Chapter 89 postscript

After the age of fifty, some acquaintances around me began to die, and the number of times I went to the crematorium increased, but I suddenly liked to carry money on my body, and my drowsiness decreased day by day, so I knew I was old. Remind yourself when you get old: don’t be greedy for your seat, don’t eat rice noodles to make a bench; don’t show your face too much, and resolutely wipe your face and refuse to participate in activities you can’t participate in; don’t be paranoid; don’t be jealous of others.All of these can be done, try to do it as much as possible, but what you can't control is the memory, and the farther the memory is, the farther it is, the clearer it is.

This made me a little confused: Isn't life a hundred years, or two hundred years, one is the real life, the other is the dream life?Don't even forget to destroy, on the one hand use children to copy yourself, on the other hand restore yourself by memory? Most of my memories go back to my youth, which was in the mid-to-late 1960s, when the unprecedented Cultural Revolution was taking place in China. For the Cultural Revolution, it has been a long time since no one has mentioned it. Maybe for more than 40 years, time was killing everything, but the film and television endlessly joked about the Qing Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Tang Han Qin story, how did the "Cultural Revolution" Is no one interested?Perhaps the "Cultural Revolution" is still a sensitive topic, and it is difficult to look back and grasp it. There are politics in it, and it involves evaluation. Let the past be the past, right?

In fact, since the end of the "Cultural Revolution", I might as well avoid it.I go back to my hometown more than a dozen times a year. There are still remnants of the old slogan on the wall of my old house, and I deliberately don’t look at it.In that abandoned elementary school, I participated in a criticism meeting and worked as a recorder, but I passed by and refused to enter.I even passed through a village one year, and someone pointed to three crooked dilapidated houses, saying that they were the home of the rebel who hanged my father. I said: Is he still there?The answer is: died early, the whole family died.I said: Oh, they are all dead.Just leave in a hurry.

But in our village, most of the people who experienced the "Cultural Revolution" are dead, and half of them are still there. One of them was once a big leader. , or already on crutches, walking silently through the alleyway.At noon when I went fishing by the river, I saw someone crossing the river with firewood on their backs. They were two old men with white hair and legs as thin as sticks. He raised his hand, staggered, and staggered over.That scene was very touching, I was still feeling it, and suddenly I realized that they used to have hatred, because the factions were different in the "Cultural Revolution". I cut down another eucalyptus tree, which was almost as thick as the mouth of a bowl.And the one who was once the leader of a big faction sat hunched over in the courtyard of his house and drank alone. The wine was of course home-brewed grain wine, and the fingers holding the wine glass were still strong, but his face was so honest. His temper is also surprisingly gentle. As soon as I passed the gate of the courtyard, he called me by my nickname and said: Are you back?You haven't been back for a few months, come and have a drink, ah, take a sip!

The sun was very warm that day, and the village was extremely quiet. I witnessed the wind swirl in the alleyway, and it actually swam there like a rope.There was such a tragic fight here back then. Now, there are no bloodstains, no corpses, no paper scraps, sticks and bricks scattered all over the place, everything is gone, the past is like this wind, whirling away Go far away. I asked my nephews: Do you know about the Cultural Revolution?The nephew said: I don't know.I asked again: Do you know the name of your grandfather's grandfather?The nephew said: I don't know.I said: Oh, I don't know anything.

I don't know the name of my grandfather, but I am still passing on the family line for my grandfather. As for the "Cultural Revolution", has everything really passed?Why can film and television show the various dynasties before the Qing Dynasty without touching the "Cultural Revolution"? Is this an unforgettable forgetting?When I was in my fifties, the experience of my youth appeared in front of my eyes at every turn, and my memory was like water. Don't other people's memories come to my mind?The stooped old man who used to be a big boss was drinking alone. In his lonely old age, he should chew on what to drink.

I think that people who have experienced the "Cultural Revolution", no matter whether they were persecuted or persecuted, as long as they are still alive, they must have memories. It was at that time when I went back to my hometown that I had the desire to write down my memories. The reason for this desire is that the memory is like the cellar water stored in rainy days. For more than 40 years, the mud and sand have sunk to the bottom. When you remove the floating grass leaves, you can see the clarity of the water.The second is that I am dissatisfied with the works about the "Cultural Revolution" that I read shortly after the "Cultural Revolution".

