Wang Xufeng's novel "Wangjiangnan": an excellent work worth collecting

Editor's Note

"WangjiangNan" is the latest novel created by Mao Dun Literature Award winner Wang Xufeng in the past 26 years. The novel tells the ups and downs of the Hang family of the Jiangnan tea family and the fate of the characters in the nearly 20 years before and after the founding of New China. Writers write about tea people and tea, in the earth-shaking era, write about the choice and opening, integration and progress of Chinese in the midst of jiangnan smoke and rain; in the excitement of the times and the thunder of the wind, the novel is far low and swinging back to the intestines, writing out the aroma and tea nature, writing the poetry and power of Jiangnan culture, and writing about China's demeanor, feelings and character. The story of the Hang family is also a Chinese story, which integrates historical memories and emotional imagination, which is not only a reconstruction of the passing time, but also an exploration of the modern inheritance of cultural traditions. The novel provides a new narrative of the upheaval and permanence of Chinese life and spirit, witnessing a century-long China in personal history, family history, and national history.

An excellent work worth collecting

Wen 丨 Hu Ping

I would like to solemnly say that Wang Xufeng's new book "Wangjiangnan" is a book worth buying, reading and collecting. This evaluation is quite high today.

Wang Xufeng is famous for his "Tea Man Trilogy", when the three works were not completed, and the first two "Southern Jiamu" and "The Prince of Never Sleep" won the Mao Dun Literature Award. Wang Xufeng's award was once regarded as a dark horse, after 22 years, the tea man novel has added a new member, "Wangjiangnan" almost turned out to be praised, and continued to be printed, monopolizing the scenery for a while. In my opinion, this is a continuation of the fifth Mao Dun Literature Award ceremony, and the author has not lived up to this award.

Wang Xufeng wrote tea, wrote about the chinese tea and the chinese tea art of the fascinating, has made the reader fascinated, and further wrote the tea ceremony and tea culture, and then further wrote the tea culture on people's edification, wrote out the national spirit of tea people, can be described as writing to the extreme. The tea body is filled with a peaceful and quiet Taoist qi, born in the Spirit Mountain, nourished by rain and dew, sun and moonlight, which can make the tea people's qinghe qi passed down from generation to generation, and quietly shape the temperament of people between heaven and earth. In "WangjiangNan", the most peaceful person is the protagonist Hang Jiahe, and of course, there is a generation of tea saints Mr. Wu Juenong and so on. In the book, many characters of the Hang family appear. Regarding the plot of Hang Jiahe, the proportion is not significantly superior, and it is even less than the text involving Hang Jiaping and Luo Li, but why does he give such a deep impression and occupy a central position in the work? First, naturally, because he is the backbone of the family, he has always maintained the continuation of the family property and its social value. At a time when China's tea industry fell into the lowest point in history during the war and chaos, he overcame various difficulties, protected valuable industrial resources, and made outstanding contributions to the revival of the tea industry after the founding of New China. The second is that this person is not alarmed, and ruoding the sea god needle generally stabilized the pattern of the Hang family during the period of fierce social changes and guarded the family. During the period of japanese aggression, in order not to accompany the Japanese to play chess, he absolutely cut off one of his fingers, showing his outstanding national integrity. At the same time, he also has his own code of conduct. When the Kuomintang was defeated, her daughter Hang Pan fell in love with Cao Jiayuan, a pilot who fled to Taiwan, and her birth mother, Fang Xileng, was furious with Hang Jiahe when she learned of this, asking him why he did not stop it, saying that the Defeat of the Kuomintang was already determined, and how could he still find such a person. But he was very calm, saying that it was good to see the young man, and another reason was that he had never seen Pan'er "laugh so much" - in this attitude, there are many things that people can taste. After the founding of New China, he was able to judge the hour and size up the situation, and when others could not see the situation clearly, he took the initiative to donate his family property, and under his persistent management, Hangzhou Tea ushered in the innovation of technology, realized machine tea making, and went out of the country. At one point, Director Yang and Hang Jiaping came to mobilize him to take up a post at a state-run tea factory, and it was a moment that, once decided, had a long-term impact. At this time, Hang Jiahe insisted that making black tea was more conducive to exchanging foreign exchange for the country and contributing, and was not moved. After hearing Hang Jiaping mention the needs of the volunteer army, he wavered and promised to contribute to the state-run tea farm, but did not take the salary, which side was busy with which side, taking into account both public and private, and smoothly resolved a crisis encountered by the tea farm. If you change people, the ending may be completely different. Therefore, this character is very unusual, and his demeanor is reminiscent of the smell of clear tea. Life is like tea, tea people, gentlemen also. Hang Jiahe did not move on the surface, and the heart inside was like a rock, like tea tumbling and floating in the bitter years, like tea brewed by boiling water over and over again, slowly emitting the pulse fragrance of life. The reader is enough to learn from his image some of the most important qualities in life.

