Powerful Narration from the Inner Mechanism of the Bottom Society —— Reading Ji's Novel Shangzhuang Ji

Powerful Narration from the Inner Mechanism of the Bottom Society —— Reading Ji's Novel Shangzhuang Ji

Zhang Shaohua.

"Shangzhuang" is a village where the disadvantaged groups are falling into poverty, disappearing and marginalized. Paying attention to it, writing about it and giving voice to this class reflect the writer's conscience, responsibility and responsibility, as well as his simple human feelings and humanitarian spirit. Because it not only needs a pair of eyes that can find problems, but also needs a kind of courage to face reality. There is no doubt that Ji has been making such efforts. Shangzhuangji is a novel with the background of social education in the bottom rural areas. The reason why Shangzhuang Collection is worthy of in-depth study is mainly to combine the politics, economy, education and daily life style of the bottom people into a sharp story, and let this individual story start with education, but never stop at education, and successfully narrate it into a national story, even a national story and an era story.

Perhaps it was a coincidence or an invisible agreement that gave me a chance to read Shang Zhuang Ji. Frankly speaking, the process of reading Shangzhuang Collection is a reunion with my childhood self, a wandering in my childhood life, a placement of my impetuous, restless and wandering soul in this pigeon-cage urban life, and an urban stranger. Therefore, reading Shangzhuang Collection is warm and happy.

In Shangzhuang Ji, every little thing, no matter the person it describes or the author, is what I have experienced or am experiencing. For example, I use "Mao Dan" as a basketball to run on a dusty playground, a wooden basketball stand, an exercise book for "Responsibility Field", the grand Children's Day, the renovation of dilapidated houses in rural areas, the development of rural aquaculture, and so on. These memories have all been integrated into my blood, which is hard to give up and unforgettable. This is based on the fact that my hometown and Shangzhuang are both solidified villages with the same identity and name: "Xihaigu" and all the social bottom villages in China form a hard body with "Xihaigu".

The story of Shangzhuang mainly tells that as a poverty alleviation cadre, I was shocked by the poverty and ruin there as soon as I arrived in Shangzhuang. There are more than 40 students in the school, but there are no teachers. Poverty alleviation cadres naturally become teachers. Some children continue to go to the city with their working parents, and the education in Shangzhuang is even more neglected, and it has existed in name only. Therefore, the old village head and "I" tried their best to solve the poverty problem in Shangzhuang from the perspective of education. However, for a poverty alleviation cadre, the tricks he can use are extremely limited. To this end, "I" constantly find relationships, ask my boss, and solve problems through my own personal resources. For example, in order to let Pan Xiang's two sons go to the provincial capital to study, "I" used the classmate relationship of the Provincial Department of Education; In order to help several poor households in the village get rid of poverty, "I" and others "set a trap" to let the boss send more than 200,000 yuan in red envelopes to the countryside. After a year in the countryside, poverty alleviation cadres finally seem to be experts in solving problems.

This novel was created to discuss some social problems, which is an unshirkable responsibility of literature and an enlightenment based on real life problems. Chen Wangdao, Shen Yanbing and so on. It is considered that "novels with the theme of labor problems, children's problems, ethics, religion and other issues" are problem novels, which are characterized by "asking only the source of the disease, not prescribing prescriptions" After reading Shangzhuang Ji, there are several key words lingering in my mind, namely: anxiety, examination and reconstruction.

First, anxiety-intellectuals' anxiety about modernity

Zhao Yong said in Cold Realism and Warm Idealism: "The Story of Shangzhuang by Ji is a panoramic portrayal of the remote and backward rural world in China. Moreover, it seems to be related to the' problem novel' that has been interrupted for many years. Zhao Shuli's hidden worries and anxieties are one after another in the novel. " This kind of worry and anxiety is very prominent in the popular saying, "Walk slowly and let the soul keep up with the pace". Behind this widely quoted and spread sentence is a general recognition of the desolation of the spiritual world. People run too hastily and too anxiously for their livelihood, which leads to weeds in their hearts. We know that when the development of material civilization and spiritual civilization are out of sync and the distance is getting bigger and bigger, there will be a crisis of value, culture and even politics. At present, China is in an era of great changes and various crises. The resulting group ethnic diseases mainly include: the loss and dislocation of values, the loss of moral bottom line, insecurity, panic and anxiety. The emergence of ethnic diseases in this group is mainly due to the imbalance between material and desire, ideal and environment. "Anxiety" is one of the national mass diseases at present. As an intellectual at present, we must face up to it and cannot avoid it.

