01
Both of them were a little intense today, like two balls of paper, and they were rubbed into each other's shape. At this point, they straightened out, flattened, and spread out as much as they could, as if there was a giant scanner directly above them.
This is usually followed by a foggy and tranquil phase. She spoke, "You know, I've never been a pure girl."
Before he could answer, she held up a long list of examples. When she was in high school, she often went to the park after evening self-study and peeked at her lover on the bench. She was pinched in the elevator, really pinched, it hurt, but she didn't say anything, she really wanted that guy to pinch it again, so she could sit all the way to the top floor. She has had three boyfriends at the same time, and her schedule is tight and rigorous. She has tried "Shake", "Drifting Bottle" and "Qianmo", and has also anonymously published an experience report on the Internet. "Shameless, look how shameless I am." She happily insulted herself, "It's so nice to say it!" I've been thinking I'm going to give you an account. Scared? ”
He made a stunned look, out of politeness. She is more than ten years younger than him, and she is single, which contains all possibilities. Besides, at his age, what else would be frightening.
"I bet everybody has a whole bunch of these things." She accentuated her tone on "such a thing", and her expression became solemn, "But only by the pillow, like us, with a specific person, can we have a ...... with it."
"A specific person?" A little tired, he didn't want to show fatigue, and tried his best to catch the core words.
"Yes, a specific person, and still in a specific situation." She paused deliberately and turned her face to look at him, "You are such a person to me. If you don't know deeply, you can't reach the point of love, so I'm willing to say everything to you. ”
"Thanks, I ......" he sounded a little moved. Her attachment to him is fashionable. The girls seem to be happy to seek and prolong puberty through a half-aged guy. In the years since the divorce, he has encountered many cases.
"You can talk about it too, so it's fair. You talk about one, and then I'll talk about another. "It looks like she's trying to dig herself out today.
"I'd rather hear from you. You have a good point. He knew what to do.
Sure enough, she couldn't help but talk about a same-sex contact with her roommate in college, which was plausible. She reached for the head of the bed and touched the phone, held it up to the two of them, and fished in the photo library one by one to find the girl's photo. Many faces rolled, and she occasionally explained, "My cousin." This is drinking with the boss. With the same apprentices. This is my mother. ”
He suddenly interjected, "How old is she?" ”
"We were born in the same year."
"I'm asking your mother."
She frowned and continued to look for photos, "She only gave birth to me at the age of 33, you count." Ah, I found it, handsome or not? Look at this look, I was really fascinated by her at that time. ”
"Then she's 62 years old, a rabbit?" He suddenly rolled over and sat up, snatched his phone, and tilted the photo back, "Let me see your mother again." ”
She tried to get the phone back, "Hey, I finally found it." She's my first 'lover'! ”
He was in good spirits, zoomed in on the photo of her and her mother, and looked at it as if he were studying, "The body is good." But is your hair so white? I don't think this pearl necklace is suitable for her, it looks old-fashioned. She doesn't wear makeup? A lot of women are like this, and they don't want themselves first. ”
She puffed out her mouth and kept silent.
"Your family has beauty genes." He raised his head and said perfunctorily, and his eyes fell on the photo again, "Your mother would be better if she paid attention to losing weight, dye her hair and change her hairstyle." Actually, 62 years old is not a very old ......"
She snatched her phone away and threw it under the bed: "What are you doing, an old man asked you to introduce someone?" Do you know," she tried to hide her indignation, "I'm talking to you...... Tell me everything about me. ”
He was silent and lay down. After a while, I was headless and thoughtless, "I was in the hospital in the morning, and I sat in a daze for an hour. She straightened up with concern, and he waved, "I'm going to get the report, and I'll sit down for a while." Sitting in the area of the body fluid testing center is where blood and urine are checked. People solemnly carry all kinds of small containers, and walk around with solemn expressions. I just sat and looked at their faces. I like the term 'bodily fluids', and I should have done more tests for people. For example, saliva, tears, sweat. ”
"And semen!" The tone is cheerful. She convinces herself not to be angry with him. He was always careless to her, like a child, but in a way, she liked that.
His eyes were fixed as if he saw the faces again, "There are many old women in the hospital, more than on the street. ”
"Like my mom?" She didn't seem to understand. He is a man with many deceptive shadows. Again, she likes that.
"Some are 62 years old, and some are in their 70s." He earnestly recalled, "I paid attention to their medical records, but unfortunately some of them did not fill in their age. He was silent for a while, and groaned a little, "Are you done talking about homosexuality?" Well, I'll tell you one of mine. ”
Her eyes flashed, something she had never seen before. Could it be that he finally felt: Today, is it different?
"It's a bit long, don't interrupt me." His expression seemed estranged, and his eyes were like parabolas, and he was thrown into the distance all of a sudden.
02
At that time, I was studying secondary school in other places. One day, I suddenly received a telegram saying that my grandfather was critically ill. Overnight to the long-distance bus station, finally bought a station ticket, the next day at half past seven o'clock, to the county and then transfer, if it goes well, you can get to the village at night.
Unfortunately, an old driver came the next day, turned on the water and picked out the and gossip with acquaintances, and did not drive after eight o'clock. I waited for most of the night and was already very tired and anxious, so I urged him. Instead, the old fritter threw his leg on the steering wheel and threw a long list of obscene words, and I was so anxious to respond with the dirty words of my hometown, but I still suffered because no one understood. Everyone was silent, just watching from their seats, probably thinking that I shouldn't provoke the driver.
Just as I was embarrassed, a woman stood up from the back row and scolded me loudly, "This dead brother, I'm stupid when I study." He took out a cigarette from somewhere, lit it with his own hands, smoked it with his mouth, and handed it to the driver. She wore red nails and lipstick, and she was frivolous and beautiful. The old fellow was very fond of this, and leaned at me as he shoved a cigarette into his mouth with his red nails. The car started with a shaky start. The woman dragged me to the back row, praising me in a low voice for the good scolding I had just done, and adding a few more vicious words. Ah, fellow. I was comforted at once.
In order to find a seat, she continued to claim that I was her brother, deliberately using her unique strengths. I don't want her to do that, but it works. There was a man alone with his daughter, and the girl was motion sick, so she sat down like a mother, talked to the man, picked up the girl, pinched the tiger's mouth for her, and coaxed her to sleep. When the little girl woke up, she sat back with half a numb arm. I insisted on standing, but she struggled with the old man next to me, and finally let me squeeze on her side, and she leaned towards the old man. The old man pouted, staggering as the speed of the car staggered, and the probability of falling to her side was much greater. I can't blame the old man, her shoulders are soft and hot, and I lean on them sleepily, as if I hadn't been on a pillow in hundreds of years.
…… Wake up, bad news. The car broke down, and the old driver was throwing a tantrum. It was getting late, and people were messing down to get their luggage. A small inn came and two people were kind to help: big business came, and they had to stay here for one night, waiting for the replacement car tomorrow morning.
I didn't have any luggage, she had three bags, I took two for her, and followed behind everyone drowsily, thinking desperately, Grandpa, you have to wait for me. She did it for me. When she came back to her senses, she found that she was already in the same room.
"I can reimburse it, two shops anyway. Besides, they all know you're my brother. She is quite experienced in stringing three bags together with a rope, "This kind of roadside shop, it is not safe to live alone." You're protecting these things for me. She pulled her hair up, dusted off the sheets and slapped the pillows with swift thrust. I was standing, and I had never stayed in a hotel.
She complained of a musty smell in the room, no windows, and no bathroom. She went out and turned on the water and asked for two cups. I bought flatbread and tea eggs, and bought a toothbrush and towel for me, and the two of them took turns going out to wash and go to the toilet. I was indifferent, and whatever she said, I did. She laughed and teased me and made me guess her profession.
"Guess...... Not out. "I stammered, but I hope my face doesn't blush. I majored in mechanics, and there were three girls in my class, and none of them were my turn to talk to them.
"It's still like this in front of my sister, and I'm going to eat deflated in the future!" She was not satisfied and scolded me in the vernacular.
"I have a sister, so she's not like that. Red nails, red mouth, you're too goblin. "That's right, in the vernacular! I relaxed a little.
"That's why you guess. Everyone else can see it at a glance! She introduced herself eagerly. It turned out that she was singing Huai opera, and she was still half the person in charge of the troupe, and she sang all over the province, so she went to other provinces to sing. She pouted at Nunu in the corner, "That's a routine, when you eat, you can sing when you dress up." Xiao You lowered his voice proudly, "The money is also hidden inside, and the people who loosen the bubbles think it is clothes." ”
There were two light bulbs in the room, one of which was broken. In the yellow and dim light, I quietly looked at her. The eyes are not very large, but the tips of the eyes are upward, and the black eyeballs always seem to flow. The lips are somewhat angular. The hair was heavy, and it used to be tied together, but now it has slipped down again.
"So, you're an actor." Somehow, I switched to Mandarin and straightened out my clothes. Yesterday I played for half a day, and I didn't have time to change my sportswear, but I hope there is no smell of sweat.
"An actor is almost the same as a person who asks for food." She scolded crisply, "Anyway, everything you do is asking for food." What school did you attend? What will be done in the future? Look at what you can do, you skinny. She narrowed her eyes at me pitifully. Hanging eyes, it's really beautiful.
"Ask for food." I learn her tone.
"Don't talk nonsense, you must be a big cadre!" She lectured me and filled her glass with water, "Oops, I haven't drunk it in a day." She craned her long neck, water overflowing from the corners of her mouth, and she lovingly stuck out her tongue and licked it, as if it were fairy soup. I was a little startled, and I couldn't take my eyes off the indescribable hollowness in my chest and abdomen. She glared sharply at me from above the glass, got up suddenly, pulled down the light, and said, "Rest, we're going to get up early tomorrow." ”
There are no windows, and one is all black.
I took off my tracksuit, felt into the quilt and lay down, but my ears were suddenly sensitive. The movement on her side was clear. First the zippered jacket, then the trousers, then the shirt: I think every step was accurate. She shouldn't have any clothes on her by now. She did not lie down immediately. Yes, you always need a sleeping shirt. Sure enough, she did something again, and then she lifted the quilt. Her bed was heavier. I tried to think back, what did my sister wear to bed before? T-shirt or vest? But I couldn't think of anything. Forget it, she doesn't look like her sister at all.
It's not my sister in the first place.
This fact suddenly made me very uncomfortable, and I suddenly sobered up. Since I received the telegram yesterday, I have been in a daze, and it is only now that my heart begins to throb. If I hadn't quarreled with the old driver, the car wouldn't have broken down, I wouldn't have been delayed all night, and I even slept in the same room with a beautiful actress and listened carefully to her undressing. Grandpa is the most precious to me, what am I doing here. I couldn't lie down, and I wanted to slap my face. I pulled the quilt over my head so she wouldn't hear me weeping.
There was no sound outside the quilt, it was too stuffy, so I quietly pulled it down again. It seems that she is asleep. I was a little disappointed, and then I realized that the bed was soft.
I've only slept in two kinds of beds before, the wooden bed at home and the iron-framed bed in the dormitory. It's all the same hard. I ran my hand over the sheets and remembered a movie. There was also a very fluffy bed there, and the male protagonist slapped the female protagonist, and she collapsed on the bed, making the bed sway. I watched the film for a long time, and I remembered it all now. The hero and heroine quickly reconciled and rolled on the bed...... I realized that I had a situation down there. What a shame. I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow and held my breath for a long time, until I slowly passed by.
