Author: Insight Xu Zhaohui
Xiao Hong is one of the "Four Talented Women of the Republic of China" and the first bitter woman in the Republic of China.
She lost her mother at an early age, was abandoned repeatedly, and ended her life for just 31 years in a turbulent displacement.
However, Heaven gave her successive sufferings and also gave her amazing talents.
In less than 10 years of writing, she has written one masterpiece after another, known as the "literary Roselle of the 1930s".
In particular, her famous work "The Field of Life and Death" shows her tenacity from never succumbing to fate.
The story in "The Field of Life and Death" revolves around a small village on the outskirts of Harbin.
The men and women of the village, like cows and horses, were born and died in confusion. In the end, he gradually woke up under the ravages of the Japanese Kou iron hooves.
Mr. Lu Xun once commented on this book: "The people in the north are strong for life and struggle for death, but they have often penetrated the back of the paper. ”
Through the appearance of numbness, ignorance, and cowardice, we can understand a better way of life.
1
A group of women with a difficult and poor life have opened the curtain on "The Field of Life and Death".
The old queen mother is the most troubled woman in the village, who has suffered domestic violence, remarriage and loss of children.
In her twenties, while doing farm work and caring for children, she was negligent for a while, which caused her three-year-old daughter to fall to her death on farm tools.
She didn't feel sad and watched the child gasp in her arms like an outsider.
Often holding hooks and digging knives to help women in the village have abortions, she has long been accustomed to tragic scenes.
In her eyes, the living life is like a weed that can be trampled on:
"The death of a child is not the same thing, you think I will jump and cry, right?" I'll howl, right? At first my heart trembled, but when I saw the wheat field in front of my eyes, I didn't regret it at all, and I didn't shed a single tear..."
By the time of the autumn harvest, she had almost forgotten about the existence of her children and had all her thoughts on cutting wheat.
The loss of her daughter's life brought her pain, and it was far worse than selling the family's old horse to the slaughterhouse.
Seventeen-year-old Jin Zhi lost himself to the young man in his village by the river bend and became pregnant in a confused way.
Thinking that he would be pointed out by the villagers in the future, Jin Zhicheng was panicked.
She couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and absent-mindedly picked a lot of green persimmons when she went to work in the fields.
The mother did not notice anything unusual about her, only noticed that she had corrupted the persimmon and kicked her to the ground.
It is not that the mother does not love her, but the wheat, vegetables, and even a thatch of the farmhouse exceed the value of the person.
The lack of material things makes them have no time to care about the birth and disappearance of life.
Anyway, in the breeding season, birds and finches hatch, livestock mate, and women will give birth to children one after another.
Xiao Hong said: "In the countryside, people are like animals, busy living and busy dying. ”
In the distant times she wrote, people were like ants, and their lives were like grass.
Everyone seems to be busy, but in fact they have walked through their long or short lives.
2
Keigo Higashino once said, "There are two things in the world that cannot be looked at directly, one is the sun, and the other is the human heart." ”
This sentence is even more thoroughly reflected in "The Field of Life and Death".
Yue Ying was once the most beautiful woman in the village.
Since she was paralyzed by illness, only sorrow remained in her amorous eyes.
At first, her husband asked for gods and burned incense for her, helping her find a home remedy to cure her disease.
But later, seeing that Yueying was not as good as a day, her husband began to complain that she was dragging herself down and ignoring her.
He even beat her often, and placed bricks around her, hoping that she would die sooner.
Her husband's abuse, the torment of disease, caused her skin to fester, her teeth to turn green, and she was haggard and unhurried.
When the queen mother came to visit her, she cried helplessly, "I am a ghost!" Hurry up and die! Bury me alive! ”
Three days later, Yueying died and was buried under the barren mountain.
The queen mother, who had delivered her last journey, also attempted suicide the following year.
That year, the princess and her ex-husband's son became bandits and were shot by the government.
When she learned of this, she was so sad that she took poison and wanted to go with her son.
But before she could fully catch her breath, her husband Zhao San began to handle her funeral.
The princess and her ex-husband's daughter Feng Yatou came, and Zhao San also urged her to leave, wanting to finish her work quickly.
Unexpectedly, the queen mother suddenly woke up at this time.
Zhao San thought that she was "borrowing a corpse to return the soul", and without hesitation, he stabbed her with a flat shoulder.
The queen mother did not die in the end, and woke up again before she entered the earth.
The husband and wife tacitly stopped mentioning the funeral, and the days went on.
Seeing the cold and thin queen mother in the world, she no longer has expectations for people's hearts.
As Xiao Hong said:
"The dead are dead, and the living are calculating how to live. In winter, women prepare summer clothes, and men think about how to start farming next year. ”
Men and women have exhausted all their strength in order to survive, and they will not make too much nostalgia for the people around them and the past.
3
The villagers who are struggling to survive in the cracks are all kneeling to beg for life.
After a long time, they forgot how to stand up.
On the eve of the New Year, Zhao San, the husband of the queen mother, had an accident.
The landlord increased the rent, and Zhao San and the others were unwilling, so they joined forces, took a shotgun, and planned to get rid of Second Master Liu, who had come to collect money.
But he injured a thief with his wrong hand and was sent to prison.
Later, it was the landlord who said two good words for him before he was released from prison.
After being released from prison, Zhao San seemed to have changed into a person.
