The new scene | Shaobu: Time is not the same as the world

Time is not the same as the world

——The flow of years and memories of Ma Jinlian's novels

□ ShaoBu

Ma Jinlian is good at writing stories of the past. Most of her works have a sense of distance from life in the moment. In the barren Xihaigu, in the folds of the mountains, a small village called Fanziwan became her glittering literary base. It is just a daily story, but it has a touching warmth in it. She writes about the farming and labor in her memories, and writes about the forbearance and tenacity that people show in their hard lives. Land and grain still retain their original meaning here, which makes her novels unique in an era of symbolic consumption.

"Flowing Years" is the name of one of Ma Jinlian's novels, and it can also be seen as a kind of generalization of her writing—in the affectionate reproduction of the past, it conveys the nostalgia for the cultural origin of the era of urbanization. The novel is set in the 1980s, not long after the arrival of the package, and is about a stubborn grandfather and a calf cow. The red cow was in good shape and had extraordinary charm, which once made Grandpa feel comfortable with his own vision of choosing livestock. However, it does not mill the field, and more importantly, it does not lay calves, and it is very temperamental. So I had to drill my nose: wire through the weak tissues of the ox's nose bone. This is a torture for cattle. In the process of guarding the cattle, "I" and the red cow "quiet, angry, lonely, distant..." eyes met, "I" "the first time I found that the animals would have such a moving gaze", I felt sad in my heart, and my heart ached. The child's delicate and delicate emotions were properly expressed by Ma Jinlian. The red cow was fed to us for nine years, until the grain was harvestless, and Grandpa had to sell it bitterly. Years later, in the era of using machine mills, looking at the sudden smoke of the trampoline, Grandpa felt remorse and nostalgia for the red cow.

With the passage of time, the memory fades and blurs, but the things that once resided in our lives have not been forgotten, such as "illusory things floating in the depths", inadvertently affecting people's nerves. Ma Jinlian captures warmth and love in the past and grows a new meaning of literature. This sets her writing apart from the literature of suffering or the literature of the underclass. Her novels do not show the spectacle of tragic wounds, do not teach people to hate or seduce people's impulses to give alms, but draw people's compassion, teach modern people to become soft in their hard hearts, and regain the ability to empathize.

This literary temperament permeates her "Period Series". It's a set of novels titled year-by-year: Dry Food in 1985, Bicycle in 1986, Syrup and Sauerkraut in 1987, Affair in 1988, Relatives in 1990, and Spring In 1992. Critics have always been cautious about the word "most", but I still want to say that the era series may be the novel that best fits Ma Jinlian's temperament and endowment. Especially in comparison with several of her recent novels in The Girl Who Visited in the Afternoon. The latter also has a subtle description of the secret affairs of urban men and women, but it gives people the feeling of holding the concept of catching up with the current life and then deliberately expressing it. The posture of catching up itself already implies a certain sense of sluggishness, but it is not as good as reading nostalgic novels.

The time landmarks of the chronology series are also close to "Flowing Years", which are all vernacular events that took place at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. For Ma Jinlian, born in 1982, the narrator and the writer are actually isomorphic in terms of age and experience, both from the perspective of children approaching adolescence. Compared with the old stories heard from the elders and the current life that has been concerned about in recent years, Ma Jinlian's narrative here has a high degree of mixing and substitution.

At this age, although the mind is still unable to control childishness, nature and play can no longer fully occupy the mind of children. As outsiders and observers of the adult world, they embody a subtle intuition and a sensitivity to the coldness of human feelings. Walking like the experience in the novel, children begin to stumble into the unknown world.

Ma Jinlian is especially good at writing about the cramps of children who do not understand the world in unfamiliar environments. In Spring Phobia of 1992, idle children are confronted with a long spring afternoon. Suddenly entering a strange and wealthy family left Ma Dong at a loss. Although the mysteries of the adult world could not be fully understood, he was obviously aware that he, rather than his uncle, would accompany his new mother (aunt) back to his mother's house, and this compromise plan pushed him into an embarrassing situation. His heart was stirred by the feeling of being under the fence, and he felt the first sorrow of his life. In "Relatives in 1990", six and a half children followed their grandfather and formed a "folk mission" to the banquet. The children did not understand the contest about "etiquette" behind the trip, but only novelized for the relatives of the wave, excited about eating oil. But in the time of waiting, these distinguished guests are slow to eat away their enthusiasm. The youngest city government always puts out the problems and interrogations in everyone's hearts. The older one pretends to be calm and restrain his temperament. The maturity of that bluff is really brilliantly written.

