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Interview: Glacier Think Tank
Guest: Zhu Dake
1. We are born of illusions
Q: Since you published the novel "Changshengyi" and the novella set "Ancient Chronicles" in 2018, and at the end of last year, you launched the short story collection "Six Different Records", and each story was brought in by an ancient text at the beginning, which means that these stories are all based on literature, which has aroused the strong interest of many young readers who love history.
What they wondered was what was so unusual about this strange style novel compared to the previous two novels?
Zhu Dake: In fact, there is no essential difference.
My novels are basically the literary cocktail of history + ancient mythology + medieval folklore, and this book is no exception, but it has a clearer boundary in the subject matter, limiting it to six ancient and mysterious industries, that is, illusionists, weeping masters, incense masters, poison detectors, bone masters, and character makers. Among them, "Weeping Ode Master" is the elegant name of "Weeping Mourning Master".
Six different, can be said to be the meaning of six strange industries, and the mystery of the industry itself is bound to strengthen the novel's strange characteristics in the theme.
As you said, all these trades have ancient records, some of which come from official revision histories such as the Ming Shi, and some from folk Taoist writings such as Liezi Tangwen and Huainanzi.
Without these historical documents, my writing would be unsustainable.
Q: The illusionist "Xiao Xiang" is notable in this book. Where did this image come from? What do you want to express through this image?
Zhu Dake: The Illusionist attempts to tell the story of the ancient eye hoax.
Given the distance between desire and reality, one needs to create visual deceptions to comfort disappointed souls. Thus, a profession called "illusionist" came into being.
Illusionists use magic to create a street illusion for entertainment. Originally originating in India, this magic became popular in China during the Han Dynasty, and along with acrobatics, horns, and games, it became an important part of the secular life of the city.
But once this illusion invades daily life, it can cause serious problems to the mind.
Illusion has given rise to an epidemic of disease, which is illusion dependence syndrome. We are born of illusions, like a love of cannabis, until the eyes and all their senses wither and die.
The illusionist in the Six Alien Records is a wandering child who, in an encounter with a wandering monk, gains the ability to create illusions. He relied on this spell to travel all over the world.
The era of magic is usually the time when the people are not happy. In the Southern Dynasty, Chen Hou used poetry to record the illusion of words, the concubine Zhang Lihua used her flesh to ignite lust, and the protagonist Xiao Xiang used magic to create a mirage.
In the face of alien invasions, this fleeting visual game satisfies the desires of court masters who need visual anesthetics to dispel the fear of existence.
The inspiration for this story comes from the "Fragrant Series" published in the late Qing Dynasty. Among them, "The Biography of Chen Zhang Guifei", which tells the story of Chen Hou lord and Zhang Guifei in the Southern Dynasty, appears in the novel of the Lefu word "Yushu Backyard Flower", which was once the most famous image in Chinese history, which looks like "fragrant", but verifies the emptiness of the carnival of life.
Its theme is so "modern", close to the current life scene. I insist that all history and myth are projections of contemporary desires that speak for our inner fears.
Practitioners of the cultural entertainment industry are the illusionists who are active around us, and they are creating all kinds of illusions according to the orders of the world (big data), from games, popular literature books, commercial film and television dramas to TikTok videos.
The only function of these phantom texts is to give temporary comfort to anxious souls.
Question: "The Creator of Big Characters" and the previously published "Character Maker" seem to have a kind of plot inheritance relationship, is this the case? What's the thrust in the theme? Why do words in the novel become the source of the world's good and bad?
Zhu Dake: In "Character Creation", Cangjie was selected by the Fuxi God because of his unique talent, and obtained the divine power to create words. Those Chinese characters with divinity can create the corresponding worldly things.
Cangjie pioneered the lineage of Chinese characters of the Guangming lineage, according to which he created a happy and beautiful form of life for mankind; but his disciple Feng Song, out of love and hate, deviated from the ethics of his mentor, created the "Dark Lineage" Chinese characters, and spread them in a smuggled way, which led to large-scale greed, hatred and violence. These two systems symbolize the two sides of civilization.
In The Great Character Maker, Feng Song kills Cangjie with Chinese sorcery, and Cangjie's wife Miao rebels in an attempt to seek justice and a just national order.