In the book The End of Peasants, Mendelas pointed out: "Two billion peasants stand at the entrance of industrial civilization, which is the main problem that the world raised to social science in the second half of the twentieth century"; Li Peilin also has a set of survey data in his "The End of Villages", which is particularly shocking: "During the 20 years from 1990 to 20 10, the number of administrative villages in China has dropped sharply from more than1000 to more than 640,000 due to urbanization and village merger, and it has decreased by180,000 every year. They passed away quietly, without elegy, obituary, sacrifice or even farewell. Some just laid the foundation stone and completed the ceremony, accompanied by cheering for the new civilization on their ruins. " He said: "At present, great changes are still taking place in the rural areas of China, and we don't even know where the end of this great change is."

Like Men Teras, there are also China in Liangzhuang, Chen Hechuntao's Going South and Going North to Study, and Lin Yanping's Seeing the Mountain Village: A Field Visit to Camel Lane Village in Xihaigu. Ji's "Shangzhuang Ji" is undoubtedly one of the important members. He paid attention to and wrote about the same problem. The author presents the problems in the process of urbanization in Shangzhuang village in a documentary way: the hopelessness of left-behind children in rural areas, the lack of old-age care, education and medical care for farmers, the destruction of rural natural environment, the fission of rural families, the crisis of farmers' "sexual happiness", the formalization of new rural construction and many other practical problems.

Whether men Teras, Chen, Chuntao, Lin Yanping or Ji, they all changed their grand narrative style and told us unforgettable stories with tears. The freshness, vividness, sensitivity and even sharpness of the works make people feel the warning power of facing reality writing. These authors are so eager, anxious and enthusiastic about this topic, which I think is based on a natural mission of "intellectuals", extending from ancient "scholars" to current "intellectuals".

The tradition of intellectuals in China, from Zeng Shen's "benevolence as one's duty" to Fan Zhongyan's "taking the world as one's duty", shows the profound sense of responsibility of intellectuals in China for moral, political and social issues. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), this traditional "caring" spirit still dances in the life of China intellectuals. Yu Yingshi pointed out in Scholars and China Culture that intellectuals are "the conscience of society" and "the defenders of basic human values (such as rationality, freedom and justice)". Zhu Yong, a recent essayist, can't resist the inner kindness. In the preface to What Intellectuals Should Do, he wrote: "Social progress depends on the overall morality of intellectuals as the representative of human wisdom, in addition to pure thinking achievements-we are used to calling it social responsibility."

In an interview with writer Ji, he said: "I am a kite put into the city from the countryside." It has been floating around for more than 20 years, and the string is still tied to the beam in my hometown. " I think it is this strong wandering complex and deep love for my hometown; It is based on this kind of intellectual's due conscience, social responsibility and special mission that the melancholy singer in his hometown created "Shangzhuang Collection".

Based on his understanding and sympathy for his hometown, countryside and China, the author experienced, observed and thought in the way of "returning to the scene". In seemingly objective brushstrokes, his deep feelings are condensed, and what's more, he is an intellectual's anxiety about reality. To put it bluntly, his position and his rational vision originated from the May 4th Movement and precipitated in the new enlightenment in the 1980s. They gently turned over the writing mode of "daily life" of the body and "internality" of the individual in the 1990s, and reached the world humanistic thinking thread of social modernization and how to modernize people, instead of the so-called "anti-modernity" and "post-modernity" that some domestic commentators and writers are considering in other ways. The anxiety of modernity in Shangzhuang Collection has become a sigh of helplessness, confusion, blindness and dislocation of the internal mechanism of the bottom society in China at this stage.

