Telling Chinese Stories with Enthusiasm - Commenting on Zhang Huimin's Novel "Peony Blossoms"

In his speech at the opening ceremony of the Eleventh National Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Literary Circles and the Tenth National Congress of the China Writers Association, General Secretary Xi Jinping particularly emphasized: "We must base ourselves on the land of China, tell Chinese stories well, shape more Chinese cultural images known to the world, strive to show a vivid and three-dimensional China, and write a new chapter for promoting the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind." To this end, he also further elaborated on this topic at the Politburo study meeting, saying: To tell the Chinese story well, "is to better promote Chinese culture to go out, to use literature to carry the Word, to convey the voice in the language, to use culture, to explain to the world more excellent cultures with Chinese characteristics, embodying the Chinese spirit, and containing Chinese wisdom." We must pay attention to grasping the tone, be open and confident, humble and humble, and strive to create a credible, lovely, and respectable image of China. ”

It can be said that General Secretary Xi Jinping's expositions on telling Chinese stories well have guided writers and artists in the right direction on how to tell Chinese stories well. For quite a period, due to the influence of Western values, we had a group of writers who indulged in the creation of historical nihilism caused by scar literature that began in the seventies and eighties of the last century. These works, in addition to ridiculing and slandering the first thirty years of New China, are to defame and scandalize the heroic history of our nation, these works have greatly influenced the promotion of our excellent traditional values, cultivated a number of social public knowledge that is divorced from the party and the people, and dwarfed the aesthetic cognition of the people. Since Comrade Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the party, he has attached great importance to this phenomenon, begun to correct the fundamental direction of literature and art, and proposed that literary and artistic creation should be people-centered and the Chinese story should be told well. Among the novels I have read recently, I think that the novel "Peony Blossoms" created by Zhang Huimin, a female writer in the army, is such a representative and good work. This is a long novel with a soul, a temperature, a thought and a story created according to the advocacy of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and it is a good work that tells the story of China very seriously.

Reading the work "Peony Blossoms In Bloom", I have a special sense of intimacy. The reason why it is intimate is because the region depicted in the work is based on the story of the Yellow River Bay base in southwest Luxi, which is also adjacent to my hometown of Lankao, Henan. The boundaries of the earth are connected to the boundaries of the earth, and the villages are connected to the villages. The so-called "Yellow River Bay Base Area" also includes my hometown. To tell the truth from facts, the "bay" of the Yellow River Bay is actually not in the southwest of Shandong Lu, the southeast direction of the Yellow River, here in Lankao turned a bend, and then went straight northeast into the Bohai Sea, this bay in Lankao, Henan is called "copper tile box". In this name, parts of heze in Shandong and Hebei are collectively referred to as the Jiluyu Revolutionary Base Area in the history of the Party and the army.

As a novel in the literary genre, the work calls it the Yellow River Bay Base Area, which is a more accurate description of the region. As the last bay of the Yellow River from ancient times to the present, there has always been no shortage of tragic stories that can be sung and wept here. For example, the last demise of the Yuan Dynasty, which has a record of history, first began here in the Red Turban Rebellion led by Liu Futong. At that time, the migrant workers who repaired the Yellow River buried a stone engraved at the bottom of the river with the inscription "Stone Man With One Eye, Provoking the Yellow River To Rebel", and in the name of heaven, he ordered an uprising to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty, and this uprising prompted the final demise of the Yuan Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, in order to reduce the flooding of the Yellow River, how many stories of powerful mountains and rivers occurred here, Lin Zexu was ordered by the imperial court to supervise the construction of the Yellow River here. Then came the anti-aggression and anti-oppression struggle since modern times. In the past century, the Chinese nation has been oppressed by imperialism, and many famous war stories have occurred here.

The novel "Peony Blossoms" is a novel written from the revolutionary war years to the new period of socialist construction. There is a folk song in the Yellow River Bay base area that once sang: "In 1943, the devils entered the Central Plains", and this Central Plains also includes this land. For a long time, this place was ravaged by the multiple oppressions of Japanese imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries and their bureaucratic capitalism. Therefore, like Jin-Cha-Ji, this is a hot land of anti-Japanese resistance and a place full of historical stories of the War of Resistance Against Japan. Because most of the stories described in the works have memories passed down orally from the older generation when they were young, it is particularly intimate to read today.

