Just the tip of this covered iceberg has made today's audience feel cool and hard, and it seems that there has been a "new discovery" in the memory formation.
Contributing writer for Glacier Think Tank丨Song Jinbo
The story of "The Long Season" takes place in the 20 years from 1997 to 2016. I happened to leave Northeast China after graduating from college in 1996, and the first half of these 20 years were in Tibet and the second half in Shanghai. I rarely go back during this period. I have a clear time and space gap between me and the northeast in "The Long Season" and the joys and sorrows of those characters.
But it also had an unexpected dissociation effect, just as "The Long Season" chose to shoot a northeastern story in Kunming, I was able to choose the other's perspective, and the non-continuation of several time sections also sharpened the picture quality. In fact, I think this dissociative effect is one of the reasons why "The Long Season" was able to get rid of the simple "Northeast local drama" and gain large-scale empathy across the country.
Perhaps it is enough to be gratifying that empathy symbolizes the long cold autumn of 20 years in the northeast, and it can finally come to an end in the plot, and the possible wonder is, why did this empathy arrive only today?
01
During the long cold season, the first issue is, of course, survival and eating.
In 1998, when I was in Lhasa, I saw a research report in an issue of Xinhua Digest that a family of three workers in Shenyang lived on 50 yuan a month. The family had to go to the market every day to pick up the leaves thrown away after the market to eat the vegetables, and occasionally picked up two bones without meat, and they were overjoyed.
At that time, I had just been in the no-man's land of northern Tibet for more than two months, and I had seen enough of the wilderness and barrenness, and I was still shocked to read this text. As for the concept of real economic life, I still have a pre-1996 impression. In this impression, even in the early 1980s, the monthly living expenses of 50 yuan were too embarrassing for a northeastern family.
I can't imagine how three people can live in Shenyang on 50 yuan, but there are many other cases in this research report, and the anxiety, urgency and worry cannot be concealed between the lines.
In my diary that day, I wrote about it: "As if I heard the sound of a flood coming from afar."
It took many years to realize that 1997, when the "wave of layoffs" in Northeast China began, was the starting point for Wang Xiang and Gong Biao's sharp turn in fate. The tide culminated around 1999 and didn't end formally until 2003—everything happened on a grand plan, 1234, step by step.
The source of the pain is certainly not the so-called "Hong Kong businessmen" or the "southern bosses" - on this point, "The Long Season" does not handle it honestly.
Huludao City, Liaoning Province (Photo/Figureworm Creative)
There are already many records of survival distress secondary to sudden occurrences, and there is no need to repeat them here. However, after watching "The Long Season", a friend from eastern Zhejiang said with a little doubt that the family conditions of the classmates in the northeast were good, and the northeast still enjoyed the dividends of the industrialization period.
Fully acknowledged. In fact, even today, "economic backwardness in the northeast" seems to have become a bitter label, the per capita disposable income data of the northeast, Liaoning is still in the top ten, Heilongjiang is second to Shanxi, higher than Henan, and Jilin's GDP growth rate is leading the country in the first quarter of 2023.
They are all in the northeast, and the internal differences are not small. At that time, the rural situation was better than the city, and the average county seat may have more room than the big city, and the worst were those cities where the whole city was tightly tied to a large state-owned enterprise, such as Fushun and Anshan, and later those resource-based cities, such as the now famous Hegang.
In the early 1990s, I heard a term called "shock therapy". In the tide of 1997, few people thought of the word, but it is true that the northeast was once in a state of "shock".
The most frightening thing is the despair that pervades the dead silence.
02
This despair, the direct effect, is reflected in the loss of security.
There was a passage at that time that said that a penniless laid-off female worker was robbed by robbers, and the robbers were also laid off, and two hopeless people knelt and wept at each other.
The paragraph is not fake. In 2000, a relative returned to his hometown in the northeast from abroad and called me a long distance in the downtown telephone booth in the middle of the day, and suddenly hung up. It turned out that a knife was lightly pressed against her waist. The looters took the 20 yuan from her and fled silently.
A familiar university teacher was robbed at the gate of the school in the center of Harbin, and although he was not injured, he was also frightened.