Second, comments-critical comments based on reality.

The sense of hardship and concern for the people at the bottom have always been the fine tradition of China's realistic literary creation. For a writer born and raised in the countryside, hometown is always the most fertile soil for writing, and hometown is everything.

Ji Liang Dong said, "My hometown has nurtured me and shaped me. My cultural accomplishment, aesthetic taste, spiritual value and belief in life were all formed in my hometown. This kind of feeding is irreplaceable, so I want to present these things through writing. " On the one hand, this description is the result of the author's testimony for his hometown, and at the same time, it is based on a strong sense of hardship and the result of his examination and reflection on his hometown. Therefore, his writing abandons the unrestrained catharsis of primitive naturalism and rejects the blind optimism of narrow cultural traditionalism and the excitement of moral idealism. In Shangzhuang Ji, the author made this critical examination through the accurate and delicate description of daily life, thus affirming its narrative reference and enlightenment function.

Ji said: "The trivia of daily life has the flavor of life and the flavor of the times. The richness, interest and authenticity of life are all reflected through the trivial process of daily life. If there is a good story frame and no daily trivia, it can't be a good novel. Even though I have written several human affairs novels, I try to make people's events everyday. " Shangzhuang described in Shangzhuang Ji is an extremely barren village. If you want to survive in this land, without extremely strong will and tenacity to penetrate this kind of suffering, life will wither and wither like crops in dry season. The older generation, represented by the old village chiefs, Gu Li and Pan Xiang, have struggled to survive in this land and raised their next generation by relying on the resilience of human beings in the face of suffering. Therefore, when a hearty rain comes, they know what to do, which is a straw that God gives them to maintain their lives. This includes: collecting pit water containing sheep manure and cow dung, picking up some "soft land" after heavy rain and so on. Faced with the dilemma of survival, people's help, mutual concern and unity are all good medicines for people to heal the wounds left by suffering.

The description of these beautiful scenes and life details in Shangzhuang Ji is expressionless, which runs through the words and deeds and every move of the characters. In Shangzhuangji, every time it rains, the old village head will go out and walk around the village and tear down several dangerous walls. There is a simple reason. When the walls collapse, they will hold down the children playing in the rain. This calm description is touching. Facing the hardships of longing for fragrance, Guli's simple sentence: "She is suffering" is full of affection and gentleness, which is more considerate and powerful than the pale "I love you". These beautiful memories, the plot of life, the beauty of human nature and the purity of human nature are all displayed or highlighted by the author. Because what the reality lacks now is this kind of beauty of human nature.

Of course, the author not only shows us an idyllic village. There must be a reason for falling behind. This long-standing deep-seated cause of people's poverty is exactly what the author wants to change and is also criticized by the author-please note that some critics always like to take criticism as an example. In other words, writers can always show good writing ability when exposing the dark side. Once they praise positively, they will be at a loss immediately. This is indeed partly in line with the current literary facts. However, it is also true that when browsing those so-called positive works, the loud voice of thought also needs essential thinking. What needs to be reminded here is that the important reason why literature can't return to the forefront of thought is that our literature has been far away from feelings from the beginning, even from the living conditions of the broad masses of people at the bottom. What we need is not too much criticism, but too little. Even literature has become a discourse sign that scholars and intellectuals are beginning to corrupt from the bottom of their hearts. This is terrible. At the beginning of Shangzhuang Ji, before "I" went to the countryside to help the poor, the experience taught by "Old Duck" and people's incomprehension and disdain when the old village chief and I tried to change the backward face of the countryside made me feel deeply helpless. In the eyes of Shangzhuang people, it costs money to do things. "Money makes the mare go"; In the face of diseases, people place too much hope on the protection of the gods, thinking that chopsticks can stand in the water through prayer, and then they can get rid of diseases and eliminate disasters with a knife; When conveying the national dangerous house renovation policy, most people, represented by Lao Zhou, Liu Zhang and Lao Gu, only count themselves as one acre and three points, and so on. Of course, Lao Cao's remarks about the renovation of dangerous houses may point out the key to the problem and the lack of policies. Lao Cao said: "It is not a good thing to say that the house is not sincere. If it is beautifully built, my in-laws will rebuild it. With an earthquake of magnitude 8, it is unrealistic to live for several lifetimes. No matter how beautiful and strong the house is, it is not blind if no one lives in it. The doll probably came back in the year of working, but the seventh day (the seventh day of the first month) left, and the house was built for a few days a year. " As Eagleton said, "All literary criticism is political criticism". The ultimate meaning of novel creation often returns to the criticism and examination of politics. Obviously, Ji not only did not avoid the difficult problem of enlightenment, but also further realized the concrete dislocation between feudal superstition, political corruption and the daily life style of ordinary people in the bottom society through narration. That is to say, in the rural world, the consequences caused by the lack of human modernity, as well as the disconnection between policy politics and even economic discourse and concrete reality, have reached to what extent.