Li Qingshan asked him how to eliminate Second Master Liu, and he quickly confessed: "I was wrong before!" Maybe it's time to be punished! ”
The landlord asked him to pay up and down, and he did not dare to argue, and sold the only cattle in the family.
The landlord increased the rent of the land more and more, and he did not dare to refute it, and he also went into the city every day to deliver vegetables to the landlord.
The queen mother looked down on him: "A man who used to be like iron, but the more he looked at it, the more he became a pile of mud." ”
The women in the village are even more angry and swallow everywhere.
They kept giving birth, working, and being treated like cattle by their husbands.
Less than four months after Jin Zhi's marriage, Karsei's fists and reprimands fell densely on her.
Ye Cheng also took the child angry and fell to death his daughter who had just reached the full moon.
But Jin Zhi seems to be indifferent, he is still difficult to protect, how can he protect the child thoroughly?
She could only watch as her husband threw the children into the mass graves, and the corpses were torn apart by the dogs.
Wave after wave of suffering wiped out their anger and courage.
Everyone became more and more insensitive, did not dare to resist, and was at the mercy of fate.
But life has always bullied the soft and afraid of the hard, blindly evading and giving in, which will eventually lead to more terrible consequences.
4
The princess who was dying took her daughter Feng Yatou back to her side.
She trains her daughter in the woods every night, asking her to avenge her brother's death in the future.
But ten years later, before the revenge was repaid, the Japanese occupied the northeast.
They burned and looted, did nothing wrong, and everywhere they went, they were shrouded in a dead silence.
Pregnant women were disemboweled, girls were ruined, and corpses were strewn across the graves.
Looking around, there are ruined houses, barren fields and caves left by bombs.
When their survival was threatened, this group of illiterate peasants suddenly understood that the so-called savior was only himself.
The originally numb, isolated village exploded with great vitality.
Li Qingshan gathered the villagers together and mobilized young people to unite to save the country.
Zhao San, who had only promised the landlord in the past, was also recalled by the hatred of the subjugation of the country to the enthusiasm of his youth.
He talked about the subjugation of the country, the salvation of the country, the revolutionary army... Bitterly advised young people to join the war.
Seeing that the lame farmer Erli was drowsy at the mobilization meeting, he also hated that iron was not steel: "What year is this still sleeping?" ”
Overnight, the villagers, who had been whispering, all straightened their backbones and decided to live themselves as a mountain.
Hu Feng said in the afterword:
"This book not only writes about the sorrows and sorrows of fools and fools, but also writes about the blurred foundation of blood under the blue sky and the iron that flows on that vague blood soil."
They no longer succumb to suffering, no longer indifferent to bullying, but fight for both mental and physical freedom.
5
The cruelty of the war is far beyond the imagination of the villagers.
Ye Cheng and Nili's wife and son all died under the guns of the Japanese.
Jin zhi became a widow, and in order to avoid being humiliated by the Japanese, she fled to Harbin to work as a seamstress.
But her life in the city was also not good.
Most of the money earned was given to the storekeeper who lived in the store, and the innocence was tarnished by the bachelor.
She ran back to her hometown in despair, wanting to lie in her mother's arms and cry.
However, her mother saw only the money she had brought back and encouraged her to return to the city.
Wang Po also advised her that Harbin must be better than the countryside, and that if she went, she would not come back.
Jin Zhi, who has always been reclusive, could not listen to anyone's words this time, and insisted on becoming a nun.
Although the nunnery was empty, this was the first time she had the idea of taking charge of her own destiny.
After losing his family, he seemed to have suddenly awakened.
He did not want to live by the graves of his wife and children, and he wanted to embark on the road of resistance with Li Qingshan.
Zhao San sneered at him: "I see that you don't have any guts, and killing a sheep is not enough." ”
But Erli half straightened his chest and entrusted the old sheep in the family to Zhao San, limping after the team and drifting away.
Will Jinzhi return to the city's purgatory? Do you dare to go into battle and kill the enemy?
The torrent of the times is muddy, and no one knows the end of thousands of little people.
But when a person has self-awareness and begins to look for the value of life, no amount of suffering can stop the pursuit of freedom.
6
Why is this book called "The Field of Life and Death"?
Life, old age, illness and death, and the ugliness of human nature are problems that everyone will face.
Perhaps Xiao Hong wants to use the cruel life and death to tell us how to view the value of life.
Even if you live like an ant and are powerless to withstand the wind and rain, you still do not give up the pursuit of freedom and independence.
Just like the queen mother who once lost hope, she no longer searched for death and lived to become the bravest woman in the village;
Zhao San, who had succumbed to power, no longer only promised, and enthusiastically threw himself into the wave of national salvation;
The most timid and fearful two and a half miles, no longer resigned to fate, summoned up the courage to participate in the battle.
Writer Lu Yao said:
"Life cannot wait for others to arrange it, to fight and struggle for it yourself; and whether the result is sad or happy, it is comforting that you have never lived in this world in vain." 」
Tie your hands to fate, and if you can't get back to the quiet of the years, you will only be doubly deprived of the dignity of being born as a human being.
Fight against hardships to have the opportunity to break the shackles and spell out a world for yourself.
No matter how difficult the road ahead is, how small you are, may you always have the determination to dominate your destiny.
The link is placed below, and interested readers can click to see it
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