In those years, there were often murders in taxis in Jilin's hometown. My second and third uncles rented out, and they encountered robbers respectively, and almost had a big accident. How much money do taxi drivers have? The robbers are really anxious.
"Long Season" stills (Photo/Douban)
The loss of security in despair, and the most frightening thing is that it is not all about money. A college classmate in Changchun died under the hammer of the so-called "planing party" in the two years of this century, at about 10 p.m. at the door of his home in the city. No case solved.
In the serial murder case in Shenyang in 2000, a criminal named Wang Qiang killed 45 people and raped 10 people in 8 years. In 2005, another serial murder in Shenyang, the murderer killed 15 dancing girls in six months. He was a laid-off former factory manager who became a master of dancing – causing chills as soon as the captain danced in The Long Season.
The underworld forces have a lot of murder cases in their hands, and some of them are arrested into the public security bureau and released when they turn around, and it just so happens that there is one in my hometown. In a neighboring area, as soon as the man was released, he shot the long leg of the police station where he was arrested.
Some of these have been reported by the media, and many more have been piled up and forgotten by the wind.
You see so many deaths in "The Long Season", it's heart-palpitating. But in the northeast at that time, the real death was around, how did they feel?
03
In "The Long Season", the fate of women has a special dark tone, associated with honor. But I didn't know these when I was in college, and after graduation, I worked in a remote foreign land, and most of my working time was in the wilderness, so naturally I didn't know it.
My field work at that time came with a little bit of indulgence. It is also common for young colleagues to go to the lounge to drink and sing and call "Miss" together. The vast majority of Tibetan "ladies" come from Sichuan. Sometimes the wine is hot, and they can be heard telling absurd stories.
But for a long time, a "young lady" from the northeast did not meet.
I didn't find it strange. Because when I was a child (mid-1980s), many beggars from the "south" (mainly Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Hebei) came to the northeast. My father often traveled to Kannai on business and told me that there was no one in the northeast who went out to beg.
Until later met a driver in Beijing. He joked and said, "Northeasterners, there are many young ladies." "I was surprised. Back in the northeast, I inquired about it, and I realized that it was not slander. A friend from the northeast at the wine table also joked: "You see that the women in the northeast are still of high quality, and they go to developed coastal areas." ”
A little surprised, a little blocked, and seemingly unable to say anything, no different from the women I have seen "stray" in the dust elsewhere.
"Long Season" stills (Photo/Douban)
Shortly after the turn of the century, I returned to the northeast and overheard the story.
A dance hall, there is a young lady, an outsider. Probably because of something, he wanted to escape and be captured. She threatened to call the police. The female boss, or the old bustard, killed her.
Not simply killing, of course. There were fourteen young ladies in the ballroom, and no one could hide this, and the female boss tied up the girl, and then forced each of the remaining thirteen young ladies to stab the girl.
This seems to have been revealed for a rather fortuitous reason. It's time to kill and sentence, it's all done.
The person who told me this was a chubby and ugly girl from out of town. She and the woman who was killed are fellow villagers. Her voice was as calm as if she was slowly reciting a text. She said the dance hall was right next to the high school I attended.
People want to survive, to be safe, and to maintain honor. Sometimes, in order to survive, a person can choose not to have honor; But even if you don't want honor, you may not be safe.
04
The above is only a very limited fragment of my personal imprint, and there is a clear diaphragm. These are only shadows in "The Long Season". There is hunger, danger, and trampled honor, but not even the tip of the iceberg.
Just the tip of this covered iceberg has made today's audience feel cool and hard, and it seems that there has been a "new discovery" in the memory formation.
I also suspect that the real sharpness and intensity, like the outbreak of the dumb Fu guard, began silently and ended in silence, as if it had never happened.
All kinds of emotional experiences, perhaps Shanghai after April 2022 can understand. Emotions that have fallen and broken are the easiest to resonate through time and space.
Some people say that "The Long Season" is "the history of the demise of Northeast Romance".
Is it romance that disappears? It's not just that, the ones that disappear are more orderly. Only with order can there be decency and the possibility of creation. This order will take a long time to rebuild, even if the next season is winter.