In the Story of Shangzhuang, Ji observed not only the short-sightedness, greed, selfishness and calculation of the people, but he saw further. On the contrary, the hidden narrative is the shocking lack of mechanism caused by the serious dislocation of the underlying politics, which is the value and significance of the novel. In the face of the "two hundred years" Chinese dream, both the people and * * * have vigorously promoted and introduced a series of policies, but none of these policies can be implemented, and the people do not support or support them. As Lao Cao said in Shangzhuang Collection, the reason is that the policy-making itself is divorced from the masses and ungrounded, and it does not really think about and solve problems from the real living conditions of ordinary people. In the process of implementing this policy, the leading cadres of Wu Tong must have their own "villagers' diaries", which are written by their secretaries. This shows that they haven't thought deeply about the problem, so how can they have a good strategy? Then, the so-called "Wu Tong" can only be a play for the people. Therefore, Shangzhuang is still the original Shangzhuang. This helplessness will repeat these problems.

When a person is helpless and hopeless in the face of difficulties, he can only pin his future, or the future of his family, on the next generation. However, for this generation, the author is more disappointed. When Yang Jiatai, who graduated from college, worked for Joo Won? Cheng, who didn't graduate from primary school, people clung to the values of the Millennium and looked vulnerable in the face of this economic wave. During the Chinese New Year, young people stay together and talk more about who earns how much money, who keeps mistresses and whose women become young ladies. The kitsch, the loss of value and the breakthrough of moral bottom line in this consumption era are the problems of Shangzhuang and the fundamental problems of this era, this country and this nation. The power and value of the novel stand out here. But the author doesn't seem to have completely broken people's hopes, which seem to be looming in the cleverness, research and diligence of Pan Xiang's two sons, Ma Pengcheng and Ma Zhiyuan. Therefore, from the perspective of symbolism and narrative metaphor, Shangzhuang Ji is actually a text hovering at both ends of love and pain, pushing beauty and sadness to the extreme at the same time. Each piece of its information, taken alone, is a concrete manifestation of the dislocation between the daily life of the common bottom society and the political and economic discourse, and its sharpness is no less than that of essays and loud online remarks. Since then, the focus of literature has been narrowed to the internal structure of reality, which is rare for telling the story of the deep-water area of reform and opening up in recent years.

Third, reconstruction-seeking salvation for self-survival.

Salvation is a basic survival skill of human beings, just as the sea has a self-purification function. From the initial prosperity and population prosperity of Shangzhuang to the emergence of abandoned villages, lonely old people and "institutional widows" and "institutional orphans", there are inherent regional reasons, people's own reasons, and even * * * reasons, but they are required to change anyway. Ji has told us all kinds of ways to save himself in Shangzhuang Ji. From the early development of forestry economy to the present relocation, reconstruction of dangerous houses and the development of aquaculture, Shangzhuang seems to have natural immunity to policies, and there has been no change under the impetus of these policies. The population is still dying, and the land is still barren, replaced by "migrant workers" and "bottle pickers" who go deep into the city.

