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Ice cubes between literary and martial arts singing

"Literature and Drama Martial Singing", by Mu Xinxin, Life, Reading, Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, January 2022 edition, 69.00 yuan.

□ Huang Li Bao

Before reading Mu Xinxin's writings, most of them were scattered in different anthologies, or concise and concise, or decisive, or clear-cut, or rigid and soft, leaving a different impression every time. Recently, reading Mu Xinxin's prose collection "Literary Drama and Martial Singing", some of the previous fragmented impressions converged and became a whole. Essays, essays, drama reviews, film reviews, book reviews, miscellaneous talks, prologues, they provide the details of life, inner secrets, and praiseworthy insights, together constitute Mu Xinxin's real and interesting soul world.

Mu Xinxin is a journalism major, which has allowed her to develop a writing style that is straightforward. Later, she studied classical drama with a doctorate and seemed to have found her ideals, and her Peking Opera script "Mirror Sea Soul" was also put on the stage and received good reviews. As Mu Xinxin, who came out of the drama family, her book exudes a strong dramatic emotion, the past of the pear garden, like a distant and near human heart, feelings flowing in between, dense branches blooming like flowers. At the age of seven, Mu Xinxin actually watched seven "The Legend of the White Snake" in the theater for seven days, which shows that the drama has affected her later life since childhood, and the drama has become her dependence and sustenance. Through the dramatic life of others, she has the cold ice on the glacier of life, she writes about the love affair between Mei Lanfang and Meng Xiaodong, it is a long talk, but it is the search for the ice of life of the characters in Pear Garden, restoring the historical details to the freezing point but revealing a human touch, as if Márquez wrote at the beginning of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" that "many years later, Colonel Aureliano stood in front of the execution team, and he was about to remember the distant afternoon when his father took him to visit the ice cube", the dream surfaced, bringing a sense of trance.

Opera is part of traditional Chinese culture, and Mu Xinxin is deeply nourished by this classical culture. In the book, she writes that the details of her father's willingness to spend money for his daughter's drama are extremely moving, and it is the outstanding tutors who have cultivated Mu Xinxin's talent for drama. Drama became a career she was proud of in her life. Ordinary people say that watching a drama is to watch the hilarity, Mu Xinxin said: "The so-called understanding of drama is to be able to see that others can't see it." Dramatic aesthetics come to her prose with another familiar expression, with long afterglow and novel tone. Many times, the prose reflects the author's real figure, the shadow in the depths, and can even be said to be the author's autobiography. "Literature and Drama Martial Singing" reflects the first half of Mu Xinxin's life, the experience of chasing drama in her youth, the desire for distant places in her youth, the imprint of reading famous works such as "Dream of the Red Chamber", and the personal experience before and after the return of Macao, etc., all of which are as open as the theater. Among them, in many articles, Mu Xinxin wrote his thoughts on "Dream of the Red Chamber", revealing traces of elegance, and even had the impulse to discuss with Cao Xueqin, which shows Mu Xinxin's earnestness. She is never ambiguous when expressing her personal opinions, she is a writer with opinions.

Every writer has his or her own "literary father and mother." Mu Xinxin wrote about Mr. Wang Zengqi many times, seeing him as his teacher in literature. Mr. Wang Zengqi did not really teach Mu Xinxin, but it did not prevent her from listening to the master's teachings and gaining true insights from him. Looking at Mu Xinxin's prose, that calm and calm, integrated into it, not sculpted, really has the shadow of Mr. Wang. Mu Xinxin wrote about Mr. Wang Lao, just like she wrote Tang Xianzu, out of the heart of "déjà vu", the sage Tang Weng who went to Macau has also become Mu Xinxin's confidant. Mu Xinxin loves Tao Yuanming, Su Dongpo, Cao Xueqin, and also has a relationship with famous artists such as Bai Xianyong at the moment, and that ancient and new emotion is hidden in the crystal ice of her words, immersed in a fluttering blue light.

It is said that Yang Xiaolou's drama is sung from the rhyme and elegance, the Tao Bai suppresses the yang and the setback, and the beating is never messy between the hands and feet, and the rhythm is in line with the gong and drum, creating a model of "martial arts singing". Yang Xiaolou is a predecessor, Mu Xinxin has never seen it, but his superb dramatic realm does not affect her yearning. In the writing of literature, Mu Xinxin gained the true meaning from Yang Xiaolou's "martial arts singing", realized the mystery of it, and some unexplored richness was felt and captured by her. Her tepidness, weight-lifting, and ease of playing are a subtle manifestation. In fact, "martial arts literary singing" can also be regarded as a means of literary creation, and there is such a kind of isomorphism and synchronicity of "hermaphroditism". Mu Xinxin named her book "Literary Drama Martial Singing", which is very clever, which is an echo of the master and also the result of her sonorous literary heart. Her heart is like water, writing to the place of agitation, and the water of meekness also turns into blue ice, flashing a faint sharp edge.

As a talented girl raised by the water and soil of Macao south of the south, because the fruit of love is in Beijing, the life of the two cities of Macao and Beijing has become a part of Mu Xinxin's life. The roughness of the north has soaked her warm character in the south, and regional changes have been integrated in writing, making her works both slender, elegant and cheerful, tenacious, passionate and thoughtful. It is the purity of Mu Xinxin's heart that makes her writing without the weirdness and pompousness of other writers. Looking at Mu Xinxin's writing, we know that her cultural inheritance is solemn, but she has the ingenuity of cross-cultural theater, and honesty reveals kindness. Remember what Graham Green said: "A writer must have a little piece of ice in his heart." I think that in the moment of writing, this little ice will emerge from the blue sea inside Mu Xinxin. In articles such as "Lovers in Past Lives" and "Artists Who Prefer Blue", I glimpsed the beauty of her sparkling blue ice cubes and received a hidden echo.

"Literature and Drama Martial Singing" is a love letter written by Mu Xinxin to stage art life, a cultural lesson she gave to Macao, and a song she sang in the face of ups and downs in life. The love of life is transferred to writing, the change of words pulls a certain air current, wandering around, the spiritual effect of the senses is sensitive, and insight makes literature make meaning. Where a person's vision is, its realm is where it is. Mu Xinxin's work has brought her complex cultural experience, while bringing her a broad perspective and understanding, she will feel and observe the life of the image to the reader, such a "literary drama martial singing" is the floating of the language ice at this moment, that stroke by stroke, paddle by paddle, infinitely close to its distant blue light.

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