Zeng Pan
Doctor of Literature, he is currently the deputy editor of Southern Literature Magazine and a visiting researcher at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature.
Executive Summary
Focusing on Chen Jiming's novel Ping An Ping Ping, this article appeals to the specific material form, character subject, and political history of how cultural traditions continued in China in the perilous times of the 19th and 20th centuries. Explore how the ethical qualities of benevolence, morality, etiquette, and faith in the humanities, virtues, etiquette, and promises of Zheng Mengmei and other figures in the historical field of China's entry into the modern century over the past century have been preserved and replaced, especially in the revolutionary history of the 20th century, how they have evolved into the sense of home and country and the national spirit. On this basis, we will further explore the tortuous course of traditional culture in the "journey" of modern China, especially with the "Ping An Batch" as the material carrier, through the interweaving of the history of things, the history of people and the history of the country, showing the multiple entanglements of material and culture, tradition and modernity, China and the world, and as a total cultural tradition, it is bound to go through various twists and games in this process, in the modern field and the world wave, re-reflect, examine and abandon, reshape itself, after traveling through the history of ups and downs in the 19th and 20th centuries, Candles illuminate China in the 21st century in a contemporary form.
keyword
Chen Jiming "Ping An Batch" Cultural Traditions Modern China
Beginning in the mid-to-late 19th century, China, as a major empire, began to be thrown into the "world" in a ruptural manner. The great powers invaded, the country opened its doors, so it began to open its eyes to the world, passively or actively joined the process of modernization, and its own cultural traditions also opened a modern "journey" in Yu Yan, but the process was so difficult that it was even constantly identified and excluded from the cultural reconstruction of modern China, encountering various shocks, squeezing and colliding, circumventing in hesitation, and evolving in tempering. Of course, the cultural tradition here is not a solidified established concept, it is variable and pluralistic, but there is always a core, and in the migration and survival of culture, especially in the form of locality and cosmopolitan interlacing, there is a more obvious transmission, showing rich and complex attributes and changes. Of course, it is not intended to be generalized here, but to place it in the structure of the text and the main body of the characters, to explore its derivation from the modernity of ancient to modern, and to refer to the cross-cultural context in it, and to examine the travel and deformation of "tradition", the flow and circulation.
The interesting thing about Chen Jiming's novel "Ping An Batch" is that it touches on such an important proposition: how to reshape the cultural context of traditional China in the turmoil of the modern field and the world tide, circumvent and game with the multiple value concepts and conceptual discourses of the synchronic state, and experience the flow of time in the vertical historical migration, the change, confluence and even disappearance of empirical reality, and move towards its own new changes in the disintegration, melting and reconstruction of revolutionary war and social politics. The intrinsic qualities of benevolence, morality, etiquette, and faith revealed by the main characters of the novel, such as Zheng Mengmei, Chen Guangyuan, Song Wanchang, Wangzhi and others, can be contained and expressed in the novel. Of course, they cannot represent the whole of Chinese cultural traditions, they are only a kind of image and sign, but the feelings of home and country, the great righteousness of the nation, and the patriotic spirit that arise from them, especially their century-old spiritual journey and life course from the end of the 19th century, represent a living sample of the integration of Chinese cultural traditions into modern times.
《Peace Approval》
Author: Chen Jiming
Publishers: Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, Huacheng Publishing House
Publication date: October 2021
01
Zheng Mengmei, the protagonist of "Ping An Ping", was born in the Chaoshan region at the end of the 19th century, specifically in the 1880s, and some scholars pointed out that "around 1873, when Li Hongzhang and Japan, Britain, Peru and other countries continued to sign 'peace' agreements, they had predicted that China was in a 'major change in three thousand years'. He was certainly not referring to the change in the division of China by the great powers, but to the change in Chinese culture1. Modern times are an important period of political and cultural transformation in China. Zheng Mengmei's family comes from the "Xiqian" in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong, born in this period, he has been reading poetry and books since childhood, dancing and ink, and is also deeply infiltrated by traditional culture. "In time, in peace, just from these two names, we can see the difference between Xiqian and Xihou, the children of Xiqian are talented, preach morals, like to read sage books, unrealistic, so lofty and far-reaching, 'such as gossip and laughter to see the heart and liver'; Xihou disciples are just the opposite, calm and pragmatic, good at strategizing, good at doing business and business." 2 The spiritual signs drawn by the visible local culture, through the family harmony and harmony of the xiqian and the post-xi, presents its open and introverted tension, around the often of history and the changes of the human heart, deduced into the modern social and historical field, forming a plurality of discourse systems, value systems, and cultural systems.