I was very tired, but I couldn't sleep, I didn't dare to turn over, I felt loud when I was panting, and I was inexplicably nervous. Soon his feet cramped again...... In short, it was extremely unbearable, and I really shouldn't have slept so much next to her shoulder in the car during the day.
"Hey." She suddenly beckoned to me, "Asleep?" "The voice is very soft, but it sounds like a gong and a drum, and the stage is about to be opened.
Suddenly I thought of the way she lit a cigarette and handed it to the old fritters. It's an actor, and you can't do anything. I secretly clenched my fists, clenched my teeth, and ordered myself: I am asleep, I can't move, I must not move.
The bed bounced, and she sat up. The two feet touched the shoes one after the other as if they were blind. Stumbled over my bed, stopped, continued to feel for the door, touched the door, changed his mind, and turned back. Something in his hand and passed my bed again. This time it didn't stop, straight to her side. The leg joint rattled for a moment, and then there was a "whoosh".
Oh my God, she's peeing. I urinated in this room and put it in the basin. How loud the sound is, it's a waterfall, Huangguoshu Waterfall.
She was also frightened by the loud noise, and stopped for a while, then changed to a small strand, and then a small strand. Really! It's even scarier. I had to wait, listen, wait, listen. She had just drunk too much water. The pee was so long that I could see it in the dark: how she was squatting with her shorts down to her feet, how her white thighs overlapped with her calves, how she urinated in bursts, and in the middle of the basin there was a brightly colored peony, and her liquid splashed between the stamens. I could see it so clearly.
It was finally over, and she breathed a sigh of relief, feeling comfortable. Then he crawled slowly and more patiently and silently onto the bed. I don't think it alarmed me at all.
I was quite angry and realized that I wanted to pee too. Is this contagious, like yawning? It's good. I immediately rolled over and a fish stood up. Hit the ground barefoot, struggling to find shoes, and coughed deliberately. I slammed my way to the door, tapping on the wall for the switch.
"Don't turn on the lights." She suddenly said, "Don't go to the toilet outside, there is probably no light there." Besides, you're out, in case someone comes in...... This is a roadside shop. ”
And scare me with the roadside shop. But I know how many days the toilet has been piled up with urine and urine.
"It's ...... Potted bar. Anyway, I won't need it tomorrow. She also seemed to have her head covered with a quilt, and her voice was not very bright.
I was a little annoyed, but I really wanted to pee. I had to do what she said. I reached the end of her bed and kicked the basin with my foot, trying to align it as far as I could. This time it's Niagara Falls. I deliberately learned from her, and I stopped a few times in the middle of it, and found it a bit difficult.
She chuckled and stuck her head out, "So you're pretending to be asleep!" But my sister hasn't been asleep. She made it clear that she was an older sister.
The urine of the two people mixed together and made a foul smell, which was not unpleasant. When I was a child, my siblings and I shared a potty.
However, where is her sister? As if I had figured something wrong, I walked to the end of her bed and sat down with my ass. Her bed bounced, and she and I both bounced around. I was shocked first, what is this for?
She asked, "Hey, what are you going to do?" ”
"The bed was too soft to sleep." I'm quite aggrieved. The sweat vest on the body is too loose and does not keep warm. I sneezed.
"Go back to bed and lie down, or wrap up something, a coat, or a quilt." Her voice was a little flustered.
I followed the last suggestion and unceremoniously pulled half of her quilt from below and wrapped it around me. My foot accidentally touched somewhere on her. I suddenly realized that her upper body was empty, and she didn't have any pajamas at all.
I couldn't call the shots all of a sudden, it was like someone was pushing me into the water. With a thud, I fell into her bed. As if I had been a fierce man, I buried my head and face as deep as I could, desperately. She actually had a small underwear on her upper body, which was too small and loosened again. I could touch meat everywhere, like a sponge, and I squeezed it like a sponge. I pressed the corners of the quilt with the soles of my feet, and the whole quilt was made like a sealed cover. I don't think anyone will know what I'm doing, including her.
She probably didn't know. She whimpered and didn't have any words, just twisting her body desperately to push me. In vain. I twisted the front and couldn't twist the back, pushed the top and couldn't push the bottom, and the nest was messed up. I'm going to explode.
And then I exploded.
Her drenched head was dragged onto the pillow. She still wouldn't let the lights on, fumbled to find a few sheets of paper from her coat and stuffed them for me, and asked me to take off my vest and put it on the dirty place on the sheets. She agreed that I would continue to stay there, but physically as far away from me as possible. I lay stiff, ashamed and embarrassed and completely deprived of my vitality.
"My shirt is prone to wrinkles, and I don't have any other gowns. I think I'm my sister. The tone was reviewative, as if it was her fault.
I was silent.
"How old are you?"
“18。” According to the habits of my hometown, I am talking about a false age.
"Oh my God, it's been almost two generations. Fortunately, I didn't really ...... just now," she was a little farther away from me. After a while, she reached out and tapped me on the head, "I know you're still a doll." Never? ”
I admit it.
"Don't worry, there will be later. There will be a lot of them. "She was trying to comfort me, but it sounded exciting. To my despair, I found out that I was reacting again.
"You, how many?" At a loss, I asked rhetorically.
That's what most people think. Singing......" she paused. Because I was rubbing against her, I wanted to burrow into the bed again.
"Why did you cry just now?" She asked coldly.
I couldn't move all of a sudden, thinking of my grandfather. Shame and disobedience have locked me up, and the hardness below has been hung in the corner.
"Something at home? That's even more not. "She pushed me back, and wherever her hand touched me, it was pricked and burned. I really feel like I'm going to die. Help me! I desperately grabbed her hand.
She pumped back, but she couldn't move. She sighed, "Why don't I tell you a story." ”
She was leaning on her pillow, still far away from me. In total darkness, we only had two hands together. The darkness is both a cover for oneself and an indulgence in the fire, just like the urine of me and her, overflowing with a strange sense of communion.
She talked about how different people eat her tofu, and the farmers in the village and the people in the county wear glasses in different ways. She said that she was called to drink flower wine in the middle of the night, and three or four men were just a female guest. When she was waiting for the scene, she was kissed by the opponent actor violently, she forgot it once, and endured it twice, so that it became a habit, and then she had to kiss every time she came to this scene......
Her voice was so debauched and squeamish, and it blew softly in my ears. Where have I heard this, I really hate her for being so romantic, and she talks about it so vividly. I couldn't stand it, and I quietly reached under my shorts with my other hand. She knew what I was doing and just went on. She was talking about two suitors of affection and righteousness, one was a village clerk and the other was a drummer. Later she got along with one of them. She even talked about the best details, where, how she was, what about that person...... Her hand rubbed against mine, palms against each other, slowly pulling and kneading the bag, strong and warm.
I'm going to die, I'm really going to die again...... This time, the dead came back to life, and the feeling of being sharply out of the shell.
She stopped talking, as if taking me through a ritual. After waiting for me for a while, she wiped the sweat from my head with her hand, and her voice suddenly became a little bitter and salty, like the midnight sea rushing to it. "It's weird. Your baby is too painful, and it hurts in your heart and body...... But how can my sister hurt you, whatever you want, my sister can't. ”
I understand, but what can I say? I pressed my face to her palm, the only place I could lean.
"Ugh." In the dark, her sigh was like a thin, large quilt that wrapped us both in it, "So you're still a good boy doll." Sleep, you can fall asleep now. "She patted me, gently and softly, it was really like she was putting a child to sleep.
"How old do you have to be to not be a doll?"
"With me, you've always been." She smiled, smirking, "I'm 16 years older than you." You remember this. ”
03
She may have been a little dazed when she heard it, and he spoke for a long time before he reacted, not believing, "That's it?" ”
"I rushed to the house at half past two at noon the next day, saw my grandfather, and he ate half a spoonful of rice soup I fed him and left."
"I mean, none of you end up with that?" She was a little ambivalent.
"I knew you would care about this. Of course I care. He said with a self-deprecating tone, and continued, "I'll see it again in four years." I got a junior college from secondary school, but after graduating, I went into another industry, and it must have taken a lot of trouble for her to find a place for me to work."
He stopped, not to sell the guanzi, but to wait for the scene to resurface.
"She came to my dorm at night, dressed a season later than her home. She didn't mention her landscapes at all, and only digressed slowly. Always brushing the hair around her ears and caressing the folds on her skirt. A silk scarf was untied, tied and untied. Every movement was as leisurely as it could, while desperately stirring the air around me, calling out to me urgently. I heard it, I heard it all the time. Her upward eyes flowed with affection like water. Her body is fragrant, and she looks soft everywhere, as if she is at the peak of her body. I had already talked about my girlfriend at that time, and I had many experiences in that area. She was so attracted to me, a hundred times stronger than the night I was 18 years old. ”
She propped up her upper body, very interested, "Such a long foreshadowing, but I finally waited." ”
"Sorry, nothing. I remember the old things vividly, what didn't happen on the night when I was 18 years old, and what happened to me later, like two fists beating me together. I was sad and angry, and my heart was full of cold fire. She should have been with me that night! What's the use of all the hard work at this time, I'm no longer a doll. I resisted my hunger for her and threw my heart into the salt bar. I snubbed her in a very obvious way. Her face slowly turned yellow and stiff, and her eyes could not turn inconveniently. Finally, she looked down at her watch, and as she walked out with her legs raised, she almost twisted her foot, and the only wrinkle of the night appeared at the corner of her mouth, 'Look, I'm so confused, I've lost track of time.' ”
"Oh my God! How hurtful you are. She was indignant, but the epilogue betrayed some kind of balance. She guessed that it would be like this, he had always had this ruthless factor in him, and it was not only for her.
Her last sentence was a pun. I'd think I'm thinking she's old. ”
"It meant to be. You men are. She looked at him with deep meaning, as if all the women in the world were possessed. He didn't look at her, and their eyes never met.
"I, no." He corrected succinctly, "Actually, I went to her many times after that. Her troupe was merged, she went to a small company as a cashier, she went to work as a nursery worker in a kindergarten, and she was hired back to manage family planning in the community. Every time I go back to my hometown, I will ask where she is, and I will run to the small shop opposite to buy something or eat noodles, and hesitate like a person who wants to jump off a building, should I run across the street to find her? I...... Never, not so far. ”
"Hey, what are you hesitating about!" Her mouth was dry. He had a heart, for the woman.
"There are many reasons. Psychological, physical, and now presumably already mental. He summed it up quickly, apparently many times, "and in terms of concrete actions." I can't think about it, I can't make up my mind. I'm scared. ”
"I think you're afraid of yourself, you're unkind, and you'll let her down!" She judged that she was more researched than he was.
"Year after year, cloudy days and straw, this hesitation is getting heavier and heavier." Ignoring her comment, "Last year, I was sensitive to 61 years old. The year before last, it was 60 years old. I always look at women who are 16 years older than me. It's been a long-standing habit for me. When I meet neighbors in the community, chat with colleagues in the workplace, go on business trips to other places, everywhere I go, I pay attention to women of that age. I pay attention to the color of their hair and voice, the skin on their hands and necks, the speed at which they walk, whether they wear reading glasses, whether they wear skirts. I imagined what she would look like, and tried to make a decision based on that imagination: whether or not I would meet her, and what I was going to do after that meeting. ”
"You want her to be a woman, not an old man." Interrupt again.