The era involved in "Wangjiangnan" is from the 1940s to the 1960s, filling the gap in the historical period in the "Tea Man Trilogy". This historical period is unprecedentedly complex, involving the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, as well as the revolutionary changes in the social system and social form, and the impact, turning and impact on the lives of the characters in the works are significant. After reading the whole book, closing our eyes and recalling, the many scenes that remain in our minds are extremely shocking and constantly evolving rapidly, making the work a real epic in reflecting social life, an epic in the style of "White Deer Plain". The so-called epic should have the quality of portraying reality, and at this point, "Wangjiang Nan" has done it. Moreover, the literary presentation of history is not the history of historiography, but mainly the history of the different destinies of the people in the tide of history. Historical narratives are not moralized, but characters in literary works need to be morally evaluated frequently. The tide of history is full of mud and sand, and the surrounding area is often full of fog, making it difficult to identify the direction, and personal choices may leave a lifelong mark. For all this, Wang Xufeng made an unadorned narrative. The Hang family has produced martyrs, traitors, battlefields, prisoners, confusion, and national elites, which is the family history in the novel.

Hang Jiaping is different from his brother, he did not inherit the ancestral tea industry, and he threw himself into the revolution very early and followed the new wind. He was very brave and shrewd, carrying out counter-insurgency work under Chen Yi's eyes, acting opportunistically and making many achievements. When the War of Resistance was won, people were in Hangzhou, but they never returned to their homes in Hangzhou. After liberation, he was very busy at work and had an important identity, but he stood aside because he liked women and was accidentally reported by the reporter "Braji". But at the business meeting, he shot up and made his attitude righteous and righteous, which was full of applause. Later, there was a comeback and another setback. Hang Jiaping is the most intriguing and interesting character in the novel, with outstanding strengths and weaknesses, and a certain contrast with his brother Hang Jiahe at home. This contrast first occurred in the eyes of Ye Zi, who was his wife, but did not really fall in love with him, and after he ran away, Ye Zi gradually empathized with Hang Jiahe and married him. However, Hang Jiaping still has valuable points, and the repeated setbacks in life cannot hide the contributions he has made to the nation. He is a living person, like people are easy to encounter in life, can not be concluded in a sentence or two, but need to slowly understand his unique existence according to the intermittent description of him in the book. It is a vivid literary figure.

The plot about Luo Li seems to be richer than the plot of Hang Jiaping. He was an intelligence officer of the party's intrusion into the national army, and he made outstanding achievements, but after the sacrifice of the introducer who joined the party, he could not confirm his identity for a long time. Luo Li was strong in party and still went to the Korean battlefield without being completely trusted. He was captured in order to save Dr. Zou, and after returning to China, he was beaten into another book and began to fall into a more difficult situation. A very soul-touching scene in the novel takes place when he comes to the Hang family and sees his wife Hang Jicao again. Ji Cao almost couldn't recognize him, he seemed to be a lot shorter, like a street vendor. The two sat facing each other, like strangers, and could not even think of hugging. But Luo Li is still a man, he lives strongly according to the benchmark of being a man, and even touches the imprisoned enemy Wu Gen, who reveals key clues to him before his death. Luo Li lived through two distinct eras, but the change of times was delayed in his place, making him a tried and tested revolutionary. In him, he shows the conflict between the fog of history and the tragic fate of the individual, which cannot be completely avoided in human life, but on the contrary deeply impresses the reader and makes the reader deeply convinced by the author's mature observation of the intricacies of historical phenomena. Reading "Wangjiangnan", we can think of the kind of roar that appears in "Quiet Don", and by this time we have realized the author's extraordinary features.

