Editor's Note:
Good books can bring people upward spiritual strength. On the occasion of the 27th World Book Day, Nanfang Net and Guangdong Learning Client specially planned a series of theme posters of "Reading Life and Fighting the Epidemic with One Heart", selecting classic quotations from books to send encouragement to friends who have worked hard in epidemic prevention and control, and feel the power of words together. Today is the third in a series of themed posters, with the King.
Southern Network News (Reporter/Zhou Cun) Writer Mai Jia once said, "In this life, I always have to write a book related to my hometown, which is not only a memorial to my childhood, but also a reconciliation with my hometown." His novel "Life Sea Sea" makes people have a new understanding and expectation of life.
Through multi-point-of-view, fragmented, and non-linear narrative, the book gives the power of storytelling to multiple characters in the novel, and uses personalized vivid language to create a new legendary figure with a mortal flavor and close connection with secular life, restoring the hero's common sense and common sense as a person.
The protagonist of the novel is a colonel with many mysteries on his body, he is the most bizarre person in the village, he has been a colonel in the Kuomintang army, he is the object of struggle of the revolutionary masses, but the villagers fight him, but at the same time they are trying to please him, and everything in the family goes to him for advice; he has never worked, does not do farm work, the sky is at home reading newspapers, sniffing melon seeds, but life is more comfortable than anyone's family, and he still has a pair of cats like raising children. The stories told by the Colonel, the stories that others have experienced and related to him, and the stories told by others are intertwined, outlining the Colonel's life of entanglement in the times.
Life is like the sea, loaded with times, legends and people's hearts, both the cruelty of daily breeding and the kindness brought by time.
About the Author:
Mai Jia is a famous contemporary novelist, screenwriter, vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, and winner of the Mao Dun Literature Award. His works include the novels "Decryption", "Dark Calculation", "Wind Sound", "Wind Language", "Knife Tip", "Life Sea", TV series "Decryption", "Dark Calculation", "Wind Language", "Walking on the Tip of the Knife" (screenwriter), movie "Wind Sound", "Wind Listener" and so on. He is the first contemporary Chinese writer to be included in the British Penguin Classic Library.
Wonderful Book Reviews:
Life is like the sea, everything can be created, and everything can be subverted. In our life like the sea, we must not only appreciate everything, but also save everything, but also harvest everything.
--Mai's family
The charm of the novel is that it can write non-existent characters as if they were our friends, and Mai Jia's "Life Sea" is so charming.
- Nobel Laureate in Literature Mo Yan
Mai Jia's body always has a bystander temperament, and once he opens his mouth, his language is so precise. His details are so touching, his thoughts are so profound. If I use a poem to describe how I felt after reading "Life Sea", it would be "looking back at the place where it has always been, and there is no wind or rain or sunshine."
——Dong Qing
Some say that strange stories and classic literature are only three steps away in a straight line. But it is precisely these three steps that cannot be completed. The great thing about the Mai family is that he has completed these three steps, and the pace is firm, slow and powerful, and the footprints left behind have become an exquisite and mysterious map.
--Wong Kar-wai
Chapter Preview:
Grandpa said that the front mountain is a dragon change, the dragon sees the head but does not see the tail, can not see the edge, the same as the sea, so it is also called the sea dragon mountain; the back mountain is a tiger that escaped from the front mountain, so it is also called tiger mountain. The tiger has a head and a neck, a back, an ass, a tail, and a left front foot—because it's sleeping on its stomach, it barely reveals one. The mountains and seas are as big as the front, and the mountains are steep, like frozen waves, one wave after another, and the waves are magnificent. The tiger climbed over the mountains and crossed the mountains, walked for eight lifetimes, a lifetime and a thousand years, tired to death, as soon as he escaped from the front mountain, jumped over the creek, escaped from danger, he lay down and slept. In this way, the head is low, the waist is hunched, the ass is cocked, the tail is mopped and thrown out, and the three feet are folded and coiled under the body. That left front foot, but try to spend as much as possible, and cooperate with the tail that is thrown out, one after the other, clamping down on the village.
Ascend to the top of the mountain — the tiger's ass — and look down, the village looks like it's being trampled by the hooves of the sky, and it seems to be gathered together by a command, and it looks tight. In fact, it is scattered, the rows of houses are leaning against each other, the size of the big is small, and the grand style is broken and broken. This is an old-fashioned Jiangnan mountain village, backed by mountains and water, and the houses are densely populated. The houses are mostly two-story buildings, civil structures, powder walls and tiles; the mountains are green mountains, full of moso bamboo and shrubs; the water is clear water, a wide stream, clear to the bottom, the pool is deep and rapid, holding the strength of the mountain. The stream smoothed the pebbles, laid them in the alleys, and were polished smoother and more vigorously by centuries-old footboards and wheels—unicycles, bicycles, tractors. The lane song turns, it seems that there is a dead end everywhere, in fact, it is connected in all directions, and then it leads to the ancestral hall.
