The mountains of the hometown, the water of the hometown, the people of the hometown...... It is the strongest and most tenacious in the growth of our life, and it is also the most vivid root system and bloodline, even if the years like a knife have already cut you and me "beyond recognition" in the dark change of years, but as long as you set foot on the homeland, taste the hometown, and lie down in the former home, the beating heart will be comforted and finally converted. The same is true for the two heroines in the novel "Returning to the Sea", mother Yuan Chunyu and daughter Yuan Feng. From a foreign country to the hometown of Wenzhou, from the 40s of the 20th century to the 21st century, from the flames of war to the stability of the present world...... Tracing all the way, exploring all the way, tossing all the way, all the rivers will eventually return to the sea, and the soul will be at peace.
"Returning to the Sea" is the latest masterpiece of Chinese Canadian female writer Zhang Ling, and it is also the second part of her "Children of War Trilogy" series after "Lao Yan", mainly from the perspective of Yuan Feng, a Chinese female teacher living in Canada, across time and space, tracing back to the source, exploring the ill-fated, heart-wrenching and tenacious life of her mother Yuan Chunyu. The motivation for Yuan Feng's persistence, in addition to her own inexplicable knots, is that her mother, who had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for many years, died in a nursing home, but left behind several rather "mysterious" relics: the glass bottle with residual crystal powder, the photo in the field hospital, and the photo of Meng Long, Yuan Feng's English teacher when he was in high school. This makes the mother's life history a confusing mystery. With its unique narrative charm and profound humanistic care, the writer uses the life history of this mother and daughter to connect many major historical events such as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the War of Liberation, the founding of the People's Republic of China and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, interweaving multiple themes such as family history, personal growth and changes of the times, forming a magnificent and emotionally delicate epic.
As the second part of the "Children of War Trilogy", the direct description of war in the novel is very small, and even "blurred" into a kind of background, but this background is crucial. Because in the writer's view, wars and disasters themselves can be defined by time, but the subsequent effects on human beings are unpredictable, and that kind of lasting trauma, even in peacetime, still affects a person and a family in an undercurrent way. Yuan Feng took his mother's ashes and embarked on a one-way street to reveal the truth of history, so as to dispel the layers of fog that had been pouring in his heart for decades. In this way, the author takes the reader through the changing time tunnel. The narrative structure of the novel is very ingenious, based on Yuan Feng's perspective, on the basis of the "flashback" technique, and the e-mails of Yuan Feng and her foreign husband George to thread the needle, organically connecting history and the present, war and peace, domestic and foreign.
History is history, and no one can go back in time. "What is the truth? The truth is water, and wherever it flows, it becomes the shape of it. "The brilliance of the novel lies in the fact that through Yuan Feng's exploration, memory, recording and writing, the moments when many characters are involuntarily and affected by fate in the tide of history are brilliantly presented, especially Yuan Chunyu's struggle, awakening and transformation in extreme environments, like water, like water, those heavy blows, those heart-wrenching humiliations, and those unspeakable pains...... But she has never cut off her hope for life and her persistence in humanity. "When others use emotions, they use patience to slowly survive the days and finally survive the bad luck. ”
And her mother's actions and gestures have inadvertently become an important consideration for Yuan Feng's career, love, family and some major life decisions. After all, family affection is difficult to give up, and the contradictions and misunderstandings between generations are even more "cut, and the reason is chaotic", so that Teacher Meng Long, who is between her and her mother, has become a "demon" who is "elusive". Fortunately, "when looking for other people's pearls, I inadvertently opened my own mussel shell", at the end of the story, the mother Yuan Chunyu "returned" to her homeland and freedom, and her daughter Yuan Feng also completed the healing of life.
All in all, water is a major thread of the writer's hometown complex. "When the water divides at one fork, it will converge at another, always finding each other and connecting with each other. Water never really dies. Water is free forever. The life trajectories of Yuan Chunyu and Yuan Feng's mother and daughter illuminate the infinite power of those women who survive in the cracks of life like muddy water, similar to the reshaping of life after disasters and wars, which is both legendary and realistic, admirable and thought-provoking.
Source: Reading Times, Issue 04, 2024
Author: A Jing
Editor: Pan Xi
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