The Story of Broken City was published in the first issue of Contemporary 1979, which is the opening work of Mr. Wang's Ten Stories of Night Tan. This series was brewed when the author 194 1 worked underground in Kunming. At that time, a plan was made, and a number of drafts and outlines were completed in the narrative form of ten poor officials in the cold yamen, including the predecessor of Broken City, Here comes the Inspector. Later writing plan was interrupted for some reason, but he never forgot about it, which was also encouraged by Wei Junyi and others. At the end of 1970s, Mr. Ma Shitu accidentally dug out the old manuscript, supplemented and revised it, and named it "Broken City", which was published by Dangdai magazine. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response from literary circles and readers, he successively completed the rest of the articles, which were published by People's Literature Publishing House as 1982. The writing of Ten Records of Night Tan lasted for forty years, which made a literary legend resounding through the sky. Among them, the story of the thief was once put on the screen in the name of Xiangma County, and was later adapted into the movie Let the Bullets Fly by Jiang Wen, which caused a sensation again. In 2020, Mr. Ma Shitu, at the age of 106, published Night Tan Xu in People's Literature Publishing House, fulfilling the agreement with President Wei Junyi that year, and he also regarded this book as the final work of his 85-year literary career.

Illustration of contemporary inaugural issue "Broken City", painted by Wang Linyou.

Ten Notes on Night Tan is Ma Shitu's masterpiece, which was first published by People's Literature Publishing House in 1983. The content is that in a yamen in Sichuan in the 1940s, ten clerks with frustrated official career, poverty and boredom took turns telling their adventures in a "dragon gate array". Ten stories constitute "ten stories", namely, breaking the city, reimbursing accounts, stealing officials, taking concubines, banning smoking, sinking the river, taking revenge and watching flowers.

104-year-old Mr. Ma Shitu still remembers an agreement with Wei Junyi, the former editor-in-chief of People's Literature Publishing House: he will continue to write Night Tan Literature after Ten Records of Night Tan. Based on the rich experience of a hundred years' life, he wrote the sequel to Night Tan at the age of 106. As a sequel to Ten Records of Night Tan, it still helps the original example: Sichuanese tell Sichuan stories in Sichuanese. The content is about a dozen clerks in Sichuan, who gathered in a humble abode, drank tea and chatted, and made a long queue to eliminate the long night. They still use their own unique dialects and dialects to tell the folk customs and anecdotes of Sichuan. The book won the title of "China Good Book" in 2020.

This work appears in a national form. This so-called national form does not mean "listen to the next chapter" and homophony, nor does it mean a large number of dialect sayings (of course, a little); It is that kind of story-rich, suspenseful form that people can't put it down, the description is extremely concise, and there is little water ... There are several novel stories in the book related to underground party activities (such as "Broken City" and "Revenge"), which he collected in the struggle between blood and fire. When these materials reached his hands, it became a novel that was "laughed and scolded". Seemingly relaxed, in fact, the author has made great efforts here, and his meticulous description shows the characteristics of contemporary people.

This unique work may not (or certainly will not) become the general trend of contemporary creation. But I think readers will welcome it, because it has the "Chinese style, China style" that the masses like.

-Wei Junyi's "Essays on Tan Shilu at Night"

See the second issue of Dangdai in 2022.

Extended reading

Ten Stories of Night Tan, a novel with more than 300,000 words, has gone through 40 years, that is, almost half a century, from 1942 written in the first word of Broken City to 1982 written in the last word of Kicking Down. It took so long to write, it must be a masterpiece. Haven't you heard that some foreign masterpieces have been written for decades? Didn't Cao Xueqin's Dream of Red Mansions "read it for ten years, add and delete it five times" before it was finalized?

Don't! Who are you, boy? How dare you compare with famous artists? Ten Records of Night Tan is just a record of "disorderly Tan". How dare you rank among the famous books? The reason why I say this book took 40 years to complete is to say how many disasters and tortures this little book has experienced before it finally won the right to be born.

To say that the material collection and brewing of this novel have to be pushed to the end of the 1930s. At that time, I was already a so-called professional revolutionary, working as an underground party in the Kuomintang area. To cover it up, I kept changing careers. I have been a teacher and student, a small civil servant, a vendor and a tramp. In the meantime, I met people of all religions. In the hotel teahouse in the city, in the chicken hair shop or millet shop in the country, in the long journey by car and boat, in the ups and downs of muddy mountain roads, and of course, in the workers' low huts, under the tung oil lamp in the farmhouse, I met many ordinary people, who gave me many strange dragon gate arrays that I had never heard of. In particular, I can't forget that I have met some small people such as small staff in small institutions and institutions. These little people, as they say, are neither blessed to go to restaurants to eat and drink, nor have the money to go to casinos to drink six cups, and they don't want to go to cigarette houses to smoke, and they are too lazy to have sex in brothels. They managed to survive these hard years, so they had to sit on the bench, drink herbal tea, chat and entertain themselves in groups of three or five, or on a stormy night or on a moonlit night. I was lucky enough to be led by them to be a first-class soldier. At the bench meeting they set up, I heard anecdotes that I couldn't imagine. I didn't know how ridiculous that society was; How miserable and colorful people's lives are; How noble and pure the souls of those ordinary people are, how alert their thoughts are, how optimistic their personalities are, and how vivid and humorous their language is. It's like I'm standing in front of a new gem mine. What a rich source of literary creation. It really surprises me and makes me ecstatic. But my job at that time didn't allow me to create with these materials. I could only let these characters and stories sink deeply into the bottom of my memory.

