"Taiwan, Please Listen to Me" (by Wu Jinxun, Huaxia Publishing House, January 2015)
Niu Chengze, born in Taiwan on June 23, 1966, grew up in the general's mansion and Shuxiang Mendi, his grandfather was a general, his father also joined the army, and his grandmother and mother taught Chinese at the university. His grandmother's father was a warlord of the Republic of China, and his body was flowing with the blood of the Manchu Eight Banners "Niu Hulu" clan. He denounces himself as "the remnants of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the descendants of warlords".
He was born and raised in Taiwan as the "second generation of the mainland", and his status as a "provincial man" made him very sad.
He identifies with Taiwan, he loves Taiwan, he can't even do without Taiwan's food culture, he can't do without his friends and cats in Taiwan. But what he can't give up is a connection from genes and blood.
I shed the blood of "manchu desires and descendants of warlords."
My surname Niu, derived from the oldest surname of the Manchus, "Niu Hulu", was one of the eight major surnames in the Qing Dynasty. Our surname Niu served as empress four times in the Qing Dynasty and gave birth to two emperors.
In my grandfather's generation, it is said that the current Beijing Railway Station is our family, and then the family road fell, and there was no money to sell the house and eat the old money. Later, my father entered the military academy, and under the arrangement of the times, he came to Taiwan like this, and he did not expect to go back.
In my experience of growing up, there was no grandfather, grandmother, uncle, uncle, cousin, only cousins, such as aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, cousins, cousins, cousins.
My grandmother was from Anhui, and her father was Feng Yuxiang's brother-in-law, surnamed Kong, known as Kong Dashuai, who served as the overseer of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. My father knew my grandmother when he was in Beijing and called her second aunt; later my father came to Taiwan, looked up, and had no relatives, so he had to walk around his only elder family, that is, my grandmother, and then talked to my mother about love and marriage. That's why I often say that my family's bloodline is "the remnants of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the descendants of warlords."
My grandfather was a general, and I was greatly influenced by him, he graduated from the law department of Chaoyang University (the predecessor of China University of Political Science and Law), and he threw himself into the war during the War of Resistance. From the beginning of the military judge, he was in charge of the retreat business, and his direct subordinate officer was Song Chuyu's father Song Da.
Grandpa lived in the official house of Baiping (hundreds of square meters) near Tingzhou Road, because the house was large, after my parents got married, they asked my father to live in his house, I lived in that big house until I was fifteen years old, and then I moved out.
Grandpa was later sent to the "Revolutionary Practice Research Office" as an official such as the chief executive, and at that time there was no distinction between the party, the government, and the army, and everyone had to be trained, and the dean was Chiang Kai-shek. My grandfather has a marginal personality, is straightforward and gentle, does not drill camps, does not form parties, and he is far better to his subordinates than to his superiors. Previously, he was the director of transportation in the 823 artillery battle, and the 823 artillery battle was a transport war, but he was poor, and he gave us a good educational demonstration.
Niu Chengze family
My frostbitten father
In 1949, when there was a wave of immigration, so many people left their hometowns and uprooted, and they never saw their fathers, wives and children again, how could there be no wounds?
My dad came to the stage alone, and the more tragic thing is that he was a frozen man. When I was twelve, he began to get sick, and by the time I was eighteen or nineteen, his muscles slowly atrophied to the throat and he lost the ability to breathe. On the day he was taken to the hospital, I did artificial respiration for him, and the doctor told me that he had two weeks left to live, but unexpectedly, he lived another eighteen years before leaving.
Usually people who are freezing have only three to five years to live, but Dad lived for twenty-five years from the onset of illness to his departure, and for nearly twenty years he lay in bed and breathed on a respirator. He was the most miserable state of life I knew in the whole world, unable to survive, unable to die, conscious, unable to move his whole body, but always tormented by memories.
In the years when he was ill but had not yet entered the hospital, I had already acted in "The Story of Xiao Bi", every day I dressed very badly, there were many horse friends outside, every day I just wanted to play, I wanted to go out and mix.
I was about sixteen or seventeen years old, just in the rebellious period of my teenage years. The impression of Dad was always that he was sitting at the dinner table, spreading a stack of paper, clenching the pen with his fist, shaking his hands, and there was almost no way to get the pen, but he was going to write to the family. He did just that every day: writing letters.
At that time, there was no "lifting of the strictness", my mother taught Chinese at the Language Center of Normal University, and the Japanese Mitsui Daishang Society sent people to Taiwan to learn Chinese, and then sent to the mainland to do business. My mother had a student who went to Beijing, and through this Japanese student, she tried to find my father's family, so she relied on Japanese students to secretly pass on letters and send letters through a third place.
My father has three brothers and three sisters, the third uncle is an authority on Beijing opera, once the vice president of the China Academy of Opera, one year he was sent to Germany as a visiting scholar, my father found someone to spread the word, asked the third uncle to call him in Taiwan to give him.
Through my mother's Japanese students, we finally talked about how many months, days, and times to talk on the phone. That night, I remember very clearly, our whole family waited very carefully next to the telephone, and the phone rang, and the international long-distance telephone was not of good quality, the sound was far away, and the echoes seemed to be in a cave.
