Lu Yao, December 3, 1949 - November 17, 1992, formerly known as Wang Weiguo, was a contemporary Chinese writer who was born in a generation of peasant families in northern Shaanxi. His masterpiece "The Ordinary World" is known for its magnificence. With its momentum and epic character, it panoramically expresses the social life in urban and rural China and the great changes in people's thoughts and emotions during the reform era. The work won the third Mao Dun Literature Award. He later died of liver disease at the age of 42.
(01) Lu Yao is not just a scholar. During the Cultural Revolution, the revolutionary masses in Yanchuan County split into two camps, and Lu Yao was the leader of one of them. Later, the Yanchuan County Revolutionary Committee was established, and Lu Yao became the deputy director, equivalent to the deputy county magistrate. That year, Lu Yao was only 18 years old.
(02) According to Lu Yao’s first teacher Cao Guxi, Lu Yao’s character has many flaws. For example, Lu Yao often asks his friends to do things for him, but he is not very willing to do things for his friends. When his adoptive father was critically ill, Lu Yao failed to give him a bowl of water; when his adoptive father passed away, Lu Yao failed to burn a piece of paper money in front of his grave. As a son, Lu Yao did not perform filial piety.
(03) The prototype of the poet Jia Bing in "The Ordinary World" is Cao Guxi.
(04) Lu Yao’s ashes were buried on the mountain behind Yan’an University. The bluestone for the tomb was transported from Qingjian County, Lu Yao’s birthplace. Because there is a Shaanxi saying called "Xintianyou" that Lu Yao often sung: "Mizhi's mother-in-law Suide is Han, and the charcoal of the slate tile kiln in the clear stream." After Lu Yao was buried, Caoguxi named the ridge where Lu Yao's ashes were placed. "Wenhui Mountain".
(05) Lu Yao’s real name is Wang Weiguo. At that time, the truth about the Lin Biao incident spread, and Lin Biao's best friend Wang Weiguo happened to have the same pronunciation as Wang Weiguo. Since then, Lu Yao has stopped using his real name.
(06) In addition to the pen name Lu Yao, he also used many pen names such as Ying Yihong, Liang Yuan, and Lu Yuan.
(07) Lu Yao is a well-known "eater". When I was young, I always slept wherever I went, and ate wherever I lived. Later, he lived in the courtyard of the Shaanxi Provincial Writers Association, and this was still the case. He had almost eaten at the homes of several young people from the Writers Association. Sometimes when I was sitting in the courtyard, I suddenly saw someone coming back from an outing. He immediately said happily: "Let's go to your house for a bowl of noodles?" The friend said: "Then let's go." He followed him excitedly.
(08) When Lu Yao first learned to write, he borrowed books from everywhere. One characteristic of his borrowing books is that he is not very trustworthy. Whenever his master begged for it, he said he had lost it, and the master could only consider himself unlucky. When I encounter a new book again, I have to insist on borrowing it. Don't borrow it because you are diligent and studious, but borrow it because you are worried that it will not be returned if you borrow it again.
(09) Lu Yao’s wife Linda is an educated youth from Beijing who joined the team in Yanchuan. Linda's pen name is Cheng Yuan. The road is far away, the pen names are in conflict, and we share the same goals. A few years later, they named their only daughter Lu Yuan, so that acquaintances could understand the meaning.
(10) When Lu Yao was promoted to university, because he had been a rebel leader, Yanchuan recommended him to Beijing Normal University, but Beijing Normal University politely declined; they recommended him to Shaanxi Normal University, and Shaanxi Normal University The Normal University was not willing to accept it either. Later, the director of culture and education of Yanchuan County led the recruitment cadres, brought a stack of "Mountain Flowers" magazine, and had a serious talk with the comrades recruiting students from Yan'an University. Yanda also has concerns. In the end, the secretary of the Yanchuan County Party Committee went shirtless and frequently entered and exited the Yanchuan University campus in a special car. In the end, Shen Peichang, the president of Yanda, took the risk and admitted Lu Yao to the Chinese Department of Yanda.