"Ping An Batch" is the most core thing of the novel, mainly from the hands of overseas Chinese who "went to Nanyang" at that time, they left their hometowns, remembered their relatives in their homeland, and after arriving in Nanyang and other places, they missed their homeland and homeland, so they sent money to relatives and friends by post, in this process, the batch bureau actually has the function of a post office and a bank, and they send remittances and family letters to China through non-governmental organizations, that is, the remittance and family letters that are sent to China, which is a special mail carrier that sends and merges. Letters from Fanpan are called approvals, and letters from China are called letters. It is worth noting that this involves the modern situation of traditional Chinese culture, the "Ping An Batch" and the spiritual ethics of the overseas Chinese at that time have been circulated for thousands of years, especially in modern China, which has suffered more than a century of shocks, how it accumulates and acts on the inner destiny of Chinese/world people, and what kind of changes have been experienced among modern subjects, which is quite interesting.
At the beginning of the novel, there are two sets of discourses that coexist metaphysically and metaphysically, representing the imagination of people in the Chaoshan region of southern China about local life and the external world. In Zheng Mengmei's eyes, "The whole earth may be water below, and the sea is secretly connected, and the earth is like a big sampan, floating on the surface of the boundless water, so the person who jumped from the well may have already drilled out from underground and re-made a guest." Either directly to the other side of the earth, or along any tributary of the Han River, swim to the sea and go to the Banpan." At the same time, this also means that the world's hopes represented by Zheng Mengmei will soon embark on a journey to Southeast Asia. This process also involves the marine experience that is quite rare in modern Chinese literature, "the sea is invisible, but not far, starting from the doorstep of the house, taking a half-day boat to Shantou is the sea, how big is it, how far it is." If you come ashore from Shantou and change to a red-headed boat that is several stories high, or a foreign ship that is several times larger than a red-headed ship, you can go anywhere." It is worth mentioning that the children of the xiqian and the post-xi in the Chaoshan area have had an imagination of the ocean and the world since childhood. In the novel, there are even various legends about Nanyang and Fanke. "Then imagine in the mixed smell of these things how a few years ago a young fan jumped into a well, how he sneaked back to the sea from the Han River, and how he returned from the sea to places like Malacca, Siam, and Shek Lat, and maybe even drilled straight up and down from the bottom of the well, and arrived at The Panpan without effort." Marine writing was originally not developed in the south, but in modern China, southern China has become the center of change, not only there are many people of insight who have crossed the ocean to the world, but also the opening of treaty ports has emerged in an endless stream, and those who have returned from the west and exiled overseas abound, individuals and countries, exodus and return, East and West, etc., building multiple channels of travel and culture. Not only that, but the novel also involves the trade and trade between China and Southeast Asia in modern times, and even the piglet/slave trade. There, "going south" became a kind of local and collective experience, and the key is that it undoubtedly provides a new mirror image and path external to its own tradition.
