"Polar Flower" is one of the few novels in contemporary Chinese fiction that reflects the trafficking of women. However, due to the author's fascination with personal aesthetics, the inability to break through the form, and the questioning of the writing position, the novel also caused great controversy. Here I will write only a few words about the novel, as well as reflections on the writer's position.
The plot of the novel is not complicated. Hu Die is a rural girl, her father died early, and her mother pulled the two brothers and sisters. Because of the shortage, Hu Die dropped out of school and her mother went all out to support her brother. Hu Di and her mother came to the city to collect the rags and opened their eyes. Once I heard that there was a part-time job opportunity, I went away with people and was sold. Imprisoned for a year in the village, raped by buyers, and given birth to a son. The mother followed her daughter's distress call, rescued her daughter but failed to take her grandson. Hu Die, who returned to the city, was completely exposed because of his identity at the commendation meeting, and he was talked about every day. Her mother found her in-laws in Henan and hoped that she would marry and start over in a place that no one knew. Hu Di knew and quietly returned to the village.
Jia Pingwo said in the afterword that this work is based on real life. The protagonist portrayed in it is a very typical woman who is easy to be abducted, poor, has a certain culture, is eager to change her destiny, and is lured by employment opportunities and then abducted. The novel rarely shows the practical difficulties faced by women after being rescued, especially the pressure of public opinion, the lack of follow-up support measures by the government, and even the rough implementation of policies.
■ Stills from "Blind Mountain"
What is even more rare is that the entire novel is an artistic way rather than a point of view first output, and the expression of the theme is completed in a way that evokes the reader's feelings, which is comprehensive, holistic, and full of rich details and images. To give a few examples, it can be seen that Jia Pingwa has a certain understanding of the lives of his characters and has made efforts to investigate.
For example, at the beginning of the book, Hu Die carved a way on the wall to calculate the time, and then there were deep knife marks everywhere on the portrait of the beautiful woman posted by The Black Liang family, "The beautiful woman seems to have been cut by a knife from the neck to the foot, and the knife is so deep that the wall soil is cut out." I asked Black Liang: You posted it? He said: I want her. I said: You want her you to cut her? He said: I hate that woman is not mine", from some criminal cases, men slash and kill women, which is very consistent with men's sexual psychology. The portrayal of many characters in the book is also real, such as monkeys, Youcheng, and bald heads who let Hei Liang lead Zimi away, they went to Zimi's house to snatch away a few women who came from other places to dig up polar flowers, and became their daughter-in-law in a year in the kiln. There are also six men who hold Hu Die and are raped by Hei Liang, and the description of Hu Die running out of the kiln is very true.
As for Jia's language, it has always been a "fox who can say right and wrong", the writing is extremely beautiful and fluent, every sentence can be read, and the text is really genius.
The following mainly explores the shortcomings in the novel, and possible reasons.
The first feeling is that Jia lacks a stylistic breakthrough in this work. To say that a breakthrough is not a breakthrough for the sake of a breakthrough, but that the subject itself needs a new form.
The subject matter itself is extremely realistic, extremely sharp, and there are many aspects that can be written. Jia also said in the afterword that this material has been in his mind for ten years, and he has not been able to find how to write, and when he wrote it, he thought he would write a million words, and the result was 150,000.
As far as the story itself is concerned, it can be divided into two parts, one is how she was tamed and accepted the reality of being abducted, and the second part is how she struggled after being rescued and chose to return to the village where she was abducted. Jia Pingwa chose to show the former, the former can continue his superb control of rural themes, and the second part that takes place in the city is more sloppy, hinting at Hu Die's ultimate fate with a dream-like ending. The latter part actually contains a fast-paced rescue scene, if unfolded and written, the breakthrough in style is certain, and even the style of some genre novels will at least be a hilarious climax. But here it was gently let go. This can also be seen that Jia's limitations are very obvious, writing about the countryside is sound and colorful, and when it comes to the city, it is obviously weak and sloppy.
The second feeling is that writing lacks moderation, with a lot of distracting parts of the subject, without letting all the parts point to the theme.