194 1 was chased by spies and fled to Kunming to be an underground party. As a professional cover, I was a student in the China Literature Department of Southwest Associated University (which was composed of Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University during the Anti-Japanese War), and since then I have formed an indissoluble bond with literature. I should not only study my lessons carefully to do revolutionary work among my classmates, but also use literature as a weapon to publicize and organize. I wrote for the Literary Wall Newspaper, and with the support of Professor Wen Yiduo, Professor Chu Tunan and Professor Li Guangtian, I started a literary publication with Comrade Zhang Guangnian. In order to "do my job well", I often tell stories among my classmates. Everyone is very happy, let me give full play to the Sichuan people's kung fu in the teahouse and continue to do so. So I dug up some stories from the ideological stratification that 1942 began to brew, and selected ten stories from my dragon gate array. I decided to create in the form of a bench meeting composed of ten clerks from Lengyamen, each of whom took turns to set up a dragon gate array and named it Ten Records of Night Tan. I started writing the first half of "Broken City", "Here comes the Inspector", and also wrote some outlines, as well as some drafts of other records. However, due to busy work and study, I spent three days fishing and two days drying nets, but I never wrote a famous article.

1946, I was transferred back to Sichuan to be an underground party. I know that Sichuan is Chiang Kai-shek's base camp and there are many spies. Before I leave Kunming, all my manuscripts must be burned. After arriving in Chengdu, I have been burning the manuscript for a long time, and my hands are itchy. So I can't help writing after work. I copied "The Inspector is Coming" for Comrade Chen Xiang and he found it interesting and prepared to publish it. But soon he had to escape under the pursuit of spies, and my house was raided several times by spies. All the pieces of paper with words written on them were taken away as criminal evidence. Needless to say, a part of my draft of Ten Notes on Night Tan was confiscated and sentenced to death.

After liberation, I was very busy at work, but I still didn't forget Ten Records of Night Tan, which was probably a habit of self-protection, and I wrote some intermittently. 1960, Comrade Wei Junyi from People's Literature Publishing House came to Chengdu, and later Comrade Wang Shijing also came to Chengdu. He saw several manuscripts and found them distinctive, encouraging me to write them. Comrade Junyi also asked People's Literature Publishing House to sign a contract with me. So I took it seriously, and after writing Song Zhuang in Qingjiang, I wrote Ten Records of Night Tan seriously.

Unfortunately, several notes in Ten Records of Night Tan, together with a large number of other manuscripts, material notes, novel outlines and other materials, were copied away as evidence during the decade of the Cultural Revolution. Everyone can imagine the fate of me and my manuscript. ...

After the downfall of the Gang of Four, people really called it "coming events cast their shadows before them". Urged by the publishing house, I decided to start a new business with gongs and drums, and then write Ten Records of Night Tan from scratch. However, this first step is difficult to cross out, and it has been done for a year with little effect. Fortunately, I came across a mimeographed draft of Broken City for criticism. I am really ecstatic. This mimeographed manuscript was taken by the editorial department of Dangdai and published in the inaugural issue of Dangdai. Broadcast in china national radio, I received some letters from readers, which gave me great encouragement. So I wrote it again in my spare time, and finally finished the first draft when I was recuperating in Qingdao in the summer of 1982.

This is the way I wrote this novel for 40 years, and it is also the experience of this novel "Ten Records of Night Tan" for 40 years. After several disasters, it finally got the right to be born.

-Excerpted from the postscript of Ten Records of Night Tan.

Ma Shitu, a native of Zhongxian, Chongqing, was born in 19 15. 1935 Participated in the "December 9th" Movement and engaged in the underground revolutionary activities in China. Published works 65438 to 0935. 1945 graduated from the literature department of China, The National SouthWest Associated University, Kunming. He has served as Secretary of the Special Committee of Western Hubei, Deputy Secretary of Sichuan Kangte Committee, Director of the Construction Department of Sichuan Province, Director of the Provincial Construction Committee, Secretary and Vice President of the Party Committee of Southwest Branch of China Academy of Sciences, Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department of Southwest Bureau and Sichuan Provincial Committee, Deputy Director of the Standing Committee of Sichuan Provincial People's Congress, Representative of the Sixth and Seventh National People's Congress, Chairman of Sichuan Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Chairman of Sichuan Writers Association, Director, Consultant and Honorary Member of Chinese Writers Association.

This issue of WeChat Editor: Yu Wentao

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