Xu Zechen's collection of short stories | lost homeland, sunken humanity, and lost classics

This article is reprinted from The Literature and Art Daily on March 18, 2022

In February 2022, the fifth issue of the "Tenth Conference Room" column recommended Xu Zechen's short story collection "Qingcheng", "If the Snow Closes the Door" and "Running Through Zhongguancun". This group of works contains the writer's short and medium-length works, as well as new works in recent years. Xu Zechen's protagonists are mostly named after place names, and the heroines of the same name in Qingcheng, Juyan, and Xixia, as well as Dunhuang, Baoding, Chang'an, and Pingyao in other works, all leave a deep impression on readers. The preference for geographical names reveals the writer's dedication to thick, deep, and different cultural spaces, and perhaps promises the endless life of human culture in a pluralistic world. This issue of "Literature Guanlan" will make an excerpt of the special commentary on the topic for the benefit of readers.

- Editor

Xu Zechen thought in a short story

——On the difficulty of "series of novels" and the three questions of "Qingcheng"

Text | Zhao Yi

Literary geography with "series" naming

The novel collection "Qingcheng" is composed of two novellas and a short story "Qingcheng" of "Western Xia" and "Juyan", spanning 15 years before and after the year of writing, which can be described as a small and large work for the perspective writer to create a transmutation. The literary geography that Xu Zechen seeks is precisely to set up growth and legendary occurrence of the character's local perception, focusing on the psychological core and spirituality of the characters, generating a sufficient path from the special place to the universality of the world, and at the same time dealing with "events" through technical methods and narrative traditions such as blank space, suspension, abstraction, and lyricism, reflecting the novel's creative ideas and its poetic implications.

Nowadays, novel series such as "Flower Street", "Beijing Drift", "Campus" and "Canal" have become xu Zechen's literary keywords. First, geographical space forms a form of expression similar to epic character in the novel, constantly re-enchanting the real landmark, restarting a realistic lyrical aesthetic, incorporating the knowledge, experience, emotion and the changes of the times in a place, condensing the writer's rational intuition and tone. Second, around the local experience of the novel characters, the writer relates his own life experience and life memory in the advancement of the story, so as to reach others in a fictitious way, and then intervene in the grand background of deep culture, history, society, etc., and introduce relevant image symbols into the text to form a certain intertextual face. On the one hand, it is necessary to mention the "Mystery" series named after the narrative installation and the "Hometown" series naturally formed in the dynamic flow, and the "Women" series in the recent novel collection "Qingcheng", on the other hand, it also refers to the geographical context of novels such as "Night Train", "Jerusalem" and "Going North".

From writing "Beijing Drift" to writing Beijing, Xu Zechen's pen also carries more aspects of thinking, reviewing and reproducing historical scenes and major events, and also presenting spiritual symptoms in the era of globalization. At the same time, Beijing and "Flower Street" are juxtaposed, and the theme of "wandering" turns to the writer's precipitation and salvage of memory, gradually getting rid of the rich suffering, and choosing to present the pursuit of the theme of growth with an erratic landscape. Just like the "Xixia" that took place near the Chengze Garden of the West Gate of Peking University, the "Juyan" in the area of Zhongguancun Avenue and Sitongqiao, and the "Qingcheng" that returned from Beijing to Chengdu, the characters of the novel all have a clear reference to "Nanjing" in their own life choices; and the "Flower Street" landscape frequently interspersed in "Night Train" outlines the water and rural world and secret entanglements, and the repeated occurrence of stone docks, canals, flower streets and East-West Avenues has gradually established Xu Zechen's "Canal" series that has been used a lot in recent years. Different from the unified cultural landscape, the three works in the novel collection "Qingcheng", Xu Zechen has tailored the background for it, bookstores and book publishing, language extracurricular training and real estate, calligraphy painting and art market, superimposed narrative "mystery" installations, the changing cultural blocks in the social context are precisely stitched into the literary geographical space, and all this drift and aggregation also outline the specific treatment methods of "history" from "returning home" to "leaving" in works such as "Jerusalem" and "Going North". In the vast literary geographical space open to the world with a very exotic texture, Xu Zechen explores important issues such as a generation's construction of their own spiritual beliefs and the search for historical subjectivity, and the flower street in "Jerusalem" is so practical and impressive, engraving the existence of hometown and the subtle spiritual prayer. "Jerusalem", as a geographical coordinate based on the mysterious experience and private complex of Chu Pingyang, actually provides the summoning power and mysterious spiritual power that runs through the theme of growth, and similar to Chu Pingyang, the names of characters whose original meaning is place names - Xixia, Juyan, Qingcheng, together with Xie Pingyao in "Going North", correspond to each other in the creation time and narrative mode, showing the accumulation of short and medium stories on long-form writing, the effectiveness of training and the tendency to escape.

