Shortly after the movie "Love Myth" was just performed, Miss Li came out of the theater, with a look of "worrying while moving cold corners, the night is difficult to calm down", and proposed to find another place to drink, it is better to go to the old White house of the same traveler, while saying but going in the opposite direction. Lao Bai was a little eager to correct her, and worried about drawing snakes to add feet, hurried to keep up, clever nest like a Labrador dog. I thought, isn't this Fang Hongwei? Later, I saw that he lived in a small Western-style building in the city center, collected rent for a living, did not have to go to work, and taught painting every day. I thought again, Fang Hongwei had finally lost his luck this trip.
Stills from the movie "Love Myth"
Fang Hongwei is the protagonist of Qian Zhongshu's novel "Siege of the City". Like other modern Chinese literary classics, The Siege is deeply misunderstood to this day. When people talk about it, they always like to re-read Yang Dai's slightly hasty conclusion: "People outside the city want to come in, people in the city want to go out, marriage or career, the desire for life is more or less the same." This is true, but not entirely true - the theme of "The Siege" is, of course, about "people outside the city want to come in, people in the city want to go out", but have you ever thought: the "siege city" in the original novel that really makes "people outside the city want to come in, people in the city want to go out" may not be "marriage" or "profession", but Fang Hongzhi himself. Or more accurately, it is Fang Hongwei's character and ideals.
Whether this is a pretentious and surprising statement, it can be proved by simply substituting the theme formula of "siege" into Fang Hong's gradual love history. Fang Hong gradually experienced four emotional entanglements, three of which were in the "prey" rather than "hunting" position, and was the one who was plucked and pursued. When Miss Bao gave him an indirect kiss on the deck of the cruise ship in the name of borrowing fire, Fang Hong gradually "was so embarrassed that it seemed that everyone on the deck was paying attention to him, and blamed Miss Bao for doing too much and hating not being able to say a few words to her." Su Wenyun earnestly showed that he wanted to sew a handkerchief for Fang Hong, he just wanted to keep his distance and avoid misunderstanding and entanglement, "I have to keep some god!" Fortunately, I will arrive in Shanghai the day after tomorrow, and there will be no chance of such a close proximity in the future, and the danger can be reduced." And Sun Roujia, who finally succeeded in luring him into marriage, may be the first "green tea" persona in the entire history of Chinese literature: "I will not be wrong to do what Mr. Fang said." I don't know how to be a person, and I am in trouble and dying! Mr. Fang, will you teach me? Fang Hongwei's era had no social media, and he had never been trained to guard against seduction, so he began to wonder if he "loved her - a little bit of love for her"?
And whether it is Miss Bao, or Sun Roujia, after getting Fang Hongwei's person or heart, she was disappointed, the former returned to the arms of her fiancé after casting a few blank eyes, leaving Fang Hongzhi 's deceived lust, damaged pride, like a tumbler, down and erect, but swaying badly"; the latter was "too despised to be sad" to her husband, and could only use a voice "Coward!" "Relieve the resentment in your chest." That is to say, "The Siege" repeats the story of how others entered and exited Fang Hongwei's city, not the other way around. Further: Fang Hongwei's cuteness is precisely his ridiculous and sad and hateful place; when he can't get it, he can feel the ridiculousness and sadness and hatred in it, and he can't leave him, so it can be said that "people outside the city want to come in, and people in the city want to go out." For this reason, the bitterness of the siege theme is hidden in the cuteness of Fang Hong's personality.
