Wen 丨 Shi Junjie
A few days ago, when I was ready to re-read Zhou Libo's Great Changes in the Mountains and Countryside, I was actually mentally prepared in advance - because this is a novel written sixty years ago, in this era of extremely rapid social and cultural development, sixty years of time is enough to break people's thoughts and concepts out of several huge gaps, so I originally thought that it was most likely to be the scalp, repeatedly put down and pick up several times to finish. But I didn't expect that when I actually picked up the book, I read it all in one go, and there was a sense of smoothness that I didn't expect.
After reading it, I immediately understood why this book was able to win so many readers at that time, and why a book that celebrates the great changes of the acura era can also become a popular bestseller.
First of all, Zhou Libo uses a large number of vivid and vivid Hunan dialects in the book, and the character language is funny and humorous, which is very expressive. For readers familiar with the Hunan dialect, reading this book is like having its own dubbing effect, after seeing the text, the voice of the character in the book will unconsciously appear in the mind. For readers who are not familiar with the Hunan dialect, it will not cause reading barriers, because these dialects can be seen at a glance to see what they mean.
Secondly, the details of the short life of the parents described in "The Great Change in the Mountains and Countryside", the trivial skins between neighbors, and the customs of marriage and funeral in the eight neighbors and eight townships are really real in real life, which is easy to think of the villages where they lived when they were young, and even some customs can still be seen today.
Finally, what amazed me even more was Mr. Zhou Libo's understanding of the policies at that time, he was not rigidly copying the spirit of the above documents, but really and profoundly understanding of how to develop the rural reform plan from rural mutual aid groups to primary cooperatives and senior cooperatives, and how the causes and consequences, advantages and disadvantages, and how the theory were implemented into daily life, all of which were portrayed very vividly, which can be called a living teaching material for the social and cultural changes at that time.
Such a long novel that can be entertained and educated can be called a Chinese story with a distinct sense of the times! And this is exactly the height that our new era of online writers strive to reach and surpass.
Based on the above points, the sense of substitution of "Great Changes in Mountains and Townships" is very strong, it vividly portrays the spiritual outlook of mountain peasants and the social changes of the new countryside, deeply excavates the pain points and pursuits of mountain and township peasants in the wave of reform of the times, and writes about the things around the peasants. If we replace the social background at that time in "The Great Change in the Mountains and Countryside", and simply from the perspective of the story, we will find that the core of the story written in "The Great Change of the Mountains and Countryside" is actually fully applicable to the vast majority of online novels.
The protagonist Deng Xiumei enters a new environment and faces a new challenge, she needs to accept teammates who are not very friendly or unconvinced by her outsiders, and then find a way to solve the difficulties she is facing and finally achieve the expected major goals.
Thinking about it carefully, in today's online novels, whether it is fantasy novels, fairy tale novels or workplace novels, they all have similar structural models! It can even be said that such a structure can be found in the vast majority of popular novels.
It can be seen that although the times change with the times and the times are constantly changing, the deep core of the stories that the people like to hear is actually unchanged and interconnected.
In the Internet age, there are too many eye-catching things, short videos, small games, all kinds of entertainment gossip... This era is becoming more and more impetuous, more and more eager to make quick profits. As writers, we cannot be self-conscious, we cannot be separated from the masses of the people, if we do not understand social changes, if we do not understand the inner world of readers, and do not understand the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people, how can this work?
Literature should not become a privilege for small circles, and should not just entertain itself behind closed doors, but should face the masses of the people, accept the test and screening of the public and the times, and create works that truly have the flavor of the times. Only such works can be immortalized in decades or even hundreds of years.