"Banana Grove Chamber": A metaphor for life and a mirror image of the times south of the South

"Banana Forest Secret Room" is a new work by Chen Chongzheng, a representative writer of "New Southern Writing", which writes about the changes of family and urban and rural areas, the mystery of Chaoshan scenery, the combination of blood and imagination, ethics and philosophy.

Those who know Chen Chongzheng may know that as a native of Chaozhou, Guangdong, he was teaching in a middle school by Songshan Lake in Dongguan ten years ago. In addition to writing poetry, he also writes some martial arts novels. In the past ten years, he has gradually constructed a unique literary map of Chaozhou, from the novel collection "My Fear is a Blackbird", to the "Trilogy" of "Black Mirror Doppelganger", "Folding Technique", "Levitation", as well as "Return to the Tide" and "Notes of Beauty City": Banbu Village and Bihe Town, Banana Forest Secret Room and Beauty City have now become indelible coordinates in the field of "New Southern Writing". He has won the 5th Mao Dun Newcomer Award, Guangdong Lu Xun Literary and Art Award, Guangdong Youwei Literature Award, and the 5th Kapok Literature Award.

Critic Xie Youshun once commented on Chen Chongzheng's writing exploration: "He has found such a channel for himself, allowing the novel to break through the shackles of reality and show a beautiful posture that rises into the sky." Such a gesture is rare in the novel tradition of Guangdong. In the two novels "The Banana Grove Secret Room" and "The Notes of the Beauty City", this "gesture" is a combination of folk legend and science fiction reality. Coincidentally, Song Song, editor-in-chief of "Selected Novels", also believes that "Beauty City" is Chen Chongzheng's latest novel published in 2020, with nearly 300,000 words, divided into two parts: "Banana Forest Secret Room" and "Beauty City Notes". The novel is a huge and complex content, integrating many elements such as suspense, science fiction, history, youth and even online games, which makes it dazzling to read. The author seems to have a belief at the beginning of his writing, to try to make the characters who appeared in his pen before reappear in this new work, and "Beauty City" has also gained unprecedented narrative density.

The Banana Grove Chamber is not only a metaphor, but also an allegory. When Chen Datong planted the banana grove with his own hands and built his underground palace, it was difficult to predict that the fate of himself and the secret room would encounter several ups and downs in the long river of history. He was caught off guard by the tide of the times, and experienced incredible scientific and technological development, his fate was ups and downs, but he didn't know where to return. The novel focuses on the lives of the Chen family, the Guan family and the ancestral family in Banbu Village, Bihe Town, and strings together the spiritual picture of several generations in the long era changes after the reform and opening up and even in the future.

In the view of Li Xiaoqing, a young scholar and doctor from East China Normal University, "Banana Forest Secret Room" marks an important turning point in Chen Chongzheng's creative process. In the novel, "my" second uncle Chen Datong built a banana forest secret room under Banbu Village. By depicting the confrontation between the ground and the underground, the first part of the novel allegorizes the generative conflict between the individual and the system, between desire and reality, during the period of transition. For example, "My second aunt's eyes crossed the fence covered with green vines, saw Tie Ruyi's back, and saw my second uncle wiping his tears with his sleeve on the side of the path." And my second uncle's eyes, beyond the tears, over the dusty hillside, saw Tie Ruyi when he was young in a military uniform for the first time into the half-step village, as if there is an iron Ruyi every year from then to now, they are different but so similar; my second uncle suddenly understood a little bit of Tie Ruyi's metaphor about onions, whether it was the warrior Tie Ruyi, the dried fish dealer Tie Ruyi, the antique guy Tie Ruyi or the prophet Tie Ruyi, he was full of respect for the Tie Ruyi in every piece of onion. After Xiao Hu set fire to the small bamboo house, he originally wanted to seal all the entrances to the secret room with cement. But he was curious, he took the Little Tiger Team and inspected the secret rooms one by one according to the map drawn by Guan Duobao's daughter Erniu Lixia. He didn't look at it on the surface, but said, "This Chen Datong is really a rat for his grandmother." But I secretly marveled in my heart, this is simply a work of art, a work of heaven, and a manpower. "How I wish my second uncle's story would stop at the best of times, but a new tragedy is like a typhoon, and it will come. Or rather, the new tragedy originated from a typhoon, which came and swept through the banana groves and razed everything good to the ground. "Of course, the villagers didn't know at this time, the second phase of the beauty city project has also begun, and the planning of the whole project is not only the 200 acres of banana grove at all, as a vulgar money structure of 'outer circle and inner square', the project has drawn a circle outside the square castle. Although most of the residents in this circle have already moved to the other side of the Bihe River, there are still those who need to continue to relocate, such as Guan Duobao and other poor people's old houses, and more importantly, the circle also includes the Chen clan ancestral hall, which is as quiet as a giant beast. The triumphant song of building a new city was played, and under a peaceful atmosphere, a storm of demolition was brewing. ”

