Chapter 233 Returning Home and Xu Chi’s Report
Three days later, Yanjing, south of Balizhuang.

Yu Qie walked into the lecture hall of the literature training class, and thunderous applause broke out in the classroom. Some students clapped their hands so excitedly that they turned red… Yu Qie motioned for them to stop, and after a while, he began his first class in two months:
“We haven’t seen each other for a while. I heard that you all have made great progress. The reason why we came to Beijing to create is because the people here are of the highest level and the news here is the most well-informed… You may not be able to create your greatest work here, but it is easy to continue your literary life here.”

Yu Qie looked at the students in the audience and said with a smile:
“Mr. Feng Mu, the editor-in-chief of the Literary Gazette, said that several writers have shown refreshing styles and have great potential. I agree with his opinion.”

“Wang Meng told me privately that the level of the students in this period has improved rapidly, which makes the teachers very proud…”

The students started to applaud again, Yu Qie was praising them!
“Wait a minute – there are criticisms to be made as well. Our course has now reached the stage where we delve into theory, and you have already submitted relevant papers. If anyone is extremely dissatisfied with their grades, it may be that I have expressed veiled criticism. Please come and see me after class.”

The students immediately opened their test papers. Most of them had acceptable scores and did not need to confront Yu Qie.

However, Guan Moye trembled as he opened his paper. The red “B” on it was particularly shocking. The level of these writers who came to study was uneven. Some were not much worse than the cotangent of the previous two years, and some were just entering the industry. “B” was a good result for some people.

However, Guan Moye is a mature author who has published several works in first-line literary magazines in the past year. The evaluation of “B” is undoubtedly Yu Qie’s criticism.

Yu Qie then named other people.

“Yu Hua…”

“Eh!”

Yu Hua stood up immediately.

Yu Qie said: “Many people are very impressed by you. They say that you have a high level of theoretical knowledge and know what you are writing… I remember when you wrote “Stars”, the ending was too gloomy and the editor advised you to change it. Many people would need several days or even weeks to finish it, but you finished it in one day, which shows that you still have great potential.”

Yu Hua sat down with satisfaction.

Su Tong, Liu Zhenyun, Qu Tiening, Wang Anyi and others were also highly praised by Yu Qi.

He said, “Su Tong’s situation is similar to Yu Hua’s. She is one of the few writers who knows the limits of her abilities.” He also said, “Liu Zhenyun has the greatest potential to inherit the ‘new realism’ school and can be a very good editor.”

He described the two female writers as “heroines”. “They no longer describe the worries of young girls as before, but have turned their attention to the difficulties faced by mature women. But I still think… female writers don’t have to write about women. They should be writers first.”

“There are many themes in our society that are worth writing about, and men are also worthy of the attention of female writers.”

Obviously, although Yu Qie was away for the past two months, he was very satisfied with the students’ situation. However, the more Yu Qie said this, the more uneasy Guan Moye felt. He also wanted to be Yu Qie’s favorite student. Yu Qie was too young, and he was both a teacher and a friend to them, and often called them friends.

Whatever achievements Yu Qie gives them will never affect their literary life. However, some people attach great importance to Yu Qie’s evaluation, because Yu Qie is the short story king for two consecutive years and the author of the only TV series “Da Saba” on People’s Broadcasting Station. After he won the Akutagawa Prize, he became even more powerful, and his every move was full of indescribable grace.

Guan Moye was distressed that such a talented person did not appreciate him. A deep sense of loss swept over him.

After class, he waited for a while and found Yu Qie’s office alone.

“I don’t understand why I am a B.”

“You still have the same problem.” Yu Qie said with an expression that he knew you would come. “Don’t study cyberpunk and wasteland literature. They are rubbish for you. You can’t write about them.”

“I don’t mind others writing these novels, but Guan Moye, you are an energetic person, like a spring. If you feel something is unfair or unsatisfactory, you will process it into a novel and use ‘literature’ to express your own words. This gives you inspiration for writing, but sometimes it also makes you go too far.”

Yu Qie became more and more serious, and his voice gradually became low.

