Readers of Malaysian Chinese Literature (hereinafter referred to as "Malaysian Chinese Literature") are probably not unfamiliar to readers of Chinese mainland. Works such as "Spring and Autumn in Giling" and "The End of the Great River" by MCA literary representative writer Li Yongping have long been published in the mainland; in recent years, MCA writer Zhang Guixing's "Monkey Cup" and "Wild Boar Crossing the River" have once again caused repercussions in the Chinese-speaking world and Chinese mainland. "Wild Boar Crossing the River" not only won the Malaysian Chinese Literature Award of the "Flower Trace Literature Award" in Malaysia, but also won the first prize of the "Dream of the Red Chamber Award" for the world's Chinese novels.
Professor Wang Dewei of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University has mentioned many times that MCA literature, as a kind of "small literature", comes from the MCA ethnic group's sense of crisis about the survival of Chinese culture: language is the lifeblood of cultural inheritance, as the most quintessential representation of language, literature is the place where cultural consciousness meets or clashes, so MCA literature undertakes the "heavy responsibility" of cultural survival.
Perhaps because of this, the creation of MCA literature has always been difficult to escape the motifs of identity, national anxiety, national trauma, and the division between civilization and barbarism. Zhang Guixing's works such as "Herd Elephants" and "Monkey Cup" depict the intricate relationship between the history of Chinese reclamation in East Malaysia and the natural environment, while Huang Jinshu is committed to criticizing Malaysia's ethnic politics through literature.
In the view of the writer Wang Anyi, "As soon as the word 'MCA literature' is mentioned, we see a fighting posture. ”
But MCA writer Le Zishu's new work, "The Land of The Vulgar Land", is different. In addition to reflection and battle, she points her brushstrokes to daily life, and in addition to engraving national trauma, she is willing to imagine a possibility of reconciliation and redemption, injecting a kind of warmth into the story and characters.
The story of "The Land of The Flow" takes place in Xidu, a city based on the hometown of Li Zishu and Ipoh in Malaysia. Famous for its tin mines, this mountain town has attracted thousands of Chinese immigrants to the area since the mid-19th century, forming a rich Chinese culture. In addition to the Chinese, Ipoh has Malays, Indians, Indonesians and Bangladeshis. The "customs" in the title of the book refer to the local terroir and the life of the city, comparing Xidu to the customs, and Li Zishu intends to record the hundreds of cities here, showing the noisy life of a group of small people who are "difficult to climb the hall of elegance" led by The blind girl Gu Yinxia, who is born visually impaired.
In the livestream, they discuss the development of MCA literature, the dilemmas and irreplaceability faced by realist novels and novels, and the metaphors and extensions in "The Land of The Flowing Place".
Guest | Wang Anyi, Chen Sihe, Zhai Yejun, Li Zishu
Organize | Xiao Shuyan
Malaysian Chinese literature is combative, tragic, pluralistic and warm
Zhai Yejun: How do you view MCA literature and its uniqueness in world Chinese literature?
Annie Wong: I have been a judge for the Flower Trail Literature Prize for many years, so I started reading and caring about the writing of Malaysian writers very early on. As soon as the word "MCA literature" was introduced, we saw a fighting posture, and I felt that malaysian writers wrote with a tension in their relations with their surroundings, first of all, they could not escape the national issues, which would make them very sharp and intense; secondly, in writing they absorbed more modernist writing, the theoretical preparation was very good, but the challenge for reading was also very great.
In addition, we should show respect for Malaysian Chinese writing. Because they are in the language enclave, or on the fringes of speaking Chinese, but their Chinese language is very clean and in good condition since the new literary period.
Li Zishu: Teacher Wang said that when it comes to MCA literature, I first think of "fighting", but what I think of myself is "sadness". It seems that many words have been summed up for MCA literature, such as "identity", "national trauma", etc., and we are so attracted by such words that if we do not have such themes in our writing, it seems that we do not deserve MCA literature.
Of course I don't think so, but the Ma Chinese are indeed a very strange group of Chinese. Many Chinese immigrants abroad can naturally integrate into it, and they do not feel that there is any problem in giving up their own language, nor do they care whether their children understand Chinese or write in Chinese. But why has the Chinese in Malaysia seen this as a problem for generations, and to preserve the use of their mother tongue, to receive education in their mother tongue, and to write in their native language anyway?
