1976 年2月，我應征入伍，背著我母親賣掉結婚時的首飾幫我購買的四本《中國通史簡編》，走出了高密東北鄉這個既讓我愛又讓我恨的地方，開始了我人生的重要時期。我必須承認，如果沒有30 多年來中國社會的巨大發展與進步，如果沒有改革開放，也不會有我這樣一個作家。

In February 1976 I was recruited into the army and walked out of the Northeast Gaomi Township village I both loved and hated, entering a critical phase of my life, carrying in my backpack the four-volume Brief History of China my mother had bought by selling her wedding jewelry. Thus began the most important period of my life. I must admit that were it not for the thirty-odd years of tremendous development and progress in Chinese society, and the subsequent national reform and opening of her doors to the outside, I would not be a writer today.

在軍營的枯燥生活中，我迎來了八十年代的思想解放和文學熱潮，我從一個用耳朵聆聽故事，用嘴巴講述故事的孩子，開始嘗試用筆來講述故事。起初的道路并不平坦，我那時并沒有意識到我二十多年的農村生活經驗是文學的富礦，那時我以為文學就是寫好人好事，就是寫英雄模范，所以，盡管也發表了幾篇作品，但文學價值很低。

In the midst of mind-numbing military life, I welcomed the ideological emancipation and literary fervor of the nineteen-eighties, and evolved from a boy who listened to stories and passed them on by word of mouth into someone who experimented with writing them down. It was a rocky road at first, a time when I had not yet discovered how rich a source of literary material my two decades of village life could be. I thought that literature was all about good people doing good things, stories of heroic deeds and model citizens, so that the few pieces of mine that were published had little literary value.

1984年秋，我考入解放軍藝術學院文學系。在我的恩師著名作家徐懷中的啟發指導下，我寫出了《秋水》、《枯河》、《透明的紅蘿卜》、《紅高粱》等一批中短篇小說。在《秋水》這篇小說里，第一次出現了“高密東北鄉”這個字眼，從此，就如同一個四處游蕩的農民有了一片土地，我這樣一個文學的流浪漢，終于有了一個可以安身立命的場所。我必須承認，在創建我的文學領地“高密東北鄉”的過程中，美國的威廉·福克納和哥倫比亞的加西亞·馬爾克斯給了我重要啟發。我對他們的閱讀并不認真，但他們開天辟地的豪邁精神激勵了我，使我明白了一個作家必須要有一塊屬于自己的地方。一個人在日常生活中應該謙卑退讓，但在文學創作中，必須頤指氣使，獨斷專行。我追隨在這兩位大師身后兩年，即意識到，必須盡快地逃離他們，我在一篇文章中寫道：他們是兩座灼熱的火爐，而我是冰塊，如果離他們太近，會被他們蒸發掉。根據我的體會，一個作家之所以會受到某一位作家的影響，其根本是因為影響者和被影響者靈魂深處的相似之處。正所謂“心有靈犀一點通”。所以，盡管我沒有很好地去讀他們的書，但只讀過幾頁，我就明白了他們干了什么，也明白了他們是怎樣干的，隨即我也就明白了我該干什么和我該怎樣干。

In the fall of 1984 I was accepted into the Literature Department of the PLA Art Academy, where, under the guidance of my revered mentor, the renowned writer Xu Huaizhong, I wrote a series of stories and novellas, including: Autumn Floods, Dry River, The Transparent Carrot, and Red Sorghum. Northeast Gaomi Township made its first appearance in Autumn Floods, and from that moment on, like a wandering peasant who finds his own piece of land, this literary vagabond found a place he could call his own. I must say that in the course of creating my literary domain, Northeast Gaomi Township, I was greatly inspired by the American novelist William Faulkner and the Columbian Gabriel García Márquez. I had not read either of them extensively, but was encouraged by the bold, unrestrained way they created new territory in writing, and learned from them that a writer must have a place that belongs to him alone. Humility and compromise are ideal in one’s daily life, but in literary creation, supreme self-confidence and the need to follow one’s own instincts are essential. For two years I followed in the footsteps of these two masters before realizing that I had to escape their influence; this is how I characterized that decision in an essay: They were a pair of blazing furnaces, I was a block of ice. If I got too close to them, I would dissolve into a cloud of steam. In my understanding, one writer influences another when they enjoy a profound spiritual kinship, what is often referred to as “hearts beating in unison.” That explains why, though I had read little of their work, a few pages were sufficient for me to comprehend what they were doing and how they were doing it, which led to my understanding of what I should do and how I should do it.

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