In 1944, Zhang Ailing met Hu Lancheng.
Because of a "blockade", Hu Lancheng irrepressibly fell in love with Zhang Ailing.
Zhang Ailing was also attracted to Hu Lancheng for his talent, and the two quickly fell in love.
At that time, Hu Lancheng had a family, and many people were very unhappy about their feelings.
Shen Ning once commented on the feelings of the two men:
"Zhang Ailing and Hu Lancheng from acquaintance to love, it is the two people who admire each other's talents and develop into love. In the vortex of sexual desire, the two are intoxicated with dreams, one is obsessed with selflessness, and the other is deliberately tempted and toyed with. ”
As it turns out, friends' worries are not superfluous.
During his love affair with Zhang Ailing, Hu Lancheng actually held a marriage ceremony with two other women.
Hu Lancheng's injury made Zhang Ailing feel disheartened.
"Red Roses and White Roses" was created during the quiet period when she and Hu Lan were growing up.
However, the character image of the protagonist Tong Zhenbao in the book is far from the "scum" of Hu Lancheng in the future.
Tong Zhenbao experienced four women in his life.
To him, their influence is light or heavy.
However, in Tong Zhenbao's world, the existence of the self is always in the first place.
Tong Zhenbao's first woman was a French prostitute.
Thirty minutes with her was the most humiliating experience for Zhenbao.
"He spent money on her and couldn't be her master."
For Zhen bao, this French prostitute is no longer a simple female figure.
Rather, he was facing the whole world.
So, on that day, he secretly resolved:
"To create a right world, to take it with you, in that pocket world, he is the absolute master."
Zhen bao's first love is a mixed-race girl named Rose.
"She's a man who hasn't covered her mouth, and anyone can fish on her." She and Zhenbao are casual, and Zhenbao thinks she is naïve. She was casual with anyone, and Zhenbao thought she was a bit crazy and stupid. ”
Rose confided her heart to Zhenbao on the eve of his departure.
However, Zhenbao rejected her.
The free-spiritedness of the rose is not under the control of Zhenbao.
If he marries a rose, he may not be happy:
"Such a woman may be very ordinary in foreign countries, but it will not work in China, and transplanting her into the society of her hometown is a matter of labor and wealth."
Zhenbao couldn't be the master of the rose, so he decisively rejected her.
Rose's experience has left a strong mark in Zhenbao's heart.
He told the outside world that he had beauty in front of him, and he had super self-control.
The outside world praises Tong Zhenbao as a very good person.
His pocket world gradually took shape.
In Zhenbao's world, what really makes sense is Jiaorui and Smoky Oriole.
Zhenbao compares them to roses.
Red roses are petites, and white roses are smoky orioles.
Jiaorui is the wife of Zhenbao's friend Wang Shihong.
Zhenbao returned to China and rented a house in the Wang family.
Jiaorui was too tempting for Zhenbao.
"She seems to be a smart and straightforward person, although she is a wife, she is still mentally underdeveloped, which is what Zhenbao thinks is the most lovely."
Zhen bao has always liked women who are hot and wave a little. And she's married and irresponsible.
Zhen Bao and Jiao Rui broke out into a fierce underground affair.
In Zhenbao's view, Jiaorui is not a good woman in the traditional concept.
During her marriage, she also maintained a lover relationship with another man.
So, such a woman is easy to cope with.
He had only had a dewy affair with her.
But Jiaorui has a showdown with Wang Shihong, she wants a divorce, and reveals that she wants to marry Zhenbao.
Zhenbao was scared.
Ambiguous with his friend's wife, once the East Window incident occurs, then the world of good people he has worked so hard to build will fall apart.
So, he abandoned Jiaorui, just as he had rejected Rose in the first place.
Abandoning Jiaorui means that Zhenbao has begun to be a good person again.
The world he built was almost complete.
However, what he did not expect was that many years later, reunited with the "fat and crazy" Jiaorui, he actually cried bitterly.