As soon as I picked it up, "Hey—" I don't know, I'll "hey" again—the third uncle replied, "Hey, I'm a button," "Third uncle, you wait a minute—" I gave the phone to my dad, and he picked up the phone with a trembling voice, and as soon as he opened his mouth, "Hey—" His face wrinkled together, crying, crying, and all four of our family cried that day. Finally know the situation at home: Grandpa died a long time ago, and then what about uncles and aunts... What I remember most is my parents' cries.
The manipulation of the big times
When I reached a certain age, I envied my "early immigrant friends", the so-called natives of the province, who could go back to their hometowns in the south and have full family relationships, they tended to have land, but we had nothing.
My father cut off contact with his hometown when he was a teenager, and most of them were manipulated by the big times, and their generation simply lived to "fight back". Just because they want to fight back, the government gives the house to live, the village, the furniture are temporary, with light rattan chairs, rattan tables, as if at any time to leave.
When I was a child, I heard a story, now under the Yonghe Zhongzheng Bridge, when someone wanted to sell land, a ping (3.3 square meters) fifty cents, my grandfather said: "What to buy, I want to go back at any time, how to buy?" When I grew up, I thought about it and wow You really bought 10,000 pings at that time, and I don't have the money to make movies now! ”
My father was very homesick, but he didn't dare to go back, because he ate for life, and if he went back, his lifelong money would be gone, so he had to try to suppress himself. He always talked about what Beijing was, and when he was in a good mood, he made his own hometown snacks, occasionally talked about his hometown, and talked about my grandfather, but he didn't talk much. Later, his frozen body imprisoned him, and he never returned to his hometown for the rest of his life, so miserable. He died in 2003 and was buried in Beijing, where he fulfilled his wishes.
Niu Chengze
Beijing, a kind of imaginary hometown
In the past, my father and I were not so mixed, and I grew up carrying the Beijing that my father said, and that Beijing was painful for me, and I would even dream of Beijing, but I didn't know where that image came from.
After being scolded by my parents, I would go to the room alone to lock the door, cry and call grandma - fantasizing about having a grandma, he would soothe me, and I often talked to the imaginary grandpa and grandma. Beijing has always been such a presence.
Beijing has a sense of connection beyond blood to me, as a flag person, I must have some genetic settings, such as my poor motor cells, but as soon as I get on the horse, I will ride a horse, pick up an arrow and shoot, I think this is related to genes.
Before I went to Beijing, I felt that everything was very kind, and I heard those people talking about the accents of my father and my grandmother, and I didn't have any barriers. There are still many dialects that people in Beijing no longer speak, only my father can speak. Let's say, "Why are you so 'timid'?" It means "How can you be so dirty?", or "Take the mound and wipe it clean!" "It was actually the mop to wipe the floor.
I've heard these Beijing dialects well since I was a child.
I remember one night in the middle of the night, I went cycling with Zhou Xun and her friend three people, and I was wandering around in the alleys around Tiananmen, and while I was riding, I felt the temperature of the air, the whole row of tall plane trees, and I knew that these alleys and alleys had existed for a long time, and my father and his family had obviously walked this route, and they felt so familiar, so kind, and there was some kind of strange connection, so I said very dramatically from the bottom of my heart: "Grandpa, Grandma, I'm back." "In the atmosphere of that night, I made such a sad but warm joke.
Nonetheless, Taiwan is my hometown. My friends, my cats, it's full of everything growing up, and my food culture. But Beijing is something I can never give up, a connection from genes and blood.
Where to identify? Love Taiwan or not? It has been a very annoying political issue in recent years. Many of my good friends are from this province, and for a long time, they didn't touch each other's wounds very well. It was only in these years that the ethnic group was re-provoked.
The sadness of the "provincials"
I don't think Taiwan should talk about the three words "people from other provinces" anymore, and the three words "people from other provinces" are very sad for me.
When I was about twenty years old, I read a lot of magazines such as "New News" and "Human World", and I had a very sense of mission, I was very concerned about the bottom, my ideas were very left, and I once had fierce ideas, feeling that the corrupt Kuomintang needed to be overthrown and replaced. When you are young, it is easy to have the impulse to want to do something, and there is the anxiety of adolescence, the heroism of revolution, as if for the sake of a big goal behind it, what can be done. In fact, it was later learned that the people who dedicated themselves to the revolution did not necessarily want to make the world a better place, but may just find an ideal banner that could be followed, attached, and then satisfied, or healed themselves. Behind this may be blind movement, is the catharsis of their own anxiety.
So I used to be very supportive of Chen Shui-bian. In 1994, when Taipei was elected for the first time, my grandmother said, my family is the most democratic, come and tell me who you want to vote for. Because she first said that our family is "the most democratic", so I generously said: "Chen Shui-bian." As a result, Grandma pulled up the octave and shouted, "What! Then he scolded: "How can you be like this, so sorry for the dead grandfather!" ”
For the sake of Ah Bian, I broke up with my family, I couldn't communicate with my friends, and my mother wanted to break away from the mother-son relationship with me. As a result, after Chen Shui-bian was elected, he celebrated on the opposite street of Xinsheng South Road in Taipei City, but I left first that night. The reasons were: first, some Hokkien pronunciation I couldn't understand; second, I felt their hostility to my blood.