Liu Xiaobo, director of the editorial department of Contemporary Literary Circle, believes that Chen Chongzheng's "Banana Forest Secret Room" shows an "early style" in many aspects, creating an image that borders on madness, and the construction of the "underground palace" is also a unique creation of a youth literary space. At the beginning of the novel, there is the idea of an "underground palace": "My second uncle no longer catches snakes. He took out all the savings of the castration and snake catching, and secretly took down a large piece of hilly land at the foot of Qixia Mountain from others, this land is not big, but from this land all the way to the cemetery at the foot of Qixia Mountain, it has also become a reclamation range by default, and no one will take care of you. So my second uncle has a kingdom with ups and downs, some people say there are 100 acres, others say at least 500 acres, or even more. It was originally a wild bamboo forest, and the Bihe River flows eastward not far away, and as soon as the peach blossoms on the embankment bloom, this bamboo forest looks even more verdant and lovely. After realizing that 'there is a lot of power in numbers', and the amount of food was also large, the peach blossoms and bamboos were cut down at the same time, and the villagers of Banbu Village basically did not let go of anyone who could grow crops as long as they saw it. When my second uncle took over the land, it was already overgrown with weeds, the sound of insects, and occasionally the lonely graves of the Anti-Japanese War, with no tombstones, no names and no surnames. My mother was against this, she told my second uncle, although the land looks fertile, but the height is uneven, many places still grow a few bamboos, I heard that there are caves under the ground, when the devils entered the village in the past, the Kuomintang troops had fought here, and many people died. The villagers took refuge in the cave, and some people got lost in the cave and never came out again. My mother was afraid that he would not believe him, so she also cited the case of the midwife in the village: 'Let's just say Grandma Ma, you know each other, don't look at the small hands, but it is Kefu's life, her husband just walked into the cave, and still can't find the body. ’...... Although the ancestral hall of the Chen family is dilapidated, there are many rooms, very magnificent, Mi Xiaonian means that he wants to review the college entrance examination anyway, and it is more convenient to move over and ask some questions. Mi Xiaonian moved into the Chen ancestral hall, and this action also made some people talk about it, but my mother smiled from ear to ear, she was very happy, and said that there was nothing wrong with young people. But in fact, Mi Xiaonian moved in, and my second uncle was equivalent to moving out, and he moved himself to the hilly land unconsciously. He built a small bamboo hut in the center of the kingdom and began to work day and night, cultivating several depressions, planting seedlings, planting rice, and building canals to bring water from the springs on Mount Qixia to irrigate the paddy fields. The rice in the south can be harvested twice a year, just after the Qingming Festival, my second uncle's seedlings have been green, looking at it from a distance, the heart is relaxed. In addition, there is another work being carried out silently - my second uncle, with the enthusiasm of first love and the religious devotion to love, began to study the appearance of the caves in this mountainous area. He began to love this life, and the cave brought him so many surprises, and he shuttled through it like a snake. An idea was rising inside him: he wanted to build an underground palace and marry Mi Xiaonian. That night, he was so excited about his thoughts that he couldn't sleep. At the turn of spring and summer this year, my second uncle was immersed in his own imagination, and the palace he conceived in his heart was the blueprint for the future banana forest secret room. ”

Young writer Li Yili said that macroscopically speaking, the novel "Banana Forest Secret Room" is about the 40-year "village history" of Banbu Village. Forty years is also the forty years of reform and opening up. From the 80s to the early 90s of the last century, the traditional crops in the countryside were gradually replaced by cash crops, and Chen Datong, who was bitten by snakes, planted banana forests, bought a Phoenix bicycle after earning money, and unintentionally became the first person in Banbu Village to adapt to social development and changes. In the view of Tian Zhonghui, a professor at Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, the story and narrative density of "Banana Forest Secret Room" and "Notes on Beauty City" are thicker, the use of "installation" is becoming more and more proficient, and the writer creates the truth of art in a magical way, transcending the reality of realism and obtaining a heterogeneous reality, and the meaning of "poetry" is also presented: its goal is not to record the era of photographic truth, and the meaning of "poetry" lies in "resistance and disobedience". Lin Peiyuan, a young writer and doctor, believes that the story of the novel focuses on Chen Datong and his descendants with "fertility anxiety", and the upper part of "Banana Forest Secret Room" takes Chen Datong's construction of a banana forest secret room for his wife to avoid family planning as the core of the plot, and the lower part continues the theme of the upper part and enters the grand plan of "human immortality". From "family planning" in the upper part to "human immortality" in the lower part of "Beauty City", the combination of realist social concerns and future-oriented scientific and technological ethics is the creation that best demonstrates the literary ambition of "Beauty City". (Reader Daily all-media reporter He Jian)