【文章內容簡介】 到一個人影，沒有人的聲音，只有鳥兒在天上鳴叫。我感到很孤獨，很寂寞，心里空空蕩蕩。有時候，我躺在草地上，望著天上懶洋洋地飄動著的白云，腦海里便浮現(xiàn)出許多莫名其妙的幻象。我們那地方流傳著許多狐貍變成美女的故事，我幻想著能有一個狐貍變成美女與我來作伴放牛，但她始終沒有出現(xiàn)。但有一次，一只火紅色的狐貍從我面前的草叢中跳出來時，我被嚇得一屁股蹲在地上。狐貍跑沒了蹤影，我還在那里顫抖。有時候我會蹲在牛的身旁，看著湛藍的牛眼和牛眼中的我的倒影。有時候我會模仿著鳥兒的叫聲試圖與天上的鳥兒對話，有時候我會對一棵樹訴說心聲。但鳥兒不理我，樹也不理我。許多年后，當我成為一個小說家，當年的許多幻想，都被我寫進了小說。很多人夸我想象力豐富，有一些文學愛好者，希望我能告訴他們培養(yǎng)想象力的秘訣，對此，我只能報以苦笑。
　　our taoist master laozi said it best: amp。quot。fortune depends on misfortune. misfortune is hidden in fortune.amp。quot。 i left school as a child, often went hungry, was constantly lonely, and had no books to read. but for those reasons, like the writer of a previous generation, shen congwen, i had an early start on reading the great book of life. my experience of going to the marketplace to listen to a storyteller was but one page of that book. after leaving school, i was thrown unfortably into the world of adults, where i embarked on the long journey of learning through listening. two hundred years ago, one of the great storytellers of all time amp。ndash。 pu songling amp。ndash。 lived near where i grew up, and where many people, me included, carried on the tradition he had perfected. wherever i happened to be amp。ndash。 working the fields with the collective, in production team cowsheds or stables, on my grandparentsamp。39。 heated kang, even on oxcarts bouncing and swaying down the road, my ears filled with tales of the supernatural, historical romances, and strange and captivating stories, all tied to the natural environment and clan histories, and all of which created a powerful reality in my mind.
　　就像中國的先賢老子所說的那樣：”。福兮禍之所伏，福禍福所倚”。，我童年輟學，飽受饑餓、孤獨、無書可讀之苦，但我因此也像我們的前輩作家沈從文那樣，及早地開始閱讀社會人生這本大書。前面所提到的到集市上去聽說數(shù)人說書，僅僅是這本大書中的一頁。輟學之后，我混跡于成人之中，開始了”。用耳朵閱讀”。的漫長生涯。二百多年前，我的故鄉(xiāng)曾出了一個講故事的偉大天才。蒲松齡，我們村里的許多人，包括我，都是他的傳人。我在集體勞動的田間地頭，在生產隊的牛棚馬廄，在我爺爺奶奶的熱炕頭上，甚至在搖搖晃晃地進行著的牛車社，聆聽了許許多多神鬼故事，歷史傳奇，逸聞趣事，這些故事都與當?shù)氐淖匀画h(huán)境，家庭歷史緊密聯(lián)系在一起，使我產生了強烈的現(xiàn)實感。
　　even in my wildest dreams, i could not have envisioned a day when all this would be the stuff of my own fiction, for i was just a boy who loved stories, who was infatuated with the tales people around me were telling. back then i was, without a doubt, a theist, believing that all living creatures were endowed with souls. iamp。39。d stop and pay my respects to a towering old tree。 if i saw a bird, i was sure it could bee human any time it wanted。 and i suspected every stranger i met of being a transformed beast. at night, terrible fears acpanied me on my way home after my work points were tallied, so iamp。39。d sing at the top of my lungs as i ran to build up a bit of courage. my voice, which was changing at the time, produced scratchy, squeaky songs that grated on the ears of any villager who heard me.
　　我做夢也想不到有朝一日這些東西會成為我的寫作素材，我當時只是一個迷戀故事的孩子，醉心地聆聽著人們的講述。那時我是一個絕對的有神論者，我相信萬物都有靈性，我見到一棵大樹會肅然起敬。我看到一只鳥會感到它隨時會變化成人，我遇到一個陌生人，也會懷疑他是一個動物變化而成。每當夜晚我從生產隊的記工房回家時，無邊的恐懼便包圍了我，為了壯膽，我一邊奔跑一邊大聲歌唱。那時我正處在變聲期，嗓音嘶啞，聲調難聽，我的歌唱，是對我的鄉(xiāng)親們的一種折磨。
　　i spent my first twentyone years in that village, never traveling farther from home than to qingdao, by train, where i nearly got lost amid the giant stacks of wood in a lumber mill. when my mother asked me what iamp。39。d seen in qingdao, i reported sadly that all iamp。39。d seen were stacks of lumber. but that trip to qingdao planted in me a powerful desire to leave my village and see the world.
　　我在故鄉(xiāng)生活了二十一年，期間離家最遠的是乘火車去了一次青島，還差點迷失在木材廠的巨大木材之間，以至于我母親問我去青島看到了什么風景時，我沮喪地告訴她：什么都沒看到，只看到了一堆堆的木頭。但也就是這次青島之行，使我產生了想離開故鄉(xiāng)到外邊去看世界的強烈愿望。
　　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 fourvolume 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 thirtyodd 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.
　　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(xiāng)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(fā)展與進步，如果沒有改革開放，也不會有我這樣一個作家。
　　in the midst of mindnumbing military life, i weled the ideological emancipation and literary fervor of the nineteeneighties, 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.
　　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(fā)表了幾篇作品，但文學價值很低。
　　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: amp。quot。autumn floods,amp。quot。 amp。quot。dry river,amp。quot。 amp。quot。the transparent carrot,amp。quot。 and amp。quot。red sorghum.amp。quot。 northeast gaomi township made its first appearance in amp。quot。autumn floods,amp。quot。 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 garcamp。iacute。a mamp。aacute。rquez. 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 promise are ideal in oneamp。39。s daily life, but in literary creation, supreme selfconfidence and the need to follow oneamp。39。s own instin