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Wen | Jiang Xu
Some people praised "The Old Story of Seongnam" and said that it was worth reading, but I didn't care too much at the time. Recently, a friend recommended this book, saying that it was really well written and thought that I could write such a text. This caused the urge to read.
Try out a chapter on the reading software, can't stop, and buy the full version under the attraction of the author's storytelling, and read it all in two or three nights.
This work is an autobiographical novel by Taiwanese writer Lin Haiyin. Born in Japan in 1918, she moved to Beijing with her parents at the age of five to spend her childhood, adolescence, and youth in Beijing, where she grew up and studied until she returned to Taiwan at the age of thirty.
Nostalgic for his childhood and his distant outlook on his second hometown, Lin Haiyin, who was not confused, "thought silently and wrote slowly" on the other side of the strait, and completed "Old Things in the South of the City" in the remembrance of the watery years.
Xiao Yingzi in the movie "Seongnam Old Things"
In the book, Lin Haiyin created the character of Xiao Yingzi, who is lively, kind and eccentric, as her own incarnation, to look at the joys and sorrows of the adult world with The simple, clean and spiritual eyes of Xiao Yingzi.
The book is divided into five chapters and tells the story of five people. These five people are crazy people, hair thieves, concubines, servants, and the affection between Xiao Yingzi and her father in the eyes of adults.
Relative to the mainstream group, these beings are low-level small roles, neglected marginal people, and even despised and spurned by the world. With the help of Xiao Yingzi's pure and kind heart, the author peeks into their unknown side, which is also a side that touches people's hearts. Just like in Yang Dechang's movie "One One", the little boy Yangyang likes to shoot the back of other people's heads, he said, "I can't see what you see, I see you can't see, so how do I know what you're watching?" We are not only able to see half of the things. It was as if I could only see the front and not the back. ”
Xiao Yingzi also saw the other side of the moon.
Xiu Zhen and Xiao Ying Zi in the movie "Seongnam Old Things"
For example, the crazy girl Xiuzhen in "The Legend of Hui'anguan", other children are afraid of her, and when they see it, they will take a detour. Xiao Yingzi is not only not afraid, but also often comes to xiuzhen to play, chat, and listen to her heart. In the process, through Xiuzhen's crazy narration when she wakes up, Xiaoyingzi learns her trust and loyalty to love, and misses her daughter who was sent away day and night.
It is no coincidence that the daughter who is missing xiuzhen is actually a girl who plays with Xiao Yingzi every day. With the bravery and wit of a child, she threaded the needle to reunite the mother and daughter, and generously helped the bitter mother and daughter to take the train to find their husbands and fathers in the distance.
The story ends with the sorrow of the impermanence of life. But I think this sorrow belongs to the people who listen to the story, and the people in the story are not lucky.
The hair thief and Xiao Yingzi in the movie "Seongnam Old Things"
For example, the nameless hair thief in "We Look at the Sea", Xiao Yingzi met him when he went to the grass to pick leather balls, and driven by curiosity and kindness, the two became "moral friends".
Two times, Xiao Yingzi knew the story of Mao Thief and his brother - he was greedy when he was a child, he did not read well, and now it is too late to regret it. But his brother has a good brain, has ambitions, takes the first exam every year, and says that when he grows up, he plans to cross the ocean to study. In order to provide for his brother to study and feed the blind old woman, it was really necessary to get to this point. The big man, who usually cowered in a dark corner like a mouse, opened his heart to the little girl: "My brother who is bent on nibbling on books is even more like a good brother to me." But isn't it, I'm not a good person when I'm studying for my brother, and I'm bent on letting him cross the ocean to study? Xiao Yingzi, you say I am a good person and a bad person? ”
Xiao Yingzi did not know how to answer, she remembered the article "Let's see the sea" in the textbook, she began to recite, he listened attentively. In the end, the two agreed that in the future, he would send his brother to study abroad and go to the sea together.
The ending of this story is also the disillusionment of longing. Because, before they could see the sea together, he was arrested.
Five chapters, five stories, the plot is independent, and the context is related to each other. "Old Things in The South of the City" is written about the childhood of a girl, and it is also the epitome of the tragic and joyful life of the children and the low-level people in Beijing.
