Wang Xiaobo (1952.05.13 - 1997.04.11)
Today, April 11, Wang Xiaobo passed away 26 years ago.
Why are we still reading Wang Xiaobo?
The name Wang Xiaobo, in our current context, in addition to referring to a talented writer who died young, sometimes represents a cultural phenomenon of semi-underground or folk writing, and a spiritual stance of pursuing freedom and maverick.
Wang Xiaobo, born in Beijing in 1952 to a family of revolutionary intellectuals, like most urban youth of that era, his youth was adrift and turbulent, he worked as a young man in Yunnan and a private teacher in Shandong in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, and returned to Beijing to work as a worker in the late Cultural Revolution.
In 1978, the second year after the resumption of the college entrance examination, Wang Xiaobo, who had only attended one junior high school, was admitted to Chinese Minmin University, and in 1984, he went to the University of Pittsburgh to study for graduate school, and after returning to China in 1988, Wang Xiaobo taught at Peking University and the National People's Congress.
Wang Xiaobo began writing while still working as a worker, and in 1982 he began to write "Golden Age", which he spent nearly ten years writing, revising and polishing, until 1991, "Golden Age" won the novella award of Taiwan's "Lianhe Pao" Literary Award, and published in Taiwan.
The following year, Wang Xiaobo resigned from teaching to become a freelance writer, and his work was published in the mainland. On April 11, 1997, Wang Xiaobo died of a heart attack at the age of 45.
Wang Xiaobo once said before his death that "Golden Age" was his favorite, and after his death, Wang Xiaobo's craze was wave after wave, and "Golden Age" has always been his most talked about novel.
Simply put, this novel tells the story of two young men and women in cities who were sent to a wild land during the Cultural Revolution, and used youth and hormones to fight castration and stigma.
Some of the words in the story, such as "knowing the youth", "going to the countryside", "cutting the queue", etc., may be slightly unfamiliar to the current younger generation, but for those born in the city in the fifties of the last century, they represent the wasted and gone youth.
At that time, the urban population was swelling and the employment pressure was increasing, and in order to resettle middle school graduates, Chairman Mao issued the instruction that "it is very necessary for educated young people to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor middle peasants."
This is Wang Xiaobo's personal experience, and it is also the background of the era of "Golden Age".
Wang Xiaobo first jumped in line to Yunnan, and he later recalled his life in the article, saying that it was very hard at that time, there was not enough to eat, the water and soil were not satisfied, and many people were sick.
But this is not the most painful, the most painful thing is that there is no book to read, and the pleasure of thinking is not obtained. He said that sitting under the eaves in the evening, watching the sky slowly get dark, his heart was lonely and desolate, and he felt that his life was taken away.
He was afraid to live like this, to grow old, and he felt that it was more terrible than death.
Wang Xiaobo's spiritual brother, the protagonist of "Golden Age", Wang Er, also went to Yunnan in line. Met the heroine Chen Qingyang in the novel, it was already Wang Er's third year in Yunnan.
He was scorched yellow, his chapped lips were stained with shredded paper and tobacco, his hair was as messy as dead brown silk, and he was wearing a torn military uniform with holes stuck with rubber paste.
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At that time, the young people had to work in the fields like peasants to earn work and support themselves, and Wang Er was assigned to plant seedlings because he offended the captain of the production team.
He was more than one meter and nine meters tall, and he had an old injury on his waist, and after bending over and inserting the straw for a month, his back pain was unbearable, and he couldn't sleep without playing closed, so he went to see Chen Qingyang, the team doctor of the fifteenth team on the mountain.
This Chen Qingyang is five years older than Wang Er, a college student who graduated from Beijing Medical College, unlike Wang Er, she is not a young person who joins the queue, but was sent to work in a farm hospital, she has a husband, but soon after marriage, his husband went to prison.
From Wang Er's male eyes, Chen Qingyang has plump chests, a thin waist, and a round butt. In addition, her neck is straight and slender, and her face is also beautiful. In the barbaric frontier farm, Chen Qingyang looks both striking and out of place with his surroundings.
It is said that Chen Qingyang is famous for slapping people, and once the military representative of the farm wanted to molest her, she hit her with a big mouth, and then she was sent from the farm hospital to the fifteenth team on the mountain to be the team doctor.
