Recently, the Capital College Students’ Youth Reading Club and the “Cultural Masters Entering Campus” activity, hosted by the Education Work Committee of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and undertaken by The Beijing News and Renmin University of China, was officially launched at RUC. This is the opening chapter of the 2025 series of reading activities for capital college students.

Wang Meng, Honorary Vice Chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, former Minister of Culture of China, and a renowned contemporary Chinese writer and scholar, were invited to share the “Charm of Language and Literature” with more than 400 teacher and student representatives from 59 universities in the capital. Wang has published the 50-volume (new edition) of Collected Works of Wang Meng in 2020. He won the 9th Mao Dun Literature Prize and was awarded the national honorary title of “People’s Artist” in 2019.

Wang started his talk from the charm of literature and used his own experiences as examples to encourage contemporary college students to keep learning and gain their own unique spiritual strength from it.

In Wang Meng’s view, using the right adjectives in the appropriate context can make the whole scene very beautiful. At the same time, Wang Meng believes that language also expands people’s wisdom and cognition, and it develops people’s thinking. “Many things cannot be heard with the ears, seen with the eyes, or smelled with the nose. When we talk about morality, philosophy, thoughts, worldviews, outlooks on life, values, beliefs, concepts, and faith, etc., all these are inseparable from our understanding of language and words. The understanding of language and words is the direction of our hearts.” Wang Meng said that compared with other art forms, language itself is very beautiful.

During the sharing that lasted for more than an hour, the 91-year-old author was energetic and showed no signs of fatigue. He quoted from classics, chanted poems, and talked eloquently. He not only led the audience through the palace of literature but also interspersed humorous words from time to time, causing the whole audience to burst into laughter.

When faced with the question “In the process of writing, do you think more before putting pen to paper or do you think more deeply during the writing process?”, Wang Meng said that there is definitely thinking before putting pen to paper, and one needs to consider whether to start writing and whether to begin this work. Some people say that when immersed in writing, it is a subconscious activity and there is no need for thinking at all. “This statement is a bit exaggerated. People always tend to consider things when doing something.”

In response to the question from the students of RUC about the “Vitality of Literature”, Wang Meng said that the power of language, the power of the soul, the power of thought, and the power of creation will never go out of style. In Wang Meng’s view, “The more advanced the technology is, the more we need writers with personality, genius, and amazing creativity, and we also need such readers who at least know what creation is and are able to be moved by creation.”