Different channels for children and adults in the same time and space. As Li Jianwu commented on Xiao Qian's "Under the Fence": "Adults are not worse, unfortunately their hearts are full of ups and downs in the world; he thinks that there is no way to go, but children think that being the head is the way, so they are extremely sad." Children are not better, they are just children, life is a hazy atmosphere, with innocence to experience the difficult world, so it is particularly separated. In the past few years, countless similar moments have continuously provided Ma Jinlian with excellent writing materials. "The Affair of 1988" is about a storm in the adult world that children experience. Hu De's sister spread rumors of affair, and the second uncle, who was acting on behalf of his father, in order to maintain the façade, rushed to catch the adulteress with a group of relatives. Hu De led the way, thinking that he was going to Lang relatives, and before leaving, he thought of changing into the new clothes sewn by his sister, a Zhongshan suit with four pockets. I also want to find my brother-in-law to find a bead to embed in the bottom of the cow. He followed the adults, walking hurriedly, a pair of eyes absorbing the disturbances around him, the adult forms and the details they ignored because they were too excited, all of which were taken into his eyes. The sister mistakenly wore a man's socks, the sister's faint smile revealed a pretentious reticence and indifference, and behind the curtain of the pot table was a secret space that could be hidden... He knew more than anyone else. But there are no words. The trip to catch the adulteress ended in failure, and Hu de did not know if his silence had done anything wrong. This little trouble was washed away by the accidental marbles, so "with happiness in my heart, I forgot everything else, including the rush and speculation along the way." The novel comes to an abrupt end in the carefree spin of the cow, like the last shot of the movie "Inception". The cattle will eventually stop, and Hu de will eventually become an adult. But at least in this moment, the innocence and kindness of children are frozen.

Compared with the time dimension marked by the flow of years, space may be the more fundamental reason for the sense of distance in Ma Jinlian's novel. The modern marginal position and local experience make Ma Jinlian far from the "post-80s writing" in the general sense, and her posture of keeping it feels closer to the post-50s generation. This question can only be answered in the dry sea of Xihaigu, which is fish-free.

Xihaigu is a latecomer to modern life. Ma Jinlian said to himself: "The backwardness and simplicity of Xihaigu have led to slow changes in the living environment here, and when I remember, some of the daily necessities and utensils used by us Fanziwan people were still inherited from an early time." Including the place where they lived, most of them were black and dark cave dwellings, which were coiled with earthen kang, with earthen walls on the kang and bamboo mats. Jars of clear oil, thick porcelain water jugs for changing water, mother's alabaster and silver powder... I love these things, I often stroke them, and I feel the shimmering luster on a crock pot soaked with the sweat and breath of time. With the help of these old artifacts, I let myself go back to the past years over and over again. ”

Compared with the outside world, "time" is faltering in the West Sea. In the cracks of time, the life of Xihaigu retains the experience that is passing away in local China. In the novel "Memories of Things", Shi Shuqing, who is also a writer of Xihaigu, tells the stories behind his childhood life, such as yellow flower quilts, old wooden beds, large cabinets, rain felts, rafters, forty rooms of earth bees, shirts, letters, silver medals, antiques, etc. An object, a thing of the past, a life that was once upon a time is reactivated again, as in the present. Although it has the name of a novel, it has some flavor of prose. The aesthetics of Ma Jinlian's artifacts are quite similar to this. Niu Xuezhi noticed that Ma Jinlian's novel was influenced by Shi Shuqing, "pay attention to the dismantling and change of intuition by excluding knowledge and concepts, and simply use intuition and subconscious summoning, even if it is at the expense of the integrity of the plot and the fullness of the story, and write the novel very trivially." "In the novel, Ma Jinlian constantly provides me with bicycles, syrup, sauerkraut, cattle, peacock vegetables... These everyday objects. Objects are the valves of memory. Through these old artifacts, Ma Jinlian is able to activate the irreproducible experience, reconstruct the past life in literature, and reproduce the local Chinese way of life that has passed away.

The same can be seen as the region, religious and cultural symbols that permeate daily life. Eating oil aroma - a traditional Hui fried pasta, which means happy events and feasts, is something that children in the novel yearn for. A peaceful life often stirs up waves for such a small thing. Lidiger – Take a handful of warm water from the front forehead along the middle all the way back, touch the back of the neck and then separate your hands, from the left and right back to the front. Then paddle along the side of the hair into the ear bowl, gently peel the ear bowl, and then slide down the ear root from the back of the ear, and recite the halal words in your mouth at the same time. Such a set of religious worship actions is completely transformed into a small program of daily life in "A Touch of Sunset". Grandma Shebbar repeated this action every day for decades, until this day her stiff hands suddenly lost touch the back of her head. She suffered from aging, a slow course of life that was suddenly discovered. Another example is the identity of Jetimu (orphans), whether it is the nuhaizi who rubs rice ("dry food in 1985") or the lame Shulbu who borrows a bicycle ("Bicycle in 1986"), who carefully maintains the last line of decency and dignity, although the burden of life is increased at the brink of subsistence, and we will eventually treat them with the kindness within our reach. In particular, the suffering of the weak can see the warmth and coldness of the human heart and human feelings.