- "You're not nasty, but useless. (The Siege)
Zhao Xinlin commented on Fang Hongwei: "You are not annoying, but it is useless. In Nasbaum's words, this reveals the "fragility of the good," the virtues of kindness, gentleness, and shame, which are often accompanied by incompetence, cowardice, and timidity, and if they are not strong enough to separate the front from the back, they will inevitably be bullied by life and constantly usher in disappointment. This is easy to understand, because gentleness and kindness are to know how to think about others, and the boundary between thinking about people and being manipulated by others is not easy to grasp, or to put it bluntly, it is easy to slip down. About 150 years ago, Nietzsche saw through this and advocated revaluation of the moral spectrum and the strengthening of the individual will. Fang Hongwei is the opposite of Nietzsche, and he always wants to act like a gentleman, in short, a good person who thinks of others. So when Su Wenyun asked Fang Hong in French to kiss her in french in the moonlight, he was powerless to shirk and could only bow his head and obey. Qian Zhong wrote: "The weight of this kiss is very light, the scope is very small, only like the Qing Dynasty official tea delivery lips on the side of the tea bowl, or the former Western court witnesses took the oath to touch the lips of the Bible, at most like those believers kissing the Tibetan living Buddha or the pope's big foot finger", meaning that there is no carnal desire and love, only obedience to the rules - when the lady asks for a kiss, the gentleman cannot embarrass her. Fang Hong gradually, out of gentle weakness (already two sides of the same body), politely and meekly deposited the temporary crisis into the account of time, not expecting that when the money was withdrawn with profit, the price paid was to say goodbye to the girl who really loved each other (Tang Xiaofu).
Stills from the TV series Siege
As for the fake diploma of Clayden University, it is another "siege" clue carefully buried by Qian Zhongshu but has been repeatedly misunderstood. People often think that this is just a proof that Fang Hong has gradually learned nothing and is useless, and they do not know that Qian Zhongshu himself left Oxford before getting his degree, so Yang Dai's statement about "deputy doctor" in "The Two of Us" is also a kind of well-intentioned concealment - whether it is somewhat similar to Fang Hongzhi. Buying a fake diploma, just like the yunyu love with Miss Bao, is a stain on Fang Hongwei, who has a gentleman's dream, but Qian Zhongshu has said elsewhere that he was born as a person, and he will inevitably have to do a few stupid things and wrong things, eat fruit that should not be eaten, love things that are not worth loving, and the important thing is that he has his own trade-offs in his heart, refuses to reverse right and wrong, and obliterates good and bad to defend himself. Fang Hong gradually achieved this, he secretly promised to buy a degree is only a temporary emergency, "anyway, when you come to find something in the future, you will never open this degree." So we walked into another virtue, the "siege" of "shame.".
Qian Zhongshu had to ask Fang Hong to pay the price for "honesty and shame." Lacking a higher degree, he was demoted to associate professor, but learned that the head of the same college earned the top salary with a diploma from Clayden University. Fang Hong gradually regretted it, "I am too incompetent, I have to lie and talk about my conscience, it is really a big fool." If you are bold and old-fashioned, at least the bullying of Takamatsu Can be avoided. Isn't that "the people in town want to go out." But Fang Hongzhi always did not have the courage to step out of the "shame siege", after leaving the university, he still did not use a diploma from Claydon University, even if he was scolded as a coward by his wife, even if he finally slept in loneliness and cold as a "dead sample".
Unconsciously, the darkness closed and wrapped tightly, like the night when the lights were extinguished, and he fell asleep. Initially sleepy and hungry like tweezers about to break his coma, his subconscious blocked it. Gradually, the tweezers became loose and blunt, and his sleep was too solid to be broken, no dreams, no feelings, the most primitive sleep in life, and at the same time a dead sample. (The Siege)
When watching "Love Myth", I think that Lao Bai and Fang Hongzhi in the play are the same kind of people, just as kind, docile, honest and shameful, likable, and easy to be manipulated by women. Although they are the same kind of people, they have completely opposite circumstances, and in the final analysis, it is the difference between the amount of family property.
Fang Hongwei's failure lies in his desire to simply copy the ideal of a gentleman left by Confucius, but he has not reached the economic level that a "gentleman" should have. You read it correctly, Confucius's so-called "gentleman" has a basic economic level and social status threshold, that is, the ruling class in the aristocratic feudal system. Nowadays, we often use "gentleman" and "villain" to refer to the level of personality, but Confucius's original meaning - in today's words - is the size of the ruler's "pattern". If you don't understand this, you won't be able to read through the Analects. In the "Thirteenth Analects of Zilu", there is a story of "Fan Chi asked him to learn the harvest", the story tells that Fan Chi asked Confucius to teach him to cultivate the land, Confucius said, go and ask the peasants; and ask Confucius to teach him to grow vegetables, Confucius said, go and ask the vegetable farmers. After Fan Chi left, Confucius said bitterly: "Little man, Fan Chi Ye!" It is to criticize Fan Chi's "pattern" for being too small. Confucius believed that a ruler, in self-denial, if you can do it, the people will come from all over the world, and where can you use your own farming and vegetables? (If the husband is so, then the people of the four directions will bear their sons and go to the end, and use the crops?) Therefore, for the "gentleman", learning any practical skills is not as important as self-cultivation, which is called "gentleman is not a tool", "a gentleman can not be small and can be greatly affected." Some people today will say that the "free and useless soul" is cloudy, and its spiritual root may be here.
