Because of Ang Lee's films, Zhang Ailing's "Color Ring" is widely known. Many people went to Hong Kong from the mainland to see this movie in order to see the unedited version. In Zhang Ailing's novels, the depiction of sex is almost only a faint hint. Obviously, in Zhang Ailing's heart, sex is not the focus. What's the point? We may wish to read Zhang Ailing to talk about the reason why she wrote three short stories, including "Color Ring": these three short stories shocked me, so I am willing to rewrite it over and over again for so many years, and even when I think of it, I only think of the surprise and rewriting process of just getting the material, and I don't feel that 30 years have passed. Love is not worth it. This is also a memory, but it was already lost.
Zhang Ailing used the word "love". For more than 30 years, she has written this story repeatedly, and only she can understand the reasons for it.
The Color Ring was published in The Crown in December 1977 and in the China Times Human Supplement on April 11, 1978. In October 1978, the writer Zhang Zhiguo published "How to Paste Spicy Seeds Without Eating Spicy" - commenting on "Color Ring", arguing that "Color Ring" is a literary work that praises Han traitors, and that "literary works that praise Han traitors, even if they are very ambiguous praises," are definitely not worth writing." Because of her past life background, Ms. Zhang Ailing should be extra careful when dealing with such subjects so as not to be misunderstood. "
Zhang Ailing quickly responded, writing a novel "Wool Out of the Sheep", in which the defense novel did not praise the traitor, but criticized Mr. Yi.
Zhang Ailing's heyday coincided with the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. When Japan surrendered in 1945, the Republic of China government immediately launched an "anti-rape" campaign and arrested a group of intellectuals, including Zhou Zuoren. Zhang Ailing is not on the government's list of traitors, but because she has been a popular writer in the occupied areas, especially her relationship with Hu Lancheng, she has become a target of attack. In November 1945, there was a book called "Sima Wen detective and the history of the crimes of cultural traitors", which listed sixteen writers such as Zhang Ailing, Zhang Ziping, Guan Lu, Pan Yuji, and Su Qing as cultural traitors.
In the war years, the government could not protect the people, and did the people have the right to steal their lives? Zhang Ailing rarely defended herself. However, from the 40s to the 70s, when it came to traitors, she still cared a lot and had to defend a few words. In 1947, when an updated edition of her Legend was published, she wrote A Few Words to The Reader and defended herself discreetly: I never wanted to defend myself, but in the last year people often talked about it, and it seemed as if I was listed as one of the cultural traitors, and I was confused. The articles I wrote never touched on politics and didn't get paid off. Imagine that my only suspicion was that I had been invited to the Third So-Called Greater East Asian Literary Congress, and that I had been included in the list published in the newspapers. Although I wrote my resignation letter, the newspaper did not remove my name.
Admittedly, Zhang Ailing never wrote about politics. Many of her works are set against the backdrop of the War of Resistance Against Japan, but the War of Resistance Against Japan is only a background. "Color Ring" may be the only work that depicts the War of Resistance Against Japan in a positive way, but the anti-Japanese student Wang Jiazhi in it has a trance thought at a critical moment: This person really loves me. Then he lost his life. This anti-war novel is really ambiguous. It seems that the focus is not on the struggle between the enemy and our army, but on the tension between men and women.
Intriguing is Zhang Ailing's reaction to the war. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, almost all Chinese writers reacted fiercely. Xiao Hong wrote in 1937: "We are going home."
Compared with most writers, Xiao Hong's response is quite feminine. But in Xiao Hong's consciousness, the boundaries between justice and injustice, liberation and slavery in this war are clear, and she still has the common passion of that era.
On the other hand, Zhang Ailing seems indifferent. She saw the war entirely as a life-oriented individual. Who started the war? Why go to war? How should a Chinese face war? Zhang Ailing did not seem to have the slightest thought about such a question.
During her time in Hong Kong, she experienced the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, leaving behind a "Record of Embers", which is enough to explain Zhang Ailing's reaction to the war: In Hong Kong, when we first got the news of the war, a female classmate in the dormitory began to be anxious, saying: "What to do?" No suitable clothes to wear! ”
For most of us students, our attitude toward war can be likened to sleeping on a hard bench. Although uncomfortable and constantly complaining, we fell asleep.
We will ignore anything that can be ignored. Life and death, the most colorful experiences of ups and downs, we are still us, spotlessly clean, maintaining the typical daily life.
I remember how we looked for ice cream and lip balm on the streets after the fall of Hong Kong.
At the same time, many Chinese writers wrote stories about the fall of Hong Kong, focusing on the atrocities of the Japanese army and the heroic struggle of the anti-Japanese army and people. Only Zhang Ailing saw the faces of ordinary people under the smoke of war.
She wrote horribly about her disgust at caring for the wounded with other students, and even watched the wounded die happily, because it would lighten the burden. She also wrote about how people marry quickly to escape the fear of death, just to grab hold of something real. Here, Zhang Ailing's writing is cruel and has a kind of fierce torture.
What responsibilities should ordinary people bear in national wars? What are the responsibilities of writers? Can you be a bystander and an outsider? Does a writer have to write about the war years? This was also Shen Congwen's doubts and distress at that time. Instead of writing about the War of Resistance, it is better to write about daily life, about the beauty of life, which is negative, even reactionary?
All individual interests in life, the joys and sorrows of life, are dismissed as negative or reactionary. Zhang Ailing has been troubled by the context of "war" and "revolution" all her life, but she focuses on trivialities, scenes of daily life, and material obsessions. In an age when everything is shaken and destroyed, any intellectual and present being is full of life and preciousness.
Today, most Chinese readers don't care about history or politics. They like Zhang Ailing only because of her words and those ordinary and far-reaching stories. Zhang Ailing's observation may be profound. Flags, slogans and passions are all over the place. Time blurs everything, and what accumulates is something else.
Is it as Chen Fangming said: "The war destroyed one China, but it gave birth to a Zhang Ailing?"