All I know is that we have been taught from an early age to defend all the rights and interests of the Chinese, including the mother tongue. We are more resistant to what we have lost than any Other Chinese anywhere else, and we know better that this must be maintained with a posture of defense and resistance. We all know that it is because our ancestors fought hard that we can maintain Chinese education. Maybe it makes others feel stupid and paranoid; but we are honored by it.
To this day, I am a fourth-generation Mahuahua who is still writing novels in Chinese. But we also know that we are on the edge of Chinese world, our Chinese is not pure, and it is not easy for the works we write to enter the vision and be affirmed by others.
Zhai Yejun: There are a number of leading figures in MCA literature, such as Li Yongping, Zhang Guixing, Huang Kamshu, etc., so over the years Chinese mainland readers are relatively familiar with MCA literature. What do you think of the uniqueness of Lai Zi Shu's book "The Land of The Vulgar Land" in MCA literature?
Wang Anyi: The Book of Lai Zi may open up a new field to include Chinese Malaysians in the life of Malaysia as a whole. After so many years, Malaysian Chinese have also lived there for generations, and they have established a strong sense of identity with this country emotionally and in life. After establishing a sense of belonging, and then dealing with the tensions between religion, nationality, mother tongue and locality, "The Land of The Customs" serves as a good example.
"Flowing Place", by [Malaysia] Li Zishu, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, April 2021.
Li Zishu: The problem with MCA literature is that there are too few types. Every time you mention it, you think of a brutal, wild, bloody novel that rains all day and whose characters are not very visible.
But the novels I can really write, or the novels I really should write, are actually based on the differences from the previous life experiences of MCA writers. I have different ideas and feelings about the country and this land of Malaysia, I don't have that strong criticism, but I have a sense of reconciliation. After living here for fifty years, I got along well with the Malays and Indians, and I spent all day talking with two Malays about how to feed the wildcats in the back alleys. I decided to be true to myself and sincerely write a long novel of MCA literature in my eyes and in my heart.
Wang Anyi: I remember Zhu Tianxin once said that I like very much - she said that everything in the world can be divided into two, politics is only royalists and revolutionaries, novels only have the Three Kingdoms faction and the Red Chamber faction, and I personally am inclined to the Red Chamber faction.
I pay more attention to the aesthetics of daily life. For example, the place where Zishu lives is called Ipoh, so I will talk about my impression of Ipoh. One evening, in a Chinese temple in Ipoh, a man, probably in his forties, wearing loose shorts and a shirt that didn't seem to be even buttoned, wore a pair of slippers, walked into the temple, and quickly knelt down and prostrated. I was very touched and felt that this place was full of stories, but I couldn't enter it, it was separated from me.
And these stories are everywhere in "The Land of The Flow", it is not told to me after summing up, full of theory and speculation, and drawing conclusions, I want to listen to you, it is better to look at life directly. Personally, I think that good fiction still has to have a normal exterior. As for how metaphorical this norm is, and what kind of value it releases, that's what we have to do.
Chen Sihe: The winning work of the last Dream of the Red Chamber Award was Malaysian writer Zhang Guixing's "Wild Boar Crossing the River". This novel is the complete opposite of "The Land of The Flowing Land", the imagery is extremely cruel, and it is very difficult to read, giving people a taste of magnificent rivers and mountains, bloody storms.
But I prefer works like "Flowing Land". The rhythm of this work is relatively relaxed. Malaysia is a country of mixed ethnic groups, and in the past, MCA literature generally focused on the Chinese world and had less touch on the cultures of other ethnic groups, such as Malays and Indians. However, in "The Land of The Flow", it is very valuable to appear in indian culture the image of the god Ganisa, and the Indian Razu is directly related to the image of the elephant god, and he has a great influence on the growth of Yinxia in his childhood. In the novel, it is also written that Ismail, who taught Yinxia to type, was a Malay. In the process of Yinxia's growth, it was not only Chinese culture that had an impact on her spirit, but also Indian culture and Malay culture. This is well worth exploring in depth, and I particularly appreciate this.
