On the morning of January 11, 2024, Cai Yiqing appeared at the 36th Beijing Book Fair with his ninth work "Snail Symphony". Cai Yiqing, who is about to celebrate his 18th birthday, what kind of learning and growth experience did he have during this period? How do you persist in creating despite your heavy studies?
Published 9 works in 9 years
When Cai Yiqing's first novel** "A Box of Chocolates" was published, it attracted widespread social attention at that time. Subsequently, she published two novels** in elementary school, "Strange Summer Vacation" and "Escape from Math Island", and completed three novels** of the "Chocolate Series".
After entering the High School Affiliated to Peking University, the studies of middle school students are obviously much heavier than those in primary school, but Cai Yiqing has not stopped the pace of creation, using the winter and summer vacations and daily weekends, she has successively created and published "Pan Xing Rabbit and the Golden Key", "Pan Xing Rabbit and ** Daughter", "Pan Xing Rabbit and Mengyun Planet" three "Pan Xing Rabbit Series" of the long **, as well as the fairy tale collection "The Chick Encounters the Bad Fox" and "The Little Squirrel Becomes Bigger"; In 2023, the full-length ** "Snail Symphony" has just been published.
"Snail Symphony" depicts the story of the protagonist Worm Wheel Steve, who was betrayed by his friends, and after fleeing to the forest, he went through various difficulties, and finally overcame the difficulties to find the snail shell and return to the snail city through the help of friends such as Squeaky Mouse, Fog Frog, and Qing Fly. Tell children how to face setbacks and choose solutions when they encounter betrayal from friends, teach children simple but profound life principles, and learn to grow in adversity.
Due to Cai Yiqing's identity as a child, her works have a natural children's stance and perspective, coupled with humorous and interesting plots and language, these works are very popular with young readers. According to Liu Dan, director of Beijing United Tianchang Company, a leading book distribution company, after the publication of "Escape from Mathematics Island" in 2018, it was a dark horse in the distribution category and became a sales hit that year. Over the years, each of Cai Yiqing's new works has been listed on various rankings of Jingdong and Dangdang, and has achieved a good reputation and distribution performance.
The High School Affiliated to Peking University "hid" a writer
With the accumulation of published works, Cai Yiqing also has many loyal fans. Cai Yiqing's parents said that they occasionally search for Cai Yiqing's name, and often see people recommending Cai Yiqing's books on different platforms, sometimes libraries around the world, sometimes parents, sometimes small fans. Even,There are some small fans who create her works for the second time.,Draw fanworks for the characters in her **,Write fanfiction stories.,It's very interesting.。
Contrary to the limelight in creation, Cai Yiqing is very low-key at school. She never talked about herself with others at school, and she did not allow parents to write any articles related to her in the school-related WeChat group, so during the more than five years she studied at the High School Affiliated to Peking University, only a few close teachers and classmates knew her identity as a writer.
Once, her short story "Circle" was published in "Chinese Campus Literature", and the magazine held a voting activity, and "Circle" was also on the voting list. A student's parent saw it and felt that it was related to the honor of the school, so he put the article in the parent group and called on everyone to vote. At this time, the parents found out that the High School Affiliated to Peking University was "hiding" a writer. Nowadays, she occasionally meets strange classmates on campus and asks, "Are you Cai Yiqing?" She was a little shy, nodded and hurriedly walked away.
Focus on people and things in a unique way
Most of Cai Yiqing's ** creations were completed during the winter and summer vacations. The self-proclaimed "king of manuscript dragging", once she enters the creative state, her biological clock will soon switch to writing at night and sleeping during the day. A well-conceived ** of more than 100,000 words was written in almost three weeks.
Paying attention to the people and things around you may be the nature of writers, and it is also Cai Yiqing's fun. Once she went to the teachers' offices and found a young teacher pressing another young teacher's head on the table to frolick, which made her exclaim. She began to pay attention to the past and their strengths of these teachers, and later from focusing on teachers to paying attention to the development history, major events, and key figures of the school, especially the process of creating disciplines and institutions, etc., she can find resources from the Internet to know a thing or two. Occasionally, she will sigh: Teacher so-and-so's college graduation ** was found by me on the Internet. In order to bring together more students who love school history, she took the lead in establishing the school history club in her sophomore year of high school. Cai Yiqing believes that the first thing to write is to create characters. In her series**, more than 50 characters with distinct personalities have been created, which is not unrelated to her usual observation of life.
Philosophy class taught her to think critically
After entering high school, Cai Yiqing took an intensive reading course of philosophy and economics classics, she followed the teacher to study "Ideal Country", "Wealth of Nations" and other works for three years, chapter by chapter, section by section, each stage of learning presentation and semester, so that Cai Yiqing gained a lot, she knew how to use a speculative way of thinking, to think about problems, and had a deeper understanding of many things.
In March 2024, Cai Yiqing will usher in his 18th birthday and enter the ** society. She said that her creation will enter a period of transition, and this "Snail Symphony" sharing session is that she is bidding farewell to the past and drawing an end to her "children's original" stage. In the future, she will look at everything from the perspective of an adult, and her creative content will also be a completely new field. She said she hopes to become a scholar-type writer in the future. (Photo: Cai Yongtao).
Editor-in-charge: XTC