Images, and more forms of programs.There is a more important point, I think I should have a mission, maybe it is also a destiny, most of the people who have experienced it have died or are about to die, and the living people either don’t write, or they can write with a lot of resentment, and I, I was thirteen years old at the time, and I dropped out of school and returned to the village just after learning the linear equation in one variable in junior high school.I haven't debated with people because I am stupid, but I have also read big-character posters, and I carried the paste bucket when I was doing big-character posters.I belonged to the United Finger at school. After returning to my hometown, our village is dominated by the surname Jia, and I belong to the United Finger. I could no longer express my point of view until my father was criticized.But after all, I am still young, and no one cares about me. Although I am also a victim, I am even more of a bystander.

My observation, after all, is the "Cultural Revolution" in a small mountain village in my hometown. It may not reflect the entire "Cultural Revolution", but I can be confident that I have observed how the "Cultural Revolution" happened in a small rural village. If " The fire of the "Cultural Revolution" was not ignited from the lowest level of Chinese society, so how did the lowest level of Chinese society make the fire ignite? My observations come from what I thought was a deep life, which constitutes my memory.This is the memory of a person, but also the memory of a country.

In fact, the "Cultural Revolution" was a major event for the country and the times, but for literature, it was a chaotic, confusing and intoxicating thing. I don’t understand, I can’t understand, I can’t figure it out. For more than forty years, from a literary point of view, I’m still watching, trying to approach and walk in. It seems that I’m more and more unable to grasp it. But the moon is still far from the mountain.I can only do what I can, experience and write from my life as much as I can, and see if I can get closer to it. The ancient furnace village where the porcelain was fired is remote. The mountains and rivers there are clear and bright, there are many kinds of trees, the wild animals are active, and the animals are prosperous. Although the people are hardworking and good at craftsmen, they are extremely poor. Because they are too poor, they are backward. , Simple, trivial, absurd, cruel.It has always been moved, and it also has the inertia of movement.Everyone is ill, violent and hateful, frightened and quarreling endlessly.Under the commune system, they guard their wives and babies like birds guarding their nests, but their wives are not virtuous and their children are not filial.They rely on each other and attack each other, like blacksmiths selling knives, never thinking that knives can hurt people.On the one hand, they are extremely selfish, and on the other hand, they are not hesitating about their lives.Facing them, you have to love them, love them but hate them, what can you do, you are among them, poor race, love and hate.

