war and ended up running out of money by his bedside. What to do? He wrote columns and serialized novels. At his peak, he would write for thirteen newspapers a day. From six in the morning to twelve o'clock, his wife would send the manuscript to the newspaper office, and then they would go to have afternoon tea together. At that time, Liu Yichang could eat thirty bowls of wonton noodles for one article, and then he could buy an off-the-plan apartment in Taikoo Shing in three years. So he said that it was a minimum to write about having calluses on his fingers. It was hard work, but he had never experienced poverty. This sentence is really heroic.

Diversity and openness make a difference

Deng: Liu Yichang is such a famous writer, why doesn’t Hong Kong treat him well? Because Hong Kong is a colony. Literature is actually a matter of family and country. Why should you respect the Chinese language? Chinese represents your country - sorry now, the British colonial government has no one to care about you. However, most of the society faced were Chinese readers. At that time, only Hong Kong among the three places across the Taiwan Strait had freedom of publication and freedom of expression. The demand for publication and viewing was all crowded in Hong Kong. That's why the column culture was created. It was originally a topic for after-dinner conversation, but after many years it is still worth reading because it is very large. Newspapers have a more open threshold than official recognition.

In the 1980s and 1990s, culture was very open, and many upward ladders emerged. For example, You Jing was born in 1966 and became the editor-in-chief of "Film Biweekly" after graduating from college; in the 1980s, Liang Wendao had not yet finished high school. , someone asked him to write a column. When there is a large market and openness, there will be more diversity left. The good columns in Hong Kong are actually about craftsmanship. Wu Xubin's "Looking at Cows" is a collection of columns from the 1990s. Her writing combines the perspectives of a girl and an old woman, which is both innocent and has the perspective of an old person who has traveled through time. Wu Xubin usually writes about nature-related things, which will appear in newspapers in the form of popular science columns. For example, the title is lizards, but it is actually a very poetic prose. Du Du, another very famous food columnist, "Food Magic" is a column he has written in Ming Pao Weekly for decades. He uses about a thousand words to talk about a kind of food, such as eggs and bread. It is very easy to read. He first talks about some food tips, and then connects the content of art movies and novels, so after reading, you will both He knew how to cook and absorbed the knowledge of art. He would not say that this is a palace of culinary art, but would say in a low-key manner: This thing is very interesting, do you want to take a look? Du Du is a good example of what a Hong Kong column can be. It does not have authoritative assistance, so it has to use commercial packaging to survive, but it actually has some very nutritional value.

Taiwan before and after the ban: a club for the minority

Huang: What Xiao Hua was talking about just now shows a certain local, urban character, with a core surrounded by the masses. The survival of orthodoxy does not exist in a designated and authoritative certification. Taiwan is completely the opposite, and it was still the same logic before 2010. In Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s, in fact, the number of media and what they had to say were completely controlled.

I used to open the supplement of "United Daily News". The right side is the supplement version, and there is a page on the left called "Colorful", which may be closer to Xiao Hua's column. But "Binfen" publishes not columnists, but readers who submit articles about daily life. "China Times" was probably the most important scene for studying pure literature in the 1980s, when "China Times" had not yet transformed into a strange shape. Competition between the two major newspapers was fierce at the time. In its heyday, just one page of the Human Supplement could support more than a dozen editors. Just imagine, if you want to take the imperial examination, you will have the authority of the imperial examination system and a feudal character. In our era, there were many official literary and artistic awards, from names like the National Army Literary and Art Awards to the Chinese National Literary and Art Awards. You will see how a social and political system affects the way and inner logic of cultural production. . Basically, through a small number of awards, a small number of pages, and a group of club-like people, an imperial examination system was designed.

Around the 1970s, the two major newspapers began to establish literary awards. In fact, they had the flavor of the imperial examination of "becoming famous all over the world in one fell swoop." This scene is very similar to the joint entrance examination, and fairness is guaranteed to a certain extent because the degree of anonymity is very high. I started writing around 2000, which was the first generation of the Internet and social networking. At that time, it was popular for us to submit articles. Of course, the articles submitted would not be used in the journal. I didn’t think anything of it. I wanted to say that everyone was great. That was a year or two later, when I won a literary award. At a certain award event, I met a senior editor of the supplement at that time. He said that he was impressed by your previous manuscripts, but at that time you didn't win the award and couldn't use it. Now If you win the award, your manuscripts will be given directly to us in the future. I didn't have a problem with the incident, and I didn't feel hurt at the time. I just realized that when he said, "Huh?", he was either being malicious or had a "good job, young man" vibe. But from this we can know how this production system has been carried out for a long time.