In the modern experience of Chinese novel narratives, traditional culture is more revealed by a transformative, banished concept, especially in the early stage of the shaping of the modern knowledge spectrum, which often worries that China is excluded from the "world" and shows the outward form of cultural continuation. However, Chen Jiming's novel "Ping An Pi" is different in its narrative of the history of the ideological turmoil at the end of the Qing Dynasty, in which the narrative ethics are open, but they are often retracted, that is, the cultural values of traditional China are incorporated into the discourse system of the novel. The family history, struggle history and spiritual history of the Chaoshan people and the revolutionary history of modern China, including Southeast Asia, which they have experienced, have become the main body of the novel narrative, during which multiple value chain locks are conceived, which are closely related to each other, and the hidden or explicit involvement between home, country and world makes the individual with cultural traditions and the modern concept of nationality constantly integrate and reconstruct. If we trace the traditional spiritual genealogy of the Chaoshan people represented by Zheng Mengmei, we can see from Zheng Mengmei's footsteps before zheng Mengmei left the ancestral land and went to Siam under the guidance of the old cargo lang. Before leaving, Mengmei specially went to the Northern Emperor Temple on the top of the Lamp Mountain to worship the Xuantian Emperor there, that is, the Northern Emperor, which symbolizes the gods and immortals of the north. "It is said that most of the Chao people came from the north and the Central Plains, and were descendants of the officials who had been assigned to this place in successive dynasties, and the Northern Emperor's faith was taken all the way to the south by them, pinning their reluctance and attachment to their homeland and the imperial court." If this is true, then the tradition is inherited in coastal areas such as Chaoshan and maintains an internal continuation in such as Zheng Mengmei and his family, which undoubtedly represents his cultural factors and spiritual roots. "As soon as he turned around, he almost felt that he had taken the whole Central Plains and the whole family mountain into his heart, which was an experience he had never experienced before." It can be imagined that for Zheng Mengmei at this moment, the ideological resources to go out of the tide and rush to Nanyang are already available, that is, when Zheng Mengmei goes to the country and goes to the ocean, he carries a strong traditional Chinese culture that combines the north and the south.
Not only that, the Chaoshan region is located on the southeast coast, and it is also a place where foreign religions flourished since the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, which undoubtedly provides an important scale and visual threshold of world significance. It should be pointed out that the inheritance and continuation of China's cultural traditions since modern times is not a single line and a one-dimensional development, but often faces the injection and disturbance of external forces, and in this process, many people will withdraw from it, and even change course, watch and reflect on the tradition itself. This is an inevitable fate of cultural continuity, and it also means the ubiquity of scrutiny and testing. In the novel, after Zheng Mengmei arrived in Southeast Asia, she accepted the influence of Western culture and constantly opened her inner spirit in the interaction of George and others. There is a very interesting scene in which he once sent a copy of the Chaoyu Bible to his home in Chaoshan Province, which in fact the hipsters have long known about. Because in the past, the trend of missionary practice has long been prevalent, and after many people convert to foreign religions, whether it is the way of life, behavior patterns and ideological concepts, they are very different from the tradition. What is worrying is that the locals are worried about whether their culture will one day disappear and will be replaced by foreign religions, and from the perspective of the development trend of foreign religions, their worries are not empty, "because of this, Lao Zu was very worried that in a few days, the whole world will become the world of God, the world of Christ, the world of the cross, And sooner or later Amitabha Buddha and Lord Baohe will be changed to Amen Amen." However, the interesting place is here, "in the blink of an eye, decades have passed, and there are still so many people who believe in God and those who believe in Lords, and there are not many people, and no one is less." It can be seen from this that in the process of China's modernization, if traditional culture is treated as an important spiritual carrier, it can be seen that it is often between China and foreign countries, ancient and modern, and constantly forming various frictions and saws. It is worth mentioning that the ancient beliefs and doctrines of the characters, and the factors that seem out of place in the age of roaring forward, have not fallen under the impact of the overwhelming cultural views and the fractured changes in values, but have finally reached some kind of balance. Behind this balance, it represents the inner vitality of the cultural tradition itself, which not only preserves and continues the indestructible part of itself, but also always faces and integrates external ethics and discourse.