With this hot land, telling Chinese stories is inseparable from the local past here, and the writer very cleverly implanted the local unique "national flower" peony as a story carrier, narrating a series of heroic stories produced by such a local custom. "Luoyang Peony Jia Tianxia", that is because the Tang Dynasty poets used poetry to do the earliest propaganda and paving for Luoyang, so most people in the world think that Peony Luoyang is the best cognition in the world. In fact, only local people really understand that it belongs to a plant with a long history and inheritance of ancient and modern and has become a plant with medicinal value, and has benefited the people for generations. Therefore, there is also the saying that "Luoyang peony is under the heavens, and Caozhou peony is better than Luoyang".

The author tells the story with the place name Cao Ze, which actually refers to the ancient Cao Prefecture, which is now Cao County. It is with such a story about peonies that the author has injected the national soul and the Chinese spirit into it, which has led to a series of tragic heroic stories that can be sung and wept because of peonies. For example, as one of the representatives of the Japanese army invading China, Okada Munoichi loved peonies, and this executioner, whose hands were stained with the blood of Chinese people, attempted to transport the most precious varieties of Cao Ze peonies to Japan along with the most experienced local flower farmers, which was a blatant cultural plunder. The people waged a resolute struggle against this act of the robbers. This historical true story has been reprocessed and recreated by the author, and there are a series of twists and turns about "flowers" caused by peonies, such as flower breeding, flower theft, flower protection, flower urging, etc. Because of the flowers, many warriors and villagers of the armed forces have heroically sacrificed their lives; because of the flowers, the enemy and our forces have launched fierce games and battles; because of the flowers, this region has a tragic and magnificent history related to national culture. Here, the flower is no longer just a simple existence of a Chinese plant, but a spiritual character that cannot be moved, rich and noble, and mighty and indomitable in this graceful and luxurious peony. The stories of those who skillfully maneuvered with the enemy in order to protect the precious plant varieties of our nation, and finally let the dreams and conspiracies of the Japanese to steal flowers come to naught, embodied the indomitable spirit of the people. In the middle of this, many heroes who sacrificed for the protection of Peony, they would rather be crushed than the character of Waquan, which became the most touching plot of the work. The struggle from protecting the flowers to defending the base areas has a special significance. The Yellow River Bay has become not only a regional symbol, but also a symbol of the national spirit. As a plant unique to the Chinese nation and a spiritual symbol, it was not until later, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and under the brand-new socialist system, that the peony blossoms could truly bloom in a splendid style, and the people could truly obtain a spring full of flowers.

A kind of flower, in fact, in this work, has become the basis for telling the story of China. As the background of the story, Heze is a hot land of revolution and struggle, and Liu Deng's army, Siye and other units have fought and lived here. The author skillfully integrates the revolutionary story of the Jiluyu base area, the southward support for the Great Southwest, the peony industry and cultural development, and other magnificent plots into the artistic characters in the book, so that their spirit is deeply rooted in the land of Heze, and the hot land of Heze also gives this group of artistic characters a unique and vivid artistic life and personality. Therefore, the novel has a strong local atmosphere that cannot be opened. A culture must be nourished by regional water and soil. The reason why this novel is good is because between the lines of the work, there is a performance of the regional language that belongs entirely to Heze (Cao Ze). As soon as I listened to it and read it, I completely felt that it was a very authentic Heze slang saying, and the local local atmosphere was strong. This kind of true display and performance of life, without a long period of life experience, can never be written.

Secondly, I think it is worth mentioning the author's ability to structure the subject matter. This work spans a large scale, from the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan to the liberation of the whole country, to the new period of socialist construction today. From the Jiluyu Plain to the south and southwest, to the reform and opening up. The characters go from being a heroic teenager to finally becoming a mature leading cadre of the party and government, such a long span of time, the writer narrates unhurriedly and methodically. The text is simple and simple, when long is long, when short, it is a sentence, which is very comfortable to read. Unlike some people's works, for one person one thing can be larazazza narrated more than a dozen pages have not been explained clearly. Some people say that oversimplification is less of the narrative character of the novel, so it is like a TV script. I don't think so, applying the method of film and television dramas, using the montage method to write novels, in the context of people already pursuing plot when reading, is a bold improvement of the traditional creation method in response to the needs of readers' reading habits. I think this improvement is necessary. We cannot dwell on stereotypes and give up thinking about changes in readers' reading habits. In this work, some events in the narrative process according to the normal development of things, some even a few days or a few days later can appear changes, the author simply omitted the boring process description, a stroke in place, so that the reader can read very comfortable and concise.

