As a teenager, in an unknown magazine, I read a novel about an old man and a dog guarding a grain seedling until the end of his life on a dry day that has not been encountered in a thousand years.
This is a very shocking story, so that to this day, although many details have been forgotten, the old man's relationship with the dog still lingers in his heart.
I have been eager to reread it countless times, but I did not know the name of the novel, and because it was published in a magazine, I mistakenly thought that it was not a well-known novel, so I did not deliberately look for it.
Until a few days ago, I finally searched for this novel with keywords, stayed up late and read it twice, and finally understood the feelings of longing for many years.
I also finally knew that this novel that shocked me more than ten years ago turned out to be the classic work of Mr. Yan Lianke, a famous writer in China, who won the second Lu Xun Literature Award, the eighth "Novel Monthly" Hundred Flowers Award, the fourth Shanghai Novella Award, and the "Anti-Hunger Book Award" issued by the International Anti-Hunger Organization.
It is the "Year, Month and Day" by Mr. Yan Lianke, the Nobel Prize winner who is most likely to become the Nobel Prize winner after Mo Yan.
Published in 2002, "Year Month Day" is a novella.
Mr. lily constructed a wild, desolate, lonely and tenacious picture under the scorching sun with a very graphic sense of text, in this picture, under the manic hot sun, there is only an old man, a blind dog, and a corn seedling, but their stories are respectful!
It is a novel about suffering, companionship, loneliness, locality and hope.
The desolate and lonely picture sense brought by its words is no less than that of "I Am Legend", a highly acclaimed movie, and its plot brings people shock, and it is not inferior to Hemingway's famous work "The Old Man and the Sea".
This is a Chinese version of "I Am Legend", and also a Chinese vernacular version of "The Old Man and the Sea".
The story begins with a great drought, as if the heavens joked, after three days of clouds, everyone planted the seeds, the clouds opened and the fog dispersed, and the rake people suffered a drought that was rare in a thousand years.
This catastrophe was the beginning of suffering, and for generations of croppers who had lived on the land, food meant life. The rake had to leave the village and go out to survive.
Grandpa Xian, a seventy-two-year-old man, stayed with a blind dog, for he found that a seed, under the harsh scorching sun, had taken root and sprouted with extraordinary vitality.
The grandfather decided to stay and guard the young seedling.
Without fertilizer, he and the blind dog soaked in urine every day and fertilized on time in the morning; when there was no grain, they planed the seeds in the field and competed with the rats for food; the well water gradually dried up, and a bed of cotton quilts was immersed in the well to absorb water, and every day the cotton quilt was twisted to take water; when the well water dried up completely, they went to the puddle forty miles away to fetch water; when they encountered the wolves, they endured hunger and drowsiness for one night and stayed up with the wolves; when the grain was completely eaten, they hunted the rats to eat, and when the rats finished eating, they drank water to fill their stomachs...
Almost all of what my grandfather encountered was life-threatening thresholds, real suffering: food shortages, water shortages, rat plagues, wolf dens. But in the seventy-two-year-old man,he burst out a vigorous and tenacious vitality like the corn seedling he guarded under the dry world, fighting with the heavens, fighting with the earth, fighting with wolves, and fighting with suffering, and the grandfather did not hesitate and retreat.
Until there was no longer a grain to feed, in order to ensure that the corn could be harvested, the grandfather finally planted himself in the field as fertilizer, and used his life to guard a single seedling.
What was embodied in the ancestors was the indomitable spirit and persistent belief of a cropper, and the way of getting along between people who lived on the land and nature, not only did not succumb to the obscenity of nature, but also made full use of all the resources of nature. In the face of suffering, he never flinched, and his only thought was how to use the existing resources to keep the only remaining corn seedling.
How heroic it was for the grandfather to whip at the scorching sun and suck the sunlight to pieces!
The whole text exudes a great sense of loneliness, the cracked earth, the loess that is extremely widespread, the deserted villages that have no one, the locked courtyard doors...
But the tenacity and optimism of the grandfather and the loyal companionship of the blind dog weaken this loneliness, and even let the reader enjoy this loneliness.
Xianye is a person who dares to face loneliness and is willing to enjoy it. The emptiness of the earth, alone, in those quiet nights, with surplus grain in hand, looking up at the stars, showing a pleasant feeling, so that readers are yearning for the loneliness of the cold moon in the wilderness.
But the grandfather still needs to talk to the blind dog. The grandfather can persevere in a person's days and nights, and it is inseparable from the company of the blind dog.
The relationship between the grandfather and the blind dog has exhausted the extreme emotions of people and animals. In the vast and uninhabited land, one man and one dog have finally become friends of life and death.
The author's description of the blind dog makes full use of anthropomorphic techniques, but it is not abrupt, especially the blind dog's repeated tears, all of which are moving.
The blind dog was originally a stray dog that the villagers saved by the grandfather to ask for rain, grateful for the grandfather's life-saving kindness, with a lifetime of loyalty to reciprocate, even if it was too hungry to walk, even if the grandfather chose to let it leave itself to live, it never left a step.
In this great disaster, the grandfather interpreted the faith with integrity and indomitability, and the blind dog accompanied by loyal and meek narration. The best qualities of human beings are vividly reflected in one person and one dog.
But the grandfather was not always straight and unyielding, and finally deceived the blind dog with a piece of copper money that was the same on both sides, choosing to bury himself and let the blind dog live. And the blind dog is not always docile, after the death of the grandfather, it did not obey and leave, but chose to die.
The feelings of people and people, the feelings of people and animals, are more or less similar. When faced with choices, the most sincere and touching side often erupts.
Why did Xianye choose to stay, in his own words: he is already seventy-two years old, and he may not be able to stop after three days. Then I saw a seed sprouting, permeated with a refreshing green, and wanted to plant it until it was harvested.
There is a strong sense of locality in this, and the grandfather knows that his time is short, and he hopes to be able to finally root it in the native place.
Mr. Fei Xiaotong said in "Native China": From the perspective of the grassroots, Chinese society is vernacular.
This kind of locality has taken root in everyone's heart and has become a memory that is difficult to give up from generation to generation.
At the end of the text, when a year later, after the drought ended, people who left their hometowns chose to return to their hometowns, and this attachment to the countryside and the soil was a deep affection that was integrated into the blood.
What the grandfather is willing to protect with his life is not only a corn seedling, but also the hope of the cropper.
It is precisely because of hope that the grandfather can calmly accompany loneliness, can he emit a series of noble qualities such as tenacity, persistence, indomitability, etc., can he not be afraid of all difficulties, and can he sacrifice everything for hope.
The grandfather belongs to the people who hold the salary for everyone, and uses his life to fulfill the promise he made to the villagers in his heart. It also brings new hope with life.
When the grandfather chose to bury himself and use his body as a plant fertilizer, the seed of hope had been transmitted in this incredible and incredibly moving way.
At this point in life, what unspeakable tragedy is there?
"Year, Month and Day" is the epitome of local culture and local feelings, and the ancestors have condensed the qualities and emotions of generations of croppers who live on the land.
He weighed the weight of the sunlight with a scale, but in fact weighed the weight of the increasingly cruel suffering, and the act of jerking against the manic hot sun with a whip was a strong struggle against fate.
In the face of suffering, some people choose to retreat, but there are always payrolls, practicing faith with their lives and passing on hope.
Embrace hope, face suffering calmly, live in peace with all kinds of unfairness from the outside world and inside, talk indifferently, experience and find the meaning and strength of life in loneliness, and show a strong spirit of resistance in the face of suffering.
This is perhaps the most powerful force conveyed in "Year, Month, And Day".