Beijing News reporter | Yu Yaqin
As we all know, "Chen Yisheng Shangcheng" is a famous novel in the literature of the new period, which was published in "People's Literature" in 1980 and quickly caused great repercussions. Gao Xiaosheng's "Chen Yisheng" has become a classic image of peasants in contemporary literature and has been written into the existing literary history. Gao Xiaosheng's "Chen Yisheng Series" is considered to be a history of the fate of china's contemporary peasants, and in the era of writers' writing, the "Chen Yishengs" finally solved the problem of food and clothing in form, but they still did not get rid of hunger mentally. The valuable thing about Gao Xiaosheng's creation is that the attention of his works to the peasants enters the soul level.
The burlesque drama "Chen Yisheng's Eating Problem" still buckles the title of "eating", and in his later years Chen Yisheng muttered to himself: "Eating is a problem, the problem is not eating, not eating..." As an opening, it arouses people's deep thinking. The whole drama begins with the "problem of eating", which is the common urgent demand of people at the grass-roots level in China, and also harmoniously narrates the land, grain and food problems of Chen Yisheng and his family in various important historical periods.
Stills from "Chen Wansheng's Eating Problem"
Reflecting the vicissitudes of the home country with the twists and turns of the fate of small people is a common technique in literary creation, and the play is no exception. The issue of land ownership is the core contradiction of this drama, whether to stick to the land as a traditional farmer, or to hand over the land and transform into a worker with a pension has become the choice faced by Chen Yisheng in his later years. Land is the foundation of the peasants, and Chen Yisheng was reluctant to hand over the land, but in order to redeem his son who committed corruption and crime, he still handed over the land. In fact, this is not an individual encounter of Chen Yisheng, but a transformation that the peasants had to carry out in the change of the times, and this process is bound to be confusing and necessarily pay various costs.
Although it is a comedy, in the process of telling the life course of Chinese farmers, the play has no lack of profound and cruel parts: Chen Yisheng has been entangled in the problem of eating for a lifetime, and finally did not worry about eating and drinking, but he was so sick that he could not eat and drink in the advanced stage of esophageal cancer; and his wife Silly Sister died alive in her early years because she suddenly got food and clothing, and before she died, she still worried about the eating problems of her three children... These contents elevate the artistic achievements of this comedy, and the absurd core is a serious discussion, reflecting the author's understanding and sympathy for the Chinese peasants.
Generally speaking, this drama takes Chen Yisheng's life experience as the main axis, and lyrically describes the peasants' mental journey of struggling and suffering for the land, survival, and food in the process of changing in this era. In the course of China's nearly forty years of change, the script shows the breeding of their desires, some go with the flow, some desire for profit, some cling to the land, and some get for nothing, but it still highlights the essence of the peasants - kindness and tenacity, and also writes the essence of human beings, with a strong sense of history and profound cultural connotations.
Reporter Yu Yaqin
Edited by Li Yan Proofread by Xue Jingning