(11) At that time, not long after the university resumed enrollment, the discipline on campus was relatively loose: smoking was allowed, napping was allowed, and students were allowed to leave class because they felt that the teacher was not teaching well. So sometimes, when the school bell rang and the students went to class one after another, Lu Yao hunched over and walked out of the school gate from downstairs of the classroom with books in his arms, maybe to get into some ideal nook in Yangjialing, or maybe to get food in front of the school gate. On Yanhetan under the ridge, I read a book until I returned before dinner. Sometimes, when the teacher is giving a lecture on the podium, he lies on the table and listens carelessly, snoring soundly while sleeping. After handing out the handouts, his deskmate put them in a drawer for him. Not only did he not organize them or read them, but when he needed them urgently, he would grab them out, mash them into a ball, and run to the toilet.
(12) Lu Yao admires Liu Qing very much and has read "History of Entrepreneurship" at least four times.
(13) In early 1976, Premier Zhou passed away, and his superiors ordered that no memorial service be held and no black veil be worn. As the squad leader, Lu Yao took political risks and organized the whole class to donate money and make black gauze from black cloth. Every student wore the gauze for three days.
(14) Lu Yao’s financial expenses while studying in college were provided by his girlfriend Linda.
(15) In the early spring of 1970, one day, the poet Wen Quan received an article titled "Car Crossing the Nanjing Bridge" and signed by Ying Yihong. So, Wen Ping met the author. He was a twenty-year-old young man, wearing a faded and rotten cotton-padded jacket, with a torn hemp rope tied around his waist. Wenpin was going to edit and publish that article, but felt that the pen name was awkward. "How about you think of another pen name?" Wen Pin asked. So, the young man took the poem manuscript, thought about it a little, and wrote the word "Lu Yao".
(16) Lu Yao especially likes rainy days. Whenever it rains, he will say with great joy: "It's raining! It's raining!"
(17) Lu Yao When buying cigarettes, you must wear a mouthpiece, but you must pinch off the filter when smoking. Lu Yao's favorite smoke is "Hongtashan".
(18) Lu Yao is very particular about the neatness of his desk. He said that if the table was a little messy, he would not be able to enter a creative state and would have to tidy it up. Moreover, Lu Yao likes to scribble on paper. He often has no idea or feeling, just draws on the manuscript paper, and then draws an inspiration. He often walked around the compound with his head down, but that was not conceiving, but relaxing.
(19) Lu Yao said that in the courtyard of the Writers Association, the most interesting phenomenon is: the children are the busiest, going to bed late and getting up early, and are diligent in their homework; secondly, the wives are busy, going out early and staying late Back home, busy with work; the least busy person is Mr. Literary, who can drink a cup of tea from morning to night.
(20) Lu Yao once said that a girl from northern Shaanxi treats people very well. If she falls in love with you, even if she has a lover but does not get married, she will never forget you in her life. Whenever, you just need to send me a message. , she borrowed money to come and see you. He also said that women from northern Shaanxi are not only beautiful in heart, but also beautiful in appearance. If you have the opportunity to go to northern Shaanxi, when you are waiting for school to end, stand at the gate of Mizhi Middle School and Suide Normal School and see that the girls coming out there are more beautiful than the last.
(21) Lu Yao once told the comrades who looked after him that if he was found to have cancer, he would run away to a deserted place, cover himself with a blanket, and lie down on the ground to die. However, even though what was finally found was not cancer, but cirrhosis and ascites, Lu Yao could not leave Xijing Hospital.
(22) In the summer of 1981, Lu Yao was writing "Life" in the guest house of Ganquan County. Baima made a special trip to visit him. He saw that the room was filled with smoke, the iron dustpan behind the door was filled with cigarette butts, and the table was full of cigarette butts. Throwing hard steamed buns and a few twists on top. Lu Yao's hair was disheveled and the corners of his eyes were sticky and red. Writing day and night had made his arms so painful that it was difficult to lift them. Lu Yao struggled to write, and his progress was not fast. He could write up to five to six thousand words a day, and he had to revise back and forth constantly.
(23) That night, Yan'an City was covered with moonlight. Lu Yao and Gao Jianqun were like sleepwalkers, tossing and turning on the street until midnight. "A big event is about to happen in the Chinese literary world!" Lu Yao said, referring to the package of "Life" manuscripts.
(24) Lu Yao came back after winning the prize and deposited the bonuses given to him by Beijing and the province into the bank in the name of his daughter Lu Yuan. The two bonuses are neither more nor less, a total of 10,000 yuan. This is the only deposit certificate left behind him.