Of course, the emotional entanglements and love stories between the characters in the novel are also important contents that attract reading, and they always affect people's desires. In this regard, the work still emits the tea aroma of Longjing, reflecting traditional humanistic values. The biggest feature of the women of the Hang family is that they fall in love with a man, they have no remorse, they are never disturbed by worldly concepts, and they have also experienced various tests like men. Hang Jicao waited for Luo Li with all his youth, and Hang Pan waited for Cao Jiayuan to be almost hopeless. Hang Pan and Cao Jiayuan only knew and fell in love for more than ten days, and the two were cut off from each other across the strait. Year after year, neither side knows if the other is still looking forward to it — and even if there is, there is no room for each other to meet. But love worked wonders, and Cao Jiayuan used the Korean War to perform a mission, parachuted over North Korea, and after being imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp, he did not even dare to confess that he chose this move for a girl. After returning to the mainland, he finally appeared in front of his sweetheart. At that time, Hangpan's heart coincided with him. This is also related to the attitude of the parent Hang Jiahe, who has said that even if his daughter will follow the Cao family to prison, she will be helpless... All the touching stories of the Hang family are inseparable from the family's long-standing way of being a person.

It should also be mentioned that the character structure of "Wangjiangnan" is unusual, and all kinds of character group portraits in the novel are included in a large family by the author, and make each other form a complex relationship, in dynamic, making people full of tension and suspense between people, increasing the potential of each character portrayal, and also making the whole work appear to be integrated, this design is a brilliant experiment. It can be seen that the author's energy, to endure the twists and turns, and the difficult problems he faced in constructing this novel are quite considerable, and Wang Xufeng has persevered in order to dedicate a masterpiece to the reader. In this long process, the vision, patience, painstaking efforts and sense of responsibility shown by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House are equally impressive. Producing a good book is not easy.

Two recent novels have been of unprecedented prestige, "Wangjiangnan" and "The World of Man" are both exciting, and the reasons for their success are similar.

Spring is not old, and new tea will be tried on new fire

Wen 丨 Pan Kaixiong

After 26 years after the opening chapter of the Tea Man Trilogy, "Southern Youjiamu", and 22 years after the publication of the final work "Building Grass for the City", Wang Xufeng finally completed the creation of his fourth novel, "Wangjiangnan". According to the writer's own account, this new novel actually began to start in 2013, "but it was delayed again and again, tens of thousands of words were written, but it was overturned, and even 100,000 words were overturned." What kind of work did this require her to prepare for so long? A novel of nearly 400,000 words took the writer up to 8 years.

The main content of "Wangjiangnan" not only does not leave the tea and tea people that Wang Xufeng is good at and obsessed with, but I also think that using the "Tea People Trilogy" as a reference can better examine the characteristics of this new novel. If I can sum it up in one sentence, it is that this is a new masterpiece of novels that is both continuous and has many differences and creations.

The so-called "continuation", "Wangjiangnan" is still based on the sadness and joy of the fate of several generations of tea people in hangzhou' tea family with the surname of Hangzhou as the main body, presenting the spirit of tea people, Jiangnan culture, and family and country feelings, reflecting a historical process of a century-old China in the history of that person, family history and national history.

The so-called "many differences and creations" not only means that "Wangjiangnan" fills in the history of the "Tea Man Trilogy" from the victory of the War of Resistance to the ten years before the catastrophe of the "Cultural Revolution", but in this period of nearly 20 years, many earth-shaking events have taken place in this ancient land of China, such as the collapse of the Kuomintang regime to Taiwan, the birth of the People's Republic of China, the establishment and implementation of the socialist system, the reform of the household registration system, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and so on. It also refers to a more free and conscious creative state that Wang Xufeng showed in the creation of this new work. This state, if summed up in one sentence, is more confident, which manifests itself in at least three ways.