This time his face moved, and he nodded slightly.
"Listen, isn't that just afraid that she's old! Admit it, for no other reason. "You're even more welcome.
"No, it's not. That's not how I think of myself. He tried to make amends, but he couldn't justify it, and he fell into this little quagmire in agony.
She clapped her hands deliberately, "No wonder you're so interested in my mother!" She couldn't bear it, if he was really an amorous person, she should have expected that many years later, she would think of him in the same way.
"Yes, please bear with me." He remembered the original purpose of telling this story, and forced a smile, "Your mother is in good health. Just now in the hospital, I met several 62-year-olds, some of whom were unable to see cataracts. Some are so fat that they can only wear men's clothes. There is one, all in wheelchairs. ”
"Why compare with them, my mother can't either." Instead, she encouraged him, took out her mobile phone again, as if it was a wishful treasure chest, and quickly rummaged through it, "Oh, I'll show you my master, I'm half a year older than my mother, I can't see it." Dressed more fashionably than I am, swim three times a week. People are Huai opera actors, and they can maintain it, at least they have to be like my master! ”
He pushed away his phone, unappreciative, "She's getting old, 16 years older than me." He made a toothache-like sound, "I've missed the best time again and again." It's good to see her when she's 40 years old, and it's good to be at 45, especially the year I gave birth to my son, and I made up my mind to call her. She 'heyed'. I panicked and hung up immediately. It was indeed a 48-year-old voice, it was too cruel. When I put down the phone, I couldn't walk for half a day, and I was much older all of a sudden. ”
She was jealous. I like him more.
"Think I'm old?" He asked suddenly, humbly, a temporary wrinkle on his forehead.
"That's why I like you, otherwise I'd be like this?" The words were hot, and she was almost emotional. But after saying that, he knew that this was not what he wanted to listen to at all.
His expression faded, and his eyes were far away, like a lonely goldfish, only swimming in his small tank, "Even I have white hair, I can't imagine if I meet her......"
"Then don't think about it." She decisively took the idea for him, "I'm also a woman, and I bet: she must not see you." I'm the same with you, once you reach a certain point, it's the last side, the last side of your life......" She stared at him deliberately, almost leaking out. If he looked at her, just one glance, he would understand!
He was anxious to argue, "It's different. Between me and her, it's definitely not a question of whether you're old or not." He denied it again, but also emphasized to himself, "You won't understand how much I miss her, and she must think about me as a doll too." Over the years, I always recall the little yellow stories she told me that night, but they are probably not true. She wanted to protect me, but she was so considerate and wanted to help me. I want to lie next to her and let me treat her well. But I don't know, if I really want to see her, can I treat her like that, or rather, is that appropriate......"
She felt indescribably tired, followed his words, and thought again, "Or, do nothing, you can tell her the story by the pillow." You are married and divorced, and there are a few big baskets of rhymes, shouldn't you tell her! I'm sure she'll be happy to hear it: you're a big baby! ”
He finally looked at her and considered the suggestion carefully, but did not respond immediately. For a long time, his face showed shame and hesitation, and he was a little pitiful: "But I have to decide first, I can't see her." ”
The wheels of the car are reversed. Alas, can't he keep an eye on the person in front of him, it's different today. She decided to change the subject, "By the way, you just went to the hospital, what report did you take?" ”
"Report." He chewed on these two words and returned to the hospital, "The 62-year-old in the wheelchair, I pushed her around and talked a few words, she has cancer. ”
"Alright, that's not your she."
"It could be her, it could be me. What if it's me, you say, should I go to her? There was a sudden hint of joy on his face, as if he had found a way out.
"You!" She covered her mouth in fright, goosebumps on her arms, "I just sensed that you were abnormal in bed just now. So you're today? ”
"I'm just assuming." He said impatiently, "Sooner or later." She or I, one of them is going to die, and we don't have a chance. At this point, if you can really force it, it is worth it. But," he frowned critically, trying to overturn this logic, "it's not good, it's not right to use a terminal illness to facilitate a meeting." That's not what I meant to see her. No, I'll have to think again. ”
"She, or you, is terminally ill." She repeated, held hostage by sudden grief, "Alright, don't make these negative assumptions. Don't they all like to talk about fate, although it's a cliché, but you don't have to be responsible, just follow fate. ”
"There's no such thing as fate. If I cross the street, I will see her. Otherwise, never. He slammed it like a hollow bullet into his chest.
"Between me and you, I'm going to follow fate." She choked suddenly, holding her breath, "Next...... I'm going to officially talk about a boyfriend, the married kind. ”
Oh, the end is coming, no. He smiled happily, "Wow, congratulations, it's long overdue for a good wife and mother." When you get married, I'm going to give you a big gift, tell me, what do you want? ”
"Whatever." She suddenly got up and dressed, "It's a little cold, don't you think?" "It's like you've done your plan, and you're in a hurry to get out of here. He heard her emotion, but ignored it. She's so young, she'll pass, and it'll be fine after going out about 150 meters. He watched her dress, inside and out.
…… She dressed very slowly, deliberately tugging at his gaze. She shows her pubic with buttocks. Her back line, her nipples, her armpits, and her toes and thighs before putting on stockings. Every movement of her is like saying, you take a good look at me, look at me like you first saw me, look like you won't see me again.
He was still distracted. "Actually, if I really went to see her, I wouldn't have said anything about the affair in the broken basket. I won't talk about you or any woman, I won't talk about my wife and children, I won't talk about divorce. None of them. You know, in front of her, I'm a boy again. His voice was fluttering, as if he had flown over a white cloud, and there was a sense of happiness, mixed with the mourning of virginity.
"And what do you say?" She had buttoned the last button. She didn't think she was too upset. She stared at his sideburns, his double chin, and a yellow-brown spot on his left forehead. She had to remember what he was like at the moment, he was about to become an old man from a man.
"Maybe, well, tell me about something from a long time ago, like the first sperm loss, I remember it clearly. In the first semester of junior high school, the mathematics test was very rare, and I was most afraid of this course, and as soon as the bell rang for the paper, I was so scared that I got an erection, and found that there was still most of the paper that had not been done, and it suddenly came out. He suddenly put his hand over his forehead and made a sound similar to laughing.
"Aha." She was also close to laughing. Dressed neatly and ready to go out, she put on her bag and asked responsibly, "You finally tell me the truth, is the report serious?" ”
He took his hand away, a fierce disappointment on his face, as if she had asked the stupidest and most inconsequential question. He opened his mouth angrily, but she suddenly stopped, "Forget it, don't say it, I don't want to know." It's all the same, isn't it. Good bye. ”
She said goodbye to him, like a business secretary, serious, colorless.
Originally published in "Mangzhong", No. 7, 2017, and "Novel Monthly", No. 9, 2017
Lu Min is the vice chairman of the Jiangsu Writers Association. He has published more than 30 books, including "Running to the Moon", "Dinner for Six", "Hormone Night Talk", "Viewfinder", "Dust", "Banquet" and "Paper Drunk". He has won the Lu Xun Literature Award, the Zhuang Chongwen Literature Award, the People's Literature Award, the Yu Dafu Literature Award, and the Wang Zengqi Literature Award. Selected as one of the "Top 20 Future Masters of People's Literature" and "20 under 40" in the Chinese fiction industry of Taiwan United Literature. Some works have been translated into German, French, Japanese, Russian, English, Italian, etc.
Interviews | Lu Min: It is only in middle age that people realize the heaviness and profundity of the physical body
Entering middle age, Lu Min was tired of the aesthetic of "peace and stability" and decided to "endorse" hormones. The order of spirit, intellect, talent, emotion, and flesh suddenly fell to the writer. At a certain stage in life, the physical body displays a heavy and fascinating, chaotic and sharp nature that is difficult to ignore.
"Hormone Night Talk" includes ten short stories, including "The Great Banquet", "Hormone Night Talk", "Three People and Two Legs", "Gravity", "Xitian Temple", "Xu Ji Duck Past", "Falling Aesthetics" and so on. Through the carrier of the physical body, Lu Min's cold investigation of human nature and sensibility is often proved to be extreme cases: the big drug lord who seduces the flight attendant with his foot fetish, the official who longs to be whipped as a pet dog, and the boss Xu Jiya who killed the wife of the cloth store manager...... The book's depictions of sexuality, violence, and freaks are quite bold. After the novel "Three People and Two Legs" was published in "Harvest", some critics even wrote an article accusing Lu Min of falling into "low-grade taste".
However, as Lu Min said, our aesthetics of literature and even human nature itself are too stable and correct, so that they are not alarmed, so that a thousand people are the same. Forty-year-old Lu Min deliberately "offended", she did not shy away from the dark and sharp energy of the body, and no longer gave the characters in her pen "round, logical, and well-dressed", she ruthlessly killed and snatched, unreservedly peeled off and restored, she said: "This is just a fact, I really understand and view the world like this recently." "It's as if being true to your heart is a writer's highest morality.
Is there a danger of getting lost? Lu Min told her frankly that in the face of the abyss of human nature, she did not have panic disorder. She had an almost scientific attitude, "I wish I could stretch my head farther, my gaze longer, cast a silent and eager gaze." ”
Nandu: I don't think of any writer who dedicates a certain stage of writing entirely to hormones (or libido). You mentioned that you used to rank all aspects of people, from front to back, spiritual, intellectual, talented, emotional, physical. The flesh was originally at the back of the line, but at what point did it suddenly grab your attention and counterattack to the front of the line?
Lu Min: To be honest, it's not the dramatic moment of lightning and rainstorms, although I'd love to do it. The answer is old-fashioned——— it's just time, like dust falling, like a wild horse soaring, with a force that is slow and slow, and keeps turning and turning. I think this kind of change may also be phased, and many people have experienced it before. Some people have changed from dung to power admirers, and some people have changed from snobbery to indifferent ambitions, etc. It just so happened that I was a writer, and at the same time a writer who was very faithful to my own feelings.
The flesh is very concrete, with a barb on the fingertips and a sip of cold beer, this is the flesh, and desire is like a knife falling to the ground, which is also the flesh. The physical body has its superficial, abnormal, self-healing side, when you are young, it is indeed easy to ignore and trample, after all, after many years of education, as soon as you raise your eyes, you have to think of the ideal halo or great future. To be truly aware of the heaviness and profundity of the physical body, its frailty, tumbling, and weight-lifting side, does take time to stir and ferment. It was only after I reached middle age that I realized or admitted this, and from a writing point of view, I could say that I accepted this assigned task unconsciously and at the same time.
Nandu: Nine of the ten short stories in "Hormonal Night Talk" involve sex and violence, did you have a completely liberal attitude when you wrote, or did you also have concerns? Was it challenging for you to write short stories such as "Hormonal Night Talk", "Three People and Two Legs", "Gravity", and "The Past of Xu Ji Duck"?
Lu Min: For fictional writers, there is a professional privilege: black and white, morality, ethics, or law, which are not simply wrong or obstacles. A writer can be an executioner who kills without blinking, with a keyboard click, a life coming, a life leaving, just as we have designed and dealt with countless betrayals, loves, and fidelities...... When it comes to the topics covered in this book, as long as they are in line with my own values and aesthetics, I don't care about them. I was even a little offended by the fun with the psychology of experimentation.