(25) Even though he has won the Mao Dun Literature Award, Lu Yao’s life is still very poor. People in the courtyard of the Writers Association saw him coming back from the street stall almost every day, holding a few steamed buns or pieces of pot helmets in one hand, and a cucumber in the other hand as he gnawed it. Sometimes he didn't even have a cucumber, just a few. onion.
(26) Wang Anyi’s fortune telling to Lu Yao was actually a psychological test. She asked Lu Yao to name three animals, and then reported the adjectives that came to mind from them. Then, Wang Anyi explained that the adjectives of the first animal are how you describe yourself, and the adjectives of the second animal are how others describe you. When Wang Anyi said that the adjective for the third animal actually meant the actual self, Lu Yao couldn't help but say "oh", the smile on his face disappeared, and his eyes became serious.
The third animal Lu Yao mentioned was cattle. He used words such as heavy and hard to describe cattle.
(27) Lu Yao said that in early spring, when walking in the mountains, the eyes were filled with loess. Suddenly, there was a winding road, and a pink peach blossom stood on the cliff. At this time, tears could not help but flow down. It is always a solitary tree with sparse branches, and the pink color is almost drowned by the surging loess color. The sky above the loess is exceptionally blue, as if it was specially designed to illuminate the loess, making the desolation even more shocking. It seems to have evacuated all the pure and virginal emotions in life, and used all its strength to bloom the flowers. It is just an understatement on the rich background of loess and blue sky, and it is the scenery that will always hurt the heart and lungs in Lu Yao's eyes.
(28) Lu Yao loves football and absolutely loves German football. The tactical discipline, tenacity, and perseverance, undaunted, and unpretentious spirit displayed by German football in both good and bad times must resonate with Lu Yao's spiritual temperament.
(29) After writing "The Ordinary World", when chatting with the writer Xiao Lei, Lu Yao said that he had always wanted to write a 200,000-word novel titled "The Tree of Life". There is an old locust tree in the loess ravine of his hometown. Under the tree, the swelling happiness and concentrated suffering of several young men and women take place. That is the history of Adam and Eve on the Loess Plateau. After the drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Lu Yao stayed up all night. He thought of the collapse of several veteran cadre families in a city in northern Shaanxi. He tried to explore the mysteries of the world through several families, and planned to write a larger-scale novel titled It's called "Crash". In addition, Lu Yao also wanted to use ten years to write about the Cultural Revolution. The book was called "Ten Years" and he wrote one million words to combine the struggle from the central government to the grassroots people, the struggle in the cities and the rural The struggles were intertwined and intertwined, and he wrote his own unique judgment and analysis of the Cultural Revolution.
(30) Lu Yao told Xiaolei that he was going to choose a time to take them to Guandong Prefecture for a tour, to Tongguan, to Longmen, and then up the river to Hukou, Then roam the loess ravines in northern Shaanxi, then go to Yanchuan where he was raised, and then go to Qingjian where he was born. He said that he would let them sit together in the stone kiln of his hometown in Qingjian and let his mother make northern Shaanxi food for them. All kinds of tea and rice, he said that the food cooked by his mother is the most delicious food in the world...
(31) On November 17, 1992, at 8:20 am, Lu Yao passed away in Xijing Hospital.
(32) Lu Yao’s fourth brother Wang Tianle finished high school, taught in the countryside for a year, and then went to work outside. He went to Yan'an and began his job-seeking career. Later, Lu Yao found him at the construction site and took him back to the hotel for a long chat. Soon after, Wang Tianle was recruited to the fourth mining area of ??Yakou Coal Mine of Tongchuan Mining Bureau. Obviously, the prototype of Sun Shaoping in "The Ordinary World" is Wang Tianle.
(33) "Life" was originally called "Ups and Downs". The title of "Life" was changed by Wang Weiling of China Youth Publishing House with the help of Lu Yao.
(34) "The Ordinary World" was initially called "Loess", "Black Gold" and "Big World". Later the title was changed by the poet Ziye who helped Lu Yao.
