Journey of authors
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E-mail China Daily, May 15, 2020
The documentary shows painter Wu Xiaohai visiting Ma in his self-designed villa, where studies are named after eminent writers such as Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy.
"Today's people really show themselves on social media. They have gone far from the nature of life," Ma says in the episode. "I'm not a hermit ... I'm only living in a way that is like the essence of literature, unadorned but poetic."
A similar situation is noticed in the episode on Alai, 61, an author of Tibetan ethnicity who's based in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and is best known for his novel, Dust Settled Down. He does not use WeChat and had to be persuaded by Wang to appear in the documentary.
Alai gets emotional on camera recalling his experience of the devastating magnitude-8.0 earthquake in Sichuan in 2008 when speaking to literary critic Xie Youshun.
For Alai, it was a bitter yet inspirational time to consider the matter of life and death on a deeper level. One night after the earthquake, he was resting in his car, listening to Mozart's Requiem, and was shocked to suddenly find the car surrounded by people. No one spoke a word.
"I thought they would smash the window (for robbery)," Alai says in the episode."But everyone was just listening. When the music stopped, they left quietly... That's the feeling I would like to include in my writing."
It took him a decade to begin writing his novel on the catastrophe, Yun Zhong Ji ("diary in the clouds"), which is narrated from a Tibetan monk's perspective to reveal not only pain but also awe of nature.
"In spite of huge loss, you have nothing to hate, because it's brought on by nature," Alai says in the documentary.
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