The novel also creates the image of George and Dong Girl, two foreigners, and the influence of their words and deeds on the main characters Zheng Mengmei and Wangzhi is very significant. "George and Aunt Dong, two foreigners I specially designed. This novel naturally has a natural perspective, the overseas Chinese batch comes from the outside, the overseas Chinese batch itself is a perspective, from the outside to the inside, I want to enlarge this perspective, used to observe Chinese society. George and Aunt Dong were arranged under this concept. These two people, who have been in China for a long time, are half a Chinese. They look at China with two pairs of eyes, both Western and Chinese. Their attitude is more peaceful, more authentic, and more authentic and believable. 3 It should be pointed out that the novel then shows the internal struggle between local beliefs and foreign religions in Chaoshan Province, which can be seen in the spiritual tug-of-war between Wangzhi and Miss Dong and others, and there are also cases of arson in the Catholic Church in the local area. It was a chaotic and unclear era, and in the coastal areas where China and the West were mixed, the preservation or abandonment of cultural traditions was undergoing a tragic tearing. In this process, the novel not only expresses a strong local characteristic, but also forms a crisscrossing coordinate with the historical, in which the particularity is revealed. Therefore, the "Ping'an Batch" in the Chaoshan region is becoming a model for the survival and flow of China's cultural traditions.
02
As mentioned earlier, the "Ping An" contains a kind of obvious geographical and spiritual contrast, and George, a doctor of anthropology in the novel, once made a comment when discussing religion and belief: "This time when I came to Siam, I have an important discovery, the Central Plains of China, not in the Central Plains nor in the South, nor anywhere else, where is it? On the way, on the wandering, on the road of the long journey, in the heart of the wanderer. In other words, there are two Central Plains, one is the Central Plains in the geographical sense, and the other is the Central Plains in the spiritual sense, which can be called the Wandering Central Plains. "The cultural traditions of the Chaoshan region represent both the migration of the northern culture and the southern inheritance of the orthodox Central Plains culture. The Zheng Mengmei family came from the Chaoshan region in the south, and in modern China, the south is an open field and the center of the revolution. Zheng Mengmei's brother Zheng Fusheng had joined the ranks of revolutionaries, traversed the uprising in the south, he went to Japan to study the military, joined Sun Yat-sen's alliance, and participated in a series of revolutionary activities, and finally died tragically, and the prospects of Xiqian began to become obscure. Zheng Mengmei's experience is more tortuous, especially his life trajectory from the end of the 19th century to the middle and late 20th century, it can be said that it is a very complete witness to the entire "revolution" of the 20th century, and the spiritual ethics revealed by him also represent the modern evolution of cultural traditions to a certain extent.
After arriving in Siam, Zheng Mengmei, who carries a strong Chinese cultural and traditional ethics, is ignorant and breaks into the Nanyang zone where fish and dragons are mixed, and his experience of "going to Nanyang" is not as smooth as imagined. However, from the words and deeds of the first time she went to sea in the cabin, the righteous and awe-inspiring moral care when rescuing the piglets, and the moral talent revealed when writing for people, Zheng Mengmei's inner qualities have been revealed. The turning point in his life came after Song Wanchang's acceptance of him and his later appreciation and entrustment, and Zheng Mengmei's career began to flourish. Song Wanchang valued Zheng Mengmei's character and character, so he divided the siamese and Shantou industries to Zheng as his successor. It is worth mentioning that Zheng Mengmei did not live up to Song Wanchang's heavy trust, and the traditional ethics in his body did not fall off with time, but constantly formed a more tenacious and precious national consciousness and patriotic feelings in the general trend of history, thus completing a new spiritual transformation. 1937 became an important turning point in Zheng Mengmei's life, it was the day of his 50th birthday, but he risked his life to refuse the visit of the Japanese consulate clerk Tomita, not only that, he then and Chen Guangyuan, Chen Aduan, Lin Awei, Lin Cai'er and other friends, fully supported the anti-Japanese resistance, stepped forward to defend the homeland. After the fall of Shantou in 1939, Zheng Mengmei went from many sides to drum and shout for the country and nation in distress, vowing to save China from water and fire. Until the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1945, he endured hardships and hardships, and also witnessed the sacrifice of friends and the suffering of the nation. In 1949, after the founding of New China, Zheng Mengmei and Lin Cai'er returned to Bangkok to become overseas Chinese. He then returned to China and died in Shantou in 1977. And around the displacement of Zheng Mengmei and others, there is always a "safe batch".
