This article was published in the "Sanlian Life Weekly" No. 52, 2019, the original title of the article is "Xu Zhiyuan: Confrontation with the World", it is strictly forbidden to reprint privately, and infringement must be investigated
Xu Zhiyuan has multiple identities and is a cultural person with a complex story line. He was a self-deprecating "unreliable" writer but spent five years writing the first volume of "Young Changemakers: Liang Qichao"; he had maintained a radical and optimistic attitude toward journalism, worked as a journalist for many years, and founded a one-way street bookstore with colleagues who had resigned from the Economic Observer, which transformed into a utopian representative in the hearts of literary and artistic youth several times. If Xu Zhiyuan stays in his comfort zone, for the public, he should only be an intellectual image of the era of contemplation. In 2016, the "Thirteen Invitations" program hosted by him was launched, because it showed doubts about various new trend things, and became the object of ridicule by netizen groups, but a "counter-trend" person who was pushed to the cusp of the storm unexpectedly became the trend itself.
Text/Kason
Xu Zhiyuan
Behind the controversy of "Thirteen Invitations"
I met Xu Zhiyuan three or four years ago, when the first volume of his "Young Changemaker: Liang Qichao" was written in tens of thousands of words, and the first season of "Thirteen Invitations" had just recorded a few episodes, and the number of online broadcasts was average. When he was a little anxious about writing, he went out to meet old friends and drink a glass of whiskey. At that time, Xu Zhiyuan was not much different from now, and his white shirt, jeans, and somewhat messy curly hair had always been his standard. After three rounds of drinking, we talked about the actresses we liked, he said that he would soon do a show, interviewed Yu Feihong, who had not filmed for a long time, he said that this is a type of actress he likes, especially the amazing young girls in "Happy Blessing Society" and the self-repressed women in "Millennium Prayer", all convey a kind of alienated poetry to him. Xu Zhiyuan never skimps on praising women who make him feel good, this is his truth.
A few weeks later, Xu Zhiyuan's interview with Yu Feihong's "Thirteen Invitations" frequently brushed the screen in the circle of friends, and netizens rushed up to ridicule the host who behaved jerkily and uneasily. This is perhaps the highest number of retweets when Xu Zhiyuan did the first season of "Thirteen Invitations". Watching this interview carefully, Xu Zhiyuan did behave very cramped in front of the camera, and the sudden blushing of a certain second and the traces of efforts to make the other party let down their guard were mercilessly recorded by the camera. Netizens can no longer care about listening carefully to this conversation, Xu Zhiyuan has been on the hot search list of entertainment. This group ridicule has not stopped for too long, and the video of Xu Zhiyuan interviewing Ma Dong and Li Shi in the second season of "Thirteen Invitations" has become a hit and truly become the target of everyone.
At this time, Ma Dong's "Strange Story" and Li Tian's "Spit Conference" were deeply loved by young people. In Xu Zhiyuan's questions, his questioning and vigilance about the new language system has become the reader's inability to eat the ancient, and his remembrance of the idealistic tradition and the pursuit of today's entertainment values have become the embarrassment of "thinking too much". After many years, I asked him where his "prejudice" came from, and he said: "The so-called prejudice is a neutral word in my dictionary, it represents a kind of scrutiny and questioning, and the questions asked are indeed out of my essential curiosity." I believe that all cultures should look at it through perspective, not blindly accept or reject it. ”
Xu Zhiyuan said that he was a shy person, never watched the cut films, and those conversations existed in the moments when colliding with the parties. He knew very well that there was his own clumsy questioning and awkward silence in this collision. "I think there's friction in real conversations themselves, so why do we have to complete a conversation with a fluid performance?"
Embarrassment is real, and curiosity and incomprehension seem to be real.
