Text / Ji Hongwei
If Bangkok, known as the "City of Angels", "The Capital of Buddhism" and "Venice of the East", is a magical city, then Fu Zhen's novel "Zebra" (People's Literature Publishing House, January 2022) is a boundary-breaking text with Bangkok as a Pandora's box, with female consciousness, women's emotional privacy, and women's marriage and childbirth as the main carriers. The creative vision of the work is extremely broad. For the fertility topics faced by women around the world, there is not only the thickness of the intertwining and collision of Eastern and Western cultures, but also the breadth of exploring the development of medical science and technology; both feminist and gender ethics debate and analysis, as well as the depth of individual consciousness opening inward and outward, supplemented by the amazing travelogue writing and suspenseful storyline of Thailand, bringing readers a real "miracle journey".
Image source: The movie "Detective Chinatown"
The protagonist's journey to Bangkok in Suang is a magical exploration everywhere he goes. While she was waiting for the miracle, she was also witnessing the miracle happening. From renting apartments to IVF hospitals, from street bars to Buddhist monasteries, from oversized bazaars to Thai massages, from youth hostels to island night markets... In a foreign country across regions, there are not only weather and leisurely things, but also customs and anecdotes. That's much more than all of this "miracle journey." Driven by the desire to have children, Suang came to Thailand alone due to three congenital miscarriages to achieve pregnancy and fertility with the help of PGS technology. "All babies are miracles, but IVF is a real miracle." In this sense, Suang's "warrior" behavior itself has magical overtones.
In addition, the unexpected reunion with Alex who has been separated for ten years, the acquaintance with Alan Stranger Road, the same disease, and the brief intersection with the alien Bob add a touch of suspense to this exotic trip. The differences between Eastern and Western cultures, the interweaving of tradition and modernity, the collision of ethics and technology, the dense zebra sculptures around the altar of the "Elephant State", the acceptance of monks and playboys, the rich and the poor, the sensory pleasures and Buddhist Qing xiu are incompatible but do not interfere with each other; the national movement in the country of smiles is Muay Thai; the most beautiful girl is not a woman, the most depressed bartender is the former CIA... Combining the sublime and the lowly, the sea and the flames, under the hedonistic atmosphere of the spaceship-like mega-malls and the apocalyptic carnivals, Bangkok is a strange mixture of the past and the future.
All of this is a writing of a woman's magical experience. If Thailand is a tropical tourist destination rich in pineapples, coconuts and mangoes, it is also a place of miracles. There is no scenery in familiar places, and miracles are always in the unknown far away. This is Su Ang's desire to take risks and challenge himself, and it is also a difference with her "safe" husband Hirakawa. "Zebra" recreates the real exotic travel experience with artistic fiction through the writer's personal experience. Presents the reader with a colorful picture of Thai style.
"Zebra" is not only a colorful novel, but also a work that confronts secrets. In particular, the topic of women's fertility is rarely expressed in detail in the form of long pieces in literary works, which is also the original intention of the author to create novels. After three miscarriages, Su Ang traveled thousands of miles to a foreign country alone, just to seek a chance to become a mother, which in itself has a strong sense of secrecy and personal color. Later, the trip to Bangkok staged a magical story beyond Suang's imagination. The unexpected reunion with old friend Alex for ten years makes this friendship ambiguously entangled on the edge of crossing the line, "in a long walk, the soul occasionally flies into the air", truly presenting the emotional world of female contradictions. "Those who are lost are lost, and those who meet will meet again." Passing by the far side of the world, and reuniting after saying goodbye from the vast sea of people, is it fate or fate? Suang witnessed not only the miracle of fertility, but also the miracle of reunion. Witness secrets in the magic, glimpse the magic in the secret.
Image source: Movie "Tai 囧"
In terms of creative dimension and artistic vision, "Zebra" witnesses the magic of the unknown world and also reveals the secret garden of the characters through the continuous transformation of time and space, with the brushwork of changing scenery step by step, left and right. The most typical are Alex and Joy's fake death scams, "reincarnation", and Alex's intermediary companies on the verge of deception and sin. The darkness of human nature and the absurdity of the world may surprise the Buddha. Regarding magic and secrets, the novel provides readers with only the tip of the iceberg in the real world, in addition to fertility disorders, how many unsolvable mysteries are hidden in the world that even science can't do, how many mysteries we don't know, how many secrets lurk in everyone's heart, maybe we don't know.
Critic Zhang Li said: "Gender issues are the most inconspicuous and all-encompassing, the weakest but also the most life-energizing literary nerves, it has a thousand and one shots, it represents a writer's modern consciousness, degree of civilization and ability to think." "Reflections on gender issues, women's consciousness, and feminist voices run through Zebra. As a woman with fertility disorders, the protagonist Su Ang is both an individual being and a group of female representatives, with both individualized traits and commonalities among female groups.
As an intellectual woman, Su Ang wants to become a social elite that conforms to the mainstream, wants to play a more correct role than her true self, and wants to stand at the same male height as her partner. The "test tube tour group" that Si Si, Xiao Zhong, Yu Jie, Chen Qian and other hardships met in Bangkok is a gathering of female consciousness. Through the same and different encounters of women in childbirth, the novel conveys the modern consciousness, civilization and thinking ability of women at present. It not only has the survival experience of the same disease, but also goes straight to the nerves of social marriage and family. Because she learned that she was not pregnant, she cut her wrists and committed suicide, and died in a foreign country, which is the most typical case of this group of "test tube tour groups", which makes people secretly sad and gives people a continuous shock.
From "not wanting" to "not being able to", and because "can't" becomes "wanting more". "Zebra" revolves around a woman's secret fertility main line, narrating the twists and turns of women's bizarre mental journey. Become the emotional entanglement of the self, the wonder of the journey of living in the present, the journey of self-help full of exoticism, through twists and turns, harvest miracles. "Pain is inevitable, but in addition to suffering, you can choose to gain more from it, and even make it a part of yourself." Ending a past, tearing down the walls of the heart and letting new light shine in is the biggest takeaway from Suang's trip to Bangkok. "Zebra" is undoubtedly an important harvest of artistic exploration with the female spirit as the writing perspective, the cross-regional writing direction as the writing direction, and the extraterritorial extension as the artistic exploration.
(The original title of this article is "Exotic Writing Full of Magic and Facing Secrets", which has been deleted)
This article is a book review of "Zebra" by Fu Zhen, authorized by the People's Literature Publishing House)
Selected Chinese books
Zebra
Fu Zhen
People's Literature Publishing House
January 2022
Zebra is Fu Zhen's first novel seven years after his departure. After experiencing three congenital recurrent miscarriages, the 32-year-old Suang traveled to Thailand alone to seek help from PGS technology, prompted by fertility obsession and self-exploration. The works start from the common plight of contemporary women, tell a story of self-search and reconciliation, observe and explore the marriage, family and personal choices of women of different classes, and are full of strong speculative consciousness and cultural tension.
Good books in Chinese
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