[Editor's note].
The reader is like a pioneer on the road to reading, and ultimately leads you to find a book worth reading. With the launching ceremony of the 2023 Xiangjiang New Area "Yuelu Mountain 52 Reading" Spring Voice, the "Reader Program" of the New District was officially launched, and the selection of readers will be widely carried out in various institutions, enterprises and institutions, villages, communities and schools, and through the establishment of a team of readers who love reading and are willing to share, they will play the role of "leading reading and promoting reading" and lead the fashion and new style of the new area. Xiangjiang Financial Media launched a series of reports on "Famous Readers", walking with readers, wandering the sea of books, and crisscrossing thousands of miles. Today, in the sixth issue, let's get close to the writer Hu Anyan and listen to his reading story.
Hu Anyan is one of the most talked-about young writers in 2023. Walking into any bookstore, you can basically see his masterpiece "I Deliver Courier in Beijing" in a conspicuous place at the entrance, and the words "the first non-fiction collection" on the book cover indicate the authenticity of the work.
On a not-so-warm day, I met Hu Anyan in Changsha, wearing a thin down jacket, his hair shaved short, his body thin, and he looked more like a writer than he was as a courier in the book.
* Refers to his 19 jobs as a title about his life before he became a writer. He has worked as a ** shop owner, an employee in many courier companies, and also worked as a waiter, security guard, small stall vendor, bicycle salesman, gas worker, ......The longest lasted a year or two, and the shortest lasted a month or two.
For most people in these occupations, the rest of the day is likely to rotate through these occupations. But Mr. Juan was fortunate to have a pen that could record it all, and he wrote about the shame, anger, exhaustion and joy he felt in his 19 jobs.
A person who is lifted up by writing
At the beginning of 2009, Juan Yan was sitting bored in the Yufeng shopping mall in Nanning City, feeling sorry for his mediocre life. At that time, Juanyan's life, both business and emotional, was full of tragedy.
It was then that Juan Yan read Raymond Carver's Cathedral of the Cathedral. The mall is noisy, and customers who come to ask for a price interrupt reading at any time, but Juan Yan finds a way out of his boring life in the story of each word - writing.
At the age of 30, he was physically and mentally exhausted, so he simply closed the shop, using writing as a spiritual outlet to escape from reality. "At first, the articles were posted on the Internet, and then the editors found out and slowly published them in newspapers and magazines, but the manuscript fee was very small. Hu Anyan recalled to reporters that when he first started writing, readers thought that Hu Anyan was a manual laborer who had never read a book because of his experience, and he wrote purely on the basis of hobby and talent, and received a lot of encouragement. "Their kindness was shocking to me at the time, and it made me feel that the world wasn't that bad. ”
In this year, Juanyan began to consciously read and write literary works, such as Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", Joyce's "Dubliners" short story collection, and Chekhov's works, all of which he desperately studied and borrowed from in his early creative process.
Salinger's innocent disillusionment has left him in a trances for many afternoons, and most of the characters in the book are a group of precocious "little adults" who have prematurely insight into the nihilistic nature of life, and still bring into adulthood what belongs only to children, and thus experience loss and confusion.
Hu Anyan said that the reading experience brought him many touches, "but when I look back, I realize that it is actually my life that moves me, and those works just trigger my life." Hu Anyan rarely revealed himself in front of the people around him, but fortunately, those indigestible emotions were slowly evaporated in the words.
A migrant worker who finds comfort in words
The days of writing weren't all smooth sailing.
Until after the Spring Festival in 2011, Hu Anyan's savings had been spent nearly half, and at that time, his writing also encountered a bottleneck, so Hu Anyan moved out of his home and rented a small single room of more than ten square meters to operate**.
Hu Anyan, who once fled to writing because he hit a nail in his life, escaped back to life because he hit a nail in his writing. Over the years, Juan Yan often looked for a job when life was tight, and also rewrote when he had a little more money.
He admits that he has not been able to balance work and writing so far, and the emotional loss and energy exploitation at work will greatly interfere with the sense of writing, and he has to heal and relieve negative emotions during his rest time. But writing still helps him to engage in life again and again, so as to maintain his sensitivity and curiosity about life.
At the beginning of 2020, Hu Anyan, who was locked down at home, picked up the pen that had not been used for a long time and wrote several diaries to restore his brushstrokes, including "My Year of Night Work in Debang". Hu Anyan recalled that the diary, which was only written for half a day, seemed to "inexplicably" push him to the front of the stage overnight, so he had this book "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing" three years later.
Now, four years later, Juan's schedule is filled with interviews, book launches, and conversations. In the eyes of the public, he successfully completed the transformation from "courier" to "writer". He said that he did not expect that because the article he published on the Internet about the night shift life in Deppon Logistics attracted the attention of literary editors, and he did not expect that "I delivered express delivery in Beijing" could cause such a warm response.
Looking back on himself today, Hu Anyan believes that for the backward him, it is an unwavering self-confidence and indomitable mentality, which allows him to absorb beneficial nutrients in the communication without losing precious internal motivation. As for talent, Juanyan doesn't care anymore, and he doesn't think he had to care about it back then—that's just a false proposition, writing isn't for talented people. For Hu Anyan, the important thing is not how good the work is, but how much it is written.
Good book recommendation
At the age of 30, Juan Yan read Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and was struck by the cruel and beautiful story of how Holden's innocence was out of step with his surroundings and how touching his love affair with his sister was. "Salinger believes that the possibility of life is hidden in the innocence of the child, not in the complexity of the child." It is these things that resonate with me, so I recommend this book to everyone. ”