First of all, as a long novel with fiction as the most important stylistic identity, Wang Xufeng has freely embedded some real history in it. Truth be told, combining fiction and nonfiction requires courage and ability. Although it is not uncommon to see brain-burning theoretical disputes and creative practices about what is non-fiction and how to embed several non-fiction components in the so-called fictional genre, such behavior does need to bear certain risks in creation, and if you are not careful, you will fall into the trap of "distortion" and "loss". I believe that Wang Xufeng, who has a wealth of creative experience, will not fail to understand the risk, but she is still free and persistent to go against the wind in her own creation. The work begins with a short intersection between Wu Juenong, a non-fiction Chinese "tea saint" and Tang Enbo, the real chief official in the Shanghai area after the victory of the War of Resistance; then there is a fictitious dialogue between the protagonist of the work, Er Hangjia, and the fictional character, and the real Chen Bray, who is known as Jiang's "literary boldness", in the tea house by the West Lake, and the scene where Hang Jia and Hang Jia get up in the middle of the night and rush alone to Wuyun Mountain to finally bid farewell to Chen Brei; and then there are the Kuomintang elders. The intersection between Chen Yi and Tang Enbo, then chairman of Zhejiang Province, and the visit of Voroshilov, then chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, to Meijiawu in Hangzhou's tea town in 1957, such as the intersection between Chen Yi and Tang Enbo in early 1949, and the visit of Premier Zhou Enlai to Meijiawu, the tea town of Hangzhou, appear in Wangjiangnan. I admit that in the above-mentioned writing of real historical figures and events, there are occasionally a very few places that are not exquisite and can be described more freely, but on the whole, they are very natural and smooth, and every time these real historical figures or events are embedded, it is indeed out of the needs of the work itself, in the words of the current "fashion", it is to "empower" to reflect a certain intention of the writer, which is Wang Xufeng's first self-confidence.

Secondly, as a long novel in which tea people occupy the main body of the story, it is inevitable to describe and introduce tea culture and tea knowledge. Of course, this kind of introduction is usually expressed or transmitted through the advancement of the characters or storyline in the work, and by means of dialogue or description. However, Wang Xufeng seems to be completely unfettered by these stereotypes, and in "Wangjiangnan", there will be large sections of introductory texts that are free from the storyline. For example, about China's tea affairs, she started from Shennong and used 7 pages to introduce it; about the history of the introduction of Chinese tea to Russia, she talked about it from the 6th century BC, until Liu Junzhou went to Russia in 1893, and the whole 3 pages of the page were also completely independent. What is strange is that such a "taboo" writing does not feel wandering and abrupt when reading in "Wangjiangnan", and there is no sense of "violation". Thinking about the reason, it is probably because Wang Xufeng's performance and description of the tea people's tea affair in the whole work has already opened the way and paved the way for this "wandering", which is her second self-confidence.

Finally, since the background of the story of "Wangjiangnan" is mainly in the first ten years of the founding of New China, this is of course an era of great change in which the old is greeted with the new and the old alternates between the old and the new, and the major historical events such as land reform, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the Great Bang and the Great Leap Forward also occurred in this period. Looking back at these today, of course, we will find some unreasonable and unsatisfactory fragments, such as how to screen cadres working on the hidden front. Amplification in "Mingfang", bubbles during the Great Leap Forward, and so on. Based on the specific historical stage and era background at that time, the occurrence and development of these major historical events did have their own reasonable logic and historical necessity. In the face of such obvious "paradoxes", how to deal with them is precisely a test of how a writer understands history, development, and so on. We see that Wang Xufeng's handling is not to evade or detour, but to face it graphically and rationally, handle it properly and appropriately, not only acknowledge the rationality of the existence of a specific period of history, but also do not avoid problems and contradictions, and calmly and calmly sum up his historical lessons. Isn't this history-oriented, future-oriented attitude the third manifestation of her creative self-confidence?