There are some challenges, not only technical, but at the end of the day, there is also the need to consider publication and audience acceptance. When "Three People and Two Legs" was published in "Harvest", there were different opinions within the editorial department, and later it was edited by Cheng Yongxin who strongly advocated the publication. Immediately after this article was published, a critic published an article criticizing it in the "Literary Newspaper", saying why did Lu Min write like this now? Isn't it a bit of a low-level fun? What about her long-term warmth and kindness and the hearts of the world? I'm confident that my interest isn't low. I once thought that the title of the book should not be too eye-catching, but then Han Jingqun decided to call it "Hormone Night Talk", and we didn't deliberately title the party to sensationalize. The writer is seriously digging into this subject.
Nandu: Where did the inspiration for these stories come from? The depiction of foot fetish in "Three People and Two Legs" is impressive, where did you get this experience? As an author, does it sometimes feel dangerous to peek into the depths of human nature?
Lu Min: When I write novels, I have always prided myself on high-purity fiction. Not this time. "Three People and Two Legs", "Falling Aesthetics", "Hug", "Hormone Night Talk", "Xu Ji Duck's Past", "Pillow Words", these six articles all have a bit of a source of shadows. The cross-sections of the characters and their bold actions that came from the wind always thrilled and touched me, what a sharp and powerful force they were, how many years of upbringing and patience they had broken through, no longer understood righteousness or shrewd snobbery, and coldly stripped themselves away, restored themselves, and asserted themselves! Therefore, I will never give them a round, logical, or well-dressed scene in my writing, and I don't want to do too much embellishment or decoration.
But in terms of details, of course, I still play my infinite fiction. In "Three People and Two Legs", it is true that the flight attendant sells drugs with shoes and jumps off the building with her lover, but the foot fetish is added by myself. Simple crime stories lack literary and gender connotations. I did do some homework beforehand, the search engine is a universal instructor, and it's so powerful. After this novel was released, some foot fetish enthusiasts interacted with me in private messages on Weibo, wanting to provide more material. I'm very happy, which means that my writing is quite in place, and it can almost be fake.
As for the danger, no, I have no panic in the face of the abyss of human nature, I wish I had my head farther, my gaze longer, and cast a silent and eager gaze.
Hormones don't just refer to sex, sex, and desire
Nandu: Hormones are always a destructive force when they appear in the story, how do we understand this human instinct? Isn't it true that all of our lives are fighting hormones?
Lu Min: As far as I know, hormones are a concept of growth and change. For example, the instinct of young people is often the positive hormone that grows and the spring breeze is vigorous. However, in my book, I write about the middle-aged beach where the tide is exhausted, the smoky juice is dried up, the cruelty and darkness after instrumentalization and pathology, they deceive themselves or others, they pass on the vulgar desires of this hot iron like a relay run...... But I'm not in a bad mood about it, and I'm not going to criticize it at all, if not to encourage it.
I have always felt that hormones, after middle age, are not only fingers, sex, and desire, but also a broader concept, which has infinite pity for the plight of the individual, with a little instigation, and affects you, making decisions that obey intuition and this in difficult times, so that going downstream becomes the driving force, flies and dogs become justice, and men and women become thin red lines that can be broken at a pull, so as to obtain liberation in pain and laughter in the dark.
Therefore, most people will fight hormones in most cases, but in some atypical environments, they will also show a disruptive side, which on the surface seems to be destruction, but in fact it is more of an outlet, the only option under the fallacious reasoning, and it is another village, even if there is no one in this village, he is still a lonely person who has lost his morality and backslidden. But at this time, he is already different, wading through the black river of desire——— he is like a new life, and he has obtained rare freedom.
Nandu: In Chinese and foreign literature, are there any works that you think are particularly good at exploring hormones and the body, or the author's concept is closer to yours? Reading "Hormonal Night Talk" reminds me of the British writer Mike Ewan, but he is clearly darker and more brutal.
Lu Min: Actually, I feel that most of my works are more or less present and involved in hormones, which are an element of infinite freedom, abundant and unrestrained, suppressing conflicts, and endless. There are in the Book of Songs, in "Thunderstorm", and in "Tropic of Cancer".
I don't appreciate decency and high legitimacy. I tend to transcend and even create in difficult situations. So I prefer Junichiro Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima. If I expand the field a bit, I also like many of the philosophers Foucault's research and discourse in this area. Among the film directors, I like Lars von Trier and Almodóvar, they taught me a lot.
"Local" is too safe
Nandu: You started working at the age of 18 and worked as a salesperson, corporate publicity, journalist, secretary, and civil servant, did these professional experiences help you write novels?
Lu Min: There is no doubt that all experiences, even the monotonous ones, will help, such as the bitter almond flavor that will help you chew on time. In addition to the obvious influence of the source of the material: fifteen years in the post office, I would write about postmen, maps, train escorts, people who checked dead letters, and so on. But I think it's more interesting and pattern——— for example, I have a tedious and boring life, and I have an inexplicable and enduring interest, which has become the background of most of my protagonists. Such characters are actually more difficult to write, but the plight of ordinary people is more valuable to investigate. For example, in this book, how ordinary housewives, neighbors, passers-by, and hawkers deal with and face their hormones, I think, this is even more explosive power that cannot be underestimated.
Nandu: You used to write about the countryside and the dark diseases of the city, why have you lost interest in these two types of subjects now? After hormones, what would you write about?
Lu Min: Actually, it's all a natural process. "Local" is too safe, and it is too easy to continue that kind of unstable aesthetic. Urban Darkness is an area that I have a lot of affection for. Not long ago, I came across a statistic in a paper that said that there were 88 patients and more than 100 diseases in my novels from 2001 to 2012. I don't know if this data is accurate, and besides, physical disease is not my focus, but at least it shows that at a certain stage, I must have become a doctor or a patient. When it comes to the hormone series, I feel that it should be a liberation of the dark disease series, and I let my novel characters rise up from the depression, and use hormones as a breakthrough to act, break and come out. Next, I'm also curious and looking forward to what I'll write. I sometimes look at the gray sky, and there is no hint on it.
Source: Southern Metropolis Daily
Worldly pleasures and dramatic mutations
——Discussion of Lu Min's works
Moderator: Yang Qingxiang
Participants: Liang Hong, Qiao Ye, Han Jingqun, Zhao Tiancheng, Li Zhuang, Liu Daxian, Li Jianzhang, Chen Ruogu, Fan Yingchun, Li Weichao, Xu Gang, Shen Jianyang, Xie Shangfa, Chen Huaji
Yang Qingxiang: The 22nd joint literature class specially invited the writer Lu Min. She recently published a collection of novels that I personally think is particularly good, "Hormonal Night Talk", which is a very interesting story, and today's discussion is mainly about this book.
Han Jingqun: The opening article of "Hormonal Night Talk" is very well written, and I saw Lu Min looking for the direction of her creative breakthrough in confusion. I have already seen the direction of her efforts in "The Great Banquet", including in "When We Talk About Constellations". Many writers of this generation are indeed facing some problems, which is also Lu Min's confusion. Confusion is important, and confusion really doesn't have to be stressful. Sometimes not being confused means that we're actually gliding along the track we have. But is it to seek some breakthrough? In this sense, art is a process of overcoming difficulties, overcoming one's inner confusion.
Zhao Tiancheng: When I was reading, I had the pleasure of reading, but it was not the complete pleasure of reading a popular novel. If you want to interpret it, you don't feel good about it. It wasn't until I saw He Ping's "Scattered Talks about Hormones and Nights" that he thought that "Hormones Night Talks" was a novel that was not very thorough, first of all, he didn't write "sex" thoroughly enough. When "color" is not written thoroughly, people's despair is not written thoroughly enough, and the complexity of the character is not fully developed. The second "incomplete" is that Lu Min cherishes her public image as a writer, so she will only regard this kind of subject matter as the liberation of narrative, rather than the liberation of values and worldview. Therefore, when the plot of the story swings to the point where it is about to transgress social norms, it will quickly retract into everyday life, into the logic of realism.
Liang Hong: In the past few years, the "post-70s" female writers have been in a period of change, and when they reach middle age and have been writing for so many years, they all hope to have a particularly big change, so how to change? It's about your view of the world, about your view of people, and of course about sexuality specifically. "Hormonal Night Talk" itself includes your views on sex, your views on the body, and your views on the body's place in the person. But sometimes, I think the story is a little too obvious for the author's thinking, such as the midlife crisis about "Hormone Night Talk", I think the midlife crisis is our personal matter, but when you project this onto the characters, you will find that the characters' thoughts are too simple.
I like the huge amount of information in my works, the mixture of all kinds of knowledge, the mixture of life, and I grasp the texture of life more and more deeply, from "Nine Sorrows" to "Hormonal Night Talk", many times the folds of life cannot be traced, or it needs the writer to show this fold to the reader layer by layer. Because city life isn't that simple. Although "Hormone Night Talk" is a collection of short stories, it shows the complex and multidimensional aspects of urban life.
Yang Qingxiang: There are a lot of flashes of inspiration in Lu Min's short stories, and the reason why such a sentence is powerful is that it is based on very detailed textures and observations of life.
There's a higher requirement for a writer to be able to turn that drama into a higher drama, into a literary drama and not just a journalistic drama.
Li Zhuang: Why is the "post-70s" generation particularly interested in the body? This is actually a generational writing vacuum, like a very lonely individual stuck between two sets of huge gears, the left gear is about social history, there is a long and powerful pedigree, but at this time it is slowly disintegrating, and the power is no longer enough to support the writer to put all his things through writing. So the cog on the other side is something that is purely internal, private experience of the individual. To this day, there has been a crisis in this purely personal experiential writing, this generation is not only the "post-70s" but also many "post-80s", they are all stuck in the middle, connecting these two sets of gears that cannot be fully bitten through physical experience, and then secreting their own hormones, so that these two sets of bumping systems can gradually work here and gradually form a complete thing. In fact, in this book, I think Lu Min has taken a step further, that is, he has not had so many constraints at the beginning, but the things behind him are deeper and more helpless.
Liu Daxian: I think the body that Lu Min writes about is incomplete, just like the feet and feet, it is a part of the body, and this part of the body may only be embodied in desire, and there should be things in it that we dislike and hate, and I think it may not have been written yet. Because the body cannot be made whole by the spirit, by the intellect, by the emotions. More often than not, I feel that Lu Min does have a sense of comfort brought to her by her own environment, that is, she really can't enter the dirty things. Recently, the sequel to the "Trainspotting" movie came out, and in the first episode of "Trainspotting", there was a man who climbed into a dirty toilet, and there was a sea-like scene, and I felt that there should be such a thing, to discover a new world in the dirt.
Li Jianzhang: Although this novel is called "Hormone Night Talk", it is actually anti-hormonal. As it is written in the book, "The vanity of words is used to fight the vanity of life". It is not difficult to see between the lines of the novel: if hormones alone are not enough to save the characters in the novel from emptiness, boredom, and disillusionment, not to mention that more often hormones are just a puppet or excuse, and what really plays a role behind it is money and power. In fact, the secretions that really make people happy, give people a sense of existence, belonging, and worth are not hormones, but dopamine or endorphins. Unfortunately, many of the characters in the novel choose hormones, giving up simple and pure happiness and a sense of belonging, so they are undoubtedly exposed to the killing of money and power. What they gain is a momentary vanity, and the price they pay is a long period of pain, and the worst is the destruction of their lives. These people resolutely chose hormones, and hormones also pushed them down the abyss responsibly.
