Chapter 32 Chapter 9 National Spirit and Family Fiction

The family novels in the new era not only inherit the examination and expression of the national character of the May Fourth Literature, but also present a new exploration of diversified themes and connotations in the context of globalized cultural literature, accompanied by the development of contemporary literary trends, and contribute to the development of the national spirit. Lu presents deep thinking on culture, human nature, society and many other aspects.Specifically, it has the following performance characteristics: This kind of works reflect the social factors that play an important role behind the survival and fate of the people through the performance of the ups and downs of the fate of family characters.Human beings are the product of social relations. In a sense, the national spirit presents different changes and characteristics in different historical periods and in specific social conditions.

Works in this category include "Red Flag Spectrum", "Three Family Alley", "The History of Entrepreneurship", "Red Sorghum", "Love and Decision", "Scene Twentieth", "Old Site", "Documentary and Fiction", "Family", etc.Of course, using the word "fate" to cover many of the above texts is indeed too simple. In fact, the content and themes displayed in these works are complex and multi-dimensional.Such as the magnificence of the revolutionary war; the magnificence of cultural customs; the hardships and twists and turns of socialist transformation; the love and hatred in the sorghum field; The golden and iron horses; the revolutionary passion of family members; the legendary story of Shanxi bank and so on.However, through these colorful historical pictures that integrate suffering, struggle, strife, betrayal, struggle, and destruction, what we read are very clear red lines of "fate", which is the invisible destiny that governs people. And the colorful life under the domination.That is to say, no matter how many experiences and secrets about history, human nature, and survival contained in this kind of family novel, its characters cannot escape the bondage of fate, and finally everything ends on this chain.However, due to the different subjective intentions of the authors, the different regional colors of the texts, the closeness and alienation to "official history", and the richness and thinness of cultural connotations, the fate curves of the characters in each work have different trends.At the same time, because the characters they portray are either in the turmoil of family revenge and political struggle, or in the eternal contradiction between the pursuit and loss of individual life in reality, or in the conflict between self-character perfection and fission, or When they are ruthlessly washed away by the torrent of history, the vast majority of them also take on a distinct color of tragedy."Red Flag Spectrum", which has the double reputation of "initiation novel" and "idyllic poem", describes the fate of two families, Zhu and Yan, who lived on the Jizhong Plain.At the very beginning, they were also burdened with the suffering and hardships of life, with the impulse and anxiety of revenge in their hearts, and lived in injustice and depression. However, they found a strong spiritual support in the process of groping, and found the ultimate need for their own liberation. With powerful power, their behavior changed from spontaneity to self-consciousness, and finally completed their historical mission with bravery, tenacity and perseverance, which also made their own destiny different from the past.Their fate is rough and sad, but at the same time bright and beautiful.The curve of their fate is painted with high-spirited colors because of its connection with the revolutionary struggle, and it also has the meaning of understanding the code of "official history".In addition, it also provides us with a novel paradigm for writing "revolutionary history" while revealing the theme of fate.

"Passionate and Judgment" shows us such a writing dimension: "Chinese farmers who have existed for thousands of years have now entered the end stage. After a while, farmers in the traditional sense will cease to exist and replace them. It will be a new generation of farmers from the mode of production to the way of survival and even the way of thinking.” [6] Therefore, looking back deeply at the relationship between farmers and the land and showing the historical destiny of the old generation of farmers has become the theme of this novel .In the narration based on several changes in the relationship between farmers and the land, the changes in the fate of farmers present such a pattern: in the primitive land period, farmers were nostalgic and eager to own the land; The dependence has been displaced. In the end, they had to accept the reality in front of them and watched the realization of land commercialization with helplessness and embarrassment. In the process, farmers finally changed from land owners to "rootless" people.Among the many images of farmers, Feng Dazu is the most typical and representative.His motto is: "In this world, even if you have mountains of gold and silver, it is not as good as a piece of good land." In order to satisfy his desire for land, he worked from dawn to dusk, and planted the land as finely as embroidery; Difficultly reclaiming the barren hills of Biedingzi; when the fields were distributed to households, he fought hard to protect his own land with his old age--finally, like other farmers, the fate of Feng Dazuo also changed with the changes in the land. Changes, and finally painfully realized the modern transformation from body to mind. "Love and Decision" records this process with full emotion, and uses a narrative that contains strong sympathy to give artistic attention to the fate of farmers in the 20th century in a panoramic manner.