Most of the guests in "Thirteen Invitations" are outstanding figures in their respective fields - novelists, philosophers, successful businessmen, martial arts masters, directors, actors, and have different degrees of ambivalence about the characters interviewed, Xu Zhiyuan, on the one hand, this has a certain utilitarian color, and the influence they may bring can make some kind of revenge on the trend of increasing marginalization of intellectuals, on the other hand, he also believes that this group of people is a slice of different perspectives in this society, through which they can write about the different styles of this era. This is also the reason why "Thirteen Invitations" got its name, thirteen is not dependent, all-encompassing, the characters are mirror images of the times, no matter what kind of situation is true.
Xu Zhiyuan once talked about his hopes for himself in an interview, hoping that he was both old and naïve. This sense of contradiction naturally brings the potential of explosion to "Thirteen Invitations", and resistance, doubt, curiosity and incomprehension are presented at the same time. "Thirteen Invitations" has now reached its fourth season, and people seem to have begun to hear more and more cultural celebrities in addition to stars, Nishikawa's poetry, Wang Jian's talk about Bach, Xiang Biao's talk about anthropology, while questioning entertainment, Xu Zhiyuan seems to be more willing to bring various cultural traditions into the system of mass culture platforms. In Xu Zhiyuan's main point of view, the emergence of prejudice is to some extent a scarcity in our world, and we give up our views because we want harmony too much.
In the fourth season, Xu Zhiyuan spoke with Xiang Biao, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University. In the space of five minutes, the conversation went from theory to the life we face on a daily basis. Xu Zhiyuan asked, in modern society, what is the change of "nearby disappearance" to people themselves? Xiang Biao's disappearance from the neighborhood to our trust in abstract systems such as Alipay deduces the disappearance of trust in social relationships and love. The logic of this process is incomprehensible to the general public, but it seems to explain our current situation. In this conversation, I saw Xu Zhiyuan's unprecedented sense of relaxation. "In fact, what I want to convey is a concept, if our time began to discuss archaeology, physics, anthropology in the field of mass communication ... would our entertainment become more colorful?" Can we not let entertainment be so narrow? ”
In 2018, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the Penghu Reform Law, "Thirteen Invitations" came out with Tan Sitong's program, connecting the changing storms of an era from the perspective of a deceased person. He also mentioned that in the future, he may be able to do a program and eat noodles with Dou Wei in a small restaurant, "Maybe we don't say a word, just sit together and eat a bowl of noodles, and after recording the noodles, everyone will disperse." Sometimes silence is a very important thing." Xu Zhiyuan felt that the show's producer Li Lun and the team trusted him and could make various free attempts in the era of "entertainment to death".
The heated discussion brought by the group ridicule has made more and more people come to see his show. The program team did not cut out those large segments of silence, but instead came to a larger close-up, amplifying the uneasiness on Xu Zhiyuan's face. It worked, and young people like to see this embarrassment because it's more real than the average variety show. "Thirteen Invitations" went from 8.3 in the first season to 8.8 in the fourth season on Douban, and the average number of single episodes reached 38 million times. According to the "Weibo 2017 White Paper", "Thirteen Invitations" has become the most popular cultural video program in first-tier cities, with the audience concentrated in white-collar workers aged 21 to 35. I can't help but think about a question. The heyday of "Thirteen Invitations" being ridiculed by the crowd mainly stemmed from Xu Zhiyuan's incomprehension and questioning of the trend culture in the program, however, the audience group of "Thirteen Invitations" today is those young people who he can least understand. Why should viewers who think Xu Zhiyuan is selling "prejudice" pay for this untimely prejudice? In three years, has the audience's mentality changed, or has the show changed?
In the third season, Xu Zhiyuan did a dialogue with the two-dimensional world, when Xu Zhiyuan and two otaku dancers sat in the same car, the cramped uneasiness in his expression made him unable to hide, when walking in the comic show to see the fancy cosplay young people, the shock and dazedness showed made him feel "unable to say", the biggest highlight of this episode is Xu Zhiyuan who mistakenly broke into the two-dimensional world. This kind of scene has a great sense of substitution, and many viewers who cannot understand the second dimension suddenly understand Xu Zhiyuan's situation. More and more understanding, allowing an anti-trend person to become the trend itself, this is obviously the absurdity of this era.