Chen Ruogu: I don't think it's just about "hormones", it's about "night talk". At least half of this is written about choosing death, and our understanding of death is certainly not because a person suddenly collapses and dies, "death" is produced in reading and imagination, and death should be understood as a symbol. I think the first image of life is the grave and the ruins, the feeling of vanishing. It is only by symbolizing death that we can understand the Enlightenment or other modern ideologies that dominate all of our discussions of the topic of "The Death of a Poet."
Fan Yingchun: For a long time, our literature, film and television have been supported by the "youth" market, and we have relied on this huge group, but also because we rely on a so-called youth and hope, on a kind of resonance and experience sharing, because everyone was young, this is a way for us to find belonging. But Lu Min's novels give me the feeling that they are full of rejection of this sense of security and social integration, full of distrust of society, and direct abandonment of family, friendship, and love.
Li Weichao: "The pleasures of the world" are especially like the mainstream of today's society - the world is well. The characters in this novel are either looking for something different on the basis of their well-being in the present world, through which they can escape their middle-aged despair ("Hormonal Night Talk"); Either they want to develop into a state of peace in the present world ("The Great Feast"). In particular, the novel "The Great Feast" is particularly like the isomorphism of our time, not an allegory or irony, it tells a carnival-like and intoxicating story, but the characters in it are all calling for power, and this power does not need to be revealed, as long as it exists, and all this is the greatest feature of our time.
Yang Qingxiang: So I think there is a very important symptom problem for contemporary Chinese writers, which is to exercise their sociological imagination to a high degree. If there is no such sociological imagination, it is necessary to have the mind of the other. This otherness is not something that you have cultivated by reading Buddhist scriptures, but the otherness is that you really live with those people.
Xu Gang: It's a very typical way of writing a short story, pursuing something very sharp and dramatic. Through clever conception, there is a plot twist at the end. We were able to be mobilized very easily, to be substituted into the situation, and finally to understand that this was the end of the story.
Of course, this novel is very depressing, but it is indeed possible to write about an individual in such an era, and to be able to feel an emotion very personally. Of course, it is still within the framework of what Li Weichao said just now, but she can do it to the extreme, and then explore the possibility of a boundary. I think this is a very valuable part of Lu Min's novel.
Shen Jianyang: I found that there are a few things that exist in the writer's hometown, like childhood, the countryside, youth, and love. In the end, these things can't be said to be a particularly complete love story. Childhood, the countryside, youth, love, may never be found again, maybe that story can no longer be said, but that thing must be beautiful, I feel that the work has always had such an emotional structure.
Xie Shangfa: The whole collection of novels seems to be about sexuality, but it brings more contemplative things, and sex is just a breakthrough to show the current dilemma of life. It's easy to think of Foucault – sexuality is not about how sexual experience has been dealt with throughout the ages, but about revealing how sexuality has been repressed and how the possibility of normal speech has been lost under the cover of discursive power. These novels are equally reminiscent of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, especially the last sentence: "Man is a useless passion." In fact, in this collection of novels, many sexual topics can also be understood in the Sartre style, and to put it bluntly, it is a useless consumption of passion.
Qiao Ye: I have basically read all of Lu Min's novels, and I mainly talk about the problem. First of all, when it comes to the problem of "The Great Banquet", she is trying very hard to expand the field of her literary expression. The problem of her expansive and realistic logical solution, as well as the problem of her central mode of thought, I think my aspect is even more prominent. We don't look the same, but we're actually on the same line. The "post-70s" generation has the same upbringing, and we have a lot in common, including the pattern of the central idea, the paranoid choice of certain taken for granted, and the problem of dramatic exaggeration.
Chen Huaji: In the collection of novels, Lu Min focuses on various sexual topics and writes a kind of butterfly effect novel. It is precisely through our most everyday writing that we combine with the social structure to open up the spirit. The whole thinking structure of the novel reflects the stability of the subject matter, especially the spiritual hidden dangers in the deep structure of this society. Therefore, Lu Min's novels are very concerned with the spiritual world.
Lu Min said
Cao Xia
Executive summary: Lu Min is a narrative "adventurer" who constantly changes the theme and method of narrative. In the early "Dongba series", she constructed the rural Chinese landscape in the post-new era through the writing of "change" and "unchanged" in the countryside. In the writing of "Dark Disease", she has insight into the fact that scarcity, loneliness, and boredom are the norm, and prescribes the "prescription" and "antidote" for autism for urban people; In her recent work "Identity/Body", she explores the boundaries and possibilities of identity, and depicts the changes of the body in the river of time, so as to reach a deep understanding of life.
Keywords: Lu Min, Dongba series, dark disease, identity/body, life cognition
Among the "post-70s" writers, Lu Min's experience is quite special. She has worked in the post office for 14 years, as a salesperson, labor-management clerk, branch secretary, external publicity officer, and secretary. However, the lull did not last long. On a "dull and deadly evening" in 1998, she looked out from her office on the 30th floor of the office building and saw hawkers, policemen, civil servants, and lovelorns hurrying forward, with deep secrets locked under the calm exterior. At that moment, she was struck by a thought: "I desperately want to be close to their hearts, to feel their sorrow and compassion." This requires sensible tools, like "a telescope and viewfinder of magnification, exaggerated and somewhat distorted and insane" that would bring "unlimited freedom of spying and the right to wild adventures" (1). Since then, Lu Min, a postal worker, has taken a long road to becoming a writer.
With this walk, I walked out of a rich, vast and mature writing scene. So far, Lu Min has published eight novels such as "Bo Love Letter", "Hundred Annoyances", "This Love Can't Be Delivered", "Dinner for Six", "Running to the Moon", and published short and medium stories such as "Paper Drunk", "Thinking of Innocence", "Dark Disease", "Viewfinder", "Death and Hide", "Burning Clouds", etc., and won important awards such as the Lu Xun Literature Award, which can be described as the "post-70s" leader. Her delicate sensitivity and her constant self-consciously changing narrative themes and methods of writing have been recognized and given fresh and strong expectations.
1. Rural utopia and the changes in the ethics of the times
Lu Min's "Dongba series" is based on his hometown of Dongtai, Jiangsu. Just like Wei Wei's "Weihu Gate", Xu Zechen's "Flower Street", Ah Yi's "Hongwu Town" and "Qingpen Township", and Cao Kou's "Tang Village", "Dongba" has also become a unique literary geographical map belonging to Lu Min. She constructed the image of "Dongba" with a tone of abundance, brilliance, and nostalgia of pre-modern civilization. It is "a place where the sun and the moon are affectionate, and human affection is kind", "the most leisurely and melancholy part of the pastoral dream of traditional Chinese literati", a "utopia on paper" (2).
Through the description of the people and things in Dongba, Lu Min tells about the "change" and "unchanged" of Dongba. The ancient ethics of rural China and the fission generated by the intervention of modernity in the countryside are intertwined, constituting the landscape of rural China in the post-new era. "Country Love" and "Country Women" are still the objects of her writing, but even in typical women's growth stories such as "Going Out", what she presents is no longer the oppression of women by male power/patriarchy/husband's power, but the intricate self-growth, the choice of the times, the imagination of the homeland, and the mutual penetration and mirror image of each other. "Paper Drunk" tells the story of Mr. Yi's two sons, Da Yuan and Xiao Yuan, who grew up with the mute girl Kaiyin since childhood. Da Yuan likes to play the flute for Kaiyin, and Xiao Yuan likes to tell stories to Kaiyin. Kaiyin cuts paper according to the characters and plot," Xiao Yuan scribbled on the paper while speaking, and sometimes raised his eyes to look. The storyteller and the listener, both pairs of eyes are wet, like the tail life, about to be submerged in water." Lu Min uses the three elements of "flute", "paper cutting" and "storytelling" to skillfully connect and distinguish their relationship. The tranquility of the countryside represented by "Dizi" is obviously not comparable to the attraction brought by "storytelling", and the intimacy and effectiveness of the interaction between "storytelling" and "paper-cutting" far exceed the static relationship between "Dizi", which hints at the nature and direction of the relationship between the three people.
"Paper Drunk" is a tribute to "Border City", but on the basis of similar narrative paths, it is different. Da Yuan, Xiao Yuan and Kaiyin are not the Tianbao, Susheng and Cuicui in the city below the White Tower, and the new social and contemporary conditions are destined to make different choices. Da Yuan left home to work, Xiao Yuan was admitted to Peking University, Kaiyin's paper-cutting was rated as an intangible cultural heritage, and she decided to leave Dongba and go to Beijing. "This Kaiyin, fate, she is not Da Yuan, not Xiao Yuan, or even Dongba, she was born as a voiceless person, a paper person, an immortal, a person who wants to float away." The unfinished state of rural love is no longer due to the accident of fate, but comes from the heroine's conscious life choices. This solid subjectivity transcends the confines of the countryside and the binary opposition of gender.
In the local society, people come and go according to the trust accumulated in the "acquaintance society", which is the etiquette and human favor that maintain cultural traditions. Growing up in the countryside, Lu Min clearly agrees with this, and at the same time, she also notices that rural life is not monolithic, and there is no shortage of "accidents" that slip out of the category of rural ethics and morality, and there are twists and turns between joy and sorrow. "Si Wu Evil" tells the story of Lan Xiao, a 37-year-old girl with dementia, who accidentally suffered a stroke, and her elderly parents were unable to take care of her. The villagers only saw that Noble took good care of Lan Xiao, but no one noticed the change in the relationship between the two until Lan Xiao became pregnant. Teacher Yi personally came forward to propose marriage for the two people, however, they did not get married, Lan Xiao died of hemorrhage during childbirth, and the "comedy" turned into a "tragedy". Lu Min wrote Lan Xiao's suffering, Noble's resignation, and the sighs of the villagers very quietly, and fixed the Dongba without Lan Xiao in the eternal peace:
Fish, snails, loaches, ducks, reeds and bamboo, bathing buffalo. A child threw down a stone. Dead trees in winter, white ice in the river. As I told you, this pond lacks nothing, just like a person's facial features, which grow properly and properly. ③
This idyllic landscape is an empathetic consolation delivered by Lu Min from the depths of grief, which dissolves the reader's hurt and regret, and also puts together a pure landscape for the rural utopia. Such a twist can also be seen in "The Grace of the Dead". The novel tells the story of Chen Yindong, a native of Dongba, who went out to repair the railway, was hit by a sleeper and died, and his wife Hongsao and daughter Qingqing received a large pension. Gu Li, who lived with Chen Yindong when he was working, brought his son Dawuti to Dongba. Although the spatial relationship between the frontier (outside) and Dongba (inside) in the novel brings the richness of the narrative, and Gu Li's identity as an "unmarried mother" and "frontier woman" can also bring diverse themes, Lu Min's narrative focus is not here, she wants to show the kindness and warmth of the Dongba people. Dawuti had a problem with her eyes, and she also had a suspicious lump on her breast. Hongsao's sister-in-law decided to give up her own treatment, use her pension to treat Dawuti's illness, and give Qingqing a "good dowry". The tense confrontation between "one husband and two daughters" is wisely resolved into a good ethic, an affectionate and ancient calling.
