An elegy of beauty and time

Author: Zhang Weiyang

Most of Zhang Chu's works are about the small town in which he lives, which is not a rapidly changing metropolis or a poor and backward countryside, but a world that seems to be full of abundance, but is actually mediocre and trivial. His most recent work, A History of Middle-Aged Women's Love, depicts such a world. On the surface, in his writings, women living in small towns are eager to flee, with nowhere to go, eager for passion and nothing to pursue, in a constant confusion. In fact, this depiction of the mundane world that penetrates deep into the marrow is only one aspect of the novel, not the whole of the novel.

Time is the key word in this novel. The time in Zhang Chu's pen is not a linear time related to history, but a time that carries emotional memory. During these times, emotional experiences that occur are either warm, intense, or miserable, or desperate. The women he writes about are bold and enthusiastic about love, they seem to grasp the initiative of love, freely chasing the emotions they yearn for, but in the end they have become the losers of love. They did not lose to lovers or lovers, but to time. The passion and admiration of the past quietly faded in the passage of time, and time flowed calmly and cruelly, wrapping up all the warmth and warmth, resentment and regret, leaving only sorrow and sadness. In the end, these emotions dissolve in the quietly receding time, becoming memories that people miss and linger.

Zhang Chu's writing is not to evaluate or analyze the emotional experiences of the heroines in his writing, but to mourn the beautiful youth of their once stirring up by recalling the occurrence and flow of those rich and complex loves. Those women who once spent their faces and moons, those who were once throbbing and confused, will disappear with the passage of time. Zhang Chu is sad about the withering of beauty and youth, and his writing is a remembrance of these women's past beautiful faces, and a regret for their lost youth. This infinite nostalgia for youth is the awe and helplessness of time in middle age, in this sense, Zhang Chu writes about the sorrow of a delicate woman like a flower, and it is also the common sorrow of mankind.

In the "History of Middle-Aged Women's Love", as the story unfolds, Zhang Chu constantly gives the memorabilia of the year in which the story occurred, which is a reference for historical time. Women living in small towns can feel the passage of time, the change of times, but the big events that enter and shape history have nothing to do with life in small towns. Zhang Chu's small towns are in modern time, but they are outside of history. These women living in small towns are drifters outside history, they do not participate in the process of history, they cannot find the position of the individual and establish the value of survival in the overall process of the times. They can only entertain life in entangled emotions, and consume life in the ordinary and humble life. Zhang Chu shows their trivial and mediocre daily lives through narrative, and also shows their desolate and tired spiritual world. In this sense, Zhang Chu's small town is not only a geographical space, but also a cultural space and a spiritual space. Many people are in big cities, but they may still be in the mental state of his characters. In this way, Zhang Chu's writings have long overflowed the scope of small towns, and have greater explanatory and generalizing effects, which are a reflection and presentation of a certain universal mental state.

The experience of literature tells us that the novel cannot be detached from reality, nor can it rely too much on reality, and there must always be something soaring and transcendent to illuminate reality and reflect reality. In classical Chinese novels, this soaring thing is morality and morality; in the main theme of literary works, it is the ideal of transforming reality and changing society; in the 19th-century Russian novel, it is derived from the compassion of religion for human beings; for Proust and Hardy and the sentimental romantics, it is the time that has passed. This kind of soaring thing that Zhang Chu found and used was the universe. The vastness and infinity of the universe reflect and contrast the humility and smallness of his characters, as well as the mediocrity and triviality of their lives. The writing of the universe represents his desire and yearning for the outside world. Even though the external world represented by the universe was so vast and distant, so untouchable, he still had such hope and anticipation in his heart. This kind of knowing that it is unattainable but still has a mind reflects Zhang Chu's stubbornness and persistence, which makes his narrative, although gray and broken, still retain the light of hope.

It is precisely this faint light that is the most precious part of literature. It allows Zhang Chu's novels to detach themselves from the monotony and boredom of daily life, and become a space full of imagination and expectation for the soul to fly freely. (Zhang Weiyang)