The vulgarity of the novel is definitely not the sin of realism
Chen Sihe: Why should I ask this question? Because I have just spoken about the realism of this novel. In fact, literary realism has two sides: on the one hand, realism is easy to read, and the stories and lives it tells are relatively real; but on the other hand, realism tends to move towards vulgar sociology, talking about eating and drinking Lasa, talking about daily life, talking about small things, talking about so-called suffering, and this suffering is not spiritual.
I think that for novels, spirituality comes first, and without spirit there is no good novel. Although "Flowing Land" is realistic, there are non-realistic and spiritual factors behind it that enhance it and make it show an open realm.
Wang Anyi: I don't think we can blame vulgarity on realism. The vulgarity of the novel is definitely not a crime of realism, but has something to do with the spirit. I emphasize the aesthetics of everyday life, not that everything is meaningful, and I don't incorporate everything into my writing.
Ideas are limited, and it seems to me that fiction conveys something that cannot be named after ideas and concepts, otherwise why should we write novels? This kind of thing can only be what life offers us. So there's a trend now that people read nonfiction a lot, because there's something in nonfiction that we don't expect, especially things that our thoughts and concepts can't generalize.
Of course, when I was younger, realism caused me a lot of trouble. One trouble is that I will become very trivial, because I don't know how to choose, others call me "trivial wind"; the other trouble is that I feel backward, others are avant-garde, not narrative writing, under this pressure I will also write something non-narrative. But this did not satisfy me, and in the end I honestly went back to writing stories and respected my original intentions.
Li Zishu: Just like Teacher Wang Anyi said just now, the way the book "Liu Mudi" is written is completely different from the modernist way that MCA has always written. I did think that this way of writing may not be so popular, which is very different from everyone's aesthetic pursuit. But for me, only writing in this way is the only way to write this novel in my heart, should be, and must be written. I hope it is a novel that every Malaysian Chinese can read and is willing to read. It should not be a novel that belongs only to literary and artistic youth.
From the beginning, I decided that the novel had to be "good-looking." Because Chinese novel creators outside the mainland always feel that they lack experience, lack of stories, or that the environment in which they live is too ordinary and too distant, and there is no strange thing that happens every day, there is always nothing to write. I also thought I couldn't write amazing, twisty stories and plots in a novel, and I knew I was going to write the story of a group of ordinary people. To write such ordinary and small things well, of course, you can't just use realistic methods to write about how a group of people live, how to eat, how to meet, and how to get along with friends. This is not only vulgar, but also not "good-looking" in my mind. "Good looking" must add some spiritual dimension, and there must be some spiritual things under the surface of how a group of people live to impress the reader, so that the novel is not just a running account.
Li Zishu in the live broadcast room of the event.
In the novel, the obscured civil society
Zhai Yejun: In the afterword, Zishu writes about the fear and torture when writing this novel, close to a mortal enemy, while in Wang Anyi's view, long writing is a common labor, requiring a needle and a needle to weave, a brick, a brick to build. What do you think of the genre of novels?
Wang Anyi: It may also have something to do with an individual's personality. Short stories require a short start, a "bang" to jump high. I may be limited by the nature of realism, must resort to a long start, and are unlikely to have jumping, flying things. In my opinion, for the narrative, it is still more appropriate to have a medium length. The original intention of the novel is narrative, it is to tell a story, and it is a human story. Of course, a good human story can go to heaven, but the starting point must start from the ground.
At present, there are many novels, but I think that the present is not a long time, because people have no patience, people who write have no patience, and people who read have no patience. Therefore, when I saw Li Zishu's long novel, I was very surprised in my heart, as if there was a person like me doing such a long-term work, and this matter seemed to be promising.
Li Zishu: I agree with Teacher Wang that writing long or short stories is actually related to people's personality. I feel that my personality is more suitable for writing short stories, because I am a more impatient person. But after writing this novel, the sense of accomplishment is unparalleled. The sense of accomplishment does not come from how well the novel is written, but because I can actually stick to the rhythm and tone that I think this novel should have, and it should be continuous, not faster, not slower.