In the "Afterword" of "Wangjiangnan", Wang Xufeng frankly said: "No matter how history advances, how culture evolves, how the world changes, how the heavens and the earth are broken, people's hearts and destinies are carried out in a coherent manner, and the Chinese nation has been moving forward in difficulties and twists and turns." To write such a long story, we must immerse ourselves in the long river of history. Only in this way will we not simply divide the impacts into movements, which are cultural units that influence each other. I believe that there will always be people who march towards the light, and no matter how winding and twisting the history of the Chinese nation is, it has never lost the elegance and steady demeanor of the tea people. I think that such an understanding and open-mindedness may also be a strong internal support for Wang Xufeng's creation to move towards self-confidence.

The tea spirit related to the national fortune and the national rejuvenation

Wen 丨 He Shaojun

"Wangjiangnan" is Wang Xufeng's new work, which is in line with her "Tea Man Trilogy" more than 20 years ago. As a new work, it is already charming to enjoy alone; if you read it together with the "Tea Man Trilogy", you will find that Wang Xufeng's "Tea Man World" is more complete, and its ideological and artistic realm is more perfect.

This is a novel that profoundly explains the "spirit of tea", and it is also a vivid history of the development of modern Chinese tea. These are all very grandiose content. Grandeur is the most prominent feature of Wang Xufeng's "Wangjiangnan" and "Tea Man Trilogy".

Tea, originally the most everyday. With tea as the theme, it is most suitable for expressing daily life and daily forms, writing about life and human nature. But when Wang Xufeng writes tea, he does not make up his mind on everyday life, but pursues a grand theme.

The nature of tea is peaceful, and the nature of wine is intense. Tea and wine may form a complementary relationship. Wang Xufeng wrote peace as the basic spiritual trait of tea, and the two brothers in the novel are called Jiahe and the younger brother is called Jiaping. There is also this sentence in the novel: "The traditional concept of Chinese has always referred to the ideal state of man and the world as 'harmony'. Harmony is precious, and tea as a symbol of 'harmony' is the most appropriate. These all show Wang Xufeng's annotations on tea.

In Wang Xufeng's view, the nature of tea represents the typical character of Chinese, and the spirit of tea also reflects the national spirit of Chinese. In the novel, it is repeatedly argued that China is the homeland of tea, and it is also said that foreigners call China "CHINA", and this CHINA does not necessarily refer to porcelain, but to tea. Tea is CHINA, porcelain is also CHINA, which really has a deep meaning. It may be understood that tea is the Chinese, and porcelain is the face of Chinese. The inside, plus the face, is the complete CHINA. So I appreciate the details in this novel. There is another detail in the novel that supports this. When the Hang family met on the night of the "sacrifice stove", Hang Jiahe proposed that everyone "drink tea seriously". How is it to drink tea in a serious way? It is to choose the right cup. He selected a set of Xuanyao blue and white tea bowls for the newcomers Cao Jiayuan and Hang Pan. The porcelain tire of this tea bowl is white and delicate, and the "Su Ni Bo Qing" green material imported from Nanyang is applied to the glaze, and the color material is deep into the glaze after firing, which is clear and bright, and there is also an inscription of Zhang Dai on it. Zhang Dai is not Wang Xufeng who arbitrarily takes an ancient literati to fill the number, Zhang Dai is also a literati who is good at tea tasting, and he pays great attention to tea sets when drinking tea.

In order to fully explain the "harmony" spirit of tea, Wang Xufeng has created different personalities in different characters. The "harmony" spirit of Chinese is not to reject romance and enthusiasm, but this romance and enthusiasm will manifest itself in another way. Chinese the treatment of tea and the spirit of tea embodied in Chinese determine the daily life style and daily aesthetic taste of Chinese. "He" has become the way "Hang Jia He" behaves in the world, and it is also their inner spiritual pursuit. This is fully demonstrated in the novel. That's one aspect. But that's not the point of the novel, which is all about the grandeur.

