Jia Zhangke's documentary "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" was released. The film hopes to tell the story of the transformation of Chinese society and Chinese mind through the experiences of three writers living in different eras.
Between the departure of writers and their return to their hometowns, China's countryside has undergone tremendous changes. The rural experience of directors and writers and the experience of the current youth is completely different, and the quality of "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" is in the hearts of the audience.
But what is certain is that we still need such records.
Jia Zhangke's documentary "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" ends with the writer Yu Hua's self-description standing on the seawall in Haiyan County. I don't know if it's dawn or twilight, under the blue sky, the sea breeze blows wildly:
"When I was young, I looked at the sea was yellow, but the textbooks said that the sea was blue, and we used to swim here when we were young, and one day I wanted to swim all the time, and I wanted to swim until the sea turned blue."
The sea in front of you is turbid yellow, and the textbook tells the writer that the sea should be blue, so the writer needs to swim along the current until the sea turns blue. The film ends abruptly here, whether the sea turns blue is unknown, the screen suddenly turns black is a fact, after the subtitle of "swim until the sea turns blue" appears, the audience wanders out and swims to the brightly lit shopping mall.
Yu Hua is at the seaside. / Stills from "Swim Until the Water Turns Blue".
Jia Zhangke has always been a director who is extremely good at capturing the situation of the times through individuals, and Yu Hua's casual "I want to swim until the sea turns blue" has also been "caught" by him and becomes the title. This finishing touch is also in line with Jia Zhangke's ambition to shoot this documentary, and in an interview, Jia Zhangke said: "We have entered not only the journey of contemporary Chinese literature, but also the spiritual journey of contemporary Chinese. ”
In Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue, writers Jia Pingwo, Yu Hua and Liang Hong serve as "samples" of writers from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, telling their journey from marginal villages and small towns, and then through literature, into the center.
This journey includes want, fear, sickness, guilt, hopeless life, forbearance, talent, perseverance, and reflection after "rushing out" of his hometown with his famous work.
For writers, the hometown is a place that needs to be recognized through "escape", and after the distance is extended, they can clearly see what the hometown in the upheaval has made them lose and what it has brought to them.
Through the hometown of the writers, Jia Zhangke wanted to reflect the changes in Chinese society and the spiritual transformation of Chinese after this drastic change.
01
"Returning home" to them
The famous works of the three main guests of "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" are all related to the countryside.
Jia Pingwa's "Impetuous" and "Waste Capital" are written between the eighties and the nineties, when people's difficulties and struggles were in the upheaval; the protagonists of Yu Hua's famous works "Shouting in the Drizzle", "Alive", "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", and "Brothers", are also "little people" starting from the countryside, and to this day, his most prestigious "Alive" still dominates the list today, causing emotional resonance among readers; Liang Hong is more special, her "China in Liangzhuang" and "Liangzhuang Ten Years" are his observations back to his hometown. Through the story of Liang Zhuang, the various realities of the current countryside are reflected.
The same is true of the films of "Fenyang Boy" Jia Zhangke, and the French film critic Jean-Michel Fu Dong summed up Jia Zhangke's films in "Jia Zhangke's World": "He focuses on the invisible China, which is becoming an important part of society, hundreds of small cities try to get out of the planned economy, try to brutal urbanization... as well as modern ways of leisure, new media and numerous everyday changes. ”
Through rural experience, Jia Zhangke wrote about the "invisible" but extremely important township group. "Swim until the sea turns blue" is a natural result of his combination of literature, era, individual experience and countryside, and I believe that no one will be surprised to learn that Jia Zhangke wants to shoot such a documentary. Jia Zhangke's experience is highly similar to the experience of several writers, he has always been a literary youth, so "every time he holds a pen and faces a blank piece of paper, his thoughts cannot help but return to his hometown, the distant Fenyang - my border city, my country."