The changes of the times have not only brought changes in interpersonal relationships and lifestyles in rural China, but also changed the laws of agricultural cultivation that have been formed naturally for thousands of years. "Upside Down Time" tells the story of Mu Dan and Fengzi planting watermelons in greenhouses. They worked hard, contrary to the law of watermelon ripening in summer, and had a full harvest at the beginning of spring, with a good economic income, but Mu Dan could not be happy, nor did he eat the beautiful watermelon that was "reversed" by the season, but the ugly melon that was unattended at the door of the house made him find the taste of his childhood: "This melon is grounded, it is laughing at the spring breeze, it is dewed, it is thundering, it is eaten in the mouth, and it is like eating the taste of spring and summer...... "In natural planting / greenhouse cultivation, should be in time for / move against the times, the unity of nature and man / In contrast to the separation of heaven and man, Lu Min awakened the long-forgotten agricultural civilization that matured in the embrace of nature, making people full of nostalgia and reluctance for the vanishing rural past.
If in these works, Lu Min shows the beauty of rural utopia with kind understanding, deep concern, and poetic brushwork, then in "Wind and Moon Scissors", a deep and painful writing makes people realize how lamentable the disappearance of "beauty" is. Master Song, a tailor in Dongba, is a homosexual, who does a good job of tailoring and accepting an elegant apprentice Xiaotong, whose sexual orientation is different from that of ordinary people, so that the villagers talk about him. In a rural society and human structure with stable inheritance, "reproduction" is the top priority of families and ethnic groups. Homosexuality is unlikely to be accepted by the villagers because it has completely severed this rural ethic. Lu Min does not criticize homosexuality, nor does she make value judgments about the behavior of villagers, she is more concerned about how "beauty" is destroyed and destroyed. The plot ups and downs, dramatic conflicts, and detailed descriptions in the novel are thus complicated, and against the backdrop of a sentimental tone, the practical and ordinary moral codes of the Chinese countryside are repeatedly examined.
In comparison, "Leaving Song" is more like the last chapter of the "Dongba Series", not only because Old Man Peng died without regrets, and properly entrusted the third master to bury his favorite things with him before his death, but also because the novel is filled with a peaceful and quiet atmosphere from beginning to end, gently ironing out the life and death love and hate in the world. In Lu Min's view, human life is like the nature of the countryside, you don't have to be happy when you come, and you don't have to be sad when you go. "Autumn is coming very slowly, the river begins to spread a layer of dead leaves and branches, and there are fallen wild berries, the third master sometimes rows by, fishes some up, has been pecked by the birds full of small holes, wash and bite open and eat, it is so sweet and sour." After bidding farewell to Old Man Peng, the third master sat by the river, "I waited for a long time before I got on the boat, rowing very slowly—the boat seemed to be slightly heavier than usual, but it was extraordinarily elegant." This kind of peace that knows how to enjoy the good of this world and welcome the coming of death opens up the tranquility and tranquility of insight into the essence of life.
In the face of the good times and clean homes that have passed, Lu Min, like many people, holds infinite nostalgia and remembrance, and that taciturn land has "little lies, little sadness, little love", and "small but precious 'goodness'" (4). The uniqueness of Lu Min's rural writing lies in the fact that the people and things she writes about have gone beyond the scope of traditional rural narratives. In her writings, there are not only agriculture, agricultural affairs, and farmers, but also "non-agricultural" roles in the process of urbanization, such as rural teachers, principals, accountants, tailors, doctors, etc., such as Teacher Yi, who appeared in various novels, assumes the functions of "teacher", "military advisor", "lawyer", "accountant" and "matchmaker". "My homeland is from the eighties and nineties, it is the countryside on the edge of urbanization, revival and restless, timid and dazed." (5) This transitional narrative category comes from the background of the social transition period in which the "post-70s" grew up on the one hand, and from Lu Min's family background on the other hand (his mother and many relatives are rural teachers). The genealogy of these characters, together with the ridges, melon sheds, grain-filled corn, and plump beans of Dongba, together shape the aesthetic style with Jiangnan characteristics, and also add important literary experience to rural China.
2. Want, Sickness and Loneliness
After winning many awards in the "Dongba Series", Lu Min began to feel uneasy about the maturity of her writing experience, and she decided to turn to the unfamiliar, difficult, and unknown narrative zone, "almost pathologically longing for oncoming branches and torrential rain, certain tension and panic" (6). The new narrative "adventure" is manifested as a spatial shift from "Dongba" to big cities such as Nanjing; Thematically, it has shifted from the local affairs to deep thinking with modern characteristics, such as dark diseases, such as death and want.
Lu Min's literary world is full of cold gray tones, and his characters are either dead or injured, disabled or sick. The "I" in "Broken Mirror" has no mother, Dalin in "When We Talk About Constellations" committed suicide, Xiaoshuang in "Sisters in the Mirror" committed suicide, Ding Chenggong committed suicide in "Dinner for Six", and Lu Danqing in "This Love Can't Be Delivered" was sentenced to death for hooliganism during the "Strike Hard" period. In "Uncertainty", the eldest sister-in-law and the second sister-in-law died of illness, which made the eldest brother and the second brother have the same widower status, and also made people worry about the fate of the third child's future wife. "Death and Mystery" is written about Lao Lei poisoning and killing his son, but the reason behind this family tragedy makes it impossible to convict this father. Lu Min's deaths are so intimate that some critics have devoted themselves to the subject. ⑦
Death is the norm of life and the natural process of life, it is "everywhere, inevitable, irresistible", and it is an "indispensable" loss. (8) Only when a person faces "loss" soberly and rationally as a modern subject can it fade away from the old wound and become the material for the construction of a new life form. For Lu Min, the real and unfortunate loss of his father became the source of the narrative. She portrays her father in fiction, imagines his father, and meets him again, transforming his "absence" into an eternal "presence". The trauma of losing a father thus finds some solace and relief, which some commentators call "self-healing writing" (9). In novels such as "White Scarf", "Father on the Wall", "Dinner for Six", and "Dust", the origin and imprint of "Lu Min's Pain" (10) can be found. This series of works on family life all deal with the "loss of a father": the death of a father in an accident or illness, leaving an orphan and a widow to cope with difficult times.
If the consequences of this loss are summed up in one word, it is "deprivation": economic deprivation, emotional deprivation, deprivation of family integrity, deprivation of individual life experience. On the theme of economic deprivation, "Father on the Wall" is the most detailed, poignant, and terrifying. The mother and daughter live in a small 19-square-metre studio and share a sewage-ridden communal kitchen and smelly communal toilet with their neighbours. Mothers try their best to ensure the nutrition of their daughters while saving money. finally ate pork ribs, the mother and daughter were as cheerful and ashamed as thieves, pulled down the curtains and used their hands and teeth together, and used knives, tongs, and hammers to knock on the bones and suck the marrow; The mother made a good fan, the sister accidentally knocked over the plate, the fan fell to the ground, the sister quickly fell to the greasy floor of the public kitchen to lick the food, and the neighbor was so frightened by this horrific scene that he sneaked away...... All of this tells and imprints their hard work. The cripple of the economy is secondary, and what is terrible is the extreme insecurity of the mother and daughter. The mother is busy saving and storing like a hamster in winter, the older sister wants to use marriage as a springboard to salvage the family from the sea of misery, and the younger sister is full of perverted love for food.
If "The Father on the Wall" is mainly a detailed presentation of economic deprivation, then "White Bib" writes how the fatherless child repeats his father's mistakes through the heroine Yi Ning's lackluster marriage and derailment, and the cycle of life has long been secretly foreshadowed. Lu Min embeds a lot of his father's real past in the novel, aesthetically transforms the real experience, and compares the shocking weathering events in the special era with the "colorful" emotional life of the current city, so that we can see: In the past, the "immoral" father had sincere and warm love; And now, the seemingly perfect husband and lover have lost their understanding of love. When Yining finally realized that "this is the common degradation of human beings", she shed tears into the void and shouted the words she never told her father: "Dad, I miss you." ”
Having the same pathological qualities as "loss" and "want" is the "dark disease". As an existence that deviates from the normal track and is always latent in the body, illness can always strongly arouse people's emotions such as worry, fear, fear and despair, so it is often used by artists as a tool to explore "people". When the artist expresses his own experience of illness through the medium of art, he "transcends subjective experience" and completes its "objectification". "Disease" is a classic in Chinese and foreign literary works. In the writings of the "post-70s", the narrative of illness is their physical and psychological feedback when they bear mental pressure, and it is their weak appeal in the historical and political vacuum. Sheng Ke's women mostly suffer from gynecological diseases and infertility, Zhang Chu's girls suffer from aplastic anemia, Yi Zhou's "Liu Xiaodong Series" focuses on depression, Ah Yi's characters suffer from secretory diseases, and Dong Zi's characters have fetishes and psychosexual illusions.
Lu Min has a novel called "Dark Disease". The Mei family all have explicit or implicit "diseases". Mei Xiaomei's father suffers from "vomiting", "something is happening, something needs to be decided, and something is easy to make mistakes", and "vomiting" has become the norm; Mother has a bookkeeping habit, not only to remember herself, but also to remember Xiaomei and her father, how her mood is closely related to whether the account book is "flat"; My aunt has been suffering from constipation for a long time, and when she talks about stool problems, she is full of interest and interest. Several of Xiaomei's blind dates were scared away by her aunt's enthusiastic chatting and pooping. Mei Xiaomei's illness is even more subtle, she works as a night proofreader in the newspaper, and her life is not fun. She suffers from "compulsive compulsion to return things", likes to go to high-end shopping malls to buy things, and quickly returns them as they are. In the end, everyone in the Mei family passed Xiaomei's blind date "Nine of Spades" with satisfaction. He was gentle, virtuous, courteous, and perfectly responsive to the family's quirky questions. However, at the wedding, his "dark disease" also attacked. He used his burning cigarette butt to burst the pink balloons one by one, gritted his teeth, and said, "I hate everything...... All people, the whole world ......" This hatred and "dark disease" that spreads all for no reason is much more serious than that of the Mei family.
"Dark Disease" thus became a work containing Lu Min's important motif, and this word also became a label that belongs to her. "N kinds of madmen, sick people, lonely people, people of disorder, people with broken heads, people who are discouraged, have entered my novels. I do not shy away from even being subtle about their pitiful abomination and pathos, and for every point of their sickness, my affection for them becomes stronger. The reason why people suffer from "dark diseases" is mostly caused by psychological reasons. In "Father on the Wall", Wang Wei suffers from eating and stealing. Xiaobai in "Dinner for Six" lost her father like Wang Wei and also suffered from eating disorder. Their greed for food comes from a strong sense of insecurity, and the psychiatrist explained it to Sister Wang Wei as follows: "Why does she like to eat so much? In the process of gastric juice secretion, people will form a faint self-paralysis, almost forgetting worries, which has become an important channel for your sister to perceive the sense of security and satisfaction of the family. Lu Min's "hidden diseases" are varied and unique: insomnia in "The Darkness of the Day and Night", the collecting addiction in "Words and Paper", the distrust in "Dust", the voyeurism in "Hundred Annoyances", the strange taste in "No Food", the paranoia in "Death and Seek", the map obsession in "On the Map", the health addiction in "Iron Pigeon", and so on. In "Dreams Are Fat", Tianxiao suffers from dreaminess, and her dreams are partially or fully realized the next day. This "special function" has been reversed several times, from attracting people to bringing her various benefits, making her a "dream woman" admired by everyone, but she didn't expect the man she liked to suspect that she was in love according to the instructions of the dream. So, is life based on dreams, or is it for the need to weave dreams and then spread false dreams to everyone? This is a difficult paradox. And those who hear false dreams are even more enlightened than those who hear real dreams, do they also have "dark diseases"......