Of course, there were some changes after the newspaper ban was lifted, but as long-term authorities, the two major newspapers continued to follow the logic of the past. Later, the "Free Times" actually continued this screening system. Therefore, the biggest difference in the literary cultivation ecology between the two places is the way of influence of the system. (Taiwan) is a top-down authoritative screening, (Hong Kong) is a bottom-up affirmation by the public.

The Shaping of the Literary Prize

Huang: In the ecology I talked about, I just mentioned "become famous in one fell swoop and the world knows it." The most impressive example should be Liu Zijie's "Seven Days After My Father" (note: first prize in the prose category of the 2006 Lam Wing Sam Literary Award). There has never been a precedent for prose being adapted into a film before; it was usually a novel, or at least a short story.

I don’t really agree with this (literary award) system because the system itself is a bit boring. Due to literary awards in Taiwan, a large number of literary award themes and literary award bodies have been formed. I came out of this system, and I don’t shy away from saying that I still work on literary awards. Because of this, I can also realize its impact. It probably took the past few years for it to become more diluted. One of the reasons is the Internet, and also because everyone’s appetite has been spoiled. I really like some articles that don’t talk about anything in particular, because that kind of work can better show the skill of controlling words, but in the literature award, there will be a lot of grandmas, a lot of hurtful experiences, a lot of thick and colorful emotions, and then there are Extensive personal life histories. Please note that I have no opinion on this matter. What I do have is that some reviewers feel that prose is about people writing about their own pain. I was shocked because I think writing has a self-revelation component, but the promise of writing is not self-revelation, it's not trafficking. I’m not saying that writing comments like this is all about doing this, but if you use this attitude as a screening, it will naturally shape an aesthetic.

I will also be moved by unique life experience, but it will not be used as a prerequisite (selection). For example, I also like "Seven Days After My Father". Death is indeed written in it, but the author created a new writing possibility to interpret "mourning".

Taiwan's literary awards also have a very strange impact on the body. The Lam Wing Sam Literary Award later had a "Short Essay" category. I think it came about in response to the reading habits of mobile social media. Those of us who have written before know that it is difficult to write short sentences, but when writing long ones, you can ramble on, and there is a lot of room for mistakes. But writers in Taiwan will be asked: Why don’t you write long novels? Everyone has an unconscious obsession with grand narratives, especially researchers in many colleges, because in academic research, long stories are a good thing to use.

Deng: Mainland China and Taiwan both have literary awards to encourage novels, but Hong Kong does not. I have thought that this is possible because novels can bear the representative narrative of a place, which a city did not have before.

Huang: I may not have a very clear mission or sense of responsibility. I think there is only one logic in literature: your material has the most suitable way of expression and the most suitable volume.

Flowing gaps vs. stable mechanisms

Deng: Going one step further, this is a question of culture and mechanism. There are bound to be good and bad, so I will say a little more to let everyone understand. It was also the first time I published an article in a newspaper. At that time, when I was in college, I needed to earn pocket money. A newspaper that was not very literary opened a supplement, and they posted emails and the like there, so I submitted the article. The editor called and said, "You write well, please send me more manuscripts." In fact, I didn't have a literary name at that time, and I was just a freshman in college. The editor has opened that volume, and there is an urgent need for someone to fill it in, so I will be a little more open and seek for the best first. He only had the position of editor when he got the resources, so he opened it first and then filled it. In order to fill it, he had to transfer his power. This is actually an exchange. If he knows he needs a manuscript, he will be more open to asking for it first. You see this is the way Hong Kong works. This is the underlying business character. There is a contract and a mutual exchange of resources. We each give the resources we can give to each other for mutual benefit. In order to fill up the content, he can even open it to strangers, and then the standards will be relatively floating. This is also a way of doing things in Hong Kong. Everyone does business together, and strangers need to know each other. This situation is of course not very stable. For example, the page often spins up and disappears. However, Taiwan's two major newspapers and Free Supplement have a very stable ecology, and there is a clear distinction between practitioners: "This is how people like us do things." This can be understood as professionalism. The so-called craftsman feeling, newspapers are That's what you have to do. The supplement has been like this since Nie Hualing. It has a great tradition and maintains the habit of not being easily cleaned. Of course, its openness may be low.

The pride of Hong Kong media and cultural people is: he is not famous, but I discovered him; instead of saying that you are famous now, you can come to us to write articles. Their sense of honor is different, which is quite interesting.