Only then did he realize how unworthy the world of good people he had been pursuing was.
Zhen Bao marries Yan Li, completely exposing the selfishness and cowardice of this man.
Smoky Oriole is a boring woman, not at all the type of Zhenbao favorite.
"She stood by the glass door, wearing a silk shirt with gray orange and red stripes, but the first impression was that of a general white."
This type of daughter-in-law is what the mother loves.
Zhen bao is a good person, and naturally will not disobey his mother.
"If you marry a white rose, the white one is a grain of rice sticky on the clothes, but the red one is a cinnabar mole on the mouth of the heart."
The marriage between Yan Li and Zhen Bao is a long evolutionary process.
Zhenbao was a little new to her at first, but over time, it became a habit.
At this time, the smoking oriole becomes a boring woman-
She can't communicate, can't manage the house, and even has a bad relationship with her mother-in-law who was optimistic about her before.
Zhenbao felt that he had been deceived and felt that his efforts were too unworthy.
He began to prostitute himself, and specifically picked some black and ugly ones.
It seems that this is revenge on Jiaorui and on yourself.
What really made Zhenbao's world collapse was that he discovered the adulterous affair of the smoke oriole.
"He looked at his flesh and skin, not as if he were looking at himself, but like a lover outside of himself, deeply sad, thinking that he had wasted himself."
As a good man, Zhenbao retreated, and another Zhenbao was born.
He wanted to smash the world he had built with his own hands.
So he began to play with women openly, not going home, and not giving the family living expenses.
This rebellion is only short-lived.
Zhen bao throws an iron seat at her when the smokebird argues.
The smokebird fled in fright.
At this time, Zhang Ailing adopted the mode of internal focus to write about Zhenbao's real psychological activities:
"In the middle of the floor lay a pair of embroidered shoes of a smoker, slightly in the shape of a figure-of-eight, one in front and one in the back, like a ghost who did not dare to appear timidly walked toward him and begged."
The good man Zhenbao is back.
End of story:
"When I got up the next day, Zhenbao reformed and became a good person again."
Zhenbao's love gave Rose and Jiaorui, and marriage gave Smoky Oriole.
In his consciousness, the smoker was a suitable marriage partner in the society at that time.
In their marriage, there is no love.
A loveless marriage, too, is meaningless.
In their marriage, all we see is an empty soul, hypocritical behavior, contradictions and entanglements.
At the end of the story, the funny treatment of the pair of embroidered shoes also shows the author's criticism of Zhenbao.
He is not only irresponsible for the smokingbird, but also pushes the responsibility for the failure of the marriage to the smokingbird.
He felt even more that in this marriage, he was a victim.
Zhang Ailing borrowed the image of Zhenbao to satirize the hypocrisy and absurdity of men.
"Human nature is the most interesting book, and I can't read it all in my life."
Zhang Ailing is good at writing about some of the most ordinary people, the most ordinary secular life, to reflect the most profound themes of human nature.
Marriage and love stories are the main material of Zhang Ailing's works.
Unlike the reunion ending of most classical novels, Zhang Ailing's pen cannot see true love, and marriage is like hell.
Reading gives rise to a lot of sadness and fear.
A man like Tong Zhenbao is shrewd and calculating before marriage, and cowardly and evasive after marriage.
No matter how you choose, men will never be able to balance.
As the author writes at the beginning:
"Married to a red rose, over time, the red became a touch of mosquito blood on the wall, and the white one was still the bright moonlight in front of the bed; when I married a white rose, the white ground was a sticky grain of rice on the clothes, but the red one was a cinnabar mole on the mouth of the heart."
After meeting Jiaorui, Zhenbao burst into tears, not because he loved her so much.
Rather, the memory of his red rose was awakened.
He was still crying about himself, and in the world he had created, he was the most aggrieved one.
The author's intention is obvious: men love only themselves from beginning to end.