The ancestral hall is majestic, and the landlord occupies a large open space and a large tree in the village. The tree is a white fruit tree, also called ginkgo biloba, the trunk is so thick that no one can hold it, the tip is higher than the ancestral hall, and the magpie is very peaceful on it to make a poop, lay eggs, and give birth to the next generation. In the warm spring, the tender green leaf seedlings are like a secret army, drilling out from under the striped bark, and they are out of control, like crazy to the sky and branches to compete for territory; in a few days, the fan-shaped leaves are densely packed, hidden branches, shading the sky, sheltering the wind and rain, and summoning all the sparrows of the village to spend the night. In late autumn and early winter, the wind is a dye that dyes the turquoise leaves layer by layer and then stains them with brass. One night in the cold wind, the leaves fell to the ground, paved the front of the ancestral hall, covered the bluestone slabs, and followed the footsteps of people into the surrounding alleys. The alley is unruly, but it is always deep, the intestines are stretched, wide and wide, narrow and narrow; wide can drive a tractor, narrow can not squeeze a pair of shoulders, only enough for cats and dogs to walk through.
Late spring and early autumn are summer, just like the summer at four or five o'clock in the morning and seven or eight o'clock in the evening are all daylight. Every summer,
The village is like a disease, torturing people to death and living. First of all, busy, the fields have to work, the animals have to wait, the leaks in the houses must be filled, the floods must be prevented, the ditches must be cleared, the pits must be cleared, the cattle pens, the pigsty, the chickens, the duck sheds, and the livestock in the rabbit nests all come to add to the chaos, and a bunch of things are sent out like rashes, and the days are not enough no matter how long they are. Because of the heat, door to door, doors and windows are open, people are open: men are shirtless, wearing shorts, women are also wearing short, shoulders and breasts, showing white flesh, and sweaty faces. People sweat, the walls and furniture are also sweaty, wet and wet. The village is covered in a mountain nest, with no ventilation on three sides, the heat cannot be dispersed, it is smothered into a miasma, climbing the wall, or hiding in a dark corner.
Although the wind was wrapped in the stench, everyone still moved out of the table and chairs, spread out in the alley to eat, cool off, talk, just a few feet away, and even the gutter under their feet. The gutters were rotten with dead rats, mud,, chicken dung, the and urine of children, whispering in the dark and spitting out foul smell. But what is this? We are not afraid of stink. Only insects are afraid of stink, and the enemy is afraid to spray and die. How can people live because they are afraid of stink? Who is going to pour the dung? Who sprays pesticides? Everyone rushes to do these tasks, because it is light, and you can also take care of your own crops.
In short, every summer, the village is like a shelled rice dumpling, slimy and smelly baked, people are always busy nagging, and all kinds of insects are always restless: flies, mosquitoes, crickets, fireflies, geckos, grasshoppers, ants, dragonflies, grasshoppers, centipedes, poisonous snakes, lizards, caterpillars, sprung up from all directions, looking for the dead and living into the pile, adding to our lives, adding to our lives, adding chaos, trouble, illness, waiting for winter to clean up.
In the winter, the village is like a condom, suddenly closed, cold, quiet. Especially on snowy days, it is quiet to plain, cobblestoned lanes inside and outside, chickens and dogs have no shadow, snow falls silently, and shadows are sparse. There was snow, and even if someone walked by, they couldn't hear the footsteps of each person. The snow is like a planer in a carpentry room, a mold in a pastry shop, and the various footsteps of each person are planed into one shape, and there is only one sound: click.
Click————
Click————
Click————
The voice is porcelain, oppressive, monotonous, stiff, not like people walking, like pebbles walking. Like a pebble that has been dead for a thousand years, one piece—perhaps two pieces—has become a sperm, alive, drilled out from under the snow, jumped on the snow, zombie-like. A person walks by, the sound is out of the ordinary difference, not click, but click! It is sharper than sharp, hard, sharp and short.
Kah!
Kah!
Kah!
The sound was harsh and frightening, like frozen snow being cut by a knife and hammered.
This voice often resounded in the hazy light of dawn or in the quiet moonlight of the night, appearing abrupt, bold, fierce, murderous in the cramped alley, jumping on the roof and rising into the air, loud in the sky, empty and distant in silence, as if coming from a black cloud or the moon.
Whenever this voice sounded, Grandpa said, "Listen, the eunuch has come home." Or: "The eunuch is out again." ”
Hearing the same voice, the father laughed: "Hey, the colonel is home." Or: "The Colonel is out again." ”