Third, about language. I think the language style of "Peony Blossoms" is very chic. The author strives to avoid those tedious and lengthy words and sentences, and narrates them in very concise and clear language. It is very rhythmic to read, if you do not know the reader, it is difficult to conclude that this is a text by the hand of a female author, reading sonorously and powerfully, quite a bit of masculinity that belongs to men, and even rich in musical beauty. Do not be wordy, do not nag, strive to be concise and clean, and read with pleasure. I think this is also a manifestation of the writer's closeness to the reader's thinking for the reader. I prefer the writer's short and flat language style to writers who write novels in breathlessly long sentences that only foreigners use.

Fourth, the work reflects the author's extraordinary ability to shape the character, especially the portrayal of the protagonist Liu Xibao, who is not only a legendary figure in his life, but also has a life experience full of revolutionary colors. From this figure, the magnificent development course of our party is vividly displayed, the flesh-and-blood relationship between the party and the people is embodied, and thus an indisputable truth is explained: The masses of the people will always be the base area of the Communist Party of China, and the Communist Party of China will always be the guide of the Chinese people. As the son of such a rich family, the family's cultivation and management of peonies is relatively solid. But he moved towards revolution, and thanks to the contamination of revolutionary ideas and the cultivation of the Communist Party, he eventually became a staunch communist fighter, a fearless hero and a typical representative of the Party's political work. This character can be described as vivid and very vivid. In addition, the depiction of Xu Tiankai and Xu Tianyi, two brothers of the same mother, in the work, is also very symbolic. His older brother Xu Tianyi became a division commander in the Kuomintang troops, and his younger brother Xu Tiankai became a commander in the Communist forces. Because of the difference in political concepts, we have entered two different camps. In the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, the two men faced each other on the battlefield, which set off the historical background of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists to the final fraternal war, which was a bit of historical symbolic significance. Looking at the small and symbolizing the great historical evolution, such a performance can be very historical and ideologically enlightening to the reader. There are many characters in the book, but the author's narrative is well organized and does not feel cumbersome and cumbersome to read.

Fifth, regarding the setting and narration of the emotional line of the work, I think this work breaks the traditional and habitual way of writing that is considered traditional and habitual in the past, which is intolerable polymorphic and love triangle. The author has written a number of emotional lines, Liu Xibao and Yang Chuntao, and Liu Xiaohong's intertwined love stories, as well as Xu Tiankai, Wang Dongming and other love descriptions, which look complicated, but in fact, they are well-organized and clearly narrated, all in line with the logic of life and the inevitable direction of historical development. It doesn't seem trivial at all. Some of these descriptions become the more attractive points of the novel. The line of love is hidden in the work, not to write love for the sake of writing love, but to become an indispensable part of the work and become an inevitable trend in the development of the story.

As a good work loved by the public, I think that "Peony Blossom" has a lot of experience worth summarizing, but the most important thing is the writer's grasp of life and the ability to reproduce life. This depends on the writer's love of life. It can be said that without a lasting in-depth life, such a good work full of life charm is difficult to complete. Secondly, I think what is particularly worthy of praise is the writer's reverence and respect for history. Many people are now very accustomed to copying materials and turning over archives, and then began the so-called creation according to their own conjectures, so some mythical farces that violate historical truth or even distort history and spoof history have begun to appear. This is the root of the literary and artistic problems of these years. There is also a question of position at the root of thought, that is, using the attitude of historical nihilism and relying on literary means to dissolve our history. These problems have been met with extreme public dissatisfaction over the years. If "Peony Blossoms" deserves special recognition, it is the writer's firm respect for history's creative attitude. Between the lines, it can be seen that the writer is not only her love for life, but also her love for the party, the love for the socialist motherland, and the love for the people, and only with this can it be possible to write good works that the masses of the people like to hear. We should celebrate Zhang Huimin and wish her more masterpieces.