As a provincial, it seems to be saddled with original sin. What's wrong with me? What did you do wrong? Born and raised in Taiwan, the time I left Taiwan did not add up to more than a year, and I have not immigrated until now, why should I be excluded? I have a very lonely feeling. I no longer agree with the corrupt regime of the Kuomintang, but here I am an outsider, as if sandwiched between.
In 1996, when Taiwan was electing regional leaders, I went to the mainland to shoot a drama, and people regarded me as a Taiwanese; in the middle of it, I went to the United States, because I looked black, I was treated as an Indian; when I returned to Taiwan, I was originally a "foreigner." As a result, fuck, where is my home?
My ex-girlfriend is dark green and I call myself an intermediate voter. Their family also has wounds, her grandfather speaks beautiful, standard Japanese, worked in the railway bureau during the Kuomintang era, obviously very good, but was suppressed. The day before the vote in 2004, there was a "319" shooting, when I was filming, she called me and said, "Wow, this is really a dick, Chen Shui-bian actually engaged in this game." ”
She was dark green and also thought the bullet was fake. The next day, she was dressed and ready to go out, and I asked her where she was going. She said: "Go to the polls. I asked who to vote for, and she replied, "Vote for Ah Bian." I grabbed her: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, didn't you say the bullet was fake?" She replied, "No way, I'm for Grandpa." "She pushed me away and went to vote for Ah Bian for Ah Gong." But in 2008, she couldn't vote for green, but she couldn't vote for blue.
I have a lot of such friends around me, like a good friend of the family members who suffered in the February 28 incident, their home is dark green, before I went to his house for dinner, his mother also asked me in Hokkien: "Are you willing to join the New Party?" The new party department hurriedly (can't) come to Nguyen Du (my house) Oh! "Now this friend doesn't vote either."
I think that the people of this province and the people of the province have their own wounds, and the wounds will eventually have a process of recovery, and it will be forgotten. In fact, Taiwan's early immigrants also experienced a chaotic transition period. The people of Fuzhou fight with the people of Zhangzhou, the people of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou fight, the people of Southern Fujian fight with the Hakka, the Han people and the ethnic minorities fight, and everyone is like this. Everyone is in this process, but after playing, isn't it just looking for respect and tolerance, so that everyone can get along?
When the DPP came to power, I had a great fear that I would not be involved in reunification and independence, but from the perspective of future development, I think Taiwan and the mainland should maintain a "way of getting along" instead of cutting off. Cut off is autistic blockade, back to the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, but the Ming Dynasty still had the territory of Greater China at that time, and we now have only one small island.
Some shameless politicians in Taiwan manipulate the ethnic group, knowing very well that it is for their own interests. Behind the manipulation, there must be a specific purpose, and there must be a wound. Only if there is a wound, it is possible to be plucked! In recent years, ethnic groups have become a topic that can be provoked, representing the existence of such a population and such a problem. I think now is the process, like a rash, hurry up and send it!
Find your way to get along with yourself
My original intention in filming "The Way to Survive" was to explore the current political media chaos on the island and "why we are living so unhappy in Taiwan", but in the end, I deconstructed myself.
Originally, I designed a "humorous but not abusive" bridge section to rip off Qiu Yi's wig in the movie. Our crew had a two-hour formal interview with him, and I saw his innocent romantic, narcissistic side, and even the pain of midnight dreams, and I had a human connection with him.
We have aversion to another person, often because we see in him some annoying parts of ourselves, like Qiu Yi's self-righteous heroism, like being the focus of the spotlight, and so on. I have those things too. Later he was actually pulled out of his wig, and I have deep sympathy, not only for him, but also for the people who pulled his wig and the reasons behind it.
We always like to point fingers at others, so that we don't have to face our own problems, our own wounds, we are also easy to immerse ourselves in negative emotions, drinking, drug use, buying famous brands, blindly pursuing success, but we have not thought about it, we should be responsible for these things, in fact, politicians and the media only reflect our complex and chaotic inside.
I was a young man with ideals and ambitions, but in the process of pursuing ideals, I unconsciously rotted and stinked, and even suffered from depression. But I finally turned back to the person I am today because I looked inward and found a way to get along with myself, so that I could get along with the world.
Everyone has this journey, and even people like me can become introspective and compassionate. I am not a nebula master, I still have desires, I want to pursue, and I still suffer from negative emotions, but I have found the attitude to live with life. I am not pessimistic about the future, and only by treating oneself with compassion can one be merciful toward the world.
【Statement】 The article is excerpted from "Taiwan, Please Listen to Me" (written by Wu Jinxun, Huaxia Publishing House, January 2015), and the headline number of "Taiwan.com" does not have any self-serving purpose, but only to share the "real Taiwan" between the lines to more readers. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete it.
Original title: "Niu Chengze: The three words of "people from other provinces" have made me very sad"