When I talked to Xu Zhiyuan about how he was now more and more like a host, not making mistakes, still very correct and decent, he showed his usual shy expression. "I miss the time when I was more unskilled, it was a jerky friction, not everything should be spring and rain, moisturizing and silent. The abruptness of the past in the interview was a way of confronting the world, and without it, I felt that it was a problem. ”
I have always felt that the existence of "Thirteen Invitations" is very much like Xu Zhiyuan's "curve to save the country", the incomprehension of the trend is out of curiosity, and the more distant poetic inquiry is the ultimate intention of this show. After a recent interview with Xu Zhiyuan's "Thirteen Invitations," Chen Chong recalled the interview on Weibo in the midst of the rain. "We rejoice for the same spirit, insist on the same personality, mourn for the same kind of death, and be infected by the same sentiment..." Xu Zhiyuan's original intention was not indicated, but some people understood him. Times change, and you know that there will eventually be empathetic encounters.
"Reluctant businessman"
There was once a post circulating on Douban, from a young colleague of Xu Zhiyuan's one-way space. It reads: "The greatest pleasure of watching 'The Thirteen Invitations' is to see how these elites have taken Xu Zhiyuan back. Because after the last time we insulted the boss involuntarily, the inside and outside of the one-way street bookstore were filled with happy air. The boss himself finally threw a concerned glance at the grassroots for the first time, and sent red envelopes and fruits, so that we who struggled in the front line were flattered. "It sounds like Xu Zhiyuan is a good boss, and even if a young colleague scares him, his response is open and inclusive."
Xu Zhiyuan talked about business, and unabashedly still held doubts. The same entrepreneur, in the first season of "Thirteen Invitations", Xu Zhiyuan and Luo Zhenyu had a dialogue with business in the era, and Xu Zhiyuan showed a lot of discomfort when facing Luo Zhenyu, who talked about the business model. In his book "Prejudice", he said of Luo Zhenyu as "quite uncomfortable" and "curious". He was uncomfortable with why a cultural person ended up throwing out a suspicious, hodgepodge of knowledge the similar concept of "U-disk survival", and wondering how the surfers of the new wave created by information, capital, and fame maintained a certain light posture in their strong bodies.
So when we talk about the operation of one-way space, he is not shy about describing himself as a "reluctant businessman", trying to achieve commercial success, but not fully trusting the logic of business. Did business make him compromise? He said that there may be, may have something to do with getting older, more and more understanding of the difficulty of individuals, and the company to feed hundreds of people, invisibly more than a responsibility.
Before starting a business, Xu Zhiyuan was a media person who worked as the chief writer in the Economic Observer. According to Zhang Fan, the current chief operating officer of One Direction Space and his newspaper colleague at that time, the idea of opening a bookstore was born between work, and young people who read books want to have their own utopian bookstore. Xu Zhiyuan was 29 years old, the age of exuberance, and he wrote in his departure letter: "Although it has no direct impact on me, I think at some point, I always have to defend a little basic position!" ”
In 2005, several colleagues opened a one-way street bookstore in a small house with a yard next to the Yuanmingyuan East Gate Café. The name comes from Benjamin's book "One Way Street", Xu Zhiyuan said that he wanted to "move the left bank of Paris to the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing", hoping that the One Way Street Bookstore would become an ideological salon living room... Zhang Fan recalled that at that time, Lao Xu was very widely traveled, opened a bookstore to recruit a lot of friends as salon guests, so that the one-way street salon soon became famous, and then caught up with the rent rise, and finally the bookstore closed its doors, and the first entrepreneurship was so yellow.
Later, a friend recommended to open a bookstore to the blue harbor, for a period of time can be free of rent, and then one-way street in addition to selling books, also began to operate coffee, the initial realization of the balance of payments. 2014 is the turning point of the one-way space, just in time for the period of venture capital is booming, the company raised tens of millions of dollars, began to transform into a content-based, offline cultural space, salon event planning and cultural and creative derivative products as the main business of the institution, at the same time began to develop new media business, systematically do their own publishing MOOK magazine book "Single Reading", but also developed related derivative products, such as the one-way calendar that literary and artistic youth must start.