As the core component of local experience, agricultural affairs have naturally become the object of Ma Jinlian's key expression. Vernacular literature is the mainstream of Century-old Chinese literature, and it is not uncommon to introduce agricultural affairs into novels. But behind the writing of agricultural affairs, the writer's concept often represents the symptoms of the times. In the case of rural novels in contemporary literature, farming has never been as simple as it is in its original sense. The exaggeration of the beauty of labor confirms the people's status as the main body of history. Thus, the revolutionary will to change heaven and earth rewrites or reorganizes the time of the countryside. "The Golden Light Avenue" (part I) has no shortage of spring ploughing depictions, but the ambitious labor of Feng Shaohuai and Zhang Jinfa is in stark contrast to the plight of poor and lower-middle peasants who are unable to sow seeds, which proves the necessity of establishing mutual aid groups after the completion of the land reform. Sowing, farming, manure, irrigation, hitting... Agricultural activities are difficult for farmers who have turned over, and only by "organizing" and consciously incorporating them into new modes of production can it be possible to avoid repeating the mistakes of exploitation. With socialist transformation as the end, "time" is given linear, teleological form and meaning. The landscape of the countryside is also attached to a political metaphor: "A red sun rises from the eastern horizon, spraying out thousands of rays of light, coating the vast and flat meadows and the brick huts of the ancient villages with a golden yellow." ”

Ma Jinlian's agricultural writing is much more separated from this literary tradition, but is closer to the tradition of agricultural poetry in folk songs. "Fire in July, clothing in September." One day is fierce, the other day is fierce. "July" takes the time as the scripture and the event as the latitude, and spreads out month by month, reflecting the production and living conditions of the Zhou people and nature in the time passages divided by the solar terms. Ma Jinlian's "Eternal Farming" can be regarded as a copy of "July". "Our farm work is arranged seasonally." The novel thus begins a detailed depiction of farming: pulling manure, ploughing wheat, planting flax and peas, raising manure, beating huki, harvesting crops, milling wheat... Spring and summer are long, autumn harvests are hidden in winter, and the solar terms and seasons are used as the yardstick of time passages, which constitute the inner rhythm of local life. Year after year, through the ages. In the face of this constant law, personnel quietly changed. At first, "I" had an indecent title for my sister- bad eyes, because she was well-behaved in front of others, but secretly always bullied "me", which seemed to be very clever. The growth of the character melts into the agricultural affairs and labor, and it becomes a clue. The rotten eyes unconsciously became gentle and stoic, smiling quietly at the corners of their mouths, making a pair of shoes in their hands -- a matchmaker had come to the door. Here, the local life experience of a generation is skillfully integrated with the rhythm of the constant laws of nature. Sociology discovered vernacular China, political science transformed vernacular China, and literature returned vernacular China to nature.

Looking at Ma Jinlian's creation, some of the basic issues of our time, such as the impact of the modernization process on human ethics, gender issues in social and religious structures, and new experiences of urban life, constitute the basic aspects of her novels. This article captures only one of these sections to discuss Ma Jinlian's return to native China. These stories of the past, told through the eyes of children, give her novels a nostalgic tone. As it is said in "Flowing Years": "People who deal with the land always have a breath of constantly breaking with the mud on their heads and faces, and this breath is impossible for people to say, but they can feel it and feel it accurately." We all have this breath in our bodies, deeply lurking all over our bodies, in our demeanor, in our sweaty blood. This earthy smell is simply infiltrated in the words of Ma Jinlian's novel, forming her unique literary temperament. How many stories are left in native China? This problem has attracted increasing attention and anxiety. But at least in Ma Jinlian's novels, we can see that its literary potential energy is far from exhausted.

exegesis:

Ma Jinlian, "The Years I Missed", Literature and Art Daily, September 25, 2014.

Niu Xuezhi: "The "Post-80s" and Ma Jinlian", Literature and Art Daily, November 15, 2010.

—END—

Yangtze River Literature and Art, No. 3, 2022

Responsible Editor | Wu Jiayan Xiong Mengrou

▲Shaobu |

Shao Bu, Doctor of Literature, is an assistant researcher at the School of Literature of Shandong University. Mainly engaged in the study of contemporary Chinese literary history and literary criticism, in recent years, he has focused on the creation and research of Xiao Yemu, Haoran and Li Er. He has published more than ten papers in important academic journals such as "Chinese Modern Literature Research Series", "Contemporary Writers Review", "Literary and Art Controversy", "Southern Literature Circle", "Novel Review" and so on, and many articles have been reprinted in full by Chinese Min University.