It's them, and it's us, all living beings, like the silt in the river moving downstream, like the crops on the land, reincarnated one after another.How can there be still water and deep flow in the downstream without the tumbling of sediment in the upstream? If the grains are to grow, the crops must endure the cold winter and hot summer.For example, some old ladies in the city were often exchanged for renminbi with counterfeit Peruvian banknotes by swindlers. Li Xiaoyi, with their little fantasies, everyone is splashing in the water, but it will cause the water to fluctuate, and the waves will rise when the fluctuation is too large, just like crossing a pontoon bridge. No one intends to swing, but everyone Walking in a panic, the bridge will swing up, and if it swings too hard, it will definitely overturn. I read a book by a wise man who wrote: The image projected from the heart is God, and this idol gives power, so the heart is empty and frightened.If the cause of something has already begun, it inevitably produces an effect, the whole process of being limited and restricted by a specific culture or civilization, this can be called destiny. The people of Gulu Village will have the fate of the "Cultural Revolution", they and we will have the fate of the "Cultural Revolution", and the Chinese will have the fate of the "Cultural Revolution". The "Cultural Revolution" is over, no matter what, no matter what evaluation is made, just as any great disaster in human history is compensated by historical progress, without the "Cultural Revolution", there would be no ideological fission of the Chinese people, and without the "Cultural Revolution", "There will be no future reforms for the transformation of the entire society.The problem is that for a period of time, it seemed that everyone was a critic of the "Cultural Revolution", as if no one had any responsibility.Yes, who is responsible? There is no one responsible who can be hacked into pieces, leaving only a synonym for evil: the Cultural Revolution.But I often think: In China, will things like the "Cultural Revolution" happen again in the future?People may think it is hypocritical to say this, but it is true. For example, after experiencing the fear of the 5.12 earthquake, I still feel the bed moving from time to time during my lunch break, and I immediately wake up with a beating heart. Someone said a very wonderful thing, saying that because you have only one chance to meet with your family and relatives in this world, you should cherish it, and you should cherish it because people are on this earth together.But in reality, this kind of cherishing is not so easy to achieve. Poverty makes people easy to be cruel, and inequality makes people easy to hate. Don’t think that how you treat others will be treated by others.Never believe in the real, there is no real, there is no real friendship, there is no real love, there is only good and ugliness, there is only time, only beauty and ugliness can be transformed in time.This is like the land, it can grow all kinds of vegetation, and the vegetation produces red, white, yellow, blue, purple, black and green flowers, these colors are originally in the soil.What we can't let go of is that in addition to benevolence, righteousness, rationality and faith, there are also devils, and devils are powerful and easy to indulge. Only material abundance, education popularization, legal system soundness, system integrity, religious promotion, It is the way of human self-control. In the book, there is such a good man, he is talking about sickness endlessly. There are too many sick people in Gulu Village. But I let him talk anyway.This good man has a prototype. First, he was an old man in our village. Later, I saw many Buddhist books on the table in a temple. Whoever likes it can take it away, so I took away a copy of "Wang Fengyi's Words and Deeds".Wang Fengyi was a native of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, and the book introduces his life and his deeds of telling people about illnesses in his life.I read it several times and thought it was very good, so I made him become a good person with the old man in the village.A good man is religious and philosophical. He is not a religious man or a philosopher. His knowledge and living environment can only be regarded as a wise man in the countryside. In the age when human nature broke out into evil, he is doomed to fail, but he has cured some people after all. The villagers are doing what they can to restore and repair, maintaining human ethics and morality, and trying to achieve social harmony and stability. Shaanxi is a place with a thick soil, and it is used to strange people and strange things. For more than ten years, it has often been rumored that something has happened somewhere.I once visited many people who practiced hidden in caves and huts in the mountains south of Xi’an. I once met a farmer who did not go to college but studied advanced mathematics for more than ten years. I wrote a new handwritten book on cosmology, and a draft of a new military book on the current world situation. I once talked with those masters of geomancy, forecasters, and people who suddenly had the power to eliminate disasters after a serious illness.I am most interested in getting acquainted with those folk artists, such as those who carve shadow puppets, make flower buns, make wood carvings and clay sculptures, make fire cores for blood clubs, paint without a teacher, and make flowers.Articulated flowers are paper-cut.I have seen these people, these people are not incredible in the legends, but without exception, they are all divine beings, either they are one with heaven and man, or they are strong-willed and super-powerful.When I wrote about the dog peeing moss in the book, I originally wanted to write about my mother's beauty and kindness. Halfway through the writing, I learned that an old lady who could pick flowers was found in northern Shaanxi, Zhou Pingying. The works produced have a kind of holy realm.Because of the distance, before I went to look for it, I unexpectedly got a copy of her paper-cut album, including an article by Guo Qingfeng introducing her. I have seen many images of souls in it.As a result, Zhou Pingying's shadow also appeared on Goupi Taipo's body. Throughout the writing process, "Wang Fengyi's Words and Deeds", Zhou Pingying's paper-cut album, and Guo Qingfeng's introduction and commentary on Zhou Pingying's articles are the works I have read and referenced the most, so I pay tribute to them here. Other than that, almost everything about everyone and everything in Gulu Village is in my memory.Dog