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as sonam cairang's first novel, "wild color" adopts a dual-line parallel narrative structure, interweaving the narrative from the first-person perspectives of naren, a herdsman on the grassland, and his herded cow "xiao yao". in the form of a grassland fantasy fable, it takes us to experience a journey of spiritual transformation and spiritual nomadism.

dafang specially invited writer and lu xun literature award winner suonan cairang to talk with writer and mao dun literature award winner xu zechen about "wild colors". the conversation was hosted by novelist and essayist dan bao. the two dialoguers had an in-depth and sincere exchange of ideas on reading "wild colors", the uniqueness of suonan cairang's creation, the important significance of the wasteland to the present, and the animals and people in the text. the following is a summary of the conversation:

dialogue scene: tanbao sonam tsering and xu zechen (from left to right)

“our basic demand for literature is the pursuit of strangeness”

pale leopard:please ask professor xu zechen to talk about his impressions of the book "wild colors" and sonam cairang's overall creation.

xu zechen: suonan cairang has written few novels, but they are very recognizable. the first thing to read about his novels is that they are good to read, and this good reading is to provide unfamiliar life experiences. our basic demand for novels or literature is the pursuit of strangeness. we want to find strange experiences. first, we need to tell a strange story with strange experiences; second, we need to provide strange art, such as skills, rhetoric, structure, etc.; at the same time, there is also a question of thought: what can it tell us? does it tell us something beyond my imagination? you can read this book in one breath, because we don’t have the experience from beginning to end.

i read quite a lot, but in my reading field, i can find only a few people who are similar to him or who write novels in a similar way. among them, there are two that people familiar with contemporary american literature know. the first is cormac mccarthy. he writes about an absolute tough guy who lives a life in the wilderness bordering the united states and mexico. in the vast gobi desert, he walks alone all the time, all in a one-man show. and it is particularly tough, whether it is the environment, language, theme, or his style of doing things, it is all particularly tough. when translated, you will feel that chinese is also hard and uncomfortable when chewed in the mouth. another writer is annie proulx, and the movie "brokeback mountain" is adapted from one of her short stories. these two authors are particularly "tough", but this toughness is not the toughness of their writing, but the whole temperament presented is very tough.

what is this novel about? let me summarize it briefly. it is about the wilderness asking questions of heaven, the wilderness asking questions of earth, the wilderness asking questions of people, the wilderness asking questions of the way, or the glorious life. actually, it is all of these. such a novel is very difficult to write because there are very few characters in it, and there are very few relationships that can form conflicts. if the story is to be interesting, it must establish a relationship that can attract us among these very limited elements. this is a great test for a novelist.

mark mccarthy

why do i mention cormac mccarthy and annie proulx? think about it, in movies like brokeback mountain and no country for old men, the relationships between characters are extremely simple. to keep pushing forward such a relationship and such a conflict, and to keep pushing it deeper and deeper, the writer needs to be extremely familiar with life and understand that even when there is no conflict, when i present details and the characteristics of this place, it is enough to support us to continue watching. this is a very important ability for a writer. at the same time, it is also an ability to manage an attractive relationship in a simple relationship.

when i was reading "wild colors", i was amazed at the writer's ability to manage such relationships, that is, the ability to tell stories. if a writer can withstand such a test, i think it should be fine. this ability is not innate, because in such an environment, he gradually realized the significance of flowing water, flowing clouds, mountains, meadows, cow dung, an animal, and a look in his life. therefore, he was able to grasp these things, and the story would look very soothing and relatively scattered, but it still held us tightly, because all the elements put in this place, in life, and in this story, are meaningful. in this sense, i think it is very difficult to write this novel.

"wild colors" by suonan cairang / citic publishing·dafang / 2024.07

"anything that gets too close to people will undergo a huge change that they cannot control."

xu zechen:i particularly like the time concept in the novel, a time concept in a wasteland. in that world, time is slow, and the world returns to the way it should be. in our current world, our lives, adaptability, aesthetics, all these things have been slowly changed little by little, but this reminds us that humans still have that kind of ability, and there is another kind of relationship between people and between people and animals.

so when i saw this novel, i was very surprised, because it is a dialogue between humans and cows. in the past, we have seen many horses or cows with personality, which are based on an instinctive confrontation with humans. but in "wild colors", it is consciously confronting humans. it constantly tempers its thinking and perception, and gradually loses some basic abilities as a cow in the process of imitation. while reading it, i sometimes feel that it is like a prophecy. this animal is becoming more and more like a human. is it evolving? but at the same time, it has lost the basic abilities of a cow to communicate, communicate and feel. in previous novels, such a character image - a cow is actually a character in the novel, which did not exist in the past.

the cow in the novel has changed a little, and i like it very much. this cow has always taken revenge as its mission, and has been thinking about revenge for so many years. suddenly one day, it found that it had a son, and its mentality changed all of a sudden. after its biological mother, adoptive mother, brothers, and even lovers all left one by one, it suddenly found that it had a calf. after it had a concern in this world, it suddenly felt that the meaning of life was different from the past. at this time, it said, what is the meaning of revenge? then it was indeed in order to protect its wife and son, and it was fighting against naren in another way. i think this change is very good. suddenly, the whole life's realm of cognition of hatred and the world was opened up. will it be like this in the future? in the novel, the human and the cow are actually two very strong lives. who will win in the end? just like the ending now, maybe no one wins. i think if this is the case, the novel will become more open in the end. any kind of life and death may not be the best for this novel and this land.