Overall, the novel presents a unity between the history of things and the history of man, more precisely the intersection of individual history, family history and material history. The novel is written about the history of the struggle and spiritual history of the Chaoshan people "going to Nanyang", which is not uncommon in the past. However, with the "Peace Criticism" as the center and axis, involving the human world and state affairs, the previous novels rarely involved such themes, especially in the way of long narrative writing, writing a kind of thing, from things and people, and then writing a love narrative history, which represents the uniqueness of the novel. "The existence and expression of 'things' not only become the key to the narrative structure of the novel, but also become the spiritual metaphor of the main body of the characters, the emotional maintenance and ethical intermediary between the subjects, and its own form, attributes, and essence are highlighted, and at the same time, the spiritual and cultural values are accumulated." In this way, the 'thing' and other elements in the text world are juxtaposed with each other, exerting their own role, forming a new synergy between equality and democracy within the text, and constructing a discourse system and artistic mechanism that conforms to the internal logic of literature. 4 Specifically, in the novel, it is written that the protagonist Zheng Mengmei adheres to and maintains that precious virtue, moral heart, and love, while at the same time, the traditional Chinese cultural spirit has always protected him through the vicissitudes of time. From the domestic "going to The South China Sea" to arriving in Thailand and other Southeast Asian regions, surviving in a different place, wandering and wandering in the chaos of war, experiencing the devastation of war, life and death, Zheng Mengmei has always embraced traditional ideas and complexes, and finally whether it is living overseas to care for the motherland, or returning to China to make meritorious achievements, this is a place in his struggle and the ups and downs of his life for a hundred years, but also reflects the revolutionary history of modern China and the reshaping history of cultural traditions.
What needs to be particularly mentioned is that the cultural traditions of the main body of the characters have penetrated with the national consciousness and family feelings formed since modern times, and even placed in the world's threshold, re-confirming their limitations and effectiveness, and also refining and analyzing their own new meanings in the torrent of time in China over the past century. The novel focuses more on the national righteousness of Zheng Mengmei and others during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and he united his family and his friends and friends, or implicitly or explicitly fought on the anti-Japanese front, "The Bangkok Federation of Batch Bureaus also held an emergency meeting, and Zheng Naiheng, who has been the president for many years, suggested that each batch of bureaus print new seals and letterheads, and print on the seals and letterheads such slogans as 'Resist Japan to Save the Country,' 'The Enemy Hates the Same Enemy,' 'Resist the War to the End,' 'Resist Japanese Goods,' and 'Persist to the End,' or engrave them and stamp them on each batch of letters. In addition, Nai Heng also suggested that when the country is in trouble, Tangshan Zhishi will give up their lives, Fanpan overseas Chinese will give up their wealth, resist Japan and save the country, everyone has the responsibility, and all overseas Chinese remittances, no matter how much, should be withdrawn as personal donations, which will be collected by the approval bureau in the era of acceptance. Whoever has donated money shall be stamped with a small seal of 'approval of donation'." It is worth noting that the characters' feelings are attached to the seals and letterheads as materials, while the latter indicates a way of life and interaction, a cultural transmission that represents morality, morality and affection.
Especially when it is placed in the historical situation of family hatred and national difficulties, the connotation between material and emotion is rapidly stimulated and expanded, and it has become an important carrier of cultural traditions. From the form of expression to the rhetoric of discourse, from the mood to the ethical purpose, the "Ping An Criticism" itself presents the spiritual form of feelings, virtues, righteousness and reason. The function of the "Ping An Batch" is to report on safety, send wishes remotely, or subsidize the family and express their hearts, which reveal traditional moods and complexes. More importantly, the novel is centered on the "Ping An Batch" and also draws out the long-standing family and national feelings. It is worth noting that in the face of internal and external troubles, especially the national righteousness and patriotic psychology produced by the invasion of foreign enemies, it did not happen out of thin air, and in Zheng Mengmei's case, it was precisely from the evolution of cultural traditions.