In Lu Min's works, there is also a considerable amount of space devoted to specific physical diseases: heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc. These physiological diseases, like "hidden diseases", form a mutually referential and allusory relationship with the character and fate of the protagonist. In "Broken Mirror", the elegant and arrogant Hao Yin suffers from minor problems that cannot be explained for unknown reasons: vomiting, dizziness, stomach pain, cramps, nosebleeds, and low-grade fever. These sudden ailments may have come from the "riot" of her sensual body against the sane life. In "The Grace of the Dead", Hong's sister-in-law suffers from breast cancer because her husband neglects her body, and she also neglects her own body. The male protagonist in "Viewfinder" is terminally ill, and although the novel does not directly mention the cause, in his dying memories, the sweet and passionate memories of his lover are intertwined with the dull life with his wife. The photographer's lover/housewife's wife, spiritual/worldly, fun/boredom, all kinds of oppositions lead to his repression, which in turn leads to illness, which is reflected in the principal in "Green Silk" and the father in "White Bib". Due to unsatisfactory feelings, they have lived in misery for a long time, and because of their identity and education, they cannot act willfully, and they have a terminal illness under self-suppression. This corroborates Susan Sontag's investigation of the causes of disease: "According to the myth about cancer, it is usually the constant repression of emotions that causes cancer. Illness occurs due to repression, and illness in turn becomes a new "cage" for the patient: "Disease weakens the patient, restricts him, renders him incapacitated, reduces his normal interaction with the world around him, and makes him destitute and dependent on others." Illness causes weakness, fear, disgust, alienation, and pathos, leading to mental and physical decay and isolating the patient in a hopeless world. This also explains why we stay away from the "sick", whose pathogens are not contagious, but whose emotions are more intrusive than germs, and which infect the world around them into a sick one.
According to some researchers, in Lu Min's novels from 2001 to 2012, there were 88 patients and more than 100 diseases, which is quite staggering. In Lu Min's collection of essays, "I Make a Business from Vanity", there is a section called "Disease Explainer". From the perspective of psychology and sociology, Lu Min explained "varicose veins", "frozen shoulder", "migraine", "vertigo" and "tuberculosis". She regards "disease" as an important way to understand "human nature", and at the same time, when she raises her knife towards the "sick body", she finally aims this blade at herself: "I have been sick for the same long and deep. ”
In Lu Min's work, there is a theme that has not received widespread attention so far: the loneliness, alienation, emptiness, and boredom of urban life, which may also come from spiritual deprivation. Lu Min expresses the lonely nature of urban life through the hustle and bustle on the surface, but in fact the state of indifference and separation. Loneliness is when a person withdraws from a world where everything is connected, as if he has cut off all ties with his surroundings. In "A Love Letter to the Postman", M stands for urban white-collar workers who like to shop online. Rollin lives at the bottom, running around for food and clothing, and the lives of different classes are completely different, but they all don't understand each other and fall into loneliness together. The courier in "Penguin" "Kuaikuai" successfully made an appointment with the front desk lady and wanted to make her happy, but she didn't expect that the reason why she came to the appointment was out of sympathy for "Kuaikuai". Both of them are mired in the quagmire, but because of estrangement and misunderstanding, they put their own superiority above others. Once the truth is revealed, who can say who is happier and who is more pitiful than whom? In "Sketching", Ding Dan participated in the purple charity night organized by Lao Wang, auctioned off his four poetry lessons, and the buyer was a "Qian ancestor" Alice, and she also photographed a female painter to paint nudes for herself. Everyone takes their duties seriously according to the rules of business, and occasionally lives together with physical needs, but they are even farther away than the Pacific Ocean. Even Alice's simple request for a hug from Ding Dan for her nude portrait became a luxury.
Compared with the estrangement between strangers, the estrangement between relatives, lovers, and girlfriends is more bleak. "Contingent Stories Once Happened" explores the truth about the suicide of an unmarried girl, Mimi, who burned charcoal through the perspective of a reporter. Mimi lives in a family where divorced parents are common. She committed suicide in a suburban house where her father and his girlfriend, Teacher Qin, lived. The novel takes such a thrilling event as the starting point of the narrative, and shows the spiritual picture of urban people through the exploration of the mystery. It stands to reason that the saddest thing about Mimi's death should be her parents, boyfriend and best friend. During the investigation, the reporter found that no one knew the reason for Mimi's suicide. Hatsune, the best friend who co-runs a nail salon, is indifferent to her suicide, and her boyfriend Zhihua doesn't know or care about her state at all. Mimi's mother has adopted a state of self-isolation and paralysis against this grief event, and Mimi's father is considering selling the "murderous house" at a low price, and his words have chilled and shocked the reporter "I".
"I don't have anything to say to Mimi." Look at me, corrected, "I don't have anything to say to her mother." It's the same with Teacher Qin. I don't have a common language with all the women."
The indifference of Mimi's relatives and friends comes from loneliness and alienation. Hatsune who plays cosplay is lonely, Zhihua who repairs his mobile phone is lonely, and his mother who goes to Qingliangmen to sing is lonely. The old man who lived in the same neighborhood as Mimi and sat in a fixed position every day was also lonely. He commented on Mimi and the people who lived with her without complacency, but in fact, he expressed it upside down, and at first glance, he knew that he had not communicated with anyone for a long time. The reporter's pursuit and investigation are more like a cruel deconstruction process, not only did they not find out the reason for Mimi's suicide, but even her life and what she looked like became more and more blurred, becoming a "Rashomon", so that we felt that for Mimi, it was really better to commit suicide than to live in such a cold and ruthless world.
In "When We Talk About Constellations", a group of feng shui masters have achieved fame, among which Dalin is enthusiastic, threading the needle and leading the way to many decent and lively parties. One day he suddenly committed suicide, and everyone remembered that they didn't know anything about him. A "successful" female anchor is quite sad and asks everyone if they know anything about themselves, and the result is of course the same. The predicament and predicament of contemporary people can be seen at a glance. People usually hook up and call each other brothers, and in the name of "social politeness", they don't explore each other's details, but in fact they have no interest in each other at all. What could be more ridiculous than knowing nothing under this intimate encounter? Is there anything more bleak than not knowing who to send the news of death to after death?
Some people comprehend the secrets of life in "loneliness", while others live boringly in "loneliness". The theme of "boredom" is well articulated in existential philosophy. Heidegger divides "boredom" into three categories: "bored by something", "bored by something" and "deep boredom", and the common denominator of the three types of boredom is the meaninglessness and worthlessness that the subject feels. In contemporary Chinese literature, "boredom" is endowed with nihilistic characteristics and the gray tones of everyday life, such as Zhu Wen's Xiao Ding in the 1990s, who lived in an era of hope and despair, lies and deception, and then began to become numb, and lost interest in everything: "If it is said that every distinctive era raises some major spiritual problems for people, I think you will agree that in today's life, 'boredom' is such a very important spiritual problem." This assertion holds true today as well.
In Lu Min's novels, "boredom" has a postmodernist connotation because of its strong absurdity and deconstruction. In "Xitian Temple", Fu Ma's family goes to the cemetery to visit their grandfather. Along the way, grandma, mother, little aunt, and big uncle each have their own thoughts. After eating, Fu Ma asked a girl he knew to go to the express hotel together. However, it was not their date that left a deep impression on us, but the boredom that bound Fu Ma tightly: "Now there is nothing good in this world, only boredom, so boring that it obscures the sky and the sun, and it is breathless." "Why is it that every thing, sooner or later, will be boring, and this boredom is as big as the sky." Fu Ma is the "outsider" Meursault in China, who feels boredom more sensitively and deeply than most. The difference is that he could not have rebelled like Meursault. The deep paradox of contemporary life is that the subject tries to rebel against boredom through various physical activities, but the revolt itself proves to be boring. As a result, the boredom deepened.
More often than not, Lu Min's loneliness and boredom do not have existential reflections like those of Xitian Temple, but they are as ubiquitous as gnaws. "A Couple in the Dark" is all about dialogue, in which a woman wants to open the curtains and sleep in the moonlight, while a man just wants to go to bed early to save up energy for the next day's work. The original intentions of the two people are misplaced with each other in the contest of words, and they are at odds with each other. In "Drinking on the Forty-Seventh Floor", whether it is the fashionable NONO after the divorce, or the standard good wife and mother Xiaomei, or Nick and Thomas, who pursue NONO with ulterior motives, they all fall into their own prisons. "They gather because they are lonely, and they reap more solitude after the meeting. People have always been like this and will always be like this. "The sense of suspension on the 47th floor is the standard for urban loneliness. In "Seclusion", Shu Ning and Meng Lou were a pair of lovers when they were in college, and they once fanatically pursued romance. Many years later, Shu Ning was already a "successful person", and Meng Lou became a "loser" in the eyes of everyone. Interestingly, whether idealistic or realistic, they feel cold and hard loneliness and estrangement when they are with their partners, families, and even old lovers.
At this point, Lu Min conducted a cold scan of the urbanite. If life is so lonely and boring, is there any point in living? Some of Lu Min's works write about the state of life that is detached from the world and pursues "high places", which may be able to answer such questions. In "The Death of Xie Bomao", Chen Yixin fictionalized a good friend "Xie Bomao" to himself, and he wrote a letter to Xie Bomao with the address of his favorite road name: Baimao Fang, Qin Zhuangyuan Lane, Invitation Dibu, and Flower Sweeping Museum. These place names, full of southern classical flavor, have long since died in his life, and no one can receive letters to soothe his meaningless life. In "The Banquet", Zhong Xi, the head of the Chinese orchestra, had to take over the banquet, but he was tolerant of the pipa master Song Chen, who did not want to accompany the banquet. This tolerance contains a secret expectation, hoping that Song Chen can retain the dignity of folk music with skill and perseverance. At the end of the novel, from Song Chen's statement that "the material of ancient instrumental music is always taken from the nature of heaven and earth", Zhong Xi thought that "these ancient instruments have always been so comfortable, higher than the temple, or lower in the alleys, all of which have nothing to do with itself, as the so-called near is from the near, and the far should be far", which is the long-term sublimation of tolerance, expectation, and thought.
Born as a human being, there are not only wants, hidden diseases, physical diseases, but also all kinds of indescribable small suffering, loneliness, boredom, and pain, the writer is completely aware of this, she has long said in the "Bo Love Letter", "Human life is a long prison", "loneliness and isolation are the eternal truth behind the mask of marriage". In "Father on the Wall", Wang Qiang secretly said to her sister before getting married: "You are not lonely, because everyone is lonely." "Loneliness is the norm, this is Lu Min's insight into contemporary life. Like Song Chen, placing the spirit in a "high place", or following the spirit of a "high place" as an ideal, this may be the "prescription" and "antidote" for urban autism prescribed by Lu Min for us.
3. Identity/Body: The path to life cognition
In his recent work, Lu Min has shifted his focus to "identity" and "body", both of which are related to the subject's perception of life. "Identity" is the social form of the subject, which refers to the resources that are "shared or shared with another person or group, or with an idea, and with a circle of nature built on this basis". The "body" is the subject's innate material form, the medium through which the world is perceived, and "the physical embedding of the body in the interaction of daily life is the basic way to maintain a coherent sense of self-identity".