Chen Qingyang has never stolen anyone, but I don't know why everyone calls her broken shoes, and many strong men come to see her when they are obviously not sick. They didn't come to see the doctor, but to see the broken shoes. Only Wang Er is different, Wang Er is really sick.
Chen Qingyang is a simple person, she believes that everything must be reasonable. When people told her about breaking her shoes, she didn't think it made sense.
She doesn't look down on broken shoes, in fact she feels that broken shoes are kind and helpful. The problem she struggled with was not whether the broken shoes were good or not, but that she had not stolen Han at all, not broken shoes.
Now everyone calls her a broken shoe, which makes her almost confused who she is.
Wang Er always said that Chen Qingyang knew nothing about evil, but in fact Chen Qingyang also knew nothing about absurdity. In those days, who a person was, what kind of person he belonged to, and where he was going were involuntary and unreasonable.
As the author Wang Xiaobo later said, when the Cultural Revolution began, he was fourteen years old and in the first grade of junior high school, and one day, a surprising change suddenly occurred in the class, and some of his classmates became the red fifth category, and the other part became the black fifth category.
The red and black statements were not invented by them, nor were they initiating the change, and they were not responsible for it, but suddenly the classmates were in a very different class, leaving no room for argument.
This illogical and unreasonable world is beyond Chen Qingyang's comprehension, and she is not willing to accept the changes imposed on her.
She was powerless and irresistible in other things, but she wanted to defend herself for the matter of being called to break her shoes for no reason.
So, when she saw Wang Er's back full of holes as if he had been raked twice by Zhu Bajie, and when she was treated by Wang Er like an ordinary doctor instead of a broken shoe, she had a hope:
That is, Wang Er is different from others, and may be able to make Wang Er admit that she is not a broken shoe - there is a person who admits that she is not a broken shoe, and no one admits it, which is very different.
But Wang Er is a rogue, he told Chen Qingyang that broken shoes are an allegation, everyone says you are broken shoes, you are broken shoes, there is no reason to talk about it.
Because everyone thinks that married women should have dark faces and sagging breasts if they don't steal, and since you have a fair face and a towering chest, it must be a broken shoe. If you don't want to be a broken shoe, blacken your face and make your breasts droop so that people don't call you a broken shoe again.
Of course, this is a loss, if you don't want to suffer, you should steal a man, so that you yourself think that you are a broken shoe. In short, others are not obliged to find out whether you are a stealer before deciding whether to call you broken shoes, but you are obliged to make others unable to call you broken shoes.
When Chen Qingyang heard this, his face turned red, his eyes widened angrily, and he was almost about to slap Wang Eryi. But she suddenly deflated and said, "Okay, break shoes."
This was the beginning of Wang Er's "abduction" of Chen Qingyang. However, Wang Er is a rogue, but not a liar, he said that to Chen Qingyang, and he did it himself.
In the spring of that year, the captain of Wang Er's production team said that he had blinded his in the left eye, and since then he has always given him small shoes to wear, and in the spring he was asked to plant rice and torture his waist; After the autumn harvest, let him go to herd cattle, and he can't eat hot food.
The's left eye was obviously not Wang Er's, but he knew that it was useless to explain. When a person, especially someone of higher status than you, decides to convict you, it doesn't matter how the truth is.
But Wang Er is a rogue after all, he is not willing to do nothing, when he is herding cattle in the mountains, he finds an opportunity to blind the right eye of the captain's female dog.
Not long after Chen Qingyang went down the mountain to find Wang Er for the first time, the production team had new rumors that she was breaking shoes with Wang Er.
So, Chen Qingyang went down to Wang Er again and asked him to give proof of their innocence.
Wang Eryi said in all seriousness that he must prove his innocence unless he proves the following two points: first, Chen Qingyang is a virgin; Second, Wang Er is a celestial castrated person and has no ability to have sexual intercourse.
Both of these points are difficult to prove, since you can't prove your innocence, it's better to prove that you're not innocent. When Chen Qingyang heard these words, his face turned white with anger, then his face turned red, and finally he stood up and left without saying a word.