Read Yu Hua's "The Writer's Gatekeeper"

? Writers and goalkeepers are two different fields that rarely intersect, except for Camus who luckily did not become a goalkeeper in his early years and became a great writer. But if you think about it carefully, writers are actually another kind of goalkeeper. On the football field of life, they are waiting for inspiration to come, and they quickly pounce on it and hug it tightly in their arms.

? Yu Hua’s "Writer Goalkeeper" is lifelike and full of fun. Let’s appreciate it quickly——

? I think many Chinese fans have played on the basketball court Football life experience.

I will present two passages from my own experience. The first paragraph is from 1988 to 1990. At that time I was studying at Lu Xun Institute of Literature. Lu Xun Literary College is very small, with only 8 acres of land. The classrooms and dormitories are in a five-story building. There is only one basketball court for our activities. So basketball players and football players were all on this field. At most, about 40 people were crowded together, and the scene looked like a group fight.

At the beginning, the basketball players and football players refused to give in to each other, and both played full-court offense and defense. The gap between the two supports of the basketball stand is the football goal. Sometimes when the football players attack from left to right, the basketball players attack from right to left, and it becomes a mess, as if it has evolved into a rugby match; sometimes the football players and the basketball players attack in the same direction, which is a joke. , the football was thrown into the basket and the basketball slid into the goal. Because football is rougher than basketball, a basketball player meeting a football player is like a scholar meeting a soldier. Later, they voluntarily gave in and only played half-court basketball. Football is still all about offense and defense. Later, the basketball players had no choice but to quit the court, because when they were shooting, they often got kicked on the back of the head by a football, which made them dizzy in pain. The basketball fell on the head of the football player, which only made him feel that his head suddenly became elastic. In this way, the basketball players quit the basketball court, and the football players dominated the basketball court.

Among us who play football, only Hong Feng has the temperament of a star. We admire him very much for his skills and physical strength. His status among us at that time was like Platini's status in the French team. At that time, no one wanted to guard the goal because the gap in the middle of the basketball stand was too narrow. If the goalkeeper stood in the middle, the goal would be almost blocked. It was a bad job. So whenever the attacking team rushes over with the ball, the goalkeeper immediately abandons the goal and runs away.

I remember one time Mo Yan was the goalkeeper. When I raised my foot to kick the ball, I thought he would run away, but he fearlessly guarded the goal. I kicked the ball into his stomach and he squatted on the ground for a long time holding his stomach. At night, he told me that he had mixed feelings.

The second paragraph is during the 1990 World Cup in Italy. At that time, Ma Yuan was still working in Shenyang, and he invited a few of us to go to Shenyang to give lectures to the students of Liaoning University of Literature. We watched the World Cup game late at night, and when we got up the next day, we had the illusion that we were stars. We gathered a few of Ma Yuan's friends in Shenyang and played a game with students from Liaoning University of Literature on the basketball court. Liaoning University of Literature is also very small and has only one basketball court.

Ma Yuan’s golf skills are far inferior to Hong Feng’s, and the rest of us’ golf skills are far inferior to Ma Yuan’s. As you can imagine, we were scored a few goals by students from the Faculty of Arts as soon as we started.

We originally arranged for Shi Tiesheng to be the coach and cheerleader on the sidelines. Seeing that we were conceding too many goals, we had to resort to a trick and let Tiesheng be the goalkeeper. After Tiesheng sat in a wheelchair and guarded the gap between the basketball stands, the students no longer dared to shoot for fear of hurting Tiesheng.

With Tiesheng at the back, we simply gave up the backcourt and attacked the goal of the students from the Faculty of Arts. But our skills are not as good as others. We want to dribble the ball past others, but we pass them but lose the ball. Finally, we changed the tactics and let Ma Yuan, who is 1.85 meters tall, stand in front of the opponent's goal. We fed him the ball and let him header the ball. The problem is that our passing level is super bad, and Ma Yuan's head often misses the ball. Although Tiesheng stayed behind and didn't concede any more goals, we couldn't score in the front and still lost the away game.