It seems that there is a certain possibility for ordinary people to save themselves, that is, to educate the next generation to study hard. "Knowledge changes fate" is the only way for people living in this land to change their fate, so "I" and Wang Huimei in the novel do their best to enable their children to receive education. As promising parents, they try their best to transfer their children to the county to study. Pan Xiang is like this, and so is Coulee. However, there are also some institutional obstacles in this effort. There is a discrimination caused by the opposition between urban and rural areas. In this case, some choose to resist, some choose to endure, but they all rush to the place of hope like moths to a fire. Is this the only thing they can do? Where is the effective social mechanism? When will the possibility of smoothing out the dual structure of urban and rural areas reach the bottom individuals?

In the process of reading Shangzhuang Collection, what I can feel is that the author is vaguely telling us that there is still a way to go. In the book, the author tells the story of the "leader" in the rural funeral at a great length, which is a dialogue between the dead and the living. This dialogue is actually a confession, understanding and redemption of both sides, and a commitment to the future, because only in this way can the deceased embark on another journey with peace of mind and the living can live in a down-to-earth manner. There is also "Liaogan" who is nearly 23 years old. People hope it can bring good luck. The "Five Flowers of Yang" embodies people's desire for a bumper harvest in this land, as well as the "agenda" in the social fire and the "flowers" that reflect the unrestrained enthusiasm in the northwest. On the surface, this is the author's expectation for the ruined traditional culture, but in fact, the author expresses the profound crisis of this bottom society, which is justice. Therefore, at present, it is better to say that what we really need to think about is how to get out of the tradition, or how to rebuild the cultural modernity of the countryside through tradition.

Kant said, "There are two things. The deeper and longer I think about them, the more lasting the surprise and awe they arouse in my heart. One is the vast starry sky above us and the other is the moral law in our hearts. " Morality has always been a way and way for human beings to be good. In Shangzhuang Ji, the author described the beauty of human feelings and reverence for filial piety to us through "a cigarette" and life details, and also wrote about the practical problems of young people's impetuousness and kitsch. It is through positive or negative descriptions that the author seems to want to tell us that no matter whether you are poor or rich, once you break through the moral bottom line, your heart will be vulgar and vulgar. But fundamentally speaking, it is not enough for an individual, a village, a nation or even a country to only know how to count votes, or to only teach how to count votes.

There is another detail in Shangzhuang Collection, which is what the author has been doing many times: taking pictures. People all know that memory needs to be preserved, but what is more needed is freeze-frame, which is a kind of inheritance and persistence. If a nation has no memory and no inheritance, it must be a nation without heavy feelings. At present, we are building for construction. Today, we are tearing down the East and the West. All the cities are dressed in heavy clothes and painted with powder. Our memory has been torn by demolition, and the social problems caused by demolition have become potential "mines". Remember history, we can live today and tomorrow well, and we won't take detours and go the wrong way. In this sense, does the writing of Shangzhuang Collection mean a responsible overall deconstruction of generalized comedy farmers?

As a contemporary intellectual, to go out of his study and go to his hometown is to return his study and speech to a solid land and a lively life. In his honest and cautious description, Ji made "Shangzhuang" a striking specimen to understand the present and future of rural areas in China. The Story of Shangzhuang created by the author is undoubtedly a new flower in the spiritual pedigree of critical realism. It continues the "reflective literature" in 1980s, and also inherits the ideological and value narrative heritage of cultural modernity. Although I dare not jump to conclusions and say that it is a rare work that goes deep into the "deep water area" in the past 30 years of reform and opening up, at least it lies in the solemn writing and serious torture thought of the operation of the underlying social mechanism. If you are honest, Shangzhuang Ji should and will be more widely circulated.

Zhang Shaohua is a doctoral student at the Hui Institute of Ningxia University.