我該干的事情其實很簡單，那就是用自己的方式，講自己的故事。我的方式，就是我所熟知的集市說書人的方式，就是我的爺爺奶奶、村里的老人們講故事的方式。坦率地說，講述的時候，我沒有想到誰會是我的聽眾，也許我的聽眾就是那些如我母親一樣的人，也許我的聽眾就是我自己，我自己的故事，起初就是我的親身經歷，譬如《枯河》中那個遭受痛打的孩子，譬如《透明的紅蘿卜》中那個自始至終一言不發的孩子。我的確曾因為干過一件錯事而受到過父親的痛打，我也的確曾在橋梁工地上為鐵匠師傅拉過風箱。當然，個人的經歷無論多么奇特也不可能原封不動地寫進小說，小說必須虛構，必須想象。很多朋友說《透明的紅蘿卜》是我最好的小說，對此我不反駁，也不認同，但我認為《透明的紅蘿卜》是我的作品中最有象征性、最意味深長的一部。那個渾身漆黑、具有超人的忍受痛苦的能力和超人的感受能力的孩子，是我全部小說的靈魂，盡管在后來的小說里，我寫了很多的人物，但沒有一個人物，比他更貼近我的靈魂�；蛘呖梢哉f，一個作家所塑造的若干人物中，總有一個領頭的，這個沉默的孩子就是一個領頭的，他一言不發，但卻有力地領導著形形色色的人物，在高密東北鄉這個舞臺上，盡情地表演。

What I should do was simplicity itself: Write my own stories in my own way. My way was that of the marketplace storyteller, with which I was so familiar, the way my grandfather and my grandmother and other village old-timers told stories. In all candor, I never gave a thought to audience when I was telling my stories; perhaps my audience was made up of people like my mother, and perhaps it was only me. The early stories were narrations of my personal experience: the boy who received a whipping in “Dry River,” for instance, or the boy who never spoke in “The Transparent Carrot.” I had actually done something bad enough to receive a whipping from my father, and I had actually worked the bellows for a blacksmith on a bridge site. Naturally, personal experience cannot be turned into fiction exactly as it happened, no matter how unique that might be. Fiction has to be fictional, has to be imaginative. To many of my friends, The Transparent Carrot is my very best story; I have no opinion one way or the other. What I can say is, The Transparent Carrot is more symbolic and more profoundly meaningful than any other story I’ve written. That dark-skinned boy with the superhuman ability to suffer and a superhuman degree of sensitivity represents the soul of my entire fictional output. Not one of all the fictional characters I’ve created since then is as close to my soul as he is. Or put a different way, among all the characters a writer creates, there is always one that stands above all the others. For me, that laconic boy is the one. Though he says nothing, he leads the way for all the others, in all their variety, performing freely on the Northeast Gaomi Township stage.

自己的故事總是有限的，講完了自己的故事，就必須講他人的故事。于是，我的親人們的故事，我的村人們的故事，以及我從老人們口中聽到過的祖先們的故事，就像聽到集合令的士兵一樣，從我的記憶深處涌出來。他們用期盼的目光看著我，等待著我去寫他們。我的爺爺、奶奶、父親、母親、哥哥、姐姐、姑姑、叔叔、妻子、女兒，都在我的作品里出現過，還有很多的我們高密東北鄉的鄉親，也都在我的小說里露過面。當然，我對他們，都進行了文學化的處理，使他們超越了他們自身，成為文學中的人物。

A person can experience only so much, and once you have exhausted your own stories, you must tell the stories of others. And so, out of the depths of my memories, like conscripted soldiers, rose stories of family members, of fellow villagers, and of long-dead ancestors I learned of from the mouths of old-timers. They waited expectantly for me to tell their stories. My grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles, my wife and my daughter have all appeared in my stories. Even unrelated residents of Northeast Gaomi Township have made cameo appearances. Of course they have undergone literary modification to transform them into larger-than-life fictional characters.

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