Frustrated Song tirelessly created her black character system, from "bullying", "leper", "cheating" to "fierce", "stubborn", "greedy" and so on.
When the words "cheat" and "fierce" were born, a large number of liars appeared in the world; when the words "fierce", "beaten" and "dirty" were born, fierce fighting broke out in many places in the city, and the streets were filled with all kinds of garbage overnight and became smelly.
I want to use this to tell the secret of the world being corrupted by evil words. Of course, this is just a mythical story, not my academic judgment of Chinese characters.
Question: The most classic text in the Six Records can be regarded as the "Incense Taoist". This fifteen thousand-word novel can be regarded as a representative work of your short story in terms of theme, character shaping, and history and culture, which is a full display of the "fragrant style" and condenses some of your ideological essence.
Zhu Dake: This novel about the "Xiang Daoist" is a "polyphonic" text, which involves at least three motifs.
The first is the magical motif about the incense path itself, the second is the motif of "anti-demon protection of the sun", which is derived from the story of the white snake and the legend of the "five immortals" of northeastern shamanism, and the third is the mythical motif of hermaphroditism, which is widely recorded in classical Chinese novels and Greek mythology.
Twisting these three motifs together is a very difficult thing that the average reader will find difficult to grasp. But it doesn't matter, even if this triple motif is not found, it will not hinder the reading of the novel.
Because it refers to the incense path, this story is fragrant and involves unusual love, so some people call it a "fragrant narrative", I think it is completely understandable.
But in fact, I don't want to explain too much about the meaning of the novel.
Although this self-interpretation is in line with my original role as a critic, the story is a bridge to meaning, and meaning is always hidden in the streets of mysterious symbols, and it is presented as a form of ambiguity, ambiguity, ambiguity and self-deconstruction. In this situation, any interpretation, even the narrative closest to the ontology, will do harm to the richness of the novel.
2. Suffering is the distance between desire and reality
Q: Although this novel is composed of six short stories of strange style, its structure looks very meticulous, and it is combined according to the "six senses" of eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body. You write in your self-trek at the end of the book that the novel borrows the structure of the "six senses" (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body) to depict the basic appearance of "Chinese desire" in the period of agricultural civilization.
How do we understand "Chinese desire"? How is it different from Western desire?
Zhu Dake: What is Chinese desire? This question is indeed the author's first question.
As long as you read the history of literature, it is not difficult to find that starting from the Book of Poetry and Chu Ci, the powerful appetite, carnal desire, lust, fame and power, these basic motifs have long become the core of ancient desires, and they are also the internal driving force that governs modern Chinese.
The carrier of desire is short-lived, and desire is eternal. This system of desire is the most powerful cultural heritage in Chinese.
Taking appetite as an example, no other people in the world loves food as much as Chinese, even to the point of using it to solve all the problems of life.
Reform and opening up has stimulated the suppressed appetite of China, which has continued to grow in the past 30 years, forming a deformed expansion trend.
Restaurants of all kinds are constantly emerging, new cuisines are mushrooming, new dishes are emerging, and new recipes are everywhere. The annual expenditure on the dinner table is as high as hundreds of billions of yuan.
One need only look at the grand pattern of China's catering industry to see that China has become a super stomach with a volume of nine million square kilometers.
In the global vision, no nation can match it, and no one can calculate how much food this huge stomach that is hard to fill will swallow.
There is no doubt that appetite is the most exciting part of the "Chinese desire" system. The story of the "poison examiner" in the Six Alien Records hints at the continuity and permanence of this desire.
Q: What is the relationship between desire and suffering? Why is China a nation that is good at using happiness to deal with pain? How does your novel confront this problem?
Zhu Dake: Because of the huge distance between desire and reality, suffering came into being and became the highest nature of life.
Suffering is the distance between desire and reality. The ratio of pain to desire is positive: how fiery the desire is, how intense the suffering will be.
It is through the voyeurism of desire that we observe the enduring suffering of Chinese.
And intriguingly, I also saw a people who were good at overcoming pain with pleasure, in addition to food, they were also good at using word sorcery to create various illusions of happiness, and living in the massage of words that blessed each other.
