Wen ‖ The South Mountain Wind
"Border City" is the masterpiece of the great writer Shen Congwen, ranking second among the top 100 Chinese novels in the 20th century, second only to Mr. Lu Xun's "Scream".
Set in the 1930s in the border town of Chatong, a border town at the junction of Sichuan and Hunan, the novel depicts the pure and sad love story between the two sons of the captain of the ship and the poor and kind ferry girl.
The brothers fall in love with the simple and lovely Cuicui at the same time, and the brother is very sad that he did not get Cuicui's response, so he anesthetized himself with busyness, and unfortunately fell into the whirlpool in the running boat.
The younger brother and Cuicui like each other, but the older brother thinks that his brother's death is related to Cuicui, and he can't face his sweetheart, so he has left his hometown and has not returned to his hometown for a long time.
This novella of less than 70,000 words has no thrilling scenes, no bizarre and thrilling plots, no sensational descriptions, but I don't know how many people have been moved.
Thirty years ago, when I read Border City, I was sad for the young hero and heroine in the book, but now when I read it carefully, I find that the simple and sad story is actually full of hope.
How much beauty does the beautiful Xiangxi remember about the beauty and sadness of love?
The story takes place in the mountain city of Xiangxi, where green mountains and rivers, simple folk customs, peace and tranquility, like a paradise. However, in that era, warlords were fighting, bandits were rampant, and the people were not happy, even the quiet towns in the mountains could not escape the harm.
In the story, the old boatman represents the older generation, and the shipmaster Shun Shun represents the middle-aged generation.
The old boatman is 70 years old and has been a boatman by a small stream for 50 years. Poverty was a curse he could never get rid of. As a boatman, he took the meager income given by the public. When he was young, he took his daughter to the ferry alone, but unfortunately, his daughter gave birth to the child in her womb and was martyred.
A lonely old man, middle-aged widowed, widowed in old age, but still quietly and faithfully living by the stream, he had to raise his daughter and pull his granddaughter up.
One by one, the hope brought the old boatman the hope of being alive.
In the story, the young brothers began to run boats as teenagers, learning to do business while traveling, and also learning the courage and righteousness of being human beings, and training their personality.
The brothers were as respected as their fathers. When his father was obedient to the Qing Dynasty, he spent his days in the barracks, and after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, he went to the Kuomintang army to mix food and eat, and later returned to his hometown because of the pain of his feet, and took his savings to buy a boat to rely on the water to draft. After stabilizing, he married a little widow with white face and black hair and a slight inheritance.
Shun Shun has always been very righteous, trying to help people in need as much as possible, and once the person in charge of the dock dies, Shun Shun is naturally elected as the captain of the ship.
With the expectation of a better life, he slowly has a wife and son, and his career is getting better and better, and he is also full of expectations for his son.
There is a song that goes like this:
I have spent half my life of hard work and hardship, and tonight I am again in the wind and rain. I can't go with the flow, for the sake of my beloved relatives, no matter how hard it is, I must be strong.
In the younger generation, the elder brother Tianyou is as strong as a tiger, kind and humble, industrious and capable, and is the successor of his father's career, and he looks forward to serving his father and fellow countrymen in the future.
The younger brother is a beautiful teenager recognized near and far. Although he has no great ambitions, the expectation of love makes him extremely happy.
The simple Cuicui does not have the luxury of wearing gold earrings and silver noodles, and has been dependent on her grandfather since she was a child, so that she can row independently and her elderly grandfather can rest.
What is the point of a group of people alive in the book? It's definitely different for different people. For many people, there is not even a so-called meaning.
When Yu Hua's work "Alive" was published in South Korea, he wrote in his preface:
"Alive" is full of power in our Chinese language, and its power does not come from shouting or attacking, but from enduring, to endure the responsibility that life has entrusted us, to endure the happiness and suffering, boredom and mediocrity that reality gives us.
So everyone will have more or less hope for the future. This hope brings something precious to life: hope.
Newly purchased commemorative edition of Bordertown
Love is beautiful, and poverty cannot curb a person's desire for love.
The story describes the tragic love story of two generations of women, making people feel that the fate of women is like a helpless, but they cannot refuse the temptation of love.
Cuicui's mother was brought up by her father. When the love sinus first opened, she and a soldier sang a song and fell in love. They stole the forbidden fruit, and Cuicui's mother became pregnant.
The soldiers wanted to flee the troops and elope with Cuicui's mother. However, Cuicui's mother was reluctant to abandon her father who had raised her with hard work, after all, her father was also in his sixties. If he didn't leave, Cuicui's father would be punished by the troops, and he couldn't accept that humiliation.