sonam tsering:teacher xu just mentioned the transformation of the cow. it is learning how to think like a human, how to deal with reality and life like a human, and gradually loses itself. i had this thought when i was writing. i think anything that gets too close to humans will undergo a huge change that it cannot control, and develop a sense of crisis. you see, many creatures have a natural sense of crisis. they know before the disaster comes. this is an innate ability. i believe that humans must have this ability at the beginning. so why have we completely lost this ability now?

i have encountered animals with a strong sense of danger several times, such as wolves. the strange thing is that when you encounter a wolf without a gun or anything that can hurt it, it is not afraid at all and just stands there watching. but if you have a gun, it will run away without even seeing you. once or twice, you can explain that it is a coincidence, but so many times, it sees you from a distance without anything and walks in front of you recklessly. suddenly one day, there is a gun hidden behind your horse. why can it know without seeing it? it is because it has the ability to sense danger in advance. this situation has never been absent in domestic animals such as cattle, sheep, and horses, or in wild animals.

so i was thinking, what should a cow with a clear sense of crisis, who can foresee danger, do when it has human ideas and thoughts and is in a human environment? the "human environment" i'm talking about is that from the moment it is born, all decisions, all destinies, and all values ​​must be contributed. it needs to mate, produce new offspring, and increase the wealth of the protagonist; its feces needs to become fuel for the city; its body, fur, and even its horns and tail are all included in the list of property. from birth, from head to tail, from inside to outside, not a single hair truly belongs to it.

when it was not yet born, it sensed the dangerous world in the womb. it resisted, but its mother was about to give birth, so it had no choice but to come into this world. from the beginning, it knew that everything was not its fault. what should this cow do? this is one aspect.

“the purest and simplest things have a great power in themselves”

sonam tsering:another aspect that really touched me was, why choose a cow instead of a horse or a sheep?

because in my pastoral area, i often see this scene: a huge, soul-stirring bull, walking alone in the silent valleys and fields. it is lonely, sad, and filled with a unique temperament. this kind of bull fascinates me. why does it escape from the herd again and again and wander alone again and again? it has a huge impact on me and makes me think of myself. this is one of the reasons why i wrote this novel.

but when i was writing, i always had a worry, not that i was not capable enough, but that i had too many ideas and they were not pure enough. so i felt that i couldn't just write about a cow, i felt that i had to let its protagonist follow him, let a cow with thoughts like its protagonist fight with a person who looked particularly stupid, and see what would happen in the end, so i wrote it down like this.

xu zechen:i had a feeling while reading, and now it is clearer. this is to push people and animals back from the world we are familiar with, all the way to the beginning of the world, all the way to the beginning of life. now we are carrying so many things, so much that we are very far away from the original and simplest state of life. but the relationship between these lives and the world is very close, or infinitely far away from us, so far away that it really feels like it has come from the beginning of creation, so it has such pure power. it appears in this place, without moving people with emotion or convincing people with reason, it just goes to that station and brings the most original information in the world. that kind of purest and simplest thing itself has a huge power.

when suonan said this, i understood. i had no idea what the bulls walking on the meadows in the alpine valleys he described were looking for. but we don't need to attach more humanistic, speculative, and profound ideas to it. it may be a very natural and simple impulse of a life state. it can really move us because it provides us with a landscape or a state that is completely different from our lives, our thinking about problems, and our understanding of the world.

the hatred of this bull named "xiao yao" actually stems from love. when suonan sees those particularly majestic and solitary bulls, he may have a very soft part in his heart, just like naren in the novel. the people and animals in the novel are completely mirror images of each other. when the two look at each other, they may feel like they are seeing their own kind. the cow and naren actually appreciate each other, because naren usually looks very vicious, treacherous, slick, and stingy, but in the end, his love for bai magni is also completely unreserved.

“i don’t know when it started, but my life has been changing year by year.”

xu zechen:i have a question for sonam. i am curious about what your wife thinks of the two female characters in your novel?

sonam tsering:she didn't read it at all. she didn't mean to not read it, because she went to school less than me, she only went to the second grade, and she couldn't understand a lot of it. one time, one of her friends read another of my novels and said to her, your husband wrote something in it. i said that's not how it should be read, so i explained.

xu zechen:the second question is, have you ever thought about changing the life you have been living since you were 12 years old?

sonam tsering:i really didn’t deliberately change. when i first started writing, i didn’t think about meeting the writers i read and talking to them. i never thought about sitting with you or filming a work. i never thought about it, including the first seven or eight years of writing. but as i wrote more and more, my life changed year by year, because writing was changing. at the beginning, my main job was herding, but i don’t know when it started, my main job became writing, and herding became a side job. i had less and less time for it, so i sold cattle and sheep, and sold more and more, and then it became like this.

xu zechen: thiswhich of the two lives do you prefer? not in real life, but spiritually, which life do you think is a better nourishment for you?

sonam tsering:that must be the original. i have said before that i have two choices, facing a lot of people and facing a lot of sheep and forests. i will definitely choose the latter because i don’t need to talk to them. when i face people, i have to talk to a lot of people, which makes me very tired, and sometimes i don’t want to. but when i face them, it’s as simple as a symbol. as soon as i speak, they know what to do and everything can be solved immediately. there is no need for deeper discussion or dialogue.