The Spring Festival is specially set up for such moments. It seems that as long as a word of "auspicious wishes" can calm all anxiety about life.
Q: The "Six Different Records" is based on the theme of China's folk mysterious industry and involves six kinds of "intangible cultural heritage". In today's real life, these industries seem to have disappeared. Why is this change happening? As a cultural scholar, do you think there is any possibility of revival of such an ancient mysterious industry?
Zhu Dake: In the agricultural civilization system, most of these industries are very mysterious, belonging to the scope of "occultism", and the complexity of the techniques makes it very difficult to pass on, so their eventual demise will be inevitable.
But there are a few exceptions, such as "weeping", that is, weeping and mourning, and this industry still exists today.
Crying is a common trait of Asian peoples, but it has reached its peak in Northeast Asia.
As far as the geography of weeping is concerned, the territory of the good weeping people is not limited to the Korean Peninsula, but spreads throughout the Tunguska language family and its surrounding areas, including the three northeastern provinces of China, eastern Inner Mongolia, Eastern Siberia and even Shandong Province.
"Liezi Tang Qing" has long revealed the lingering of the weeping wind in the Qilu area in the Spring and Autumn Period.
At that time, a woman named Han E came to the country of Qi alone, because there was no ration, she sold begging grain in the Yongmen area, and the song was so moving that after her people left, they could still linger around the beams for three days, so that the residents around her mistakenly thought that she had not left.
After that, Han E passed by an inn and was bullied by the locals, and Han E cried out for this, causing the whole village to cry and cry, and could not eat for three days.
The locals were forced to catch up with Han E and whisper to her to lift the spell of crying. Only then did Han E sing a song, causing the whole village to dance uncontrollably and forget the sadness just now. Locals pay a lot for it.
The story of Han E allows us to see the folk customs of the Qi people who are good at singing and crying. And this Han E is the prototype of Wei Zi in "Weeping Mourner".
Today, in the northern countryside, funerals in many places will also pay for the help of mourners. Although this profession has shrunk, it has not completely disappeared, and it still lives in the cracks of current social life.
3 Myths that breath my suffocating soul
Q: If "Six Different Stories" belongs to the "Chinese Story", can it be regarded as a revolution in the traditional Zhiwei novel, or simply call it a "New Zhiwei Novel"? In an age when civic reason predominates, can such a literary tradition be revived?
Zhu Dake: I don't like the term "new Zhiwei novel" very much. Although there is attention and research on this type of novel, it is still very different from my mythological novel.
It is said that there are "new zhiwei novels" in the literary world, but unfortunately I have not read them, and I don't know what they have written. Anyway, I just bowed my head and walked my own way.
If we have to talk about "resurrection," I hope to revive the ancient mythological tradition, not the Medieval tradition.
Q: One of the common features of your novels is that they are all ancient myths and folk legends, which are very different from the contemporary themes or historical themes commonly found in the literary circle today, showing a unique creative interest.
Some commentators think that you have opened up a new direction in literature and have a good reading experience, but others think that your work is not "popular" enough to "please the public". What do you think of this reaction?
Zhu Dake: Because of the infiltration of cultural and philosophical thinking, this group of novels looks strange and fragrant at first glance, but sometimes emits a strange and absurd smell, which is difficult to achieve the purpose of "healing", which makes some literary petty bourgeoisie who like to receive warm massage feel uncomfortable, for which I can only apologize for twelve points.
In contrast to the "literary popular readings", literature should not be a rhetorical massage, but a revelation of historical/realistic truths, and therefore necessarily possess a cruel and absurd character, the ultimate goal of which is to destroy all ridiculous illusions. I don't like the unprincipled "healing system" thinking.
Of course, I also try to inject the necessary hope into the text kernel.
While deconstructing the dark illusion, I want to carry out the only bright white illusion to the end, but this is not to please the reader, but to allow my suffocating soul to breathe.
Q: Why did you choose this rare mythological writing direction? Is this a short-term option or a long-term plan? In the current trend of "returning to tradition", what is the significance of myths?