"Grandeur" is the highlight of this novel. Chinese how to deal with grand events in the spirit of tea, especially those related to state affairs and civil affairs, as well as great right and wrong and great righteousness. At this time, "and" is transformed into a kind of tenacity, a kind of perseverance, a kind of calmness, and a kind of perseverance. The "faces" embodied in different characters are different, but they combine to form a "and" word, which is the spirit of tea. This is the greatest contribution of Wang Xufeng's four novels, that is, to write the grandeur of tea.

In order to enrich the connotation of grandeur, "Wangjiangnan" adopts the method of connecting fiction with historical reality. The novel directly writes about a large number of real historical figures, such as Chiang Kai-shek and Zhou Enlai, who only write their sporadic fragments in an interlude way. There are also some characters that run through the development of the plot, such as Wu Juenong, Chen Yi, Zhu Kezhen, Chen Bray and so on. I find that this is also a trend in contemporary novel narrative, that is, to introduce non-fiction content into fictional stories, so that real historical scenes overlap with fictional spaces, and real characters and fictional characters can restore history together. This, of course, reflects a new view of the novel, which removes the gap between the fictional world and the real world, allowing the reader to experience the story told by the novel in the realm of reality.

This issue was also addressed in a recent conversation between Ai Wei and Kim In-soon, and a number of novels written by Kim In-soon also have this tendency, and Ai Wei believes that Kim In-soon wrote this way to "create a fictional effect that is not fictional." But Wang Xufeng does not seem to want to catch up with fashion and introduce real people in the novel, because she still follows the pure realism of the Tea Man Trilogy in her novel view. Her approach of connecting fiction with historical reality is entirely intended to better express the thematic connotations. The novel is about tea, a novel about tea culture, but Wang Xufeng is not writing about culture for culture, she is going to write about the great historical changes in China in the past hundred years through tea culture.

One of the basic themes of the novel is "Tea luck is connected to the national fortune, and the tea industry helps the country prosper". The period of time involved in "Wangjiangnan" is about 1945 to 1965, which is the historical period of earth-shaking changes in Chinese society. The direction of the country's destiny is often concentrated in the actions of important historical figures, so when Wang Xufeng wants to reflect how the tea people and the tea industry are connected to the national fortune and national rejuvenation, he feels that directly involving historical figures will be more conducive to the expression of this theme.

Of course, this also brings up the question of how to make fiction and non-fiction natural and perfect in narrative. In how to deal with this issue, it is clear that the different attitudes of serious literature and online literature are distinguished. Online literature easily dispels this problem with network rules such as crossing and overhead, but serious literature views this as an artistic challenge of "dancing in shackles". It can be seen that Wang Xufeng still has a lot of effort in this regard. For example, in the novel, it is written that Zhou Enlai accompanied Voroshilov of the Soviet Union to visit the Tea Town of Hangzhou in 1957. Wang Xufeng wrote in detail about this historical and real event, while cleverly embedding Hang Jiahe's actions into this event. But at the same time, she will not change the authenticity of history with fiction, and will not write that Hang Jiahe has direct contacts with Zhou Enlai, but write that Hang Jiahe wants to send tea to Gai Tianjia, Gai Tiantian has always been drinking Hangjia's Longjing, and she did not expect that when he went to deliver tea, it was Zhou Enlai and his party who went to Gai Tianjia. This made the Hangfu family talk warmly around Zhou Enlai.

Wang Xufeng boldly let Wu Juenong join the stories of fictional characters such as Hang Jiahe, which not only highlighted the brilliance of Wu Juenong through fictional characters, but also consolidated the theme of the novel through the real history of Wu Juenong. Wu Juenong is known as the "contemporary tea saint", and he was probably the first to write an article arguing that China is the homeland of tea. There is also an anecdote about Chen Brei finding a burial place for himself in Hangzhou, which was originally when Chen Brei was the director of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education, drinking tea with his wife at the Hupao Temple, seeing the surrounding scenery and sighing, hoping to be buried here after death, and his wife really bought six acres of land nearby. Wang Xufeng placed this anecdote on Hang Jiahe, which is not only natural, but also the story is also very exciting, which is very powerful for shaping Hang Jiahe and this character. Of course, how to make the narrative connecting fiction and non-fiction more mature, Wang Xufeng can also polish it in detail.