Jia Zhangke's World
[Fa] by Jean-Michel Fu Dong, translated by Kong Qian
Republic of | Guangxi Normal University Press, 2021-1
Jia Pingwa needs to get himself out of the countryside to some extent through writing; Yu Hua has escaped the slightly bitter life of a small-town dentist by constantly submitting articles; Liang Hong has become a "good student" through study and let himself out of Liangzhuang; Jia Zhangke, too, has walked out of his hometown by being admitted to film school.
In "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue", several writers return to their hometowns as "returners". To us, their lives seem to have a clear line of demarcation – before and after they leave their homeland. Their hometown is more or less tinged with painful memories, but in their narratives, it can be felt that it is the melancholy that their hometown brings to them that contributes to their works.
The film is divided into eighteen chapters, and at the interval of each chapter, Jia Zhangke arranges a group of "ordinary people" to recite literary works, in the fields, on the fields, on the road... When non-standard Mandarin utters "elegant" words, we see a difficult combination of rough landscapes and "literary beauty" in the abstract sense, and it is this arrangement that makes the film controversial.
We can understand Jia Zhangke's intention in arranging this "landscape" in the documentary, but in fact, the more important problem is that in Jia Zhangke's documentary, although "rural experience" is the theme, the countryside we see is still extremely vague.
Stills from "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue".
There are some more important questions that I want to find answers in this movie. For example, how has the former countryside changed from the current countryside? What kind of concrete experiences did writers have after leaving the countryside and arriving in the city? How did this experience change their perspective on their hometown? Jumping out of these questions and looking back at the past, the "hometown" always seems vain.
But perhaps we should not blame Jia Zhangke's capture distortion, or perhaps the "countryside" itself has blurred its face.
02
Landscaped countryside
Estranged countryside
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 1977, when Jia Pingwa's first short story collection "Bingwa" was published, the urban population was 160 million and the rural population was 780 million; in 1983, when Yu Hua published his first novel, "The First Dormitory", the urban population was 220 million and the rural population was 800 million; in 1996, when Jia Zhangke filmed the first feature film "Xiaowu", the urban population was 410 million and the rural population was 830 million; Liang Hong published "China in Liangzhuang" in 2010. The urban population is 660 million and the rural population is 670 million; by 2020, when "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue", the urban population is 900 million, while the rural population has been reduced to 510 million.
The data shows the most obvious changes, and after 2010, the number of urban populations has surpassed the rural population. In China, the world's largest urbanization has already taken place.
Stills from "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers".
What happens when hundreds of millions of people are uprooted from rural experience? This is the question that Jia Zhangke's film wants to answer.
In the penultimate part of the film, Liang Hong's son, 14-year-old Wang Yiliang, becomes the protagonist. Liang Zhuang, who is of great significance to Liang Hong, does not have a deep mark on his son's life. Wearing bose headphones and studying at the Renmin University Affiliated High School, Wang Yiliang, who loves physics, was most impressed by the changes in the river channels in the village recorded in Liang Hong's book, the so-called "thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi". The long period of "vicissitudes and mulberry fields" like changes was strange and shocking to him, and the moment he followed his mother to learn Henan dialect and regain the local tone, he naturally became part of this change.
Liang Hong in "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue".
When Jia Zhangke and Liang Hong's generation grew up, the rural population was the main body of Chinese society, and she belonged to the "majority" of Chinese society, and their rural experiences were more or less similar—material deprivation, the barrenness of spiritual life, and the desire for the outside world. In Wang Yiliang's generation, when the urban population has surpassed the rural population, he is also the "majority", but he has already lived in the life that his parents' generation longed for, and rural life is a strange experience to him.
Fei Xiaotong said in "Native China" that one of the biggest characteristics of local society is that it belongs to the society of acquaintances, and the society of acquaintances has created a "pattern of difference order" between urban and rural areas, and the network of private connections has firmly maintained the traditional countryside.
