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Since the mid-1960s, China has shifted its defense industry, heavy industry, and other industries from coastal areas to the central and western regions to enhance the country's strategic depth and defense capabilities. Under the call of "good people, good people, good people, right away on the third line", millions of construction troops have penetrated into remote third line areas and embarked on arduous entrepreneurship. After the 1980s, the "third tier" enterprises either relocated, reorganized, or dissolved into the tide of market economy, and the witnesses gradually aged. This significant historical period, which was related to national strategic defense and industrial layout adjustment, gradually drifted away.

 

The prose collection "Growing in Time" by writer Shen Junfeng has opened a warm door to the memories of the "Three Lines" for us.

 

Shen Junfeng lived with his parents in a remote mountainous area of Anhui for more than 20 years. As he approached his thirties, he left the mountainous area and later moved to the provincial capital of Hefei, where he worked for a magazine. A few years later, he went north to accompany his daughter and worked for a central news unit.

 

As a child of the "third line", Shen Junfeng has always had a dream to record those people and events with literary strokes. As he approached his sixties, he recalled that experience and salvaged fragments of memories from decades ago.

 

Prose cannot do without expressing emotions, the key is to choose the right way. I loved literature when I was young, and later pursued a career in journalism for over 20 years. Literary creation requires rich imagination and can be imaginative, but the first priority in news writing is truth. In order to objectively narrate, it is necessary to carefully consider and give up some vivid expressions that are difficult to grasp. In the afterword of the book, Shen Junfeng said that the two contexts of news and literature have always been fiercely entangled in his mind, with endless battles. Although there is a sense of soul tearing, it has been refined into a narrative style with distinct recognition, which does not deliberately exaggerate or elevate, but focuses on detailed descriptions.

 

In terms of narrative style, Shen Junfeng is good at seeing the big picture from the small and understanding the big picture from the small. In 'Growing in Time', the distant 'three lines' are concrete and tangible: the difficulty of transporting heavy power poles to the mountains for digging and erecting, the accident that happened when the father worked overtime on a lathe, the constant supply of vegetable gardens dug by the mother all year round, without the fear of adults falling asleep at night at home, and the excitement of holding up slingshots to play sparrows

 

There are no earth shattering events in the book, just some trivial daily matters. Each thing is so ordinary that it cannot be more ordinary, but precisely because it is a small matter, many people may have experienced it and it is easy to develop empathy.

 

Sincerity and restraint are the fundamental elements of Shen Junfeng's narrative and the distinctive features of 'Growing in Time'. Sincere and easy to understand, with genuine memories and writing about real events, there are close relatives around, as well as my father's colleagues and childhood playmates, and colleagues after starting work. Restraint is not repression, it refers to being very rational in narration, with few straightforward expressions.

 

Deep affection is contained in restrained expression, and warmth is seen in accurate description. Rereading this book will make this feeling even stronger.

 

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