Literary motifs and "series" narratives

"Western Xia", "Juyan" and "Qingcheng" are all based on many literary motifs, and tend to be consistent in the artistic structure in the narrative, which is another joint of the reason why the short story has become a "series". Whether it is looking for themes, growth narratives, gender issues, and disease aesthetics, Xu Zechen invokes the effect of defamiliarization, so that the narratives related to suffering and the "bottom" return to the category of literary and artistic aesthetics, and iron out the realistic theme creation and modernist techniques with "endless words and infinite meaning", pointing to the complex interweaving of reality and history such as human civilization and social development and the distant places they show.

"Searching" is always juxtaposed with "lost", the lost homeland, the sinking humanity, the lost classics, in the "Western Xia", "Juyan", "Qingcheng" have their own reflections, the human spirit of pursuit through literature to translate a variety of aesthetic forms. "Western Xia" has an obvious expression pattern of the tramp novel, the unknown source of the Western Xia corresponding to the surface structure of the reality of survival, the first-person narrative unfolded from the perspective of Wang Yiding, the "fear" and "love" of "I" for the Western Xia are interspersed through multiple rounds of expulsion and searching, which not only retains the traditional adventure main line of the tramp novel, but also forms a turn-based structural paradigm, through the gradual formation of a small family to return the real big daily life, meaning the spiritual destination of Xixia and "I". In "Juyan", women who hold a set life orientation and clear life goals are forced to rebuild their personal ideals and spiritual homes, rise and fall in the midst of encounters, and also realize the truth of life and people, and are given a metaphysical or philosophical dimension to find people, not only to find the old people to dispel the vanishing fog, but also to regain themselves, discover the growth path of their true self, and finally grasp the life-led women face the various possibilities and expectations of life. The motif of "pursuit" in literature is closely related to individual value choices, spiritual pursuits, cultural concepts, emotional contexts, etc. In the pursuit of giving up pursuit, in the abandonment of persistent attachment, the soul has a landing and home, and the growth motif looks at each other. The belief, perseverance and ability to act in the pursuit and exploration become feats, beyond the purpose of the pursuit itself, and become the immortal value of literary expression.

The short story "Qingcheng" implies the philosophy of life and its poetic summary, and cultural symbols such as eagles, books, and paintings convey the deep structure of the pursuit of the motif. Different from the "dumb" of the Western Xia, who did not know the reason for the day after tomorrow, "I" witnessed Qingcheng's daily cooking of lao tie, and the increasingly serious "cough" of lao tie also supported the logical starting point of the whole novel. The "cough" under the metaphor of illness has the characteristics of romantic associations, which are elegant, sensitive, sad, weak, and slender counterparts, which also mark elegance and talent, and at the same time symbolize the attitude of the story characters towards "self". Therefore, the core of the suspension in "Qingcheng" does not push how the story develops and whether the characters are solved, but in the mythologized disease narrative of literature, the psychological emotions of "I" and Qingcheng always change around the changes in the old iron disease, even if the feelings are pushed to the surface and are out of control, the characters' spiritual choices are also in accordance with the realm of calligraphy and painting and leave blank vacancies at the right time, although there are hidden great changes or tragic experiences hidden in the Western Xia, as well as the new feelings and escape possibilities shelved by Juyan and Qingcheng. What Xu Zechen wants to achieve is a more plain and timeless, and therefore more simple and eternal comfort and compassion.