Zhu Dake: Only myths can satisfy our infinite expectations of dreams; in a secular life ruled by bad news, only myths can alleviate people's trauma. So I decided to write mythology to the end.
The next novel about the theme of Chang'e Dayi is nearing the end of writing. This has been my main takeaway during the pandemic.
For more than a year, due to the epidemic, I had to live in seclusion in the suburbs of New York, largely isolated from the world, so I had a lot of time to explore the techniques of mythological fiction writing. I hope that this new work can bring a completely different reading experience from "Six Different Records".
Q: As an expert in mythology research, what do you think of the current situation of mythological research in China?
Zhu Dake: For a long time, mythology has been the exclusive subject of Chinese children's books. This is because, the atheistic stance of adults sometimes creates myth-reading and viewing disorders, which children do not have.
This situation has improved in recent years, because Hollywood has launched a large number of mythological films, and China's post-90s generation has become the main creative force of fantasy literature.
All this has drastically improved the soil in which the new myth grows.
But in mythological research, there is no corresponding change. Intellectuals continue to hold on to the atheist stance and even continue to see it as a "pediatric" thing. This is the main reason for the continued decline in the study of Chinese mythology.
Q: Due to the influence of popular mythological books in Europe and the United States and Hollywood film and television dramas, a large number of works have emerged that use local mythology to create films and television, many of which are scripted in online novels. In your opinion, what progress or shortcomings are there in this genre of fiction?
Zhu Dake: I'm sorry, I don't read much about this kind of novel, but I have seen some film and television dramas adapted from novels, and my impression is that my imagination is bursting, and I can use the structural formula of Jin Yong's martial arts novel "Yitian Slaughtering Dragon" very skillfully, and the defect is that there is less historical and academic support behind it.
But as these authors grow, they should be able to solve these problems. In any case, the future of Chinese mythological writing belongs to them, and I have great expectations for them.
Q: In terms of film and television, 2006's "Wuji" seems to have set a precedent for oriental magic, and now that you are looking at it again, what do you think? Looking back at the Chinese mythological film and television dramas, what are your comments and expectations? In the blueprint of "Chinese cultural import", what position should mythology occupy?
Zhu Dake: "Wuji" is obviously Chen Kaige's failure, it deliberately creates a pseudo-god "full of gods", neither divinity nor humanity, clumsily floating in mid-air, like a puppet, a completely pale concept, which is proof that the director does not understand "what myth is".
Chen Kaige's "Farewell to the Overlord" is very good, I can't get tired of watching it, but "Wuji" is very boring, although he has always been reluctant to admit this fact.
On the side of the younger generation, "Traces" appears weaker, and the name is not good, so it is "extinct" as soon as it comes out.
What I appreciate more is the animation mythological movie "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending", which should be the benchmark of Chinese mythological theme film and television works, and its box office has inspired more capital to enter the animation field, so in this year or two, Chinese animation will have a better performance than film and television dramas.
Whether it is anime or movies, if you want to enter the international box office and realize the dream of "cultural export", you must play the "myth" card well, and I don't see any other way out.
Q: Finally, I would like to bring the topic back to "Six Different Records". The book's illustrations, cover design, and binding are so distinctive and memorable that some people use the term "fragrant" to describe it. Can you tell your readers about their authors and their creative process? And everyone thinks that this book is particularly good to do, and it looks very bright on the shelves, is this the credit of the publisher CITIC?
Zhu Dake: Thanks to Wu Fan, an animation designer and director living in Hangzhou, he specially painted six exquisite illustrations for this painting, providing exquisite portraits of the characters and scenes of the novel.
He has worked as the director or artistic director of several anime films, and the six paintings took more than a year from conception, sketching, repeated revisions to final completion.
Wu Fan painted this kind of illustration for the first time, so it can be said that it is his "debut work", and it is also a work of painstaking blood. Fortunately, his efforts were not in vain, and these illustrations were widely liked and praised by readers.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the cover and binding design made by CITIC's generous editor on this basis has made this "strange" small book obtain a "fragrant" visual style, which is said to be praised in the industry.
As a publisher, CITIC Dafang has demonstrated its outstanding ability to readers at the level of content expression. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to it.
The pictures in this article are illustrations of the "Six Different Records"
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