Fantasy love story that tugs at the heartstrings
Print Edition
LITERATURE belongs to everyone. You too can be a writer,” says Xu Zhangqian — and he should know.
Xu, a 33-year-old Jiading government official, has been cited as a “Top 10 Citizen Writer” in the Shanghai Citizen Writing Contest.
The contest is one of the activities of the annual Shanghai Citizens Art Festival.
The writing contest solicits pieces from various types of literature — such as poetry, prose, mini-novels and drama — to build a platform for writing enthusiasts to communicate and present their works. Winners come from all walks of life.
As a government worker, Xu does a serious job. But in his leisure time, he says he is a “literary and artistic geek.”
He has wide interests, and is infatuated with all literary and artistic forms including literature, drawing and photography. Xu’s friends say that if you chat with him about a piece of animation, he will know its origin; if conversing about a nine-dragon screen (a wall featuring dragons), he will point to nine descriptions of dragons from different literary works.
As with so many of the post-1980s generation, Xu loved comics and video games when he was a schoolboy. But unlike so many of his contemporaries at school, he had a weak body and he was not interested in sport. He turned to literature instead, especially classical Chinese literature, and immersed himself in novels about good and evil.
“If I don’t have these special hobbies and a long-term accumulation of literature, I will not have a chance to write the short story in half classical and half vernacular Chinese, which helped me to win the prize of ‘Top 10 Citizen Writer’,” Xu says.
Waiting for the beloved
His story “The Weird Chinese Zither” tells of a young man, born with black palms, and a young woman, whose fingers are like claws as a result of putting six rings on her fingers from the age of 15. Everybody regards them as weirdos.
But when the two meet, a black dead wood appears with golden light from his black palms. Then the woman raises her arms parallel to her eyes with her fingers moving, just like she is playing a Chinese zither. As she does so, there is music. When it ends, fire erupts from their hands, and together they hold a black Chinese zither in their arms.
“This is not a serious story. It is a metaphor of my philosophy about love,” Xu says, “People look them as two weirdos. But in fact only they themselves can understand their characteristics.”
The judges of the contest are impressed by Xu’s story. Xue Shu, a writer and judge, says, “the way to move people is to write one’s own life and people around him with special characteristics.”
The story line was shaped to a time when Xu was single. Xu’s parents were worrying about his bachelor status and wanted him to get married, but he couldn’t find someone to love. Several failures after repeated blind dates led to family quarrels.
Once, Xu recalls that when he broke up with a girl yet again, his mother asked, “what kind of girl would you love indeed?” Xu replied he knew very well in his heart, but his mother was not at all appeased.
However, Xu doesn’t think that he was deliberately defying his mother’s wishes. From his point of view, a couple’s love has nothing to do with others’ opinions. It’s the couple’s feelings that are of the utmost importance in a relationship or a marriage.
“It might take a long time to find the right person, and during that period, one should tolerate others’ mocking words and family misunderstandings. But after one bumps into the right person, he will feel that the bright life with her is all worth it,” Xu says.
Now Xu is married and he adores his wife. They have a very recently born and very cute daughter.
“Finally I find the one who is willing to playing the weird Chinese zither with me,” Xu says of his wife.
Talent for drawing
Xu also loves drawing. “Maybe it’s because of my heritage,” he says. “My father loves to draw and writes beautifully.”
In his childhood, Xu often drew to pass the time. “People around me praised and encouraged me. They pushed me forward on the way of drawing.”
Xu says he was fortunate to be born when he was as his generation grew up in a flourishing time for culture. When he was little, he watched many classical cartoons by Shanghai Animation Film Studio. And in adolescence, he watched countless excellent animations from the United States and Japan. The Internet allowed him to communicate with animation and comics lovers around the world.
After watching numerous animations and reading many comics, Xu wanted to improve his drawing. He read books about drawing and asked experts for advice.
He realized that if he wanted to draw sumptuous scenes and lifelike figures, there were only two ways to go. The first was to draw traditionally with propylene, watercolor and gouache; the second was to learn digital drawing with a graphics tablet.
Xu decided to spend a third of his monthly pay on a graphics tablet, and learnt how to use digital technologies to maximize his creative powers.
He often creates comics inspired by interesting things that have happened to him, and posts his pictures on his social network platform.
“For me, drawing is like a flavoring out of daily work and life,” Xu says.
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