“Now, the things I wrote in Japan are like trees without roots and water without sources in the mainland. They are too far away from your life, so you can’t get this energy. They become pure imitations and are very artificial. You should pay attention to your own reality, your hometown, and your yellow land.”

Guan Moye felt very confused. Seeing him like this, Yu Qie could only say: “Come to me next time, you still don’t understand now.”

After the new round of courses, the students have reached the practical stage. They will eventually have to write a novel based on the literary theory they have studied. Yu Qie did not deliberately guide these writers, but without exception, they chose the style they were good at in their previous lives.

Only Guan Moye was obsessed with writing what Yu Qie had written. Historically, Guan Moye used “Gaomi Northeast Township” as the setting for his novel Red Sorghum, which was so amazing that it was praised as the “Chinese version of One Hundred Years of Solitude”. His literary style was also jokingly called “rural magic realism”.

After many twists and turns, he reached his literary peak again in the article “Life and Death Are Tired”, which was more than 20 years after “Red Sorghum”.

Therefore, “magical realism” is such an important literary style for Guan Moye! He even won the Nobel Prize for it. After Yu Qie’s extensive translation, “magical realism” eliminated many negative factors, making it even more worthy of Guan Moye’s exploration.

If he can truly write a domestic version of magical realism that is not so reckless and fabricated, it will be a good thing for the entire literary world.

Guan Moye came to Yu Qie’s office again, and this time Yu Qie said, “I have thought of a more appropriate statement. Guan Moye, when you write magical realism, you are a first-rate writer, and when you imitate other styles, you are a third- or fourth-rate writer… Which one do you want to be?” This evaluation undoubtedly declared that Guan Moye “was not going this way.” Moreover, Yu Qie was so arbitrary and resolute that he even felt a hidden anger: Even if you were the first to create this kind of novel, you can’t always think that I’m not good enough, right?

This time when he came out of the office, he met Yu Hua. Guan Moye had a good relationship with Yu Hua, Su Tong and others. He couldn’t help but tell them the story, and then asked Yu Hua: “What kind of person do you think I am? Why can’t I do it?”

Yu Hua stroked his chin, smacked his lips and said, “Guan Moye, you are a person who is easily influenced by others.”

“Yeah.” Guan Moye did not refute.

Yu Hua said: “So, you care deeply about other people’s judgments and try your best to prove yourself. This is your literature, your inner strength. Yu Qie is exactly the opposite of you.”

Guan Moye was curious: “Who is Yu Qie?”

“Yu Qie is a superman. He doesn’t care about other people’s opinions. He thinks that those who don’t listen to his advice are idiots… I don’t know why he thinks so, but in fact, he is always right. So when you and he create, it seems that the results are the same – you are both influenced by the people around you or the things that happened to you to create novels, rather than writing them out of thin air, but your original intentions are completely different!”

“Also, the novel he wrote in Japan requires a lot of knowledge in science, engineering, and humanities. Neither of us has a degree, so we can’t write such a novel.”

“Do you know what alienation is? Do you know what cyber is, what hackers are, what nuclear waste is… You don’t know anything? Then you can’t write about it at all. Su Tong is a top student, he knows it, and after he knows it, he feels even more unable to write!”

This finally broke Guan Moye’s defense.

OK! I’d better write magical realism!

Yu Hua was the student who had the best relationship with Yu Qie. He had worked with Yu Qie for a period of time, and he obviously understood Yu Qie much better than the others. Guan Moye was ordered by Yu Qie not to write about a certain style, and the news spread, and many people’s impression of Yu Qie changed:
Wow, can Teacher Yu ever be so domineering?
In late April, “People’s Literature” was published, and this issue contained Xu Chi’s report “People Want to Become Yu Qie”. The article caused a sensation after its publication, and countless readers of Yu Qie got to know a “different” Yu Qie.

In their imagination, Yu Qie endured humiliation, was financially strapped, and had a noble character…but in Xu Chi’s article, he created a unique image of a literary giant.

The article consists of tens of thousands of words. The first part recalls Yu Qie’s experiences from childhood to before college. At this point, it is similar to other reports such as “Goldbach’s Conjecture” and “The Light of Geology”. Readers think that a “saint”-like literary giant is about to emerge, but things are completely different afterwards.