"Wangjiangnan" as a cultural novel

Wen 丨 Yang Qingxiang

Wang Xufeng's latest novel "Wangjiangnan" is narrated around 1945 to 1965, such a time is actually between the early "Tea Man Trilogy" "The Prince of Never Sleep" and "Building Grass for the City", although there is a slight superposition in time, but on the whole, this work actually echoes with the "Tea Man Trilogy", forming a very complete and unified historical narrative. This "wholeness" is not only the continuation of the time narrated and the background of the story, but also the internal consistency of the theme, and this consistent theme is to write the history of the times, the history of the nation and the history of the homeland with the history of the "tea people". The completion of "Wangjiangnan" is not only a continuation of the previous "Tea Man Trilogy", but also a deepening. In this way, the "Tea Man Trilogy" has evolved into the "Tea Man Quadrilogy", but if you change your perspective, it can also be said to be the "Era Quadrilogy" - the history of the Tea Man is the history of the times. In the great history of China's modern transformation, tea people are only one of the groups with unique occupations or industries, but the fate of this group is inevitably woven into the process of this great history, and individuals and times, individuals and home countries are organically linked through the highly symbolic thing of "tea".

The novel is not history, history records what happened, but the novel has to shape the characters and bring what happened back to the center of the stage. Novels, in particular, should shape series characters, and the success of character building determines the artistic level of the novel. There are two sets of character sequences in the long story "Wangjiangnan", one group is non-fictional, such as Zhou Enlai, Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Bray, Chen Yi, etc., and the other group is fictional characters, including the Hang family brothers, Ye Zi and so on. From the technical point of view of novel writing, fictional characters are easier to write than non-fictional characters. In particular, the "non-fiction" characters in "Wangjiangnan" involve important historical figures, which have very complex historical factors, and the treatment of these characters can very clearly see the foundation and level of a writer. Wang Xufeng's pen is pharaoh and spicy, she did not preset the image of these characters, but let the characters "act" by themselves, through specific details to expand their personality features. For example, the details of Chen Brei drinking tea in the tea house vividly portray a new and old staff literati. If you borrow the phrase painting, you actually use the way of light ink lighting, rather than the way of heavy ink redrawing. This light ink actually forms a counterpoint between it and the Jiangnan landscape, and the characters are pointed out with a single click, avoiding the excessive force of the portrayal of "non-fiction historical figures". "WangjiangNan" has a good balance, and these characters are also vivid and vivid.

Whether it is "Tea Man Trilogy" or "Wangjiangnan", the relationship between "tea" and "people" is one of the core keys of the novel, which is of course no problem. "Wangjiangnan" is an important work about the history of tea, tea people, and the development of tea. But I think its significance or value can not be limited to this point, "Wangjiangnan" is also a novel about Jiangnan culture. Cultural fiction once flourished in contemporary literature, such as Wang Zengqi and Acheng, but it has gradually become rarer because it requires a very high comprehensive cultural literacy of the author. Through the shaping of Jiangnan cultural traditions and cultural accumulation (the main symbol is "tea"), "Wangjiangnan" dissolves the historical "upheaval" with the "constancy" of culture. This is the law of history; "I have a pot of tea that can comfort people's hearts", which is the nourishment of culture. China's classical literature has always had Jiangnan, mainly love Jiangnan, remember Jiangnan, but there is no "Wangjiangnan", Wang Xufeng's "Wangjiangnan" actually enriches the tradition of Jiangnan writing, enriches the geographical map of our imagination of Jiangnan culture, and allows us to have a more dimensional cognition and understanding of the genealogy and context of Jiangnan culture.