On the morning of Oct. 15th, the first national academic seminar of Food Is Heaven, which was written by Ge Liang was successfully held in JSNU. The seminar was jointly organized by School of Chinese Language and Literature of JSNU and Dangdai Bimonthly. The meeting was set up both online and offline, with Fang Zhong, Secretary of CPC JSNU Committee, Xu Chenliang, executive editor of Dangdai Bimonthly, Huang Dezhi, secretary of Secretariat of the Writers Association of Jiangsu Province and the well-known author Ge Liang attending on site. Experts, scholars and chief editors from more than ten universities, including Nanjing University, Wuhan University, Jinan University, Yangzhou University, Shanghai University, Communication University of Zhejiang, China University of Mining and Technology and Jiangsu Normal University, and journals such as Novel Review, Selected Novels, Contemporary Chinese Literature Studies, Exploration and Free Views and Forum for Chinese Literature of the World attended the seminar remotely. It consists of opening ceremony, work discussion and closing ceremony.
On the opening ceremony, Fang Zhong extended a warm welcome to the experts and scholars and congratulated Mr. Ge Liang for his latest work. Secretary Fang introduced the development of our university and concluded the experience and achievements in the first five “Forum for Criticism of Chinese Contemporary Literature” by School of Chinese Language and Literature. He pointed out that the forum has promoted the classic and historical development of contemporary literary through in-depth studies. Also, it has injected fresh blood and vitality into the exploration of diverse contemporary literary trends of thoughts and the researches on the history of contemporary literature.
Ge Liang extended deep appreciation to the participated sponsors and researchers. He gave an introduction to his field trip to create Food Is Heaven, noting that in Chinese people’s minds, geography always relates to food. Therefore, his new work focuses on the Greater Bay Area to demonstrate the prime of modern China’s centenary from south to north.
In the discussion, experts and scholars expressed their opinions freely centering on Mr. Ge Liang’s new novel. From the theme, characters, aesthetics and thoughts of the work to explore its space narrative structure, atmosphere aesthetics, narration of sound and other aspects, especially the value of humanism and culture implication created by the author. They not only highly recognized the perspective of writing and humanistic values of the work, but also gave insights into their own doubts and questions in reading.
In the closing ceremony, Wang Chunlin, the chief editor of Novel Review, made a summary of the discussion and fully confirmed the research results. He hoped that the forum held by School of Chinese Language and Literature of JSNU will be long-standing and has a better future.