That is to say, in the actual migration and impact, as well as in the changes of external history, the ideas and concepts of traditional culture in Zheng Mengmei and others have not been torn apart, on the contrary, they are always as solid as stones, which is the most valuable wealth of his personal and his interactions and deeds, and it is also the value that can really be preserved and passed down after more than a century of rich and complex modernization.
From the novel "Ping An Batch", we can see the coexistence of realism and romanticism in the Chaoshan people, who are pragmatic, low-key, calm, full of materialism and the spirit of hard work, but also have deep feelings, often have an idealized pursuit of life and culture, and have a strong ardent hope for the future of the country and the nation. Chen Jiming closely focuses on the "Ping An Batch", writing about the batch, but also writing about people, but also about a modern China, as well as the cultural traditions that China has left behind and survived. "Nai Heng really doesn't know who to write to, the old qualified recipient in time has just passed away, or he has just passed away at the moment when Nai Heng is ready to write a peace batch, and there is no one suitable for the batch in time." A person who receives approvals was originally slowly created by countless seals and batches of several generations. She died, and there was another death hidden in her death, the death of a recipient. One of the recipients died. "The emotional connection seems so intrinsic and profound at this time, which is the emotional structure of the Chaoshan people, and it also means the spiritual traction of the same root within the nation-state.
03
The process of cultural fission is often traceless, but one thing is that its continuation must be linked to the re-integration of the spirit, especially in times of severe turmoil, when the traditional flow is constantly dividing, stripping away the old and decaying layers, moving towards new integration, and also constituting a new structural form. In the novel, it is true that getting ahead is the dream of those who "go to Nanyang", but looking back, no matter how they lived outside, sending feedback to go home to report "peace" is the norm. At that time, the people who went to sea knew that "after leaving, the lady of the family will definitely go to all the temples to prostrate her head until she receives the peace approval he sent back." A steady stream of people went out of the Han River and then from Shantou into the sea. In order to go out and do a career, "make a fortune, marry a wife, and honor the ancestors." However, such a concept not only contradicts an open modern China, but also gradually eliminates it in the historical situation of national peril and death in people of insight and aspiration. It is worth noting that in Zheng Mengmei's body, the process of "going to Nanyang" is more of a conflict between the new and the old. From the perspective of the actual situation, there is often a diametrically opposed between the cultural traditions of etiquette, righteousness, benevolence, and virtue in his body, and the fate of modern China and the fate that history imposes on the individual. In such a mixture of old and new, the preservation and retention of Zheng Mengmei's inner spiritual texture truly released its meaning. That is to say, only after experiencing internal and external tests and shocks, and even when the tradition itself is facing a real crisis, its inherent color and strength will eventually be projected, or when it encounters various tribulations in modern China and even the world, the turnaround of cultural tradition in coping with it will become reliable, otherwise in the major turbulence and changes of the past century, everything that has been solidified and unchanged will eventually become suspicious.
In the novel, Zheng Mengmei, Chen Guangyuan, and George consciously agreed with each other, so they imitated the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" to carry out the "Taoyuan Three Knots". Interestingly, in the process of concluding righteousness, there is a three-person discussion about "righteousness", which talks about the original meaning and variation of "righteousness" in the tradition. Among them, Chen Guangyuan pointed out that the conclusion of "righteousness" does not hinder each other's concepts and wills to be different and different, while George proposed, "If misfortune and happiness, life and death involve positions, and are related to principles", what should be the combination of "righteousness" and "righteousness", and Zheng Mengmei provided his own insights and answers for this:
Righteousness and righteousness, because of righteousness, righteousness, since ancient times, there have been clear meanings, for example, righteousness can not be shirked, see righteousness and courage, righteousness without remorse, righteousness and wealth, righteousness and thin clouds, these words in the "righteousness", are the same meaning, that is, morality, justice, righteousness, righteousness, ancient Chinese literature has a lot of further explanations about "righteousness", for example, "righteousness and then move", "righteousness does not kill", "righteousness does not kill less", "life, I also want; righteousness, I also want, both can not be combined, those who sacrifice life and take righteousness are also "...