Character building and "series" imagery

There is no doubt that the novel collection "Qingcheng" has been the signpost of Xu Zechen's "Women" series, and the three female protagonists named after place names not only allude to Xu Zechen's understanding of women at different stages of life, but also make the beauty of women heartbreaking. In Zhang Li's "Survey of the Gender Concept of Sixty Contemporary Emerging Male Writers" on the writing of female images, Xu Zechen admitted that "the most important thing is not gender awareness, but the appropriate character heart and unique words and deeds", "when writing about the characters, plots and details with unique female characteristics... Based on a broad understanding of human nature and gender, and a basic respect for the equality of all beings".

The Western Xia, Juyan and Qingcheng portrayed by Xu Zechen exist in their respective stories an old order of repression that is either implicit or explicit, suggesting that the "other" that was once imposed on women either left their homes to find a new self and life, or broke free from some kind of limitation, comforted themselves with a deep understanding of the self, and achieved a certain transcendence and calm self-awareness. Xu Zechen focuses on shaping psychological characters, using psychological potential energy to express the stages of life as he says, and even implicitly conform to the subconscious female understanding, but he has no intention of seeking some kind of critical theory or discourse power. Only in this way, we read more about the maternal image and cultural lyricism in the Chinese literary tradition, the former is the archetypal expression, and the latter borrows the ideographic function of symbols. One of the memories of Xixia, Juyan and Qingcheng to readers is that they are all capable women who can take care of housework, providing a warm and appropriate daily life for men such as Wang Yiding, Tang Tu, and Lao Tie. Motherhood is like a utopia, providing rest and stable perception, on the one hand, prompting the reader that the three women are not rebellious images, on the other hand, once again pointing to the trend of female image writing and its judgment, the cultural and ideological meaning of the female image has always been related to the fatherhood and the value world of the male image. In addition, at the level of the writer's education, especially the symbolic metaphors that outline the cultural, historical, and social backgrounds, whether they are true or false, people always live in a world intertwined like a river, whether ideal or not, they can always find a spiritual conversion, which is Xu Zechen's intention to devote himself to the cultural attachment of the novel text and the character image.

Look at the dazzling rise of fireworks in the world

——Xu Zechen's short story creation

Text | Detective

In the camp of "post-70s" writers, Xu Zechen undoubtedly understands the essence of Chinese novels, and his short and medium stories often replace the story with the human fireworks of still water and deep currents, and activate and stir the thinking that focuses on narrative development, so that realist texts soar into a broader starry sky.

The words of Xu Zechen's short stories secretly surge with abundant human fireworks, and the cold and unexpectedly construct a strong sense of trust and life between strangers. Whether it is Ma Po and "I" grandmother in "Flower Street", as well as between her and Lao Mo and Lan Mazi, whether it is Baoding, Xia Xiaorong and Qibao in "Running Through Zhongguancun", Meridian and Beijing girl Wen Jing in "Heaven on Earth", or XiXia and Wang Yiding in "Xixia", JuYan and Tang Tuo in "Juyan", they know each other from strangers to interact with each other, which is a deep excavation of the permeability of solid reality under the normal state of social indifference and highly defensive psychology. These men and women, humble hearts do not lack their own spiritual pursuits, and even burst out under infinite pressure the original burning and pride of life. Xu Zechen gives great respect to the souls of the characters in the novel, no matter how heavy life is, they are still dreamers who do not give up easily: even if the dream is in the sky, they are at the lowest level of the world, they still venture forward. We cannot deny the strength and texture of Dunhuang's life, we cannot identify the pale and hollow meaning of Xia Xiaorong's waiting, and even sincerely praise the love persistence of Meridian, the full possession of ideal love, the courage of love to bear dangers, and even ignore the greed dominated by love, and will sincerely affirm the inner spirit of these lives, and all of Xu Zechen's texts are spiritual construction beyond the story. In the vast sea of people, their encounter is tantamount to the warmth and embrace warmth temporarily obtained in the lonely journey in the dark night, and it is these little people who build a rare spiritual equality and mutual harmony in the world with their own body temperature in the bitter and difficult city.

