It takes a village

The trilogy, by telling the stories of one typical Chinese village, vividly and faithfully records the great changes in the countryside of China since the reform and opening-up started in the late 1970s.

Around the country, as more residents have left their hometowns to work in cities, villages have been emptied, except for the elderly and children left behind, giving rise to many problems.

In recent years, society has been paying increasing attention to the revitalization of villages. Writers, scholars and artists are casting their eyes back to the roots of Chinese civilization.

"While I was writing the first book, I could feel that my hometown was a place in my heart that especially made me feel sore. Because I often went back, I knew a lot of stories about it which gradually accumulated in my heart. That's why I wrote the first book," she says.

In a dialogue with Liang in Beijing, livestreamed in February, Chinese film director Jia Zhangke says: "We often say that villages are silent. Without writers like Liang Hong, villages will remain silent."

Liang's five books form an epic narration with a timeline and rich depictions based on longtime observation of the village, Jia says.

"The five books construct a firm structure, not only about an individual or a group of people, but from a panoramic perspective of a village. And any figure or any story from the books can make a touching film," Jia says.

"I wrote about Liangzhuang village and the villagers because they are common people and we are all common people. And in common people's lives, we can see they were trying to break the defined limits of their dark life, which is what particularly touches me," Liang says.

Liang recalls that when going to different cities to visit her fellow villagers for Out of Liangzhuang Village, the migrant workers told her how they fought in Xi'an using bricks and iron chains.

"It's horrible just like those Hong Kong action movies. But in their stories is also the hope of their life. It is a fundamental task for literature to find marginal people's discourse and to see the possibilities included in the marginal discourse and something hidden in it," Liang says.

Nonfiction writing demands a writer's capability to deal with information about the reality, Jia says. Through scattered irrelevant information, writers insightfully make discoveries that with their creation will allow readers to understand the world better, he says.

Liang says she wanted to represent the complexity in the development of both villages and cities. Instead of simple optimism or pessimism, by reading her books, people can understand the problems better.

Liangzhuang continuously gives Liang, who now lives in Beijing, great spiritual support. For her, villages exist as a basic experience for a fast-changing China that shapes people's thinking or behavioral modes.

"Villages are important cultural genes for China," she says, "which cannot be simply decided as advanced or backward."

As China is now attaching more importance to the rejuvenation of the countryside, Liang says one of the important things is to build public spaces to meet people's mental needs.

"I want to renovate our old house to open a library. Besides, we can also show movies using a projector," she says.

Physical life has been greatly improved in the countryside, but it still needs time for advanced concepts to be promoted, understood and accepted, Liang says.

"It needs artists, scholars and writers to go to the countryside to help to build cultural space," Liang says.