For example, the "old man" who focuses on shaping, a rural teacher who has not entered the establishment, lives near the home of the abductor Hei Liang. This old man is highly respected, he does not say much, and the few words have the role of correcting people's hearts and educating people, which should be the remnants of Confucian culture in the countryside. The old man also often taught Hu Die to look at the stars in the sky, this design played a role after Hu Die became pregnant, she found that two new stars appeared in the sky, and she was frustrated that her fate really belonged here? The prophetic old man was therefore quite illusory, with the aura of a taoist or even a yin-yang family. In other words, the "old man" here is a symbol of the old order and goodness. However, for the pain of Hu Die, who was raped, and for those who raped Hu Die, the "old man" did not have any indoctrination and attitude. That is to say, "Old Master" does not serve the theme of the novel, and the preferences of Jia's literati are imagined, and the meaning of the "symbol of goodness" that is given is also very empty. This "old man" can be compared with Mr. Zhu portrayed by Chen Zhongzhong in "White Deer Plain", the two seem to have similar cultural backgrounds, but the latter is a person from the Republic of China, not far from traditional society, and is Bai Jiaxuan's brother-in-law, and the double superposition of time and identity makes zhu's character real and convincing.
In addition, the various scenes of cooking rural food depicted in the novel are also quite redundant. The original intention was to depict Hu Die's slow integration into rural life after giving birth to a child, but for the long and arduous display of Hu Die's cooking, we see only a hard-working and happy peasant woman, which is obviously Jia's unconscious projection of his memories of rural cuisine when he was addicted to writing. This feeling is often highlighted, and all we can glimpse is the author's fascination and praise for the beautiful life in the countryside, which is different from the theme of the novel and even weakened.
The third feeling is that the novel lacks a deep or genuinely sympathetic understanding of the lives of trafficked women.
The story is based on a local theme, the theme is from the daughter of a neighbor, the neighbor is not familiar with the life of the daughter in the abducted village, but Jia has a large number of depictions of Hu Die's life in the abducted village. The lack of in-depth knowledge of the lives of trafficked women is evident here, although it is masked by his familiarity with rural life.
For example, Zimi in the book is a woman bought by Lichun and Labahe, who has been a lady in the city. She is bold and informal, shrewd and calculating. The author's explanation for her marrying the brothers is that through her own mouth, "I am the emperor and can marry, and the beggar can marry", and a lovely female figure jumps out of the paper. But in fact, she is just a functional character, just to help Hu Die escape from Yiliang Village. In real life, a woman bought by her brothers will never be such a relaxed and cheerful woman as Zimi, shouting "I must have sex at eight o'clock in the evening". There are a large number of bloody examples in the 1980s documentary literature "Ancient Evils - Documentary on the Trafficking of Women".
For another example, the sex life of Hu Die and Hei Liang has only been described twice in the text, once when he was raped, and once when Hu Die took the initiative to ask for sex after pregnancy. Nothing since. Jia Pingwo is very good at sexual description, but he does not write much in this novel, and the moderation is a bit abnormal, the root cause or the relationship between the two people, and the characterization of black and bright. The novel has a lot of beautification of the buyer's black light, for example, although he imprisoned the butterfly in the cave, he did not use it much for a year, and also bought her white-faced steamed buns every six or seven days, and there were places that rats could not reach, so that she could have white noodles to eat. Black Liang's father never entered her cave and adhered to the identity of a father-in-law. Hei Liang's positioning is a person with a very good personality, who only buys a wife because he can't marry a wife in the countryside. But can such a person truly respect and actively understand a abducted urban woman? I believe that Jia himself has no answer. So when he let Hei Liang rape Hu Di, he arranged for six people to help cover Up Black Liang's face with a noisy group portrait.
Jia said in the afterword that this matter was engraved in his heart like a knife, and he had not written for ten years and had been thinking about how to write. Because the events are extreme and sharp, and he is unwilling to write them to the extreme. He has a very good metaphor, "Can you take a bowl to receive water under the waterfall", the waterfall is this theme, fast and very impactful; the bowl is this novel, the capacity is limited, you need to carefully consider the angle and content presented. Therefore, he introduced the theory of ink painting and wanted to write beyond it, so he introduced the "old man", wanted to have freehand, and transcended this extremely dirty and cruel reality.
