This article was published in the "Sanlian Life Weekly" No. 32, 2020, the original title of the article is "Li Bihua: A City, a Kind of Loneliness", it is strictly forbidden to reprint privately, and infringement must be investigated
Li Bihua's ghost story has a strong Hong Kong-style strange color, which can only happen in that region, and only in that special geographical and cultural context can it show its meaning, like a local dish that is difficult to replace.
Text/Zhang Yuehan
The imagery of the umbrella often appears in Li Bihua's strange love novels
The soul of the city
As a writer who grew up in modern Hong Kong, Li Bihua's reputation for writing was also related to the environment at that time. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hong Kong's economy developed rapidly, leaping to the position of "Four Asian Tigers", and a large number of cultural needs emerged from the formation of a class of citizens. Works full of public tastes, such as eroticism, violence, love, and ghosts, were popular at the time. There also seems to be a kind of "soul" in her story, a wisp of urban soul, which is very in line with the tastes of the public and the market at that time. Urbanism and strange feelings are an important feature of her works, a pen that writes about the love and hatred of Hong Kong men and women.
"Milk Tea in a Trance" is a masterpiece of this type of work. The novel uses a drink with very Hong Kong characteristics, milk tea, to imply the love story of an office worker woman. Although it is "in love", it is also lonely, because it is mixed with the alienation of urban interpersonal relations and the flood of crime. A teahouse guy in a gray-yellow uniform who "can't wash it" fell in love with an office woman who often came to eat, wore spotless white clothes, and looked unattainable. Such a woman with a clean personality was unfortunately raped and committed suicide. He was extremely sad and indignant in her colleague's cold-blooded and joke-reading comments after dinner, but there was nothing he could do, because it was not even a loss of love, but a parting of life and death. Just as he was losing his soul, one night, he suddenly caught a glimpse of the tea restaurant door, and the umbrella he had lent her on the night of her murder had been returned at some point. She's back. "It's a little late, but she understands, so she tentatively, is it coming?"
"Trance Milk Tea" is only a little sinister, a little scary, but more of a regretful story, although short, but reflects the deep urban sadness, from small to large, whipped into it.
Li Bihua's sense of the city is also reflected in the remembrance of the history of Urban Change in Hong Kong, such as "The Key" cleverly integrated into the historical event of "The Last Kai Tak" before the demolition of Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport. Kai Tak Airport and Kowloon Walled City were once two landmarks with hong Kong characteristics. Kowloon Walled City is a magical sight in Hong Kong's world-famous city. It is located in the three-way zone, the buildings are densely packed with no gaps, and it is a slum with no streets and only garbage walkways, where yellow gambling and poison are rampant, and dragons and snakes are mixed, like a strange utopia. Since the walled city is not far from Kai Tak Airport, on the roof of some buildings, you can photograph low-altitude flying planes. The plane felt so close to the man that it seemed to be accessible as soon as it reached out. "The Key" writes about this historical event through the daily life of a couple, and the core of the story is still the past life and present life that Li Bihua is familiar with, and through recording the past, the contrast between the past and the present is caused.
"Su Qing" is a more swinging urban Zhiqi. A very ordinary female Shuna, about to get married to a very ordinary marriage. One day, she took the subway as usual, and the train left Tsim Sha Tsui Station and entered the undersea tunnel not long ago, but suddenly stopped due to a malfunction. All passengers must get off the bus and trek through the undersea tunnel. Imagine a pitch-black tunnel, with the sea not crossing your neck, and thousands of people walking through this pitch-black water. After Shu Na got out of the car, she followed everyone to "cross the sea", and the obsessive soul of the previous life was found. It is a male ghost who has fallen in love with each other in a miserable past life, and has also involved another woman's love triangle. This legendary past love affair is in stark contrast to Shu Na's usual pale love in this life. It is worth mentioning that the short story "Su Qing" and the long story "Rouge Buckle" have many similar elements, which also express the sigh of the lack of legend of modern love, Tangxi Agu, Taiping Theater, Shitangzui Fengyun, etc., both works have appeared.
The movie "Rouge Buckle", a strange love classic performed by Mei Yanfang and Zhang Guorong
Charming women
The delicate relationship and mental portrayal between women is another feature of Li Shiqi's love novels. Li Bihua's charming and concise writing makes the bitterness, hatred, love and unwillingness of women in various eras call out to each other in the gaps of time and space, forming a unique landscape.
"Double Sister Mark" is a classical and beautiful, gloomy and extreme female relationship written according to the popular double sisters in the last century. Twin Sisters is the first cosmetics brand in Hong Kong, founded in 1898 and launched by Guangshengtang. Guangshengtang was a famous cosmetics company in Hong Kong in the late 19th century, and launched more than 300 kinds of products in 100 years, the most popular of which were floral dew and alabaster. This flower dew is packaged with the writing "Double Sister", but Li Bihua's novel uses "Double Sister Mark". "Mark" is an English transliteration, commonly used in Guangdong. Later, there was a magazine in Hong Kong called "Double Sister Mark", and the slogan on the cover was "SAR Stage, Crazy City Dance". Maggie Cheung and Zheng Yuling have acted in a movie called "Divine Courage Double Sister Mark". Hong Kong also prefers to call the old days the "Double Sister Mark Era".
The commodity icon of "Double Sister" is usually two women, generally tall, fat and thin, at first glance look like a replica of two people, close together. But when I zoomed in closely, I found that their faces were very different and very real, as if they were drawn according to the characters that existed in real life. Li Bihua interprets this trademark as " Ambiguously and never separated " . Provinces, Hong Kong, Macao, all over China: Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Dalian, Changchun..." This extends a story of betrayal and unforgivable betrayal among women.
The extreme "sisterhood" portrayed in the novel is in line with the social customs of the Pearl River Delta region at that time. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the emergence of the silk reeling industry in Guangdong at that time, women began to earn their own money. After witnessing unhappy married lives for some other married women, some women agreed not to marry for life. They comb their long braids and are called "self-combing women". Self-combing women formed a strict sisterhood based on women's friendship, worked hard all their lives, saved enough money, and lived in a house for the elderly. They never marry, but they cannot rely on their families and must be self-reliant. The cruelty of this rule is that once you comb yourself, you must not regret it. Even if you later meet a suitable man and want to marry him, you will not be able to do it, and you will be tortured or even lynched.
The movie "Dumplings of the Three Changes" is based on Li Bihua's novel "Dumplings"
"Double Sister Mark" is such a tragedy. One lost the other, so they jumped into the sea and decided. The one who is alive, unmarried all his life, is used to atone for sins to another. In the year of white hair, the double sister mark products she had collected were exhibited in Hong Kong, and she waited in the exhibition hall every day, hoping to wait until the appearance of her friends and hope that she would forgive herself. Who knows, the last day is over, and she still hasn't waited. As she was about to leave, she suddenly "stared straight at her pile of treasured relics, lost her soul, and her gray face was covered with dead light, like a stone lamp in a deserted temple, frozen in the cold night." The locked showcases that could not be opened from the outside, all the twin marks inside that could not have been moved at all, all the trademarks, the face of one of the women, were torn apart by Sheng Sheng, "leaving only a hollow white mark..."
She refused to forgive her to the death.
The self-combing female jumping into the sea in the novel is also the real history of the last century. At the end of the 19th century, there was a lot of social news about women in the Pearl River Delta and southeast Fujian. In 1893, the "Dianshizhai Pictorial" had the news that the Sisters of Guangdong Jinlan had met to throw water. At that time, the picture showed several young women, tying their belts together and jumping into the sea together. By 2019, a well-rated Hong Kong drama "Twelve Legends" has evolved into several women who tie their braids into dead knots and jump into the sea together, adding to the horror and spooky dramatic tension.
Li Bihua Classic Novels Author: Li Bihua Publisher: Nova Publishing House Published year: 2013
Gastronomic delights
Melting into the strange feelings is also a feature of Li Bihua's strange story. Her characters eat baby fetuses, eat their own children's eyes, eat bird's nest cakes, eat egg tarts, eat brine geese, eat octopus, eat "pink bread"... Her "eating" appears delicious in horror, delicious seeps into the terrible, and food and "weirdness" form an inseparable blending relationship, which sets off each other, and the thrill of life is full of pleasure.
