The author | sweet
Chen Yingzhen is an unfamiliar name to many, even though he was one of the most important Taiwanese writers of the twentieth century. As a left-wing writer, Chen Yingzhen occupies a unique position in Taiwanese literary circles. He cared about the fate of the underclass and loved to write about the nameless people in the "backstreets" of those times.
"Cloud" also tells the story of a group of small people, revolving around the incident of a foreign company forming a new union at its Taiwanese factory. How are people alienated in the modern enterprise that prides itself on being an advanced civilization? And how do you regain your dignity? What is a good life, for oneself or for the sake of others? We may be able to find inspiration for these questions in this novel.
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Bibliography of this issue
"Night Truck", by Chen Yingzhen, edition: Kyushu Publishing House, June 2020
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Modern people's life is based on work. When we ask, what is the work for? In fact, it is also asking, what kind of life do we choose to live?
When the clock of culture swings toward individualism, life "for yourself" becomes something that is taken for granted. In Chen Yingzhen's novel "Clouds", he asks about another meaning of life - "for the lives of others".
Zhang Weijie, the protagonist of "Cloud", was once a person who believed in living for others. He started as a teacher at a rural elementary school. In tears in class, he would encourage students to study hard, learn more, and protect their strength; he would also walk a long mountain road to persuade a pair of mute girls whose parents had shown their talent for painting to be sent to the blind and dumb school in Taipei. Until his father fell ill, Zhang Weijie obeyed his father's wishes and no longer curled up in the countryside all his life. He quit his job as a faculty member and went to a Factory of Madison Instruments in Taiwan to coordinate a company magazine. Xiaowen, a female worker in the assembly line, often came to submit articles, and the two became acquainted.
During an inspection by the general manager, Mr. Eisenstein, Zhang Weijie was promoted to the company in Taipei as the administrative director. Born into poverty, he was grateful for the appreciation he received, and he had a deep awe and admiration for the Madison company represented by Eisenstein with advanced management concepts. The first task that Eisenstein gave Zhang Weijie was to reorganize the unions. Replace the original union that obeys the company with a trade union that truly belongs to the workers and protects the rights and interests of the workers. In the days of full study of the Trade Union Law, he received submissions from female workers, but he no longer had the mood of a primary school teacher, and wrote her a letter of enthusiastic encouragement, replaced by a "sense of responsibility for work that he thought was very important."
Looking back later, he lamented: "The self who once lived for the bitterness of others and the weight of others became a slave who only cared for himself and lived, and it was around that time that he began, maybe not." ”
The reorganization of the trade union encountered many obstacles from the factory director. In the end, due to the personal relationship between the president and the factory director, the union reorganization failed. In this regard, although Eisenstein is unwilling, he also agrees: "The safety and interests of enterprises are more important than human rights considerations." At this time, Zhang Weijie truly realized the hypocrisy and ruthlessness hidden under the appearance of capitalist enterprises that pride themselves on being advanced and civilized, and finally resigned in anger.
Zhang Weijie returned to his hometown in the mountains, and under the pressure of his father, he left his hometown again to find a new way out. He opened a small trading studio and hired an assistant, Lily. Busy from morning to night, worried about his own business, there was no room in his heart to tolerate the bitterness of others. It was not until a business trip, when he reunited with a female worker at a former factory on a bus, that he learned the fate of the women workers who were fighting for the establishment of a new union. Late one night, he was in the studio, flipping through the diary of the female worker Xiaowen, and finally realized that he was lost:
He suddenly felt that the life of the two years that he thought he had worked very hard was actually a lazy life. Only let this rapidly turning profit-seeking world pound, tear, and frustrating, and be lazy to seriously seek your own life..."
Zhang Weijie remembers that after the failure of the new trade union, Xiaowen said such a sentence on his car: "To be honest, I have been looking at those white clouds." Watch them so happy, so peaceful, so lovingly, drifting slowly in the sky together, holding and holding each other so gently. How embarrassing it would be to think about how embarrassing it would be if they looked down on us on the ground. ”
Chen Yingzhen said that literature is to restore dignity to those who have been humiliated. He wrote a warm ending to Clouds.
Late that night, Zhang Weijie, who had read Xiaowen's diary, wrote a note to his assistant Lily, inviting her to have dinner the next day to thank him for his hard work. After writing, he couldn't help but sigh softly: "In the past two years, why did I just use her as a highly efficient typing and miscellaneous machine..."
"Cloud" is included in the short story collection "Night Truck", together with "Night Truck", "A Day of office workers", and "Ten Thousand Merchants Emperor", collectively known as the "Washington Building" series. These four short stories are all set in the "Washington Building" in Taipei, and the protagonist is an employee of a multinational company in the building. The ornate office building is a symbol of modern civilization and a home for many suffering souls. The pain comes from the separation of rich and poor, the collision between tradition and modernity, the separation of ideals and reality, the contrast between magnificence and decay... Today's urbanites may feel familiar when they read it.
In addition to the "Washington Building" series, Chen Yingzhen has also written many thicker and more historical works, and written many people who "live for others". Whether you agree with his ideas or not, you can feel the understanding, warmth and love between human beings in his novels.
Written by | Sweet Editor | Zhang Ting
Proofreader | Lee Sai-fai