Xu Zechen's novel collection "Qingcheng": The Light in the Yin Feng

Qingcheng is Xu Zechen's latest collection of novels, including two novellas and a short story he has written with women as the core characters from 2004 to 2019. From "Western Xia", "Juyan" to "Qingcheng", Xu Zechen stopped writing, and it took 18 years before and after to reunite his "three sisters of literature". In the book, we see Xu Zechen's understanding of female beauty, although the writer did not initially perceive and describe the hidden power of women under daily practice and social burdens, but from "Qingcheng", these women who have been busy inside and outside the family all year round but have been neglected for a long time finally reveal their light from the yin.

"Xixia" has the ancient meaning of Liaozhai style, telling the story of a book seller Wang Yiding, who has "no miracles and no sexual encounters" in life, but has a good cultural accomplishment and honest loyalty, and a dumb girl Xixia who "fell from the sky" accidentally lives together. Xixia is beautiful, but also industrious and virtuous, just in line with Wang Yiding's ideal wife image - a woman working in the wheat field - when Xixia cleaned up the simple rental house spotlessly, Wang Yiding was moved for the first time. This incredibly beautiful girl, however, made up her mind to live with Wang Yiding from the very beginning, picking vegetables, washing, buying clothes for herself like the hostess of the family, frying two eggs for Wang Yiding when cooking, and putting two pillows side by side when sleeping. When Xixia appears from the big willow tree in front of the door at dawn, we can't help but feel a little bit of folklore such as crane wife and field snail girl from this realistic story.

Although the image of this mute girl is strange and impressive, in the first-person "Western Xia", the main body and narrator of the novel is always "I". Xixia intruded into my life out of thin air, living under my roof, and on some level, Xixia was my vassal, her past was a blank, and her present was all about me. And I have the power to grasp her future — whether she can speak again or not, I can decide with a phone call.

For young people in a foreign country, "family" is a complex discourse space, due to the pressure of intergenerational relations or when the appeal exceeds the geographical time, we often choose to leave the original family; but after coming to the big city, we are faced with more complex social relations, people are polite and distant, loneliness and loneliness are our common spiritual dilemma. Therefore, Xu Zechen constructs such a special small family in the novel as a kind of comfort, Xixia has a good character for a single man who is controlled by "I" and seems to never turn his back on "me". But a good literary image often grows freely in the storyline and guides the creation of writers, so Wang Yiding must make this ambiguous relationship justified after falling in love with Xixia. Sincere emotions force Wang Yiding to confirm that Xixia also loves him, because words have a spirit, words fall to the ground to come true, only when Xixia opens his mouth to prove his love, Wang Yiding's inner desire can be truly satisfied. As a result, Wang Yiding fell into a dilemma, let Xixia open her mouth, her lost past life will involuntarily emerge, she is no longer a new girl who belongs only to me; without letting her open her mouth, Wang Yiding has never been able to distinguish her true heart from Xixia's daily behavior, knowing that when he says: "I am afraid of losing you", Xixia did not use body language to argue, she just cried. For Wang Yiding, Xixia and his future are like a Schrödinger's box, Xixia's words are the key to opening the box, whether to open the box, touch the heart, or face the relationship confusedly, the decision is also in his own next words. At this point, the writing of the text came to an abrupt end, but the reader's curiosity and conjecture grew wildly from the end, and the story belonging to Xixia could also be extended in another imaginary space.

Juyen is a novel written in the third person, which also seems to imply that male and female voices are in a balanced relationship. The beginning of the novel describes the encounter between Tang Tuo and Ju Yan, or the story of "hero saving the United States" with traditional meaning: Ju Yan went to Beijing to "find a husband", Tang Tuo helped each other, the two not only had the friendship of their hometown, but also the common sad memory brought by the dilapidated stadium, in the context of "meeting and knowing in other places", Tang Tuo and Ju Yan gradually came together around Hu Fangyu, a MacGuffin-style character. But as the story progresses, the narrative subject quietly changes. When Xixia is obsessed with finding Hu Fangyu, Tang Tuo's narrative perspective occupies a major position, telling his life, his failed first love, and speculating about the past of Ju Yan and Hu Fangyu. But from the beginning when Ju Yan wanted to get a foothold in Beijing and find a job, the narrator of the story became a woman herself. Trial lectures, classes, Ju Yan by herself to find a good job, alone through the End of the Year, she gradually walked out of the shadow of Hu Fangyu, sorrow and joy are no longer only related to a man. At the end of the novel, when JuYan finally finds the center of her life, she is like watching a memory, and her heart is as calm as water in an instant.

Unlike The Western Xia, Juyan was not born for a "Beijing love story". From the perspective of spatial structure, Tang Tuo and Ju Yan are equal tenants in a house, and their lives are not like husband and wife, but more like roommates partnering together. Although Ju Yan once owed Tang Tuo a lot of love debts, the author cleverly arranged for Tang Tuo to be unemployed and then re-employed, so that the status of both men and women returned to a balance. It is worth mentioning that the novel was written on the eve of the 2008 Olympic Games, and at such a moment, Juyan's story has a certain motivating significance, and the writer seems to use it to tell the reader that the obsession is only because the vision is too narrow, and in the context of the big times, everyone's dream is acquiesced, and everyone is the protagonist of his own life, without having to lose himself under the cover of others.

In "Qingcheng", the female subject status is more prominently depicted, and although the writer also tells stories through the male first person, the "I" as the narrator has never been named. "I" entered the life of Qingcheng as an outsider, without salvation or change, but only to excavate what was originally in Qingcheng's soul; when "I" left, what continued to grow in the novel space was the story that belonged to Qingcheng alone.

It is not difficult to find that there is a mysterious connection between Qingcheng and the novel's main image, the "eagle". "I" like Qingcheng, like "I" like Eagle, has always been an appreciator, a bystander, and does not try or interfere with her life. And Lao Tie is a person who wants to become an eagle and cannot do it, and because he is always with the more spirited and more backbone Qingcheng, his incompetence and decadence are highlighted even more humble. Although he deliberately did not guide Qingcheng's paintings, he could not stop Qingcheng's growing wings after all, just as he could not stop qingcheng and eagle from awakening their consciousness and physical betrayal after meeting each other.

Compared with the industrious and kind Xixia and the persistent and tenacious Juyan, Qingcheng's character is more complex. She seems to be living under Lao Tie as a student and partner, but in fact she is the deserved leader in this relationship; although she has an independent core and unlimited potential, she still self-sacrificially shoulders Lao Tie's living and bears his tyranny. In her body, the spirituality of the near demon and the motherhood of the near god intertwined, bursting out a powerful life energy.

In "Qingcheng", Xu Zechen's understanding of women has been quite profound. In China's social structure, women are often the core of the family, although they have their own desires and scars, they often consciously practice moral and ethical disciplines, and assume responsibilities inside and outside the family without hesitation. They regard pain as comfort and sacrifice as the embodiment of their own meaning, and such gender identity and complex psychology are difficult to explain in the discourse of power. The particularity of women in Xu Zechen's pen is also in this, he wrote about the tenacity of women through daily observation and delicate feelings, and praised them for always responding to the negative in life in a sincere and beautiful way. From "Xixia" to "Juyan", women gradually appear in the darkness, slowly accumulating energy, and in "Qingcheng", this strong vitality finally shines in the darkness.