urine moss, that poor and lovely child, although he is not completely attached to a certain archetype, but when writing, he often has an illusion that he is in my study, or hides here or there, or is demented. Sitting at the table blankly looking at me, occasionally calling my name.After I fixed my eyes, of course there was no one in the study room, but I was confused: Could it be me?I like this character, he is too ugly, too weird, too wronged, he has nowhere to go, no place to stay, like a guest from outside the planet, when he was adopted in Gulu Village, because of the cramped environment, so Leading to boundless imagination, communication with animals and plants constitutes a fairy-tale world.Dog urine moss and his fairy tale paradise, this is the beauty of the beauty of the mountains and waters of Gulu Village. In the middle of writing, I bought a copper Buddha of the Ming Dynasty. The knee points to the ground, which means: I am the only one in the sky and on the earth.This Buddha is on the desk. He watched my writing. In my mind, he also bestowed gods on my dog ​​pee moss. I also vaguely believed that the dog pee moss was actually an angel. It's been four years, and it's been soaked in memory for four years.But I understand that what I want to complete is not a memoir, nor is it a job to write an autobiography.It is fiction.A novel has the basic rules of writing a novel.I still adopted a realistic approach to build the village that has been made of porcelain since ancient times, and tried my best to make this village vivid, smelly, warm, visible and palpable.In my narrow understanding, a novel is about writing about life and life experience. If it is written so that readers will not think it is a novel when they read it, but believe that there is such a village in which a group of people live a closed life. The vulgar days of daily necessities, rice, oil, salt and joys and sorrows are the stories that happened in that village. After they have this kind of identification, they even feel that such a village and the people in the village are too plain, simple, and too common. Novels, then they can write them themselves. This is my most satisfying success.I wrote poetry when I was young, and I was influenced by Li He. Li He often rode a donkey and thought about his poems. When I suddenly came across a sentence, I wrote it down and put it in my pouch.I also thought hard to find verses, but I often wrote them for the editor to review, but the editor said that I wrote every line full of poetry into a poem without poetry.Later, I gave up writing poetry and rewrote novels. The novels I wrote at that time pursued how to write philosophically, conceptually, and unconventionally.I am reading poems and essays by great ancient writers, such as Li Bai, the poem "Moonlight in front of the window, suspected to be frost on the ground, look up at the bright moon, bow your head and think of your hometown", is this simply vernacular, too simple, but let yourself To write, even if you die, you will not be able to write.The easiest is actually the hardest, and the simplest is actually the most luxurious.What does writing mean? You can only live if you are realistic. If you are realistic, you have to be realistic. Realism means writing about daily life and ethics.You can only jump when you put your feet on the ground. Any modernist art is based on solid realistic skills. Realism is not about talking about facts, but for the sake of realism, it is a pool of mud that collapses on the ground, and chickens can only fly to the courtyard wall.In that book, I advocated using the truth to describe the fiction, using the most authentic and simple sentences to build the ambiguous and complete artistic conception of the work, just like building a house, with a solid foundation, strong pillars and walls, and all the buildings in the house It is emptiness, allowing sunlight to enter and air to circulate. In retrospect, my writing has benefited the most from art theory. Twenty years ago, the art theories of various schools of modernism in the West opened my eyes.As for Chinese books, in addition to my interest in opera aesthetics, I am keen to find the techniques of my novels in Chinese paintings.If the thinking and concepts of western modernist art and the philosophy and techniques of traditional Chinese art are combined, it will be exciting and enjoyable if you can knead it.For example, how to render a large area of ​​clumps seems to be full, but in fact there are layers and veins. The rendering has both Western colors and hidden Chinese lines.For example, it seems to be realistic, but it is actually freehand. It seems to be disorderly, untidy, and messy, but overall it is clear and transparent.For example, how to "break the pen and scatter the front".For example, how to make the world environment bitter and desolate, how to make the characters gloomy, lonely and helpless. The trouble is that the more I think about it, the more I experiment, the more I feel that my skills are not good enough. In the past four years, I could write quickly, but often I couldn’t write, discouraged, angry, and hated myself in front of the mirror. Said: Stop writing!But not writing is more uncomfortable.There are too many addictive things in the world, smoking opium is addictive, drinking is addictive, eating is the biggest addiction, and writing is also addictive.If you still have to write, calm down and write to the best of your ability.In the case of poor skills, all I can do is to repeatedly remind myself: slow down, slow down, grasp the rhythm, let the pen follow me, don't let me be led by the pen, let the story grow for the characters, and don't let the characters follow the story up. In the past four years, how many things have happened, how many hardships I have suffered, when I finished the last word of the book, I said oh my god, I finally finished it, how well it is written is another matter, but I finally finished it . I am grateful that I was never allowed to do all the big and small jobs at home. I was so irresponsible to my wife and daughter. I said to them: ah, treat me as a big leader, who can take care of the family? ?I am grateful for my calligraphy and painting. The income from calligraphy and painting relieves me of financial pressure, so I no longer consider the market in writing, and allows me to write quietly and write what I want to write.I am grateful to my body, except for the broken four teeth, other parts are not damaged.I am grateful for the more than 300 signature pens. Their blood was like black water, and when they ran out, they died quietly in that big basket.