I've read a lot of novels myself. As a peer, I can feel the impatience of the author almost every time in the work, how it ends like this, why the novel ends like this; as a reader, I myself do not have much patience and courage to open too thick novels, and I am afraid of spending time on a long story that is not worth it afterwards.
Chen Sihe: In my opinion, there are two kinds of novels. One is epic, its narrative is closely related to the major nodes in the history of the country to interpret the fate of the protagonist, this type of novel is easier to write, but also more valued. The novel belongs to another long narrative: the depiction of civil society. Civil society, unlike national history, has its own way of knowing the world. But civil society, in the face of national society and orthodox history, is often obscured. It is difficult for this obscured world to really discern its reality with the so-called epic consciousness, so that for us, folk may be dark.
Yinxia was born blind, and the author has been reminding us that the world she describes is actually a dark world in the eyes of the blind, and Yinxia is telling the truth of her life as a narrator of the dark world, telling the civil society in which she lives. From a metaphorical point of view, civil society itself is a dark society, including the so-called ghost world, the so-called cat world, the dream world, etc. This multitude of dark worlds is not seen by the naked eye of normal people, but can only be reflected through imagery, imagination or feeling.
In such a dark world, the humiliation and damage of women is at the heart of the entire novel. Almost all the women in the novel are experiencing betrayal, rape, abandonment, domestic violence, deception, etc., and probably no woman is in what we usually understand as a "happy family", but is constantly fighting against fate. Only by including these women in the dark world can we see the importance of Yinxia, because she directly feels this dark world with her heart.
Until the end of the novel, Yinxia still stands firm in her own dark world. At the end, it is written that Yinxia meets Teacher Gu, a character from the outside world, with light and ideals. Teacher Gu's name is Gu Youguang, which means to see the light. But the most interesting thing is that when Gu Youguang and Yinxia were trapped in the dark elevator and exchanged heartfelt feelings, Yinxia said: "Now we are all in the dark world, welcome you to my world." What does this sentence mean? In this civil society, in the end, it is not Teacher Gu who gives her light, saves her, and frees her from the dark folk world, but she draws Teacher Gu to the dark world. This fully demonstrates a kind of folk power.
The works that have always been written about the bottom and about the commoners often contain a kind of compassion for the people, and the civilians are written as having no way out and in need of salvation. But good novels, even if they write about the sufferings of living at the bottom, about people who have neither knowledge nor power, are still full of courage and strength in their stories. The same is true of this novel, whose warmth comes from the fact that it shows the power of civil society.
"Coming-of-age fiction" with metaphors
Zhai Yejun: Chen Sihe and the teacher mentioned Yinxia as a blind person and the dark world she lived in. In the history of world literature, there are many stories of blind people, such as Junichiro Tanizaki's "Chunqin Copy", Shi Tiesheng's "Fate Ruoqin Strings", and Bi Feiyu's "Tuina". How does the writing of the blind in The Vulgar Land differ from the blind in other works? Why would Li Zishu want a blind man to be the protagonist of the story?
Wang Anyi: In art and literature, any disease has a metaphor, if there is no metaphor, or blind, or deaf, at most can only present a state of fighting the disease. So I think that everything that writes about illness has its meaning. For example, In Hou Xiaoxian's film "City of Sorrows", the protagonist is a person who cannot speak, which has a strong metaphor.
Metaphors are different in everyone. In the novel "Flowing Place", Li Zishu releases the "blind" very fully, using such a small metaphor to release a long story.
Chen Sihe: This is not comparable, but as far as the book is concerned, the blind man of "Liu Mu Di" is particularly well written. This blind man is radiant, not to speak of the blind, but of another kind of brightness. Although she is a blind person in modern life, she actually represents a folk world that we can't see, and is actually more transparent than the world of our discerning people. From a metaphorical point of view, this blind man is particularly interesting.
Li Zishu: Malaysian society has all kinds of races, all kinds of conflicts, I want to arrange a blind person as the protagonist, because I can't see, the skin color has no effect on her, basically can be immune to all kinds of stereotypes. In her dark world, it is actually a relatively just world. But the blind man of this novel does not speak purely for the blind, purely for the blind, because the novel is not dealing with the problem of the blind.
