Taste and read the inexhaustible national memory of | books, the endless century-old nostalgia - a brief review of "Wangxiangtai"

Text/Tan laughs

"Lingaotai, looking at the hometown." The earth is thousands of miles, the sky is one side. "The ancients who had not returned for a long time or were exiled often appealed to wangxiangtai about their attachment to their homeland. Even the undead in myths and legends must climb the wangxiang platform to look back and make a final farewell to the past life and this life. In the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, Wangxiangtai has always been an image with a strong atmosphere of nostalgia. Writer Zhao Wei used a "Wangxiangtai" to present readers with his century-long look back and a hundred years of nostalgia...

This novel describes the story of a courtyard that took place in the depths of the mountains in the 1000 years of the twentieth century, focusing on the joys and sorrows of several generations of the Zhao family, the Ren family, the Chen family and other families, telling the historical process of the transformation of agricultural civilization into a modern urban civilization and people's thinking and living conditions. Guo Yi and Yuzhen have adhered to their promises to the Zhou Treasurer throughout their lives, protecting the suitcase entrusted by the Zhou Treasurer without complaint or regret. The descendants Dehui and Shulan inherited the traditional family style and the excellent qualities of their fathers, and although they experienced hardships, they did not change their beliefs and codes of conduct in the world. Zi Gui, Si Fan - A group of young people in the new era broke the tradition and left their hometown, but experienced changes in the situation, the ups and downs of fate, and finally realized the difficulty of survival. There are also some various characters, Duan Ba, Qinggu, Zhao Moqing... Everyone is a witness, witness to the great turning point of history, and also a promoter of history, in the hundred years of changes in the twentieth century, their fate and life have precipitated and condensed into the epitome of the great changes in China's rural areas in the past century.

"Wangxiangtai" shows readers the survival status and fate of a group of low-level people in the context of the big era. The changes of the times affect the fate of each individual, and the fate of generations and the hardships and tragedies experienced are more from the sense of powerlessness in the face of the times. The story structure and pattern of "Wangxiangtai" are undoubtedly grand, but it is worth noting that there are many works with such a grand background in contemporary Chinese literature, and many authors are keen to portray great people, heroes, ordinary characters, ordinary characters, and ordinary characters are almost without exception reduced to supporting roles, and even dragon set characters, so not only are the tragic and strong and slightly empty and distant renderings rendered by the changes of the times and the sentimental sadness in those works, but more importantly, those works seem to be unable to answer who is the creator of history. The inability to reconcile logic with history falls on paper. And "Wangxiangtai" is precisely from the universal values, truly and credibly restore the ups and downs of the fate of several families and generations of low-level people in that turbulent and changing era, which is also the original intention of the author Zhao Wei's creation: "I also want to build a monument to the people at the bottom of China, and I want to write about the fate of small people in this big era." In the same way, every seemingly thin and small individual is also a microcosm of an era and a period of history. The author wrote in the opening chapter: "The manuscript of "Wangxiangtai" was originally a family history of the Zhao clan, the author was rough and shallow, did not understand the writing method of family history, regarded family history as a family affair, did not remember the ancestral deeds, but wrote in detail how the grandfather's generation survived, claimed to despise the struggle and struggle, refused the fat powder wind and flowers, stayed away from the prince and the general, did not talk about the dignitaries and nobles, Did not have a word of fancy, no half a sentence xuanxuan! "Chai rice oil and salt, marriage and funeral dowry, these seemingly bland, trivial daily family affairs have accumulated into the family history of the Zhao family, and the parents are permeated with a hundred years of turmoil and changes in the times." The history of the family is carefully woven together to form a magnificent state affair and national history. The author follows this concept, closely connects state affairs and family affairs, embeds the story of the Zhao family in the context of the alternation of the old and the new in the twentieth century, and conveys to the world the era, social features and the century-old vicissitudes of the Chinese countryside with Dabashan as the epitome in a serious but simple tone.

The people in the courtyard of the Old Guan Temple live in the depths of the mountains, and when communicating with the outside world, they face insurmountable spatial barriers, and the long-term isolation from the world has caused people here to be spiritually and ideologically closed. For the peasants who face the sky with their backs to the loess soil, "the countryside", "land" and "crops" have long become their spiritual dependence and an inseparable part of their lives. However, the twentieth century was an important turning point and era of change in history, the end of the imperial system, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the War of Resistance Against Japan, the War of Liberation, the Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, natural disasters, the Cultural Revolution, reform and opening up, rural urbanization... Many historical changes are coming like a tide, modern civilization has broken into the ancient countryside in a swooping posture, completely breaking the tranquility and leisureliness of the traditional countryside belonging to the borderlands, and a series of drastic changes have forced the croppers who had been farming for generations to be forced to get involved in the tide of the times. When cars and airplanes drive into the mountains, when the sickles and hoes that have witnessed thousands of years of agricultural civilization are collected into the Agricultural Tool Museum, when new ideas violently impact the ideas that have been believed for generations, where should ordinary people facing the dual dilemmas of environment and spirit go?