They felt that they could not live and die together, and the two of them met to drink poison together. The soldiers drank the poison, and Cuicui's mother could not bear to take away the unborn child and did not drink it. She ushered in the birth of Cuicui in her father's indifference.
However, after giving birth to Cuicui, her mother ran to the stream to drink the cold water of the stream and died.
Cuicui lost his father before he was born, and he lost his mother as soon as he was born, and his only dependence was on the old boatman.
During the Dragon Boat Festival when he was twelve, the simple and kind Cuicui and the youngest son of the shipmaster met, and the seeds of love were sown in each other's hearts.
After two years, Grandpa felt that his time was short and wanted to find a good family for Cuicui, but he did not take good care of his daughter, so he made up his mind to be worthy of Cuicui. The two excellent sons of the shipmaster are naturally important candidates. He knew that his brother Tianyou liked Cuicui, so he asked Tianyou to come to the door to propose to him or sing a song to Cuicui for half a year.
The eldest son of the shipmaster, Tianyou, likes Cuicui, and Tianyou takes the road to ask the matchmaker to propose to him, but unfortunately he does not get a response from Cuicui, he is very depressed, so he keeps himself busy to anesthetize his heart. When running the ship, he encountered a whirlpool of rapids, and in order to stabilize the ship, he unfortunately fell into the water, and he did not see anyone dead or dead.
Like Cuicui, he and his brother compete fairly, the brother takes the car, takes the road, and sings to Cuicui at the top of the mountain at night. The beautiful moonlight sang into Cuicui's dream.
However, the news of his brother's death came, and he believed that the old boatman's slimy had indirectly killed his brother, on the one hand, love, on the other hand, brotherhood, and he could not choose, so he had to leave his hometown.
On a rainy night of thunder and lightning, the ferry was washed away, the white tower in the distance collapsed, and Grandpa died.
Trish cried for many nights, she got up, and she took the ferry.
In the change of seasons, Cuicui was waiting for The Servant to send her back and return to her side.
Are you happy when you come together?
Remember a sentence: The unfortunate have their own misfortunes, and the happy people are the same.
Coming together may be an ordinary person's home.
Perhaps missing is the most beautiful thing to lose will you know the beauty of having it better.
Perhaps tragedy is the most contagious. But who in life loves hopeless sadness?
Shen Congwen wrote at the end of the story:
This person may never come back, maybe "tomorrow" come back!
The story also quotes a side saying: "Fire can be burned everywhere, water can flow everywhere, the sun and moon can be illuminated everywhere, and love is everywhere."
If love is there, the end of the world is within reach; if love is not there, it is also the end of the world.
As long as the sun rises, hope remains.
Xiangxi is still beautiful today
As long as there is hope, what about the bitter points of life.
Re-reading "Border City", I saw Shen Congwen's full hope for this work. I believe that The Gift will return to Cuicui's side, just as Shen Congwen married his beloved Zhang Zhaohe as he wished, and after years of repentance after cheating, he was forgiven by Zhang Zhaohe.
Shen Congwen's life really has a lot of continuous connections with "Border City".
Shen Congwen has been poor since childhood, and he has been wandering since he was a child, and he has always pursued a life of his own ideal. After drifting north with hope, he began to write without even using punctuation, and even became a great writer, with tenacity and effort unimaginable to ordinary people.
In terms of love, Shen Congwen painstakingly chased after his beloved Zhang Zhaohe, but soon after marriage, he cheated on a 18-year-old literary and artistic young woman Gao Qingzi.
He was very distressed that he knew that he was not doing the right thing, and he sought a solution to this distress from his wife. His intermittent entanglement with Gao Qingzi brought great pain to Zhang Zhaohe.
Of course, Shen Congwen has also been in great pain. He looked forward to his wife's forgiveness in pain, hoping to return to his original happiness. In such anticipation, Shen Congwen lived to the age of 86.
He did not receive forgiveness from Zhang Zhaohe during his lifetime. Four years after his death, Zhang Zhaohe said:
"What was not known in the past, now it is known; what was not understood in the past, now it is understood." He (Shen Congwen) is not a perfect person, but a rare kind person. ”
If Shen Congwen had a spirit in heaven, he would definitely be happy like a child.
For all the sadness, Shen Congwen looked at it like this:
Everything is full of goodness, but everywhere is not a coincidence. Since it is not a coincidence, it is inevitable that a simple good ending will produce tragedy.
I often hear people sigh like this: fate always makes people, and there are always regrets in life.
Miyazaki said: What you meet is providence, what you have is luck, there are a thousand kinds of waiting in the world, the best one is called "the future can be expected."
This sentence is encouraged by all the friends who have regrets in the past and still have expectations.