Stills from the Malaysian film Light.
Zhai Yejun: Li Zishu said very harshly, "I myself am distrustful of human society, people who are skeptical of feelings, when I was a journalist, I came into contact with the dark side of the bottom of society, and saw a lot of tragedies, helpless realities and the darkness of human nature." A lot of these have become the material for the novel, I can't write the sunshine thing, my whole outlook on life has been fixed, I am not dark for the sake of darkness, violence for the sake of violence, because this is the concept of life. But at the end of "Liu Xiandi", Yin Xia meets Teacher Gu, is this a symbol of reconciliation with the world? Teacher Wang Dewei also wrote in the book review: Yinxia does not meet wild boars, but meets light. Is this a romantic moment in a contemporary MCA novel, but it is also a moment of "detached from reality"?
Wang Anyi: I personally feel that the appearance of Teacher Gu is necessary and inevitable. I very much agree with Teacher Chen naming Yinxia's world "Dark World". But what is the dark world's intention? My explanation may not be the same. In my opinion, the dark world is precisely a kind of resistance to the Taoist world. Yinxia had two opportunities to enter the outside world, once to learn chess and once to learn Braille, but both times were hindered. This kind of obstruction is actually resistance, and this invisible world is actually a world of great light. In the process of their three little friends growing up slowly, they continue to gain enlightenment in various ways, and Buddhism and Hinduism are enlightening them from different directions. Because it can also be seen as a coming-of-age novel. If we admit the premise of this great light, we will not turn the appearance of Teacher Gu into a romantic and saving imagination.
The plot of Yinxia's rape is also metaphorical in my opinion--people must suffer before they can become enlightened. If you look at Yinxia from a metaphorical point of view, I think she is more like a Guanyin, "bodhisattva with low eyebrows", guanyin does not look at life with her eyes. I often think of Tolstoy's War and Peace, so why should Natasha have an attempt to elope and make a mistake? In fact, a "person" becomes a "good person", and his goodness is not accumulated, but has to be punished.
Teacher Gu's arrival seemed natural to me. It is not just a simple human experience of "feeling warm", but it suddenly releases the value of Yinxia in the human world, and her value is not in the human world, but in the heavens.
Chen Sihe: I agree with Wang Anyi's analysis that Teacher Gu did not appear as a savior, but entered the world of the blind girl. In the face of the dark world of the blind, there are two great pressures, one is the pressure given to her by the political authority, and the other is the pressure given to her by the intellectual authority. The line of Razu unfolded from the perspective of political authority, and the boy later died on the road of politics; and Teacher Gu was a compromise on the line of intellectual authority, he was concerned about the existence of such a civil force, and felt that the darkness contained great energy. That's how I take care of the teacher.
Li Zishu: As an author, I don't think there is anything romantic about this part. A girl as outstanding as Yinxia, only because she was blind, had to meet a teacher Gu who was much older than her until so late in life, which was actually not romantic, but the last comforting appearance under her choice.
However, when I wrote about the earlier part of the novel, Yinxia and Razu and Xiaohui went to the elementary school to play and fell off the swing, I already planned to arrange for her to meet this teacher again. Why? Maybe I am really old, and I have great sympathy for Yinxia in my heart, and I do not intend to write Yinxia's life as a tragedy with no way out. But I didn't think that Teacher Gu was needed to save her, and I didn't agree that this was a kind of salvation, because Teacher Gu himself was also a person who had experienced vicissitudes and scars.
But there is indeed a sense of reconciliation. This reconciliation is not only Yinxia's reconciliation with her past, her experience, the trauma she has been buried in her heart, but also for me. When I wrote this novel, I was actually very kind, not only to Yinxia, but also to the other characters in the novel. But is this kindness myself, or is it from what I see and come into contact with in Sidhu, in Ipoh? I used to talk a lot to the driver in the taxi and listen to the radio lady's radio. As long as I hear that voice and listen to those people communicate, I feel that this is a warm society. Maybe that's why when I write this novel and these people, the brushstrokes naturally become warm.
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Edit | Qingqingzi Luodong
Video Production | Fang laughed
Proofreading | Fu Chunyi