In the 1990s, we heard—this is a legend—that there was a writer named Lin Yaode. When I got to know him, he had already passed away. But Lam Yiu-tak is known in Hong Kong because he often writes manuscripts that challenge the principles of literary award review. He also responds to the views of the literary award reviewers and changes the ecology of the literary award. Therefore, we in Hong Kong admire and affirm that Taiwan’s literary award review records are completely open. You can at least discuss whether you agree or disagree. In this regard, we can see the situation of Hong Kong's cultural desert. The largest literary award in Hong Kong is organized by the library. The library is already the largest literary institution. The government does not pay attention to literature. The transcripts of the awards are poorly done and are only short sentences. : "Well written", "Not well written", "I don't like", "I don't agree with". (Appears to be) Some of the comments are very unfair, and the recording is particularly idiotic. For example: The Lantau Island she wrote is not like the Lantau Island I agree with. You know, if a judge said that, it would be a scandal, and every word of that thing would be a scandal. Such a literary award record cannot create any professionalism.

The best time for Hong Kong's newspaper and magazine culture was in the 1990s. At that time, an interview of 1,500 words made you feel like you had a lot to read. Why was it so powerful? There is a space limit. You may visit for three days, but you can only write a thousand and five words. You can only keep shortening and compressing. Restriction is actually a kind of training, which will make you know how to jump and compress. Some content can be hinted at, and you can save thirty words, how important it is.

Internet ecology impacts literary tradition

Huang: In fact, you don’t have to expect too much from literary awards now. It’s not just a matter of winning a literary award. It’s like a fixed event. I think this is a paradigm shift in communications, I can’t remember the last time I read a newspaper.

Modern literature is: you don’t need that set of authority. New authority appears, which is flow. Now the whole paradigm shift, instead of how do I get into literature, what are the new and most important text types now? It's YouTube. Literature as a text, or even as a whole category, is no longer authoritative; it has been removed from a larger scene. I don't think it's that bad.

Now when you open the community, everyone is eager for you to see his privacy. If you don't want to see it, his privacy will keep coming to you. This will affect aesthetic logic. In the past, there were many technological and physical barriers to communication between people. You would want to peek into your life, but now you don't. At this time, how you can re-draw the interpersonal boundaries to your own position is a huge conscious and spiritual need in the contemporary era. The way technology is used means there are almost no boundaries, and everyone feels that you need to know their things and privacy as a matter of course. I saw that many people would take videos of themselves crying while holding their pets in the last hour of euthanasia, and upload them to Instagram, writing: "It's very sad, this is our last hour." I am very concerned about this matter. Very reserved, when a private mourning emotion is given a performative nature, what kind of spiritual world are we facing? We will record the last moments of our pets, but there are still some essential differences between putting my phone there and taking pictures of the last moments when I held him and cried. The strong stretching of boundaries, including psychological boundaries, will also inadvertently flow into the writings of young writers. They will no longer use the heartbreaking, come and see my wounds. I think they have had enough. , the forty-year-old generation is very new to these things, and they release everything for everyone to see. I think that in future generations, "demarcation" will be a very important concept. How to draw boundaries between public/privacy and individuals/others will be a new key issue.

Deng: (Responding to the audience’s question: What is the source of literary nourishment for Hong Kong writers?) Taiwan’s inheritance or rules are relatively fixed. Everyone often talks about the same writers and works, but this is not common in Hong Kong. It sometimes happens. A system that is split into several people because it is usually the teacher who leads the students. For example, the elegant aesthetics of Chinese culture that Yu Guangzhong brought to Hong Kong conflicts with the Western aesthetics of marginalization, decentralization, and centralization in the West. However, Hong Kong (system) generally does not have a clear distinction, even if you don’t like it. You have to look at Yu Guangzhong or Yesi, they are basically omnivores. Novels from Mainland China in the 1980s and 1990s had a great influence, because Hong Kong did not have very strict gates. At that time, avant-garde novels from Mainland China, such as Mo Yan, etc., suddenly came in, and their influence was huge.

For poets born in the 1980s, they were more exposed to Taiwanese poetry through the Internet. In the seven or eight years after 2008, the poetry style in Hong Kong was largely influenced by Xia Yu, which was quite similar to that in Taiwan. The seniors who taught poetry writing were puzzled: How could the poetry that was very life-oriented in the past turn into a derailed language? How did you learn it? They learned it online. Therefore, the context of Hong Kong literature is very complex. What is more obvious is the magical realism in Latin America. Before Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Hong Kong had already introduced his works. Considering the small volume of Hong Kong literature, the proportion of people writing magical realism is really high. , two or three every decade. This does not have a strong teacher-teacher system. It is a traditional but spontaneous process. A reader wants to write after reading it, and then keeps writing.

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