A long picture scroll of rural change
——Read the novel "Three Mountain Concaves"
Zhou Daxin
China's reform and opening up initially began in the countryside. When we look back at the glorious history of reform and opening up, we cannot but first look back at the history of change in the countryside. After years of preparation, Nanyang writer Li Tiancen mobilized his own life accumulation and spent two and a half years to write a long novel "Three Mountain Concaves", which painted a picture of the changes in the central plains countryside for more than 40 years with words, providing readers with an image of the rural life in southwest Henan, the difficult process of reform and opening up in the rural areas of the central plains, and the great changes in the rural areas of southwest Henan.
In this work, the author first depicts the background color of the painting, the true color of the land in southwest Henan, that is, the living conditions of the villagers in the small village of SanshanWo, deep in the Funiu Mountains, in the late 1970s. At that time, the main food of the peasants here was sweet potatoes, and white noodles and rice were rare things; they lived in adobe walls and grass houses, and the main preparation for building a house was to beat adobe; the best clothing they wore was home-woven earthen cloth and black and gray jersey; the main means of transportation used were rack cars, and bicycles were still rare in the village; people's commercial activities at that time were mainly barter, taking the eggs laid by the chickens and hens raised at home, and quietly changing a little salt, green vegetables and other consumer goods. People have a strong desire for change in their hearts, and the whole society is silently calling for reform and opening up. It was also in this context that the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was convened, and the wind of reform blew into the Central Plains, into the Nanyang Basin in southwest Henan, and into this remote mountain village called Sanshanwo. With this background depiction, the deep reason why rural reform can be quickly promoted in remote villages is self-evident. The author's depiction of this background color adds ideological implications to the whole painting.
The author then begins to depict the figures on the background of the painting. Liu Dalin, Zhang Baoshan and Bai Wa are the three characters that the author focuses on depicting in the painting. The three of them all grew up in the Three Mountain Caves, and were once brothers who drank chicken blood wine, and the three people faced the rural reform on the three roads, each made their own choices, and began to interpret their own destiny. Liu Dalin studied hard, and with the sensitivity brought about by his knowledge inventory, he was the first to perceive that the wind of change in society had blown. After he entered politics, he supported the peasants' reform behavior, boldly introduced foreign capital to run schools, supported farmers to make sweet potatoes into vermicelli to sell, supported villagers to go out to Shenzhen to work, supported farmers to open flour mills, and supported farmers to run rural tourism. Although Zhang Baoshan only has a high school education, he relies on the peasants' intuition and yearning for a better life, raises his arms to embrace rural reform, and he wins the power of the secretary of the village party branch by election, and then uses this power to lead the villagers to get rid of poverty and become rich. He planted chestnut-fragrant sweet potatoes, opened vermicelli workshops, set up flour mills, went to Shenzhen several times to attract business, changed the old planting traditions and plans, welcomed urban people to travel to the countryside, and completely changed the poor and backward appearance of Sanshan'ao. Bai Wa, on the other hand, relied on her own alertness and calculations to feel that society was undergoing drastic changes, and she first began to try to do business, running around selling live chickens and eggs; she was the first to know how to open a restaurant, and she knew how to make useful officials through the liquor bureau in the hotel; she first knew how to make a lot of money by selling steel bars and building roads; she first began to engage in real estate development, and entered the circle of the county town and the rich. He has been chasing the tide, every step has not lagged behind, but almost every step has crossed the bottom line of being a man, completely fascinated by money, and finally fell into the trap covered by money. The fates of the three characters are written logically, flesh and blood, vivid and vivid. These three people in "Three Mountain Concaves" have become new images in the Gallery of Central Plains Literary Figures. Especially in the depiction of the character of Liu Dalin, the author's brushwork is particularly flexible, probably because the author himself has many years of experience in politics, and it is more comfortable to write such a character.
In this picture scroll, the author also carefully depicts the scene of the character's activity. Some of the scenes are brilliantly depicted. For example, the criticism meeting convened by Wang Chunbao, the captain of the production team. Wang Chunbao, believing that Zhang Baoshan's going out to sell chickens was a capitalist one, ordered someone to seize him and return home one night and hold his criticism meeting in front of the village's cattle house. In the past, the scene of the Criticism Fighting Association was repeatedly staged in the countryside of the Central Plains, which was a terrible means of completely making a person stink in the countryside. I did not think of this batch fighting meeting, under the spring breeze of the package production to the household, it became Wang Chunbao's stepping down meeting, but zhang Baoshan, who was criticized by the fighter, was elected as the captain by everyone. Another example is that Bai Wa set up a beautiful woman banquet to entertain Liu Dalin. In order to comfort Liu Dalin, who had suffered setbacks, and also to express her apologies for taking Liu Dalin's bride that year, Bai Wa specially set up a beauty banquet, especially instructing the beautiful girl she hired to let go of the wine banquet, and the bright red who was bent on making money certainly understood Bai Wa's meaning, and suddenly sat on Liu Dalin's lap when Liu Dalin was half drunk. According to the usual logic of human development, what should happen next is that Liu Dalin takes the beautiful woman into his arms. However, things did not develop according to the procedures set by Bai Wa, and Liu Dalin stuck to the bottom line of his public servants, and he pushed away the red and angrily left the table. Another example is the struggle between the villagers of Sanshanou and neighboring villages for water to fight against drought reservoirs. People in the two villages want to use the water in the Tiehe Reservoir to water the crops that have been subjected to drought, the villages in the upper reaches are afraid that the reservoir will not be able to water their crops, and the people in the lower sanshan are bent on opening the gates and pouring water on their own land. But Liu Dalin finally resolved the water dispute, showing the ability and courage of this cadre born in the three mountains. The creators of realistic novels pay great attention to the choice of character activity scenes in their creation, because whether the scene selection is appropriate or not has important significance for the shaping of the character image. In the depiction of this long picture scroll, the author Li Tiancen pays special attention to the selection and depiction of scenes, which is his cleverness.
In depicting this long scroll, the author uses words with special care, just as the painter attaches importance to the use of visual elements such as points, lines, shapes, and light. This work has two characteristics in word operation: one is simple. Whether it is narrative or dialogue, the author does not use or less gorgeous adjectives to modify, using all ordinary and very common daily life words, not to mention the use of translation, there is a strong sense of simplicity in reading. The other is the bold use of dialects in large numbers. The men and women in the novel basically use the Nanyang dialect when they talk, and the popular range of many of these dialects is around Nanyang, and the radius of popularity may not exceed 300 miles. Although these dialects make it difficult for readers from other places to understand, Nanyang and Henan people feel particularly familiar with them. I think it is not difficult for foreign readers who are interested in this book to understand with a little thought. The use of words involves the writer's writing style, and reading this book can see that the author is deliberately pursuing his own unique writing style, which is worth praising.
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