Not only that, the story narrative even restores a tradition of interspersing speech, argument and even speech in the text of the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty novels, especially in the interactions between Zheng Mengmei, George and Chen Guangyuan, there are often situations between each other to discuss the times, lament life and talk about culture. For example, when talking about the difference between China and the West in "repentance", George once again made a macro statement: "I also think that Chinese have Chinese way of repentance, such as donation, generosity, and helping others, to a considerable extent, it is a way of repentance. People say that foreigners will repent, Tang people refuse to repent, I think not necessarily so, the real situation is likely to be that foreigners' confession is always verbal, once they leave the church, they will forget everything, and the Tang confession is more invisible, more hidden, and more will become practical action. The reason why the novel adopts such an incompletely formalized rhetorical approach is related to the fact that the chaotic and unclear value ethics of the place at that time cannot be fully distinguished and clarified, especially through the different identities of the three people, the Chinese cultural tradition is analyzed and considered in a new realistic historical situation, and in the collision of cultural discourses in Southeast Asia and even the world, the various established cognitive structures are re-examined.
Not only that, the novel also places the traditional Chinese cultural landscape revealed by Zheng Mengmei in the midst of revolutionary history and even war and strife, encountering destructive and even destructive threats, glimpseing the decline and fall of the old and testing its new possibilities. "Feeling what song Wanchang and Song Wanchang heard and saw in Bangkok's Yishan Pavilion, after Mengmei made her fortune, she founded a pure public welfare Wanchang Yizhuang in Hundreds of acres of land in Shantou, specializing in sending coffins that have no owner's body or cannot be buried for the time being. The first thing Yizhuang did after it was put into use was to rent a whole steamer and relocate the coffins in the Yishan Pavilion in Bangkok that were willing to be moved back to China, and some unowned bones were buried to Wanchang Yizhuang free of charge. Not only that, Song Wanchang had the grace of knowing Zheng Mengmei in the early days, and the Grand Duke selflessly entrusted his own property to Zheng. Zheng Mengmei has gone through hardships and knows how to repay. "In order to thank and commemorate Song Wanchang, all the companies are still named after Wanchang. Mr. Song Wanchang died of illness many years ago, and his two sons held 49% of the shares in each company called Wanchang. Many people think that this is not necessary, and Mengmei is unwavering and insists on doing so. "Mengmei and Naiheng father and son run the Wanchang Batch Bureau and Wanchang Seeds together, and the two generations of persistence, watching for peace, are guarding the traditional spiritual ethics from the hinterland of Chinese culture."
After the founding of New China, Zheng Mengmei, as a patriotic overseas Chinese, not only set up the "Museum of Criticism during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" in a thousand ways, "thinking that the Japanese army invaded the mainland to receive evidence, and warning future generations not to forget the national shame, think of danger in times of peace, and revitalize China." Moreover, after the pioneering practice of Zheng Mengmei's blue wisps on the road, "in 2004, the first overseas Chinese cultural relics museum in China was established in Shantou, and its predecessor was Zheng Mengmei's Museum of Shen Criticism during the War of Resistance." On June 19, 2013, about 170,000 overseas Chinese archives widely distributed in Chaoshan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Yangjiang, Jiangmen, Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou and other places in Fujian Province were officially applied for and became the 'Memory of the World'. Because, in addition to 'the collective memory of international migration in modern China', it also has 'unique outstanding value in the literature of similar international migrants'". Therefore, it has to be said that the narrative structure of "Ping An Batch" is quite rigorous, and the novel not only always closely follows the main line of "Ping An Batch", pulls out various entanglements in family history, national history and modern history, but also sinks into the values and spiritual ethics held by Chaoshan people and their families and individuals, exploring Chinese cultural traditions such as the family disputes between Xiqian and Xihou described at the beginning of the novel, and getting a response at the end. "It can be said that Xiqian Zheng not only saved his reputation, but also gradually surpassed Xihou Zheng in strength and influence, and Xiqian Xihou also abandoned his former suspicions and became a double male of the Zheng clan again." It is worth noting that the reconciliation of the family is guided by the more grand narrative discourse of the national family, and the family narrative as a sub-level gradually bridges its own internal rift, and the pre-creek and the post-creek eventually converge, echoing the national discourse of the previous level, so that the dual narrative of home and country is tightly sewn at the end of the novel, echoing the big theme of "Peace Criticism".