Confucius was born in the chaotic spring and autumn, when the ceremony collapsed and the old order was almost disintegrated, the new order had not yet been established, every nobleman wanted to become a prince, and every prince wanted to establish himself as a king. What Confucius wanted to do was to "maintain stability", and the way to "maintain stability" was to persuade the rulers to abandon their utilitarian desires and abide by benevolence and righteousness. With this as an ethical starting point, any undertaking or skill that will bring immediate material benefits is considered inferior. This later gave rise to the "contemptuous structure" of "scholar-peasant-industrial-merchant", and merchants were the most despised because they were closest to interests. Therefore, when Fang Hong gradually learned that the female poet Su Wenyun actually relied on Shanghai daigou to earn extra money, he couldn't help but sigh: "This bright blue sky is no longer where heaven and God are." "His spirit and soul belong to the nobility of Confucius's ideals.
He was not aristocratic. Although there was a chance to be.
Confucius's ideals were not realized during the Spring and Autumn Period, and although the princes liked Confucius because he could teach the minor nobles to keep to themselves, they hated Confucius because he also demanded that they keep to themselves. Eventually, bureaucracy replaced feudalism, and the imperial family increasingly relied on selecting bureaucrats from among the commoners to govern the country, but it was inevitable that they would fear bureaucratic rebellion, so the "zi yue" who advocated peace and self-preservation served as a tool for indoctrination. In addition to indoctrination, the royal family also understands the principle of high salaries and loyalties, so it gives the bureaucracy extremely high material treatment, and they seem to believe that people with enough money will not care about money, just like where there is enough water, they will not save water. Lu Xun's sixth ancestor was once raised in high school, so until Lu Xun's previous generation, the entire family did not worry about eating and wearing. And Fang Hongwei's father, who also happened to be a lifter, was gradually in the twentieth century, and soon after entering the twentieth century, the late Qing dynasty people could not get Feng Lu. Therefore, he only touched on the ideals of the nobility, but he did not have the fate of the nobility, and he lacked the self-knowledge of the commoners, and did not understand that a gentleman who did not have Qilu and was not strong enough would eventually become Lu Xun's trickle and son.
--------------------------------------- I will write down my regrets and sorrows for myself, for my son. ("Wounded Death")
If the late Qing Dynasty had not been overthrown, Fang Hongwei might have become the appearance of the old white in "Love Myth", kind, gentle, and still a little timid, but few people would feel that he was a nest - there are a lot of land to collect rent, and the strength necessary for life is not important. So I thought enviously, old Bai is really lucky. Unexpectedly, Lao Bai's luck will bring controversy to the movie.
Some people say that Lao Bai is too lucky, and this luck makes all the goodness in and around him seem vain, which means that the beauty that has not experienced suffering is not a goodness. This is too much to demand on human morality, because not all lucky people are willing to use their luck alone to protect the good in their hearts. After all, even Confucius only made demands for self-denial and retribution to the lucky nobles, and most of the nobles did not think so, in their eyes, luck is the capital and opportunity of the wandering, and should not be constrained by the virtues imagined by nerds. If Lao Bai had been born in the Spring and Autumn Period, he might have been able to become a gentleman in the eyes of Confucius.
It is also said that Lao Bai is too lucky, and his luck constitutes a satire on honest laborers, and he is not worthy of being so favored, nor worthy of representing any class or universal presence in Shanghai. But in fact, man is man, and there is no real or fictional man who can bear the complexity of an entire city or class. But on the other hand, we often can't help but take some kind of excellence and ideal as a representative, called urban height or speed. If so, there are certain things in "The Myth of Love" that are rare in previous works, but that are often moving in real life, it is not height or speed, but a cuteness that is not stumbled by luck.
" In evaluating a person's life, to what extent can we distinguish what depends on the world and what belongs to us?" (The Fragility of the Good)
(The author is an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University)