How to transform agricultural civilization into modern urban civilization? What kind of spiritual and human direction will individuals in society under turmoil and change have? For these unavoidable problems in the process of modern civilization, it is difficult for a writer with the experience of dabashan life and his heart and love for his hometown to turn a blind eye. "Different cultural geographies play a different role in molding the writer's sense of life and the form of writing, and the writer's regional feelings play an indispensable role in his literary writing." (Wang Juan, "Cultural Geography and An Overview of Chinese Literature Studies," Jishou University Journal (Social Science Edition), No. 2, 2013, p. 104) This also made Zhao Wei fatalistically a remembrance of the distant agricultural civilization. He used a "Wangxiangtai" to deeply reflect on and interrogate the traditional agricultural civilization, and borrowed the identity of the protagonist in the book to express his understanding.

In "Wangxiangtai", the Guoyi and Yuzhen generations represent the working people of traditional society, who face changes in the environment and the injustice of fate, never complain about the world, and their inner standards of conduct have not wavered in the slightest. They keep to themselves, do not argue, do not ask for anything, calmly and idyllicly face the vagaries of life, and dissolve the suffering caused by great changes in their own unique ways. This kind of character of dealing with people continued to the generation of Dehui and Shulan, but later, due to the faults in social changes, the Zigui and Sifan generations were deeply influenced by reform and opening up and foreign cultural concepts, and they rebelled and resisted some traditional ideas and old ideas. With spiritual loss and hardship, they fled the land where they had been able to live for generations, exploring their new world with a fearless and unconscious mindset. But going around in a big circle, increasing experience and precipitating the heart, and then looking at the world, they found that the family rules and family rules that they used to think of as a shackle and the truth of the elders' words and deeds are the foundation of being human and the root of survival, no matter how the social form changes, they cannot be abandoned, and they should be passed on by blood.

The so-called inheritance is the tradition of ancestral beliefs under the Wangxiangtai Laoguan Temple, the family rules and family disciplines that have edified and standardized generations of descendants, the spiritual character inherited from the fathers, and the ancient folk songs that linger in the ears and flow in the blood...

"Ants and ants, you are busy, where are you going?" I'm going to climb up to the lookout platform and see my father and mother at home! ("Wangxiangtai • Jade Emperor Asks"). Crying and laughing, everyone went to catch up with the old official temple. The theater floor of the Old Guan Temple is very lively, and the crying and laughing laugh" ("Wangxiangtai • Crying and Laughing") ... In each chapter, the author opens the whole article with a short and concise folk song, a hundred chapters, a hundred folk songs, outlining a simple, vivid and very local old official temple and courtyard. Folk songs, although only a few sentences, are enough to vividly display the historical origins, customs, cultural beliefs, ethics and morality of a region. More than 100 folk songs vividly and three-dimensionally reproduce the working people at the bottom of the land and their living conditions and the whole picture of their lives for thousands of years. The author skillfully integrates these folk songs into the creation, which in itself is also the inheritance of the traditional culture of the nation. In the story, the children who learn to speak can even hum a few folk songs, and the folk songs can be passed down from generation to generation in this inadvertent singing. Zhao Wei is also continuing to sing these ancient songs in his own way. He once said: "Folk songs are ancient culture, the history of this place, and the 'hometown' of our thoughts, while my novel is a modern story, and I want to use this structure to form the effect of 'correspondence between ancient and modern', which is also a kind of 'looking at the hometown', cultural homecoming." In "Wangxiangtai", whether it is the setting of the plot, or the use of folk songs, folk proverbs, and slang, all of them show the writer's concern and adherence to the culture of the mother tongue. The author consciously gives Wangxiangtai a literary proposition - to examine our mother tongue culture and to guard the roots of the nation. Looking at the whole work, it is not difficult for us to see the writer's strong sense of responsibility and mission for cultural inheritance, which also makes "Wangxiangtai" a literary work with profound social significance.

Mr. Zhang Zhizhong once used a witty remark to evaluate the book: "'Wangxiangtai' is a sobering agent of the soul, which soothes the reader's soul, and also arouses the reader's yearning and search for the spiritual homeland and local traditions, so that people can be freed from the anxiety of reality and get the broadening and calming of the inner world." In the rapidly developing modern society, people often focus their eyes on the road in front of them, accustomed to looking to the future, but ignoring the road they have walked behind them, and the author Zhao Wei just makes up for this shortcoming and chooses to explore the land he lived in in a way of "looking back". "Wangxiang" is not only a look back at the homeland, but also a look back at the local traditions and spiritual homeland that are about to pass away, and it is also a look back at the century-old history of the twentieth century. Mr. Xiao Chunfei praised "Wangxiangtai" for writing a hundred years of nostalgia. This nostalgia is thick, it has long gone beyond the emotion of individuality, behind this nostalgia carries a magnificent social content, with a strong sense of history and vicissitudes.

Since ancient times, China has had the idea of relocating the land and relocating it. Writer Jiang Yun mentioned in the article "What We Are Losing": From a literary point of view, the most unique contribution of traditional Chinese literature to the world is not the expression of suffering and love, but the highly imaged and symbolized nostalgia and huge sorrow of life, becoming the imprint of the entire national soul. "Wangxiangtai" - the carrier of strong nostalgia, pinned on the author's attachment to the homeland, but also reawakened the memory that belongs to our nation.

【About the Author】

Tan Xiao, a native of Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province. He is currently a 2020 undergraduate student of the Department of Chinese of North China University of Technology, and has published commentaries such as Tianjin Poet.