Chapter 5 Close to hometown

As dignified as Emerson, he also said a joke: "An English lady heard a German on the Rhine call her and her accomplices foreigners, and she said aloud: 'No, we are not foreigners; we are Englishmen. ; you are the foreigners.'" (see "Characteristics of the British") The "unclearness" of the British in the Victorian era came from "the endless conceit".The Chinese people of the same age also had this idea, and it was even worse than that. The "world" in the minds of people of insight in our country is simply There are no "foreign countries" and foreign "people", let alone who is who.The gunfire of the Opium Wars brought us nationalism, and once again it was more than that - the reverse of the English lady on the Rhine who saw foreigners not only as foreigners but herself as a foreigner. It is technically assumed to be a foreigner, or a Chinese "outside" China.

It's best to start with a patriotic song.I found that in most popular patriotic songs, the narrative and lyrical subjects were transferred to places outside of China.Ever since Li Guyi sang "Nostalgia" which is still soul-stirring at the Spring Festival Gala, the largest "cultural imagination community" in China, the mythical atmosphere of "Nostalgia" has become stronger and stronger-that time, lyrical The subject is assumed to be the ancient man Wang Zhaojun who is about to "go abroad".At the Spring Festival Gala in 1984, Zhang Mingmin, a Hong Kong native, pushed the "nostalgia" to a climax.Two years later, Fei Xiang, a Chinese-American, sang a song "Clouds of Hometown", which made countless Chinese beauties mesmerized.In fact, the first famous patriotic song "I Love You China" is also the theme song of the movie "Overseas Children".

Every time I walk in the hutongs of Beijing, "Teach Me How to Miss Him" ​​can be heard in my ears-I just found out recently that this is also a patriotic song. The lyrics were written by Liu Bannong on the ship going to France, and the song was written by a sojourner living in the United States. It was written by Zhao Yuanren.The common "far away from home" background endows these songs with strong artistic expression.Beauty comes from distance.People who go to the country miss their motherland, which is indeed more beautiful and tense than those who are in the country. The reason why "My Motherland" has been sung to this day is mainly because of Shangganling, a foreign land.When the empathy effect of "distance aesthetics" intensifies and "atypical experiences" are gradually internalized into typical experiences, patriotism begins to take on a certain exotic flavor.Let's put it this way, at least in 1984, a Hong Kong person and a group of mainlanders sang "although they are wearing foreign clothes", "the motherland has not been close for many years" and "even if they were born in a foreign country" at the same time. Not limited to the pronunciation of Mandarin, at least not honest enough in geographical knowledge.Besides, "Western Clothes" was not as popular as it is today. It was only a year after Bu Xinsheng's suits were introduced to the whole country (there may be some connection between the overall popularity of "Western Clothes" and this song).In the spring of that year, I was in Guizhou for my graduation internship. The sound was surging all over the street. I raised my head suddenly, but when I saw mountains after mountains, I felt strange again and again.

Let's talk about "Descendants of the Dragon", which is popular in the Chinese world all over the world.Leaving aside the background of the late 1970s, although the narrative subject was indeed outside the mother culture at that time, this does not mean that there is no special spiritual phenomenon worthy of analysis in its narrative perspective.For Hou Dejian and Li Jianfu who were on campus in Taiwan at that time, although the Yellow River and Yangtze River could only "sleepwalk", the "East" was not as far away as they sang, and was even right under their feet.As for "there is a group of people in the far east, they are all descendants of the dragon", not only is the geographical concept confusing, but the impulse to turn oneself into a third person as "them" is a childish behavior.We know that children are always accustomed to "non-first-person" themselves when they are giving the narration.

If you call me a "word picker", I have nothing to say, but I believe that the "postcolonial" theorists who love to sing these songs more than anyone will never agree.They are convinced that the reason why "Oriental" is "far away" is caused by the bad word "Oriental". Oriental is different from east or eastern, which simply means "East" in orientation. It is an "othering" term that regards Asia, the New World, and Africa as a barbaric and uncivilized world based on a Eurocentric cultural standpoint. It is demonization. "Pan-Oriental Imagination".In short, the Oriental that Shanghai Oriental TV Station and China Eastern Airlines are willing to use is fundamentally different from the Oriental that Leslie Cheung jumped from at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.In the same way, a Chinese living overseas has more reason to use the word "motherland" than a Chinese living in China, and for the latter, "country" is more appropriate.It was the first time I read that a magazine published by Chinese characters in Chinese characters and edited and printed in China was called "Mother Tongue". The melancholy and embarrassment was really not humane.

When the Oriental Orientalism (Oriental Orientalism) of the Orientals becomes a custom, we are intoxicated by this aesthetic conception and cannot extricate ourselves.When we were mourning for the lives of people in foreign countries, when the Iraqi boy cried on the CCTV screen on time every day, in Haicheng, Liaoning, not far from Beijing, more than 4,000 primary school students were poisoned collectively by drinking bad soybean milk. The child could only curl up on the hospital bed and cry, convulsing and even fainting.Of course, I don't believe that Chinese TV stations love children from foreign countries more than children from their own countries. Children are for their own good, and everyone is always sober about this.I just suspect that the long-term self-foreignization has made us more or less homely.

The Master said, whoever loves others without loving one's relatives is said to be against morality; one who does not respect one's relatives but respects others is called against propriety.What kind of "righteousness" is it, teaching us to molest to the point of "killing relatives"?