The implicit attachment of historical and cultural character and consciousness embodies the dialectic of "being" and "non-being" in Xu Zechen's text. Xu Zechen's short stories have a strong sense of geography and are also a kind of historical and cultural significance. History and culture are extractive existences in the novel text, and for Xu Zechen, it is the only topic that belongs to the connotation of the novel, which belongs to the unique naming of the novel characters. "Dunhuang" symbolizes the ultimate loss of inner glory; "Meridian" is the southern and northern positions corresponding to the midnight and midday, representing the blazing life of the text characters in the heavens and on earth; "Western Xia" is the vanishing dynastic civilization, specific to the novel text is the perfect crystallization of the ideal personality that exists from the heavy life of reality; "Juyan" is the edge plug of the pass that is difficult to penetrate by human nature, and in the novel it implies the heroine's successful process of gaining complete personality independence; "Qingcheng" Refining the process of the heroine of the novel from attachment to independence through the Taoist holy land... The attachment of these historical cultures and the strong human fireworks atmosphere of the novel are the shallow invisibility of turning into nothing, and the real reclusive existence is the choice of the life and life inertia of the novel characters, the way of persistence, the gradual change of concepts and the integration into modern life. The historical and cultural factors shape the spirit of the text characters, and at the same time, the spiritual gradient of the novel characters fits and cuts into the rhythm of the wheel of the times, completing the arrival of a new height of modern urban civilization, and then achieving the harmony of the great era.

Xu Zechen attaches great importance to the way of storytelling, which is the stirring and tempering of the text's intrinsic breakthrough thinking, and can also be seen as the training of his new era of realist texts. The short story "Flower Street" brings up a complete story with a large time and space span with multiple characters, and occasionally from the perspective of children's confusion, and finally hands over to the reader to complete the active splicing. From the perspective of the effect of text construction, it is said to be "intentional to qi", which comes from the real strength and resilience of life, the endless life of life and the intensity of the fireworks in the world, and it is also the highlight of the root nature of national culture through thousands of years. At this point in the text, Xu Zechen seems to subvert the logic and the spirit of all the words, instantly completed the natural formation of the novel art, from the outside to the inner quality of the tight seam.

The short story "If the Snow Closes the Door" sublimates the narrative strategy into a more exquisite inner-quality construction, the text takes Lin Huicong's desire for heavy snow from the south as the starting point of imagery, with its surreal and heavy light imagination, holding up the spiritual movement of the characters, and at the same time with the unbearable load-bearing seen in the eyes, intertwining and working together, and finally constructing the texture of the resonance of the rational sexiness of the "world outside the world" belonging to Xu Zechen's text: the cruelty of survival still cannot hinder the free flight of spiritual purity. It was a desire to pierce through the frozen noble soul. On the one hand, Xu Zechen is striving to create a pure and innocent spiritual realm, and at the same time, with the original daily beat and chaos of the protagonist and the surrounding characters, he sketches the real state of life in the anti-logical reality, and uses this to dissolve, deconstruct, squeeze, and even try to destroy the pure state of the spirit. The force wrapped by the limited spatial normality of daily life and the sudden change of life is undoubtedly strong and unbearable, but through the fierce confrontation and tearing of the two poles of life, the snow closed door is no longer an imagination, but an unexpected arrival, but also a spiritual ascension of the intersection of warmth and pessimism like mountain water, the opposition between the weight of life and the lightness of life, interaction and cruising, which is undoubtedly the excavation and prominence of the deep and hidden spirit of the characters, and it is a work that achieves lightness and soaring.

