Describing the life of the children of the military compound that he experienced, Ye Jing once said that we lived a completely collectivized life, and since kindergarten, they have seen teachers more often than their parents.
Since Wang Shuo remembered, the first thing he remembered was the classmates around him and the kindergarten teacher on the podium, and even when his father occasionally came to the kindergarten to pick himself up, he had to repeatedly confirm the identity of the other party, so as not to misidentify the father in front of him.
At that time, Wang Shuo firmly believed that sooner or later he would become a general with outstanding military achievements, and he had no doubt that he would fight bravely with the children of the same hospital to kill the enemy and smash the enemy with their iron fists, and he would also successfully become a general star who attracted worldwide attention. This is the most habitual fantasy of the children of the military compound.
They naturally have a sense of superiority, a sense of mission, and they often steal their father's tweed coat, military shoulders, and go to the street to fight fiercely, instead of learning the knowledge that is destined to be forgotten in their eyes, but this sense of superiority eventually becomes an illusion.
After the reform and opening up, the market economy has become the mainstream, although today there are still many people who believe that the success of Ye Daying, Cui Jian and others is inseparable from the identity attributes of their children in the courtyard, but Wang Shuo believes that after the reform and opening up, in fact, the children of the military courtyard have not much resources that can be envied by people.
On the contrary, the first condition for being able to integrate into the tide of the new society is actually to abandon one's own sense of worthless superiority. At that time, Wang Shuo and Ye Jing tried to survive in any industry, they opened restaurants, sold clothing, and electronic watches. Although it seems to be a decent job today to make a deal. But at that time, the self-employed had to associate people with social backward youth who did not have a unit to accept.
For Beijing in the 1990s, Jiang Wen described it in the movie "Sunny Days": "In just fifteen years, Beijing has become a fashionable city." The words carried Jiang Wen's pity and concern for the familiar Beijing that accompanied him growing up.
When Ye Jing's father was told that his children were making a living in a restaurant, Ye Father angrily kicked him out of the house, and his partner Wang Shuo was in the same situation. In this way they ate in the restaurant, lived in the restaurant, and here they condensed a revolutionary friendship.
Recalling the embarrassment at that time, Ye Jing pedaled a tricycle to the Chaoyang Vegetable Market every day to buy vegetables, and the good-looking Ye Jing always wore a straw hat before going out, and along the way he pressed the brim of the hat low, afraid that others would recognize him.
But for a young man from a large courtyard, the restaurant industry is not suitable for them, especially the grumpy Ye Jing, and unnecessary conflicts and disputes with diners have become the norm. As the saying goes, "harmony makes money", but Ye Jing, who could not tolerate any grievances in his eyes, soon pushed the first Sichuan restaurant in Wukesong in Beijing to the brink of closure.
In the late 1980s, Wang Shuo, who had been wandering in society for many years, finally broke through the cocoon and became famous, becoming the best-selling writer in China, and in the late 1990s, Ye Jing also began to enter the audience's vision through some TV drama works. Based on their own personal experiences, both of them have created many works that reflect the lives of the children of the military compound. And when the two were in trouble, perhaps no one realized that Wang Shuo and Ye Jing would also experience confusion.
First, Wang Shuo's work "Look beautiful" published in 2004 encountered Waterloo, and it is believed that Wang Shuo has been separated from the life experience of the army compound in recent years, and there is a serious lack of creative materials, which has led him to focus his memories on his kindergarten career. Prior to this, his elementary school, middle school, and adulthood had been exhausted.
In 2013's "Private Order", Wang Shuo also failed to turn things around, and the lackluster plot made him regretfully selected as the "Most Disappointing Screenwriter Award" at the 5th Golden Broom Awards.
Ye Jing, who became famous later than Wang Shuo, also had a hard time producing more excellent works after "Days Related to Youth".
Today's Wang Shuo and Ye Jing are really difficult to bring more surprises to people in their lives. But an era that serves a generation is like the lives of the children of those who have passed away in the military compound, and Wang Shuo and Ye Jing, after sharing their unforgettable memories of the compound with the audience, do not seem to want to say anything to those young people under the generation gap.
After experiencing the successive deaths of his father, brother and good friend Liang Zuo, Wang Shuo was once anxious, and he was afraid that after his generation slowly began to die, he would not find anyone who could talk to him. Rather than saying that Wang Shuo and Ye Jing have "passed", it is better to say that they do not look at this era, they are a group of adolescent rebellious teenagers who will always live in their own compound.
But in any case, what we remember is the good memories that Wang Shuo and Ye Jing brought to us in those years, although the culture of the army compound has long ceased to be charming, and today's young people are no longer obsessed with the experiences and stories they tell, but those immortal works will still be forever imprinted in the hearts of a generation.