(35) Lu Yao said that when the last part of "History of Entrepreneurship" was published in "Yanhe", he had been Liu Qing's editor-in-chief. He said to Liu Qing, you are from northern Shaanxi, why do you set your creation in the Guanzhong Plain? Liu Qing said, the reasons are very complicated. I may not be able to write about Northern Shaanxi in my life. You should shoulder this burden. Regarding northern Shaanxi, several big books need to be written, books that have never been written by predecessors. Liu Qing said that from the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor to Yan'an, to Li Zicheng's hometown and the tomb of Genghis Khan, only one day is enough. It is not possible for such a great land to have two or three great works of northern Shaanxi written by its own people. Let history explain it.
(36) Accompanied by Wang Tianle, Lu Yao suddenly proposed to change Sun Shaoping's fate after experiencing life in the coal mine. He said that Sun Shaoping could only go as far as the coal mine. If he went to a big city, I would not be able to control him. Because Lu Yao is not particularly familiar with life in big cities. In the end, Lu Yao and Wang Tianle jointly decided to let Sun Lanxiang enter the city because she was their ideal character.
(37) The relationship between Lu Yao and Linda was on the verge of collapse ten years before Lu Yao's death. Wang Tianle once advised Lu Yao to divorce and then find a girl from northern Shaanxi to take care of his life. But because of their daughter Lu Yuan's problems, Lu Yao refused to divorce. In the summer of 1992, Lu Yao finally decided to divorce Linda, but a sudden serious illness prevented Lu Yao from leaving the bed again. So until her death, Linda was still Lu Yao's wife. She and Lu Yao's daughter Lu Yuan jointly inherited the copyright of Lu Yao's works according to law. In 2003, Linda transferred all the copyrights he enjoyed to Lu Yuan.
(38) When writing the third part of "The Ordinary World" in Yulin Hotel, Lu Yao was at the end of his rope emotionally and financially. He often writes while crying. One day, when Wang Tianle was interviewing in Luochuan County, Lu Yao suddenly called the newspaper office and asked him to come to Yulin as soon as possible. Wang Tianle thought something big had happened and rushed to Yulin. As soon as he entered the house, Lu Yao said to him: Tian Xiaoxia is dead.
(39) No matter where he writes, Wang Tianle helps Lu Yao clean up the room before leaving. Wang Tianle often travels more than a hundred miles to help Lu Yao clean his room. And Lu Yao, while Wang Tianle was helping him pack his bags, always smoked silently on the balcony.
(40) "The Ordinary World" won the Mao Dun Literature Award. Beijing notified Lu Yao to receive the award, but Lu Yao couldn't even afford the travel expenses. In the end, it was Wang Tianle who helped him borrow the money. Wang Tianle handed the money to Lu Yao and said: You will never win any prizes again. If you win the Nobel Prize for Literature, I won't be able to get you any foreign exchange.
(41) Lu Yao once lamented: On a snowy night, lovers clinging to each other on the street corner are the happiest.
(42) No one has ever told Lu Yao’s adoptive mother in Yanchuan about Lu Yao’s death. The old man still learned about it from the TV news. Even during the farewell ceremony for Lu Yao's body, the funeral committee did not notify Lu Yao's adoptive mother. The old man sat alone under the locust tree beside the kiln yard of his hometown in Yanchuan all day long, facing the road at the entrance of the village and looking into the distance. When his son was studying, the old man sat there looking forward to his return from school; when his son went to a big city, the old man sat there looking forward to seeing him come home; when his son never came back, the old man couldn't even see him for the last time. So, all I can do is sit there and stare longingly...
(43) In terms of reading interests, Lu Yao has a special preference for Russian classical literature and Soviet literature. At home, I like "Dream of Red Mansions", all works of Lu Xun and "History of Entrepreneurship" by Liu Qing. Abroad, I prefer all the works of Tolstoy, Balzac, Sholokhov, Stendhal, Shakespeare, Chakovsky and Aitmatov; Rabindranath Tagore's "Government", Charlotte's "Jane Eyre", Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude". For newspapers, you must read "People's Daily", "Guangming Daily", "Shaanxi Daily" and "Reference News" every day. Magazines, in addition to literary magazines, I like "World Knowledge", "Global", "World Expo", "UFO Exploration", "Xinhua Digest", "Reader's Digest" and "Youth Digest".
(Excerpted from "Lu Yao's Fifteenth Anniversary", edited by Li Jianjun, New World Publishing House, 2007 edition)