Xu Zechen's series of novellas "Western Xia", "Juyan" and "Qingcheng" are the fusion process of Chinese and Western philosophies, especially in terms of narrative motivation, Xu Zechen strengthens the spontaneous movement of the narrative flow with the expansion of thinking activity. "Xixia" is a flash of inspiration for creative thinking, and it is still the construction of the "world beyond the world". The "Heavenly Descending" mute woman, whose origin is unknown, is itself an anti-logical existence, but until the end of the text, Xu Zechen did not give any explanation or hint. As a narrative strategy, this kind of text exists beyond reproach, and it serves as a powerful and continuous guide to reading as suspense. The work is a controversial text, and a different perspective is a useful breakthrough in the exploration of realist texts, although there are still traces of experimental texts. Reading the text intensively, we can see that this is a typical example of the real and imaginary, a reproduction of the real existence of art, a man-made scene of imagination against the wind, and finally completes the reflection of the "world beyond the world" on the present world. Perhaps it is easier to understand as an allegorical text, "Xixia" is a mirror, from the perspective of Wang Yiding's life level, the identity of others and the road ahead are faint, he undoubtedly longs for girls like "Xixia" to give spiritual warmth, the tranquility of life, and the vanity that is indispensable to satisfy the world, but due to the inertia from the level of the city, the hero has to leave Xixia again and again. The shackles of solid real life, always walking on the road contrary to spiritual imagination and self-soothing, the emergence of Western Xia, giving Wang Yiding a sense of physical and mental happiness, is actually a dream of spiritual exile. Finally ushering in the hope of the mute woman opening her mouth, Wang Yiding, as a partner, cut off further contact due to endless fear. The various contradictions about the philosophical level of life are centrally implanted in the text by Xu Zechen's naturalness, and are truly interpreted by the hero and heroine, which is also the perspective above the text.

From "Running Through Zhongguancun" and "Heaven on Earth" to "Juyan", the selection of materials is the progression of the writing class of the city and others, and it is also the acceleration towards a high degree of urban civilization; on the road of literature, it is the arrival of the other shore, a kind of adaptation suitable for film and television texts. Ju Yan set out from looking for love to Beijing, waiting in difficult circumstances, awakening his potential for survival, forgetting his original intention for success, falling in love with Tang Tuo, the general situation was turbulent, the former helpers became unemployed, and the former helpers in turn gave Tang Tuo spiritual encouragement. When the hero and heroine are finally about to go to the full moon after ups and downs, the seeker appears, and the novel comes to an abrupt end. Departure, searching, waiting, rebirth, forgetting the original intention, regaining love, reversal, accident and abandonment, etc., almost all the possibilities of life are concentrated in the way of natural flow, which is both parody and reality. All the details are carried by the linguistic accuracy of words, and traditional realism is withdrawn into faded allegories and interpretations. Compared with "Western Xia", the modernity of juyan text is more prominent.

From "Xixia", "Juyan" to "Qingcheng", the text narrative becomes more and more bone-like, awakening and driving the energy of art itself, while the allegorical meaning it carries is becoming richer and richer, achieving a high degree of lightness and heterogeneity, and embodying the superiority of thinking storm creation. "Qingcheng" abandons the narrative strategy and realizes the capture of smart imagery, such as the eagle in the sky, the eagle's cough corresponds to the cough of the old iron, and even "I" only exists as a narrative perspective and narrative deep instigation source, in order to support the heroine Qingcheng's spiritual fission. "I", as an outsider, opened a new habitat for the tasteless life of Qingcheng, and then went to see the eagle together. Seeing the eagle is undoubtedly the sudden rise of the spiritual space, the ignition of the artistic soul, and the skin kiss of the man and woman in the tent, which is the linguistic completion of this process of behavior. The text simplifies the dialogue of the characters, and with the rich historical and cultural heritage information, it completes the rapid progress of artistic ethereality, and the reader can feel the coldness of it.

