The journey continues

Acclaimed author Liang Xiaosheng delves into his working class roots to honor those who built China, Xu Fan reports.

Liang Xiaosheng is one of the few living writers that is a household name－and not just in his own country. His works have been published in multiple languages but, at 71, he still zestfully questions the ultimate meaning of literature.

The TV series A Lifelong Journey, adapted from his award-winning novel of the same title, started shooting in March in Changchun, Northeast China's Jilin province.

The author believes the novel acts like a key that unlocks a puzzle. "A literary work can have value in two aspects－to reflect an era and to panoramically showcase how people from different walks of life think and strive in that era," says Liang.

Such an ideal has been fully employed in A Lifelong Journey, an epic that chronicles the life of three siblings from a working-class family in a northern city over the course of 50 years. Their personal ups and downs, triumphs and disasters are interwoven with, and reflect, the country's rapid change, ranging from resuming the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, to reform and opening-up and the cracking down on corruption.

Liang is old-school in his approach and shuns typewriters and computers when working. He wrote the novel completely by hand, submitting more than 3,000 sheets of paper to his bewildered publishers. The endeavor that lay before them, Liang recalls teasingly, exhausted the editors from China Youth Publishing Group.

The novel was published in December 2017. Two years later, it won the Mao Dun Literature Prize－one of China's most prestigious literary honors. In 2019, it also won the biennial Wu Cheng'en Novel Award, a significant honor named after the writer of the 16th-century classic, Journey to the West.

But the novel had caught the attention of the studios before all that. In 2018, Tencent Pictures purchased the adaptation rights, persuading director Li Lu, best known for the 2017 anti-corruption-themed hit TV series, In the Name of the People, to helm the project.

Approximately spanning 60 episodes, A Lifelong Journey gathers a stellar cast, including actors Lei Jiayin and Xin Baiqing as well as actresses Song Jia and Yin Tao.

Lei plays the lead character of Zhou Bingkun, the youngest son of the Zhou family. His father was among New China's millions of workers dispatched to construct large-scale industrial bases in the country's western and central provinces.

Growing up alongside the glamorous life of his intelligent older brother and sister, who respectively become a high-ranking government official and a prestigious university's professor, Zhou Bingkun, a factory worker, has learned the value of life and bravely pursued his true love. And therein lies the challenge. The woman he is determined to spend the rest of his life with has struggled, being socially ostracized for being the widow of a "murderer".

For Liang, who was born in Harbin, Heilongjiang province－a key manufacturing base at the time of the founding of the People's Republic of China－the characters of Zhou Bingkun and his father embody his affinity with factory workers.

Liang's father left his poverty-stricken hometown village in Shandong province to struggle for a better life in Harbin, landing a job as a construction worker and later assigned to far-flung areas to support various industrial developments.

"My father only had a 12-day break to return home and reunite with the family every two years. We barely saw my father at home when we were young," recalls Liang.

Demonstrating his gift in writing when working on a farm in rural Heilongjiang province from the late 1960s to early 1970s, Liang was transferred to work as a scriptwriter at the Beijing Film Studio in 1977. This move launched his career as a professional writer.

"It was not until many years later that I was capable of having more time to spend with my father. He came to live with me in Beijing, but he was already a gray-haired old man by then," says the emotional Liang, who published a biographical novel to commemorate his father in 2005.

"My little brother was once a soy sauce factory worker," says Liang."Personally, it was like an itch. I wanted to pay homage to them. For a long time I have wanted to write a novel for Chinese workers, a revered group who have sacrificed their family life and achieved great things in propelling the economic development of China."

Respect for the working class is also the main impetus of director Li, who, more than 10 years ago, had purchased the rights to adapt a different novel about Chinese workers, but, due to various reasons, the planned production did not come to fruition.

China has experienced a huge transformation. After their significant contributions workers deserve an epic drama to highlight, and show appreciation for, their dedication and devotion, he says.

"As someone who lived in northeastern China for nearly 20 years, I have a deep love of the 'black-soil land' (as the country's northeastern countryside is colloquially known), and also heard a lot of stories about the people who have lived and strived on the land," says Li, who was born in Changchun, Jilin province, in 1966.

With the novel adapted by veteran scriptwriter Wang Hailing, known for Chinese Style Divorce, a popular TV series, A Lifelong Journey is set to hit screens by the end of this year.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn