Reading | Modern Marriage and Love Apocalypse - Reading Zhou Daxin's New Novel "Los Angeles Flowers"

Zhou Daxin is a writer who continues to pay attention to social issues, and his long new work "Los Angeles Flowers and Falls" (People's Literature Publishing House, 2021 edition) uses a divorce incident to start thinking about current love and marriage, from the frustration of love, the search for romance to the tearing of marriage, restoring the vivid picture of young people's marriage and love.

Good love has to face many marriage problems

The novel is about two graduate students who graduated from 985 colleges and universities, working in Beijing, because their respective relationships are not smooth, their parents in their hometown entrust "me", a "matchmaker", so that they intersect, fall in love, get married, and divorce. In the eyes of the "matchmaker", the two are quite a good match, both are high-achieving students of prestigious universities, one article and one history, and the appearance of a talented woman. Knowing the roots of both parents, the family situation is also comparable. At the wedding scene and on many occasions, he also witnessed the poetic and romantic passion of the young couple's love, but unexpectedly went to court. Because of his sense of responsibility and the love of his father, the "matchmaker" participated in the whole process of mediation and court, unveiling many marriage problems for readers that beautiful love also had to face.

The first is the problem of the life level, which is derived from the "complaint" of the first and second hearings. As "matchmakers" in the mediation, it was already found that these two young talents from other places, although settled in a home in Beijing and looked glamorous, lived in difficulty, living in a small house shared, and their mother-in-law came to take care of the baby and could only live in the public living room. The woman expressed dissatisfaction, and the man also defended that he was working and part-time, saving money, or unable to catch up with the house price, and wanted to buy a car because of the restrictions of the lottery.

The second is the rational dimension, including parents and defense lawyers on both sides. In the eyes of parents, with the idea of persuasion and non-persuasion and the experience of those who have come over, they always do not want their children's marriage to disintegrate. The multiple voices of the defense lawyer are also the highlights of the work. The woman's two defense lawyers, divorced and unmarried, dare to seek an independent life that is not dependent on men, and are also committed to "saving" more women who are besieged by marriage. The man's lawyer does everything he can to retain, through reviewing the warm details of the love, hoping to regain love.

Then there is reflection on a historical level. The work introduces the two divorce lawsuits of the Xiongjia Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China in the form of family history, both initiated by women, it seems that women have autonomy, but they are oppressed and have to rebel, and they are also subject to many rules of family rules, guidelines, and ethics, and are still victims of unfortunate marriages. Even if you can get out of marriage, you will be punished by either committing suicide or being a nun. Women seem to be able to intervene in rebellion against the system and husband's rights, but they still have to end in tragedy.

Reflecting on the fate and choices of modern women

Unexpectedly, after the modern view of the 20th century, divorce has become a common social problem. From the awakening of the "self" of the May Fourth generation, the courage to break through the cage of family and marriage has also become a model for the liberation of many "new women". Big Brother Zhang, who "opposes divorce" in "Divorce", is also synonymous with a small citizen who is conformist and has no spiritual pursuit. Once upon a time, "Cars, horses, and mail are all slow, and there is only enough to love one person in a lifetime." Even the 30-day "divorce cooling-off period" has been criticized by the whole network and is considered to "restrict the freedom of divorce." "Los Angeles Flowers" revolves around the four court sessions of divorce to cite scriptures, and debates marriage and gender issues from life experience, Chinese and foreign allusions, and scientific data. Feminists enumerate unmarried and accomplished historical figures, including Nietzsche, Plato, Descartes, Newton, Beethoven, Schubert, Adam Smith, Hans Christian Andersen, Leonardo da Vinci, and so on, as well as the long-standing weaknesses in women's marriages, and finally rationally disintegrate marriages.

The novel is also reflecting on the fate and choices of modern women, which is an issue that Zhou Daxin has always been concerned about, from Han family women to fragrant soul girls to warm and warm. Yuan Youlan in the work is a post-90s, beautiful looking, independent personality, self-esteem and self-love. But it is inevitable that the only child is pampered by the simplicity and arrogance, in the marriage relationship she can not face the roughness of men like the mother can also be endless "gentle", nor can she tolerate the shortcomings and nuisances brought by the other party's original family. This also reflects the strong self-awareness of women with the changes of the times. Chinese people call the only child generation "my generation" and "cool generation", representing self-confidence, self-improvement and self- Therefore, even if her mother defected in court and joined the ranks of persuasion, she was still unmoved and insisted on divorce. The rebellious psychology towards the father is more serious, as long as the father insists, he opposes it, and the decision to marry is the same. But in Xu Youyu's view, the appearance is that young people are very self-centered and highlight their own ideas, but in fact, their appeal to do some things does not really lead to the self, and they do not have the ability to analyze independently.

Learn about yourself through the other and discover the happy hints of love

Zhou Daxin has continued to warn of social problems for many years, from the distortion of people in the city of "21 Building", the impact of the rural economy on ethics and morality in "Lake and Mountain", the deep reflection of "Requiem" on the problem of losing independence, the warning of the aging society in "It is Dark Very Slow", to the exploration of marriage and love in "Luoyang Flowers", always facing the real life, although some painful unveiling is sad, but it is also sobering. At the end of the story, he still can't bear the "collapse of human design" between the two beautiful young people in resentment and accusations, and finds their suspected cheating farce and unavoidable bitterness. In the tolerance of difference, it injects the power of love and warmth into the trivial and dull and even hopeless married life. Tolstoy said: "The purpose of the artist is not to solve problems indisputably, but to force people to love life in an infinite and infinite variety of forms of expression." From this novel, we can understand ourselves by understanding others, discover the happy hints of love, and reflect on the many problems of a "ordered" society. It's just that the cover of the "long novel seal" is inevitably sentimental, and we still hope that the flowers will fall and bloom again. (Wei Huaying)