In his epilogue, he unabashedly shows his regret for the withering of the countryside. Even if he has such a bias in his heart, in the novel, the power of the subject matter itself determines the direction of the novel: we see an obscure, dirty, and cruel countryside, and the beautiful side of rural life is mainly focused on food and some natural scenery. Most of the characters are ugly. That is to say, in fact, at least in the writing of the novel, he did not lament the demise of the countryside, let alone lament the demise of the countryside because there was no woman. If it were to die, it would be because of this group of ugly villagers and not because of anything else. This is where the novel's profound criticality lies.
From this level, in the interview of Beiqing Bao, the positions of literary works and writers are not completely consistent, and even contradictions arise from time to time. Personally, Jia has a lot of affection for the countryside, but his fictional work does not fully reflect the position shown in his interview clips, and even deviates from his own position to a certain extent. From this point of view, Jia is worthy of his position as a writer. He confronted and recorded the contradictions between the times and himself.
■ Stills from "The Woman Who Married the Mountain"
There are many contradictions in this novel, and there are two groups at the core. Thematically or from the standpoint, it is Jia's attachment to rural life and his tormented conscience of deep sympathy for the tragic fate of trafficked women, which form a strong tension: to support the latter is to completely negate the former. Stylistically, how to choose between your own well-written and aesthetic style and the sharp and extremely radical style brought about by the subject matter itself? He thus wandered for ten years, eventually choosing the former.
At first, this wandering seems to be caused by the indetermination of style and style, but in fact it is still determined by the position. The position determines the theme, the theme determines the content of the writing, and the content determines the style and style. He is always wandering in his position, his conscience is torturing him, but to support his conscience is to deny his homeland, and he cannot complete such self-destruction. So in style, what we see is the repetition of the self, the lack of penetrating depth in the content, and the final novel is heavy, but it lacks the power of contemplation.
On the question of the weakening of literary character caused by the aesthetics of stylistic style and the truthful depiction of objects, regardless of Jia's performance in this novel, I think the perfect answer is Lu Xun, who abandons the writer's stubbornness to the self—the pursuit of literature and beauty—and chooses to face the cruelty and reality of life. This is the embodiment of his artistic outlook, and it is also closely related to his position and pursuit, and he always has the deepest sympathy for the weak. The repeated appearance of the elder mother in the prose, "How We Become Fathers", "My Festival of Spirits", etc., all show his position.
And Jia has always been obsessed with his dream of rural life, in his eyes the city sucked up the countryside, and the countryside is withering. When the countryside as a whole appeared in front of the city, the countryside was weak, "I remember the popular Zhiqing literature of that year, there were so many words accusing Zhiqing of throwing them into the countryside and making them suffer." I think that when I go to the countryside, I should not, then the rural people, including myself, suffer is a matter of course? But in the face of Hu Die, a woman who is absolutely weak in both urban and rural areas, Jia Pingwa's logic has been impacted. He had to take care of him left and right, and turned to the filter of nature, hoping to use the laying out of the literati's pleasant countryside scenery to evoke a trace of sympathy in exchange for a moment of paralysis.
Literature is the answer to the times, and it is also a cause that is naturally close to the weak and closely related to the weak. In the face of the literary beauty of the work and the radical extremes that must be written due to the sharpness of the subject matter, Lu Xun gave up part of the literary nature, gave up the narcissism belonging to the writer, and always remained faithful to his writing theme. In the face of the sharp and painful subject of abducted women, there are few related works of art, and the writer Jia Pingwo made his answer with "Polar Flower", at least recording the history of women's plight and abuse. He has transcended, but he has not reached the bottom, he has not exhausted all the evil in this matter, and such transcendence is incomplete, with a partial escape.
He was still deeply sympathetic to the decay of the village, repeating the tone of the millennium in empathy—yes, I know that reproduction is ugly, but it is the reality that is instinctive, and man always has to live—man always has to live," and this logic covers the plundering and encroachment of all the weaker on the weaker, giving such harm room for compassion and empathy.
The men in Polar Flowers who cannot have heirs and lead to the demise of the countryside are weak; the women who are violated by these men and deprived of the possibility of life, and their sacrifices complete another group of people. And this group of women who have suffered greatly but have few voices, how should we write, and how should we compensate and redeem them? This is an interrogation that goes straight to the cornerstone of national ethics. Maybe Jia dived a little deeper in "Polar Flower", and after all those pains, we will have a Dostoevsky-like masterpiece, but who can answer such a question?
Author | Tapir | Shaanxi people