The love myth of the materialized era

——Reading Xu Zechen's novel collection "Qingcheng"

Text | Nie Zhangjun

Xu Zechen's "Qingcheng" in the three works are named after the heroine, and they constitute a kind of connection between them, which is either hidden or present. Mystery and the unknown are always shrouded in the novel collection "Qingcheng". The unknown life and experience of Xixia, how the lover that Juyan was struggling to pursue evaporated in the world, the relationship between Qingcheng and "I" and Lao Tie, and so on. So many mysterious elements express the absurdity of modern life. Xixia, Juyan and Qingcheng, the three heroines in the novel are always pursuing love, happiness, and a certain consummation of life. They also deeply appreciate the absurdity of life. But they all found a way to face the absurdity of life.

The way to overcome the absurd is to acknowledge the truth of life, accept everything in life, and get up and embrace life. Chinese New Year's Eve lived alone in a foreign country at night, and she was the only one left in the noisy city of Beijing. However, in the face of life, Juyan's answer is to live well. The same is true of Qingcheng. She came to the plateau to see the eagles as she wished, and from the moment she saw the first eagle, she began to scream until her throat was hoarse. In the difficulties of life, Qingcheng is always looking for hope. The three girls in the novel are all pursuing the happiness of life and the meaning of life, and in the process of pursuing, they witness the disappearance of meaning, but this does not stop them from pursuing happiness.

The three stories of "Xixia", "Juyan" and "Qingcheng" all explain the truth about love: love is the beginning of chance, and the extension of time is the test of love. Love is an event full of accidents, and the trajectories of two people's lives suddenly intersect and relate at some point in their lives, producing a certain common meaning.

The beginning of love is accidental, but that's not all there is to love. The perseverance of love lies in taming this contingency, which is another key word in love: time. Wang Yiding and Xixia, Tang Tuo and Ju Yan, "I" and Qingcheng, Lao Tie and Qingcheng, the love stories of these protagonists start by chance, and it is in the continuation of time that they gradually realize the true meaning of love. They approach the occasional beginning of love in different ways, and they also move toward the continuation of time and love with their own attitudes.

The interpretation of love in the three works of "Western Xia", "Juyan" and "Qingcheng" is also different. The stories of "Western Xia" and "Juyan" have a certain fairy tale nature, while "Qingcheng" is slightly cold. Combined with the order in which the three works were written ("Qingcheng" was written more than ten years after "Western Xia" and "Juyan"), this may also reflect the change in the writer's own concept of love.

The "eagle" is an important image in "Qingcheng", representing freedom and distance. However, Qingcheng voluntarily gave up the distance and decisively left the man who watched the eagle with her. From "Running Through Zhongguancun" and "Night Train", to "Jerusalem" and "Going North", "going to the far side" has always been the consistent theme of Xu Zechen's novel creation. In "Qingcheng", there is another trade-off between the far side and the foot in love. In fact, love and materiality have always been an important part of the three novels. Xu Zechen, who is good at writing about the life of The North Drift, has a special sensitivity to the details of money in his works. In "Juyan" and "Qingcheng", the author repeatedly wrote about the dilemma of money between the two. The myth of love always seems to return to material and reality.

All three works leave suspense in the ending. Truth doesn't really matter, and so does the myth of love as true. Love can be the myth of the fall of the country, the mountain calling the tsunami; it can also be the daily life of chai rice oil and salt, and the waves are not alarming. Qingcheng accepted the reality that "eagles don't cough", and she practiced the rigid and strict Zhao script "a little wild". The coexistence of romanticism and realism is the true meaning of love, or life.

Editor: Wang Hao