04
Of course, it has to be pointed out that the continuation and inheritance of culture, especially in the face of external invasion and internal changes, may not all be exclusion, but also sometimes there is a boost in intertextuality and mutual infiltration, if the cultural tradition is regarded as the existence of some kind of object, then the process of continuous deduction is often uncontrollable. Jameson once quoted Artussy's concept of "overdetermination" to point out that any historical phenomenon and event—including ideological changes—needs to refer to different causes and depends on all conditions and factors that drive their formation. "So the concept of multiple decisions tells us that we have to consider all the reasons, including things that seem extremely unrelated." Once we have found enough explanations, we need to understand them from a structural point of view. All determinants are inevitable, but they cannot be explained completely. In this case, "the interpretation of history can only be obtained through concrete, complex, pluralistic decisions." 5 And because of the joint action of different causes and factors, coupled with the metaphysical abstract texture, making the culture incomparable, immeasurable and depicted, in this process, the novel provides a certain possibility of interpretation with its figurativeness, especially through the crisscrossing of time and space elements constructed in the narrative text, providing an inquiring rationale for judging the flow and flow of cultural traditions. In this sense, through the transmission of things and the traces of people, "Ping An" not only shapes the overflowing cultural form, but also in the context of China's revolutionary history in the 20th century, it has never obliterated the voice of the cultural tradition itself, and it is in harmony with China's modernity.
I have to say that what is undoubtedly discussed here is a grand proposition, but in such a clear coordinate, it has become clear and clear, and the Chinese cultural tradition is concretely and slightly attached to people and things, forming its own apparition, which also represents a kind of value revaluation in cultural evolution. At present, when we re-discuss the "Ping An Criticism" displayed in the museum, we choose to use it as a subjective existence juxtaposed with the character image and political history, so that it has a cultural and spiritual connotation, and in the awakening and rebirth of writing, it summons several levels of cultural and traditional elements, which not only represent the modern spread of classical spiritual ethics, but also include the contemporary extension of local concepts and folk beliefs, revolutionary spirit and homeland feelings. Not only that, the enduring spiritual texture of Zheng Mengmei is the inheritance and reshaping of traditional Chinese culture and meaning, which not only maintains the most basic trust between people, they carry the indescribable faith and morality, but also live up to their promises and take responsibility, between righteousness and profit, in the ceremony, keeping the clarity and frankness of the state of mind, as if thinking about the ancient feelings, but resisting a century of bitter wind and rain, or even longer, even the present. Looking back at the bending process of China's real march toward modernity, in fact, it is even more necessary to get out of the blindness and blindness of the human heart or the ignorance of human nature. For the arrival of cultural traditions in contemporary China after a hundred years of travel, there is still no shortage of deafening voices.
【This paper is a phased result of the "Gui Pai Criticism Research" project of the Guixue Research Institute, a key research base for humanities and social sciences in Guangxi universities]
exegesis:
1 Xu Zhaoshou: The Journey to the West, Writers Publishing House, 2021, p. 216.
2 Chen Jiming: Ping An Batch, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, Huacheng Publishing House, 2021 edition, p. 9. If not stated in this article, they are from the book and will not be repeated.
3 "Chen Jiming's Ping An Approval:Why Can't We Forget Our Homeland", The Paper,
https：／／baijiahao.baidu.com／s?id=1717998110695118129&wfr=spider&for=pc。
4 Zeng Pan, "Things, Knowledge, and Nonfiction: The "Outward Turn" of Contemporary Chinese Literature," Southern Literature, No. 3, 2019.
5 Jameson, Postmodernism and Cultural Theory: Professor Jameson's Speech, translated by Tang Xiaobing, Shaanxi Normal University Press, 1987, pp. 59-60.
Originally published in Studies in Contemporary Chinese Literature, No. 2, 2022