Which is the German author with the fewest works?

Modern Express (Nanjing): When Gu Bin compared contemporary Chinese novels to "big hams", this reporter was reminded of Mo Yan's "Big Breasts, Fat Hips", which is as thick as a brick and is really a big guy. Gu Bin, on the other hand, looks like a smaller, leaner version of Stallone. He seems basically a gentle man, and his tone doesn't have the slightest hint of fire in it, but when the words come out, they're as vicious as Rocky's outgoing punches. This reporter is not a member of the literary community, so I don't know if he hits hard and fast. But he must have been a stickler, a one-track mind. Throughout the hour-long conversation, he never cracked a smile. Even to a layman, he didn't want to play false. He didn't compare anyone to garbage this time, but Yu Hua, Ge Fei, Su Tong, Mo Yan, the stalwarts of contemporary Chinese literature, were no better than garbage in his eyes, "They don't know what a human being is." He almost sentenced them to "death".

Contemporary Chinese novels are popular literature

Seven News Weekly: When you are mentioned, the topic of "contemporary Chinese literature is garbage" comes to mind. Bypassing "trash", let's start today's conversation with another interesting judgment of yours. You said that before 1949, Chinese literature, that is, modern literature, was Wuliangye; after 1949, Chinese literature, that is, contemporary literature, was Erguotou. Doesn't this have a flavor of epochal determinism? Because we know that even in the same era, there will be different writers.

Gu Bin: That's because the Chinese literary scene changed a lot around 1949. In the 1930s and 1940s, China was much more advanced in literature than some European countries. But after 1949, China said goodbye to the literature of modernity.Before 1949, there were some Chinese writers who hoped that literature could help China to be liberated, and that literature should serve politics, and some of the more representative writers were He Qifang and Zang Kejia. Today, the path they took has been proved wrong, for literature should serve language, art, and aesthetics. Now, literature in China is largely no longer linked to politics.

Seven News Weekly: You published A History of Chinese Literature in the 20th Century last year, and according to the introduction, you judged and evaluated Chinese literature from the perspective of world literature?

Gu Bin: Yes, in the first half of the 20th century, Chinese literature could be compared with the literature of other countries in the world, like France, Italy, Spain, no problem. 1949 to 1979, I am afraid that it could only be compared with the literature of the Eastern European countries. 1979 and onwards, there was certainly no problem with Chinese poetry, and Chinese poets in the 1980s could be compared with the important poets in the world. In terms of theater, China made some efforts to modernize in the 1980s, but its achievements are not comparable to those of its contemporaries in the world, because Chinese theater is basically a work of imitation. In terms of fiction, China produced some good works in the 1980s, such as Zhang Jie's novels about women's issues. Her ideas were very close to the international values at that time, so her novels were easily accepted by European readers, and she was very popular in Germany at that time. Wang Meng's novels were also of international standard. But in the 1980s, the achievements of Chinese literature were mainly in poetry, not novels.

Seven News Weekly: What happened after that?

Gu Bin: Since 1992, Chinese literature, like world literature, has been slowly moving towards the market. Most German readers don't read German literature. 70% of the literature published in Germany is not German literature. German readers like to read American and Chinese novels. Why? Because after 1945, European novelists no longer wrote any real stories, and it was no longer the age of storytelling for novels. The only writers who still wrote stories were Americans and Chinese. This is why American and Chinese novels were popular with German readers. But these readers do not include intellectuals, nor sinologists. The literary literacy and cultural level of these readers is relatively low.

In Germany, we call popular literature as ham. Ham that you buy today and you can still eat a year later, on the road while traveling. German readers like to take a book with them when they travel. The book should be thicker and bigger, like ham. Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Bi Feiyu, the books they published in China became ham when they arrived in Germany. German intellectuals and literary scholars will feel disgusted when they see these books. They will think, these books are not written and published for me, they are for those who don't understand real literature. They are for people who don't know real literature. They are for them to have fun and to get pleasure from it. So contemporary Chinese fiction, in Germany, is not serious literature at all.

Contemporary Chinese poets are different. Germans, like Chinese, rarely read poetry. But no matter which city, no matter which cultural center, if a Chinese poet is invited to give a reading or hold a symposium, at least 40 people will come, sometimes as many as 100 or 250 people. If a Chinese novelist comes, at most 10 or 20 readers will come.

Contemporary Chinese writers simply don't know what a human being is

Seven News Weekly: The writers you just mentioned are all considered serious writers in China, and all of them used to be avant-garde. How come they became popular writers in Germany?

Gu Bin: Because they tell stories. Mo Yan's "fatigue of life and death", but also especially with chapter book style to write. European writers writing novels usually write about one person, Mo Yan's novel is written in dozens of people, which is unbearable. Contemporary Chinese novelists, they don't write about the inside of people, they don't know what people are. All they write about is the appearance of people. Contemporary Chinese novelists cannot write about the flavor of a city. When Wang Anyi writes about Shanghai, she writes about a very abstract Shanghai. Contemporary Chinese novelists like to tell stories that have already been told; they have little imagination.

Why don't we need stories? We read newspapers, watch TV, listen to the news, and there are stories in our lives that writers can't think of. What we need is not stories, but revelations. But contemporary Chinese writers have no way of revealing anything to us, of revealing to us why something happens, why a place is characterized by a certain feature, why someone jumps off a building, why someone is disappointed in life, what path people should take, what people should do.

Seven News Weekly: shouldn't the answer to a question like yours come through a story?

Gu Bin: It should depend on whether the writer has a mind. Writers nowadays write for money. They don't write one sentence less, but definitely write one sentence more. Because if they write one more sentence, they can get more money. German translators translate Chinese novels and "turn them to death". German translators translate the works of Chinese writers into Italian, and all of them are abbreviated. Chinese novels are too long.

In German literature, American and Chinese novels are popular fiction.

Contemporary Chinese writers: the woman's breasts are big, so he wants to touch them

Weekly Seven News Weekly: Are there many Chinese novels translated into Germany?

Gu Bin: A lot. The books of Wei Hui, Cotton and Rainbow Shadow sell particularly well because most readers in Germany are women.

Seven News Weekly: When you said "trash" in 2007, were you actually referring to the works of these women writers?

Gubin: Yes.

Seven News Weekly: If the books of Wei Hui and Cotton are garbage, how do you evaluate the works of Chinese writers of Yu Hua and Ge Fei's generation?

Gu Bin: They are not pioneers at all, they are backward. They are all about storytelling. For example, Ge Fei's latest novel is still telling stories. There is another problem, a lot of Chinese writers, the narrators in their novels treat women in a way that we can't stand. In their works, men have no way to understand women. Women are all meat. For example, in Mo Yan's Wine Country, the man comes across a woman who has big breasts and he wants to touch them. When I open a book and see a sentence like that, I close the book right away. I can't accept their attitude towards women.

Contemporary Chinese novelists should be silent for 20 to 30 years

Weekly Seven News Weekly: In your opinion, there is a serious problem in contemporary Chinese literature, just like a patient, so how to cure it?

Gu Bin: First, they should be silent for twenty to thirty years; second, they should continue to write, and when they finish writing, they should put their works in a drawer and take them out to see whether they are good or not after twenty to thirty years; third, they should learn a foreign language; fourth, they should read foreign writings; and fifth, they should meet with foreign writers and communicate with them, and they should not be introduced to them through us. Many sinologists, do not have a literary background.