In the afterword to "China in Liangzhuang", Liang Hong said: "If I had not left, I would not have been so shocked to see the changes in Liangzhuang. ...... For the Liangzhuang people, it was a quiet rout day after day, year after year. The "rout" of Liangzhuang is the rout of the acquaintance society under the process of urbanization.
"China in Liangzhuang"
Liang Hong, Ideal Country 丨Taihai Publishing House, 2016-11
In the documentary, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong's narration all have specific descriptions of the society of acquaintances, the most interesting of which may be Yu Hua. Yu Hua, who was a dentist, saw the staff of the cultural center who wandered the streets every day, and after communicating with them, he was envious and wanted to work in the cultural center, so he began to submit articles. The article was accepted, and after the revision in Beijing, he immediately became a "celebrity" in the town — a story that can only happen in a "society of acquaintances" indeed.
Some critics say that Jia Zhangke's documentary is more or less with the meaning of "remembering bitterness and thinking sweetly", the three writers are consciously or unconsciously showing "suffering", and the interval between each paragraph, the peasants under the lens are also like a landscape presentation of "suffering" itself.
In Jia Zhangke's essay "Jia Xiang I", he once expressed his views on the narrative of suffering very clearly:
"There is such a worship of 'suffering' in our culture, and it seems that this is also the capital to gain the right to speak. Therefore, some people habitually want to possess 'suffering' and think that their experience is suffering. And what about others, what will the next generation experience? At best, it's a little bumpy. In the face of their 'suffering' and 'experience', we can only 'shut up'. 'Suffering' becomes a hegemony, and thus derives a value judgment. ”
Jia Xiang I
Jia Zhangke by Wan Jiahuan, eds
Republic of | Taiwan Straits Publishing House, 2017-6
Jia Zhangke tried to restore their memories of their hometowns from the writers' narratives, and for several writers, pain, sorrow and hometown are closely linked. Jia Pingwa could not go to school because of his father,Yu Hua failed the college entrance examination and faced the patient's mouth every day in the dental clinic, while Liang Hong experienced his mother's illness and poverty.
Respondents' expressions were restrained, but we could still feel a strong "tearing feeling." There is a huge rift between our past and the present, and Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue is clearly no way to bridge this irreversible rupture.
03
rustic
An imagination
Scholar Hu Binbin distinguishes between "village culture" and "city culture" in his new work "History of Chinese Villages". In the past, village culture was dynamic, chengyi culture was static; village culture was colloquial, and chengyi culture was written. But this observation, placed in the current urban and rural areas, is obviously difficult to establish. In the present, the city is the fast flowing, while the village is in a static state.
The inevitable result of urban population growth is the loss of rural population, and it is not news that many villages are left with only the elderly and children. The issue of "migrant workers" has been discussed for nearly two decades since the beginning of the new century, but it still attracts people's attention from time to time, like last year's survey "Takeaway Riders, Trapped in the System" to some extent is also a continuation of the "migrant worker" problem, but it has become more complicated.
A large part of the reason why Jia Zhangke's "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" will cause some controversy is also in the era of social networks, and such expressions cannot let the emotions he wants to convey reach the audience. In other words, the hometown in this documentary is far from the "countryside" shaped by the era of social networks.
Take Li Ziqi's video as an example, in each of her videos we see a very comfortable rural life. In twenty minutes, we will see the sunrise and sunset, the clouds cirrus, the smell of chickens and dogs, the spring and autumn fruits... Crops in the short video experienced spring, summer, autumn and winter, into a rather beautiful meal, with exquisite music and photography, Li Ziqi's video is people's best imagination of the countryside, more specifically, it satisfies the imagination of the middle class for the countryside.
Screenshot of Li Ziqi's top Weibo.