This article describes Yu Che’s life before and after winning the award, or his creative process. Xu Chi tries to explore why Yu Che is so popular.

Yu Qie is first and foremost a genius with talents in all aspects, and his curiosity drove him to work in a certain industry.

Xu Chi wrote, “Yu Qie generally doesn’t like to cook, but prefers to eat out. If he wants to cook, he has to cook very well. I have been lucky enough to try it a few times, but he doesn’t do it out of love for cooking, but because he doesn’t want to be worse than the average chef.”

“Yu Qie exercises every day and eats a lot of meat. He has a very strong physique, which is different from any other scientific researcher I have written about.”

“Yu Qie was once commended by the military district leaders. When he went to receive the award, many soldiers were curious about his marksmanship. He tried shooting on the spot and missed the target. The soldiers burst into laughter… But after Yu Qie practiced hard for two or three days, his marksmanship was already quite good. After that, when he participated in such activities, he always looked for opportunities to practice shooting. Half a year later, Yu Qie returned to the unit to test shooting again, and this time he got a very good result.”

Then, Yu Qie’s thinking was different from that of ordinary people.

“Márquez, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, has written a new work, Love in the Time of Cholera. A team of translators, led by Huang Jinyan from Shanghai Normal University, is currently translating this masterpiece. They wrote to Yu Che, hoping that he would once again write an errata for the novel… Yu Che relearned Spanish and Portuguese for this. I thought he learned these in order to use foreign materials to prove his own views – but he wrote a long international letter and sent it to Márquez in Colombia.”

“Yu Che said: Instead of doing research, it is better to ask the author directly. Marquez immediately responded to Yu Che’s questions. Yu Che wrote an errata based on Marquez’s letter and published it in Foreign Literature Research. Some Latin American literature researchers were shocked at first reading it and thought Yu Che was making it up. Until the last line stated that he learned it from Marquez, everyone was speechless.”

Xu Chi also wrote about Yu Che’s affluent living conditions and the natural and freehand style of Yu Che when he wrote novels… He had such talent and ability, but at the end of the report, the report suddenly turned from the previous light-heartedness and wrote about something that made Yu Che anxious.

This was the misunderstanding about the award that arose in the country due to reports at the time. Faced with this matter that might affect his literary career, Yu Qie ultimately chose to deal with it calmly, which both took into account the domestic emotions and prevented the incident from worsening.

All the pressure was borne by him alone, and Nie Weiping, Qian Zhongshu and others who were just bystanders were almost on the verge of collapse.

Xu Chi wrote: “Yu Qie used the spirit of a young man to do some great things; many great things in our society are often driven by such people, who have abilities beyond ordinary people but retain their own sharpness; why do people like Yu Qie? Because people want to be Yu Qie!”

After the report was published, it immediately became Xu Chi’s new masterpiece. In addition to People’s Literature, many newspapers and magazines reprinted this article. Even ordinary people who are not interested in literature will like Yu Qie after reading this article.

China presents a different climate in April. In the northeast, some areas have not yet transitioned from winter, and the temperature is still more than ten degrees below zero. Readers sit by the stove, reading Xu Chi’s report word by word with their carrot-like fingers, and a living great friend Yu Qie comes into their minds. In the south, the area near the Pearl River basin has begun to have temperatures of 20 to 30 degrees. The young people who come here to make a living are wearing single shirts, looking forward to seeing “Yu Qie” “speaking big” in Japan and getting a lot of royalties.

Who doesn’t want to be Yu Qie today?

The man who made his fortune by reselling corn might sigh and say: If I could write novels, why would I need to engage in speculation?
Once upon a time, “Goldbach’s Conjecture” changed people’s views on scientific researchers, and now, the article “People Want to Be Cotangent” makes the public re-examine the profession of writer.

Countless letters were sent to express the audience’s admiration for Yu Che, the “youth role model”. Girls wrote to express their love, and some literary “folk scientists” wrote to argue with Yu Che that “Marquez doesn’t understand the novels written by Marquez”, which made Yu Che very annoyed.

(End of this chapter)