In Lu Min's novels, the characters are constantly changing and searching for new identities in order to find another "self", a seemingly unrealistic approach that reinforces their shaky sense of reality and prompts them to re-understand and affirm the boundaries of life. In "Little Exile", Mr. Mu found the business cards left by the former tenant, among which was "Xuyi Thirteen Spiced Lobster Nanjing Sales Agent Fan Zhigui". He was very interested in this identity, so he printed a business card for himself and played the role of "Fan Zhigui". In "The Great Banquet", Brother Rong, who is said by word of mouth, can solve all the problems of life. In order to invite Brother Rong to dinner, people broke their heads. Brother Rong did not come in the end, and according to reliable sources, Brother Rong is not a "brother" but a "sister". Imagination and misplaced identity of the black boss control people's joys, sorrows, and sorrows, and this is more like a phantom created by the mediocrity. "The Ball and the Gun" is a typical text about identity. The novel is set up with two men who look the same, Mu Liang and AB. Mu Liang likes to be quiet, sit in the office, and do boring work; AB likes turmoil, is impermanent, and is agile in breaking the law and committing crimes. Mu Liang saw his life through AB's perspective, which led him to voluntarily plead guilty and go to prison instead of AB, because "anyway, there is not much difference between staying anywhere and sitting in the office, going to the vegetable market, or staying with his wife." AB is Mu Liang's alter ego, and the true feeling of "I am not the only one in this world" strengthens Mu Liang's adhesion to the world.
The novel Running to the Moon (2017) is Lu Min's best work on the issue of identity/body. The novel tells how Xiao Liu successfully changed from a "Nanjing person" to a "black magpie person" through a car accident. In Nanjing, Xiaoliu follows the rules, is the timid and quiet wife in the eyes of He Nannan, and is a promising training object for the company. With Xiaoliu's "disappearance" in the car accident, her "true" face in Nanjing emerged little by little: in Zhang Deng's statement, she was a good hand in bed; In the narration of "best friend" Luyin, she is very social and handy among men. In Wuque, Xiaoliu had to rely on the forest he met by chance due to his identity, lived in a rental house, and his life was uncertain. Through Xiaoliu's life in Nanjing and Wuque, the novel explores the desire of urbanites to escape the orbit of daily life and reinvent themselves. Lin Zi helped Xiao Liu get the legal identity of the black magpie, and when this identity was determined, it was when Xiao Liu withdrew. What is the difference between the certainty and mediocrity of the black magpie and Nanjing? However, when she returned to Nanjing, she happened to witness her husband, who loved her deeply, proposing to her "best friend". Once again, she is faced with the dilemma of whether to erase her true identity and disappear on her own.
The in-depth discussion of identity is also reflected in Xiao Liu's "thin quilt theory". The quilt at home fell and was put away by the neighbor, and when Xiaoliu went to pick it up, she found that the quilt was as harmonious in the neighbor's house as it was in her house. By extension, the husbands and wives of neighbors are no different from their own and other people's homes. This set of theories also often appears in texts such as "Drinking on the Forty-Seventh Floor" and "The Boundless Swimming Pool", and it can be felt that Lu Min is full of confidence in the universality of this theory. In addition, the novel also provides two intertexts about "disappearance": Xiao Liu's father and the children of the black magpie's landlord's family, both of whom disappeared for no reason, which also provides a rationale for Xiao Liu's identity change. Through Xiaoliu's virtuality/reality, existence/absence/reproduction, Lu Min tries to answer the confusion and curiosity of urbanites about self and identity.
At the same time, she explores a more eternal and ultimate proposition. If we know that life will eventually be a void, then where is the boundary and scope of "me", and what is the meaning of existence? This may explain why she returned from "poetic" and "spiritual" to writing about the "body": "When I was very young, I had a serious order of the aspects that make up a person, in descending order: spiritual, intellectual, talented, emotional, physical. At that time, the flesh was used to lay at the bottom, and it was felt that the flesh could be suffered, controlled, and trampled. But when people reach middle age, they witness many so-called spiritual things being frustrated and fleeing, "and in the end, it is precisely the flesh, in a savage and almost naïve posture, that crashes straight into the red line and wins the final game." From this, she realized the importance of "flesh" and did not hesitate to go into battle to "endorse hormones".
Lu Min uses more physiological words such as "hormones" and "flesh" to refer to the "body". In fact, Chinese readers are no strangers to body writing, from the Shanghai-style novels of the 1930s, to the private writings of Chen Ran and Lin Bai in the 1990s, to the body writing of Wei Hui and Mian Mian, and then to the image of peasant women in the low-level literature of the 21st century, each stage has different characteristics due to differences in social, economic and cultural contexts. Lu Min uses the "body" as an intermediary to record the life of contemporary people, and pushes it to the level of socialization, philosophism and cognition with a sense of life. "Our body has all kinds of feelings, its memories, its encounters, its repressive history and its glorious history are all worth remembering." Some physical relationships lead to Plato's love, such as "Pillow Words", a pure experience of physical closeness becomes the heart knot of the hero's life; Some physical relationships redefine the way modern people interact, such as "Dancing Around a Cactus", which is a highly narrative experiment; Some physical relationships record the alienation of urban emotions, such as "Young Teeth Shake Off"; Some physical relationships lead to murder and crime, such as "The Past of Xu Ji Ya" and "Three People and Two Legs", in which the hand-to-hand combat between men and women in the novel has faded from the color of lust and has been transformed into a series of malicious injuries and killings, revealing the dark abyss of the people involved; Some physical contact leads to a new life, such as "Hormonal Night Talk", in which the sculptor He Dongcheng regained his artistic sensibility in the misdeeds on the plane. As he himself said, when the fragile and insignificant individual feels that he is docking with the immensity, only the vertigo and trembling of physical bliss can match such "shock".
Lu Min changed his previous rural lyricism and urban experience narrative, and devoted himself to writing about "identity", "body" and "flesh", which some people regarded as "vulgar". In my opinion, this kind of writing happens to contain Lu Min's keen perception of life. She has come to realize more and more that it is the "body" and nothing else that sustains us from youth to old age, from birth to death. Changes in the body are the "origin" of all changes. In "The Infinite Swimming Pool", the difference in body set against the backdrop of the pool is huge. The body of childhood and youth is sweet and white like a ginseng fruit, but when it is old, it is extremely corrupt and decayed, even the old man and the old lady are difficult to distinguish, and it is no wonder that people's snobbish physiological feedback is often close to the former and avoids the latter, and it is time that dominates all this: "Time is really like the water in this pool, in it, men, women, children and old people are just a piece of driftwood." The power of time can make a "degenerating" distinction between the body, or it can erase the great differences of the body, down to the body itself.
The comprehension of this theme has led to Lu Min's concise, powerful and Zen-like writing, which is "Burning Clouds". The male protagonist in the novel was originally an associate professor in a university, but then suddenly gave up everything and went up the mountain to become a layman, and the place where he lived was called "Cloud Gate". Accompanying the change of identity is a metaphor for his lifestyle and physical suffering. His life was light and restrained, but his body was suffering from hidden illnesses from time to time. A female guest has to come to Cloud Gate to live in seclusion, and she suffers from men and childbirth. The layman could not bear her indulging in the chatter of the past and her attachment to worldly things, so he first copied the scriptures in the town day, and then went down the mountain to return to the world. At the end of the novel, the female guest dies in a fire at Cloud Gate. Through contrastive writing, Lu Min places her thoughts on identity, body, gender, life and death in a very dense space in a short space: a layman and a female guest, one intentionally retreats, the other unintentionally escapes; One has a hidden illness and is unbearably suffering, and the other is suffering from physical suffering and does not care; A physical body is still alive but the heart is unhindered, and a physical body dies and leaves behind countless debts. In the contrast of abundant details, the writer quietly reveals the vanity and emptiness of life. In the final analysis, only the body honestly records the veins and shapes of time. Recognizing the changes in a person's body can also identify the true nature of his life. I think this is the value and meaning of Lu Min's "identity/body" writing.
So far, Lu Min has been involved in a variety of narrative categories: the warmth of the countryside, the loneliness of the city, and the exploration of individual life, all of which have their own systems under her pen. In terms of her current state of writing, "identity/body" writing seems to have matured, and she may soon move into the next new narrative realm. Thinking of Lu Min's diligence, talent, and resilience, we have reason to believe that there will be surprising updates and transformations in this process.
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Exegesis:
(1) Lu Min, "Adolescence: The Sultry Time Before Lightning", The Abyss of Memory, Kunlun Publishing House, 2013, pp. 4-5.
(2) Lu Min, "Twelve Years, This Is a Road Full of Loneliness", Huashang Morning Post, November 10, 2010.
(3) Lu Min, "Thinking of No Evil", The Abyss of Memory, Kunlun Publishing House, 2013, p. 253.
(4) (5) Lu Min, "I am a child of Dongba", Literature and Art Daily, November 15, 2007.
(6) Lu Min, "Wandering in the Vast Dark Night", "I Take Vanity as My Business", Henan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2014 edition, p. 154.
(7) Yue Wen, "Unknown Death, Yan Zhisheng - Lu Min's Novel Theory", Southern Literary Circle, No. 4, 2017.
(8) Judith Wilder, The Loss of Necessity, trans. Zhang Jiahui et al., Peking University Press, 1988, p. 2 of the Introduction.
(9) Zhai Yejun, "Lu Min: Self-Healing Writer", People's Daily, July 23, 2013.
(10) Liang Hong, "The Pain of Lu Min", Yangtze River Review, No. 5, 2015.
Vera Polant, "Literature and Disease: An Aspect of Comparative Literary Studies", translated by Fang Weigui, Literature and Art Studies, No. 1, 1986.
Lu Min: "Betrayal and Offense", "I Take Falsehood as a Business", Henan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2014, p. 149.
Susan Sontag, The Metaphor of Disease, translated by Cheng Wei, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003, p. 21.
Zhu Yuxi, "On the Narrative of Disease in Lu Min's Novels", master's thesis, Nanjing University, 2014.
Lu Min, "Disease Explainer", "I take vanity as a business", Henan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2014, pp. 244-265.
Lu Min, "Contingent Stories Have Happened", Dream Reaper, CITIC Press, 2021, p. 85.
Heidegger, The Basic Concepts of Metaphysics, translated by Zhao Weiguo, The Commercial Press, 2017, pp. 117, 159, 198.
Wang Xiaoming, "Under the Forced Gaze of "Boredom": Starting from Zhu Wen's Xiaoding", under the shroud of new ideology: cultural and literary analysis in the 90s, Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2000, p. 205.
Stuart Hall and Paul Gay, Introduction to the Study of Cultural Identity, translated by Pang Li, Henan University Press, 2010, p. 3.
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, translated by Zhao Xudong, Fang Wen and Wang Mingming, Life, Reading, New Knowledge, 1998, p. 111.
Liu Yaqi and Lu Min, "Born as a Human Being, There Must Be a Dark Disease", Beijing Youth Daily, January 16, 2017.
Lu Min, "Endorsement of Hormones", Masterpiece Appreciation, No. 5, 2017.
Lu Min, Gao Yuanbao and Huang Dehai, "'Hormonal Night Talk': Beyond Reason and Emotion", Literary Daily, March 30, 2017.
[Author's Affiliation: School of Chinese Language and Culture, Nankai University]
Source: Studies in Contemporary Chinese Literature, No. 3, 2021