Lu Yang, a professor in the Department of History at Peking University, commented on the phenomenon of Li Ziqi quite precisely:
"Our understanding of ancient rural life is mainly based on the poetic reproduction of ancient literati and painters, and few people will question this reproduction, and the kind of picture that is reproduced and imagined becomes the basis of our understanding of Rural Life in China, but that reproduction actually reproduces the imagination of the literati, filtering out anything that does not conform to their ideals, and their ideals contain a strong tendency to politicize." The reproduction of rural life in postmodern society such as today needs to be achieved through special visual arrangements, the choice of tones, the editing of lenses and the combination of sound, some of which are used to create a depoliticized illusion of life in the era of consumption, which on the surface seems to be completely pleasant and harmless, which is actually highly depoliticized, in fact, based on consumerism, and is a phenomenon that occurs after the highly urbanized and consumerist era encourages the public to replace thought with life and rural problems. ”
Screenshot of Li Ziqi's latest video.
The countryside in Li Ziqi's video is essentially a rural village that has been commercially integrated. The commercialization of "barbarism" has created exquisite pastoral dreams, a new generation that has gradually lost contact with the land, and under the control of social media, and the understanding of "countryside" is obviously not the countryside experienced by Jia Zhangke and several writers he has documented. The popularity of "Huanong Brothers" and "Plum Ziqi" is the embodiment of people's desire for "beautiful countryside". These beautiful villages represent abundance, ease, and happiness, while the villages experienced by Jia Zhangke, Yu Hua and others are lacking and restless. Urbanization has "wiped out" the countryside once, and the rise of social media has, in turn, reshaped an idealized countryside to some extent.
Of course, social networks don't just get attention to "beautiful villages", but Chen Nianxi is an exception. Chen Nianxi, known as the "Miner Poet", wrote many touching sentences, and after gaining media attention, through his poems, people saw another image of rural people.
In his "Chronicle of Explosions", there is such a sentence:
"The country you loved is old
And the crowd is still young
Those tiny people who run
They are paper paste free
Papyrus fury
Blown by the wind on the blue sky
In the far north
Winds and snow are blowing across the world
Oh, the sky is shining, the morning light is cold
The sea has tranquility
You have iron sweaters."
Chen Nianxi is obviously a "rural man" who overflows the norm, and his vivid words have shocked many readers. The great suffering caused to him by the circumstances in which he lived nourished his literature. He has received attention, and in a way, although commercialization is creating a new "rural imagination", there is still the power to break through this false imagination.
"Exploding Chronicles"
Chen Nianxi, Taibai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2019-1
Chen Nianxi, who works in the mine, has a similar experience with Yu Hua. Many people say that in the documentary, Yu Hua is a bright color, and he recalls the contact with "death" when he was a child in a relaxed and witty tone.
There are more specific expressions in Yu Hua's anthology. In the 1970s and 1980s, he witnessed many scenes that are difficult for young people to understand today, such as the process of his father's surgery and the execution of prisoners. The scenes Yu Hua witnessed also filled his early works with bloodshed and violence.
In the documentary, Yu Hua said that when he first revised the manuscript, the editor suggested that he change the ending, and his answer was: "I can give you light from beginning to end." Although in the context of the interview, this sentence is tinged with ridicule and ridicule, in Yu Hua's experience, it is the "not so bright" part that makes him have a different understanding of the world, and he sees the surging dark tide under life.
In the afterword to Brothers, Yu Hua mentions: "A Westerner who lives for four hundred years can experience such two eras of worlds, and a Chinese only needs forty years to experience." ”
Brothers
Yu Hua, Authors Publishing House, 2012-9-1
Jia Zhangke, who had experienced hunger, and Yu Hua had similar views. In Jia Zhangke's view, hunger made him understand what poverty is, and limited resources will push people to greed. But in the era of poverty, there are some people who can always give warmth, Jia Zhangke used the term "wet mother" to describe, these people gave him the strength to live. Jia Zhangke also said that living is the theme of all his films. "Whatever we're enduring, we have to live."
Jia Zhangke wants to evoke people's memories of past eras through the stories of several writers, and perhaps in these memories that are so far away that young people cannot empathize, the instinctive desire to survive is the core.
It is unknown whether the sea has turned blue, but in order to "survive", you still have to swim forward.