Life's a journey

Zhang Wei spent more than 20 years on his book You Are on the Highland. [Photo/Zhan Min / Provided to China Daily]

No one, it seems, has read from cover-to-cover Zhang Wei's ponderous 10-volume book on four generations of a family caught in the throes of change. But critics have been unstinting in their praise. Yang Guang reports.

It is writer Zhang Wei's wanderlust that has brought him to where he is today. His impressions from two journeys - one in his late teens to escape from his family's political travails, the other at his prime to fulfill a childhood dream ?present themselves as Zhang's magnum opus You Are on the Highland. The 10-volume work, arguably the longest Chinese novel of all time, may seem forbidding to ordinary readers and, in fact, even to literary researchers and critics.

Six months after appearing in print, no one seems to have read it completely. Despite this, critics have lavished praise.

However, Zhang, 54, is very matter-of-fact while discussing his book. Talking in a low voice, with an idealism that seems to belong to a distant past, he says:

"It took 22 years - the best of my life (to write this book). If I had known how hard it was going to be, I might have never started."

Born in Longkou, Shandong province, Zhang spent his early years by the seaside. The discovery of gold and coal mines in that area forged his early dreams of becoming a geologist.

A voracious reader, he not only devoured the family's collection of books, but also borrowed from the geologists working nearby.

"Books circulated very quickly," he recalls. "I got to keep Balzac's Le Pere Goriot for only three days."

Zhang began writing while in junior middle school, with his poems and essays appearing in student magazines. He says the excitement of seeing his words mimeographed was even greater than seeing his books in print years later.

"I would find a secluded place, hold the sheets to my face, and take a deep breath," he remembers. "The ink smelt even sweeter than jasmine."

To escape his family's difficulties during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) he left home to stay with an uncle. To support himself, he worked in a rubber factory. It was then that he started his wanders.

"Impoverished and forlorn, I found solace in books," he says.

Looking for fellow literature enthusiasts became the other emotional outlet. He would often knock on their doors and stay the night for a talk.

He still remembers the pigtailed girl in a plaid coat who wrote reports for the local commune, and the lone bachelor who collected manuscripts written in the local dialect.

He eventually made it to university in 1978, majoring in Chinese literature.

Zhang's second long journey, that harked back to his childhood geologist dream, came in the late 1980s, and took him to numerous villages, towns, rivers and mountains in Jiaodong Peninsula, the hilly eastern section of the Shandong province.

Friend Yang Jianping remembers how Zhang holed himself up in a small mountain cottage with a whole week of ready meals frozen in the fridge, writing even as he ran a fever continuously for three days and even while connected to wires and tubes after a serious car accident.

Spanning 100 years, You Are on the Highland narrates the vicissitudes experienced by four generations of the Ning family, caught in the currents of the country's political and social transformation.

"I've always wanted to portray the 1950s - protagonist Ning Qie's generation as well as mine," Zhang says.

"Understanding the nation's present and future will be impossible, without understanding this generation," he says.

Since publishing his first work of fiction in 1980, Zhang has produced 18 novels, 11 novellas and more than 130 short stories, including The Ancient Ship, September's Fable, A Letter from Other Provinces and Song of the Hedgehog.

Talking about the decline of literature, Zhang mentions Po, a disabled native of his village.

Known for his quick wit in improvising doggerels, Po could easily gather a crowd around him. In times of material scarcity, Po's funny little poems were a much sought-after recreation.

Po died several years ago, alone on his ice-cold kang (a traditional brick bed). In his later years, he could often be seen strolling alone on country lanes, trying in vain to get people to listen to his witticisms.

"But there will always be people who treasure him," Zhang says. He is one of them.

"And such is the destiny of literature," he adds.