In the movie "Seongnam Old Things", Xiao Yingzi and her parents
At the end of the book, with the death of Xiao Yingzi's father, her own primary school graduation, and her childhood also came to an end. "Daddy's flowers have fallen, and I am no longer a child."
Looking back, Xiao Yingzi found that the family maid Song Ma, the neighbor Aunt Lan, the hair thief who squatted in the grass to tell stories, including her own father, these people who often asked her to be adults, all disappeared with her childhood.
Each story, like a shiny and flat bead, Xiao Yingzi grew up to be a silk thread that stringed these pearls, and finally on the day she lost her childhood, the silk thread was knotted.
Friends think I can write such words. After reading the whole book, my biggest feeling about Lin Haiyin's literary style is: simple and natural, but there is no lack of childlike innocence and naughtiness.
During the reading, I thought of "The Legend of Hulan River". The same is the theme of childhood, Xiao Hong and Lin Haiyin have all sentient beings, all have childlike innocence and sincerity, but they do not have Zhang Ailing's embroidered exquisite sentence style. However, Xiao Hong's rich and dense emotions envelop the reader layer by layer; Lin Haiyin's faint sorrow will always be dissolved in time by the naughty tone of the child.
She writes about the pleasure of children focusing on ordinary things: "I looked inward with my nose against the goldfish tank, and the goldfish swam and drank water one by one, and my mouth couldn't help but learn to drink water one by one. Sometimes goldfish swim in front of me, and through a layer of glass, I and the fish nose are on top of the cow! ”
She wrote about the child's reaction to loss: "My heart is so uncomfortable. I had a fossil in my pocket that I could write white on the brick, and when I pulled it out, I couldn't help but draw it all the way down the wall of the house to the wall of my house. ”
She wrote about her vague feelings in her illness: "I thought about thinking that I was gradually rising and rising, and I was lying here, tall, tall, high, and my nose was going to touch the roof." ”
These details are described without any effort, appearing natural and true, but because of the resonance of childhood memories, people will not feel a smile when reading.
Writer Lin Haiyin
Writer Fu Guangming made this comment on Lin Haiyin: "Compared with the female writers of the 20s and 30s, Lin Haiyin's novels have both the sorrow and sorrow of Lu Yin, the refreshing vigor of Su Xuelin, the looseness and elegance of Ling Shuhua, the poetic lyricism of Bingxin, and the pride and ambition of Shi Pingmei. ”
Looking back, in my childhood and hometown, there were also fools, mutes, beautiful girls who were speculated and criticized, and I think your childhood memories are also full of silhouettes of a group of marginal people. Why can't we write their stories, our own childhoods?
Yu Guangzhong once said: "Shanghai belongs to Zhang Ailing, and Beijing belongs to Lin Haiyin." ”
When people are rare, Lin Haiyin will also sigh to others: I have two hometowns, one is Taiwan, and the other is Xuannan in Beijing.
Little Ying Zi
"I miss the scenery and characters who lived in the south of Beijing in my childhood!" I said to myself, write them down, let the actual childhood pass, the childhood of the soul live on forever. In this way, I wrote a book "Old Things in seongnam". ”
Seeing this ending, I feel overwhelmed. Looking back, the taste in my heart is just like the evaluation of this work by Wu Yigong, the director of the film of the same name based on the original adaptation: a faint sorrow, a deep lovesickness.
The actual childhood, with untold secrets, caught off guard. In the actual childhood, people cannot distinguish between the sky and the sea, between good people and bad people, between crazy people and thieves.
The childhood of the soul is pretended to be something that was before, something that is not understood, something that cannot be determined. Childhood in the soul is a pure land that has not been polluted by the secular world, and only by standing here can we abandon prejudices and look at people we encounter with compassion.
Everyone comes from childhood. Everyone's childhood will eventually pass. Whether the childhood of the soul can be perpetuated depends on each person's talent and circumstances.
[Author's profile: Jiang Xu, a post-80s woman, is a signed author of Ten Point Reading. Cook words to cure hunger, borrow a pen to draw the heart. Has published "Li Qingzhao: Wine poetry who shares". Click "Follow" in the top right corner to watch more related content. 】