Outside of business, Xu Zhiyuan's "willfulness" has not converged, he himself likes to wear flip-flops, he believes that flip-flops represent an open and unfettered freedom, so one-way space produced "thirteen drags", and he sold slippers in a serious way. Xu Zhiyuan, who likes to drink, also produced a small bottle of rice wine for "Changemaker" after publishing "Young Reformer: Liang Qichao". In Zhang Fan's view, Xu Zhiyuan always said that he was not a good businessman because of his extremely curious and creative personality, afraid of repeating himself and repeating others. Xu Zhiyuan assigned the work of thinking about business models and operations to trustworthy old colleagues, and he took on the role of maintaining cultural quality more like a person. Xu Zhiyuan is very clear about what he can and cannot do, which makes the one-way space develop faster in the hands of a group of people who understand business.
Toward the end of the interview, I asked him, "Do you think you're still a 'thorn in the head' now?" He laughs and says, "I don't think I ever believed in the concept of peace, I think that a person's life is an eternal struggle, but the way it struggles may be deeper, or more powerful, and there is no need to show it at any time." ”
Xu Zhiyuan walking in San Francisco, USA
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Sanlian Life Weekly: In "Thirteen Invitations", your question about the background of Ma Dong's life at that time was whether you really felt that such a form as "Strange Story" should not exist?
Xu Zhiyuan: When I interviewed Ma Dong at that time, I was curious about why there was a new way of language, and why people liked the existence of such a form as "Strange Story". Sometimes I think that chatting with them is to help me understand them better, but I later find out that it is not that we have more powerlessness when we face reality, and such a show finds a defense for our sense of powerlessness.
Triptych Life Weekly: Do you think you understand young people?
Xu Zhiyuan: The life of young people is composed of the current hot search, what kind of thing is hot and trendy, you pay attention to it, I think they have lost the ability to distinguish. At the cusp of Thirteen Invitations, many people thought I was in conflict with young people, but it turned out that they saw their situation in my embarrassment. They act more like hedgehogs than any other era, afraid of being hurt, wrapping themselves in sharp language, a gesture that is a sign of vulnerability. In fact, in our current language model, the lack of warmth and the lack of understanding are all more real aspirations in the hearts of young people now.
Sanlian Life Weekly: You often talk about the zeitgeist in interviews, what do you think is the zeitgeist?
Xu Zhiyuan: At this moment, our language is composed of technology, consumption, and entertainment. The old system of linguistic thought has somehow disappeared. In fact, those things that are universally recognized, we should all remain skeptical, and when you join the chorus, you have chosen safety, but at the same time a symbol of laziness and timidity. When you are afraid to be different from others, you are losing the most important part of your life. The so-called spirit of the times, it is a spirit that transcends the times, to be honest, is a spirit that will be misunderstood at the moment, but you are bound to ask questions.
Sanlian Life Weekly: You spent five years writing Young Changemaker: Liang Qichao, do you feel that you have something in common with him?
Xu Zhiyuan: Liang Qichao was a rebel in his time, and his bravery and confusion in dealing with change aroused my strong resonance. I believe that the people who write history will always be those key minorities, and I have always been curious about such minorities. Before writing this book, I read a lot of materials, although the daily writing is very boring, but in the thousands of ideas once I found the connection of events, just like the process of solving the case, there are unexpected surprises.
Triptych Life Weekly: What do you think of the claims that once ridiculed you?
Xu Zhiyuan: That kind of attack is not actually saying to me, its goal is a strong anti-intellectual wave. It's been a long time coming, and I may have been a target at that time. The anti-intellectual wave represents a discursive system of knowledge that everyone dislikes very much. No one will accept complete criticism, but I believe in the rhythm and order of the individual's heart. Misunderstandings are the norm, yet I firmly believe in the questions raised by minorities.
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