"Chaozhou Lane" tells about the brine goose that Hong Kong people love to eat. At the beginning of the description, there is almost appetite: "It is a large bucket half a person high, soaked in hundreds of thousands of geese, dark and shiny and fragrant marinade." The surface was covered like a thin tarpaulin, protecting the forty-seven years. It continues to absorb the essence of goose meat every day, recycling and regenerating, every day is fresher and more concentrated and fragrant than yesterday, boiled and boiled, brine and brine, boiled and boiled, never changed. ”
Girl Yueming, the family is famous for selling brine geese. The mother supported the mother and daughter in that shop and provided her with a good education. This story is a refreshing text of a small family jasper class jumping from the surface. Relying on her delicious goose and observant wrists, she caught her boss, a big golden turtle son-in-law. The brine goose echoes everywhere in the whole article, and even becomes the reason why the male protagonist falls in love with the female protagonist. To portray the moment of love as a delicious moment, only Li Bihua, a "literary demon", can do:
"Pick a goose with a full mouth, and the dew bubbles are soaked in golden crystals, glowing with oil, and can shine on people." Touch the goose chest with your hand, and flick the back of the knife. Lovingly patted its body, placed on the cutting board, looked at the middle of a section, after the broken chamber there was still marinade leaking out, no matter, the ripe goose, spread some cold before it was good to swing the knife to the flesh and remove the bone. Click, click. Quickly cut into thin slices, neatly arranged, scoop a spoonful of aged brine, the juice will be drilled at the sight of the meat seam, and in the blink of an eye, the black sweetness has invaded the goose meat, adding color. ”
The whole story mixes the delicious taste of the brine goose and the final horror of the protagonist in the story, and writes it darkly. The more delicious it is, the more terrifying the truth behind it. Every knife work, every sentence is a careful detail of the aged marinade, and after you know the truth at the end, it is extremely frightening to return to see. This kind of ingenuity has created the unforgettable taste of Li Bihua's "food horror story".
The same is true of Dumplings. The novel was adapted into the movie "Dumplings of Three Changes", which was launched in the summer of that year, and the name and poster alone made people feel extremely cold, and it is also considered to be one of the more successful modern Hong Kong horror films, creating a special style. Many people who have seen books and movies have invariably thought that the original book was more terrifying. Why? There is only one simple word in the original book: "crisp", put in the context, you associate it, on the scalp numbness. Coupled with: "blood stains", "viscous films", "two small black spots in it", accurately knocking on people's horrors, menstruation. There is a medicine in Chinese medicine, called Zihe Car, which is actually the human placenta, and the "tonic" in "Dumplings" is even more "supplemental" than the Purple River Car.
However, I think that the best thing about "Dumplings" is not the bloody plot, but when all this horror and absurdity is described vividly, its ending is a woman's recollection of the day she married, the most beautiful moment in her life. At that time, she had no idea that she would eventually become a middle-aged wife who was so worried about getting old, worried about the young opposite sex and her husband's change of heart. The whole story of "Dumplings" is about the absurd and extreme actions that women can do in order to save their youth, which is actually women's greed for "youth" and "love". The cleverness of the return at the end lies in the deep contrast between the cruelty in the front and the simplicity in the back, suggesting how a woman sees herself and determining her life's behavior and choices.
"Revitalize Hong Kong films, kill the Yin Si Road", when Li Bihua was preparing to make a film adapted from his own work a few years ago, the Hong Kong media, which is known as the title party, once had such a title. Later, she quoted this sentence in one of her few interviews. Hong Kong's unique civic culture makes Hong Kong horror stories their own, with a group of fixed fans. And Li Bihua's strange love novels, with the legacy of Ming and Qing Zhiwei novels, and then adding the insight and understanding of the world's situation through the woman's heart, is a color that is difficult to be crossed in The Hong Kong-style horror.
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