On the evening of November 3rd, the Seminar on the Rise and Development of the Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu was held in Anning District, Lanzhou City, attended by 15 writers, including Peng Jinshan, Ma Busheng, Gao Kai and Yang Yongkang, who exchanged ideas with one another on the rise and development of the Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu.
“A group of local writers appeared in the 1980s. The Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu will really rise if the local writers produce a great influence throughout the country.” The seminar kicked off with Peng Jinshan sharing his opinions with the rest under the theme of “the Rise and Development of the Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu”. At the seminar, the writers talked about the development history of the Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu from different perspectives. “The phrase ‘Eastern Gansu’ has two meanings. In addition to the geographical meaning, it also has cultural connotations…” Writer Ma Busheng believes that “Eastern Gansu” is not only a regional concept, but also a cultural concept. From a geographical perspective, Eastern Gansu also covers western Shaanxi, as well as Pingliang and Qingyang, which are located to the east of the Longshan Mountain (i.e., the Guanshan Mountain); from a cultural perspective, the Eastern Gansu culture is a synthesis of the loess culture, Yellow River culture and Wei River culture, as well as the relevant prehistoric culture, nomadic culture and farming culture. The unforgettable feeling of trauma, pain and sadness brought about by nostalgia is the shared spiritual background under which the writers from Eastern Gansu perceive, discover and touch poetry.
As an important part of the contemporary Gansu literature, the Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu germinated in the 1970s, achieved growth and prosperity in the 1980s, further flourished in the early 1990s, and has expanded and grown mature in recent years. The rise of the Group of Writers in Eastern Gansu with its regional culture and aesthetic characteristics marks that this type of regional works has been accepted by the literary world.
Hosted by the Gansu Provincial Contemporary Literature Research Association and Lanzhou Book Cube Bookstore, the seminar was held as a cultural salon for online and offline writing experience sharing and in-depth exchanges, aimed at guiding the writers from Eastern Gansu in establishing a higher literary outlook, and actively building a mode of self-discourse so as to create excellent works with more distinctive characteristics and higher literary values.