"Act Twentieth" narrates the history of the rise and fall of the Shangjili silk weaving industry with the characteristics of a family industry in the turbulent changes in China in the 20th century.The work completes the characters of the five generations of the Shang family through the strong patriarchal culture and the cultural connotation of misfortunes and blessings, through the swaying plots and details full of complex human nature, and through the "moderate" colorful narrative style. The depiction of fate shows the ambitious yet fragile social characteristics of the industrial and commercial families that are quite inland in China.Shang Dazhi has gone through vicissitudes all his life in order to revitalize the family business, but in the end he did not get the happiness he wanted; Sheng Yunwei was adrift and helpless under the pressure of patriarchal culture; In other words, their lives are all made up of suffering and pain, and each of them draws a clear trajectory under the traction of fate according to their own beliefs and pursuits. The life situation described in "Old Site" is even more unique.Through the historical changes of two families in the southern town of Yancheng, it reflects on the cruelty and absurdity of the irrational history "created" by rational humans.Since almost all characters are squeezed, bumped and killed on an irrational stage, the fate of the characters has a shocking and tragic style.Whether it is Li Naijing, the elder of the family who is devoting all his efforts to turn the tide, or Li Zihen, a chaste woman who self-destructs her appearance and sacrifices her youth, they all fail to escape the various traps preset by irrational history, and lose their lives after a lifelong pursuit fails miserably. Although "Old Site" is close to history, because its characters do not have the identity of the characters in "Red Flag Spectrum", their bodies and souls are not absorbed and integrated by history, but are resolutely wrapped in the abyss of destruction by ruthless history. This makes "The Old Site" permeated with a deep sense of sadness.

The history described in "Red Sorghum" is the real folk history. Although it also has a relatively clear background of the Chinese revolution, its focus is on folk culture and folk spirit. Whether it is "my grandpa" or "my grandma" ", there is an extremely tenacious vitality hidden in their bodies. They dare to love, hate, and act, which fully demonstrates the complexity and diversity of human nature.They write the history of their own families and the folk history of the Chinese nation with their own preferences and choices.Their relationship with the revolution in China is clear, that is, the ups and downs of the revolution can better set off the beauty of their lives.They don't necessarily understand the revolution, but they don't oppose the revolution. When the times call for it, they can stand up and use their flesh and blood to fight against foreign aggression and defend their homeland.Their sacrifice was tragic, but even more sublime. Although "my grandpa" and "my grandma" do not have Zhu Laozhong's class consciousness, they share the same spirit of heroic struggle against the invaders.The fate of their families is closely intertwined with the history of China. Every turning point in history will cause drastic changes in their family, thus affecting the turning point in the fate of each character. This turning point has made "my grandma" The brilliant love and magnificent life also reflect the own destiny created by "my grandpa" with manly feelings.

The different destinies of different characters are revealed through the literary imagination of the life of the little-known Tibetan chieftain.Although the author also vaguely shows the appearance and exit of the "Han people" in the detailed description, the characters are closely connected with the fate of their families.The life trajectory of each character has its own internal rules, the so-called family prospers and I prosper, and the family dies and I perish.It can be seen from the Taoist principle that "the extreme of prosperity must decline, and the extreme of things must be reversed", or it can be concluded that the historical trend is irresistible. "Documentary and Fiction" is Wang Anyi's few family novels with experimental nature.It describes the historical fate of the ancestors and descendants of the "surname Ru" family with the artistic technique of alternating reality and reality, and true and false.As a contrast, it contrasts the paleness, monotony and poverty of today's life with the bravery and tenacity of the ancestors' spirit and the life scenes of gold and iron horses. Full of passion and vitality, in order to dilute the trivial and meaningless of the current life.The fate of the characters in it unfolds in a criss-cross pattern, drawing a reasonable curve in line with their historical essence and way of life.It is "the revival and lamentation of a great financial tradition by the writer with his novelist's vision and means." [1] In the process of showing the twists and turns of the story and the complex characters, the author miraculously revives the escaped Another extremely complex, huge, mysterious, and subtle business civilization tradition of Chinese cultural conventions.Because the characters in it are "full of contradictions in cultural spirit, pioneering and conservative, open and conservative, open and narrow are entangled like a nightmare, so there is a forward-looking behavior, a democratic nature, and great ideas. The intertwining of conservatism and feudalism",[2] all of which painted their fate with an extremely bright tragic color.

As mentioned above, from the mid-to-late 1980s to the 1990s, there was a "cultural craze" in the literary world that spread widely and deeply. discussed and inspected.The influence of the family has a strong traditional cultural color, and the individual life of the family is passed down through blood and word of mouth, which infiltrates the accumulation of many traditional cultures. Therefore, their ideological and spiritual states must have some commonalities of national inheritance.As one of the forces, contemporary family novels also show clear writing achievements. Works in this category include "Ancient Ship", "Moving into a Human Shape", "The Gate of Sheep", etc.The difference between these texts and the first type of works is that although they are also writing about family fate, they focus on digging deep into the deep existence of traditional culture in the psychological structure of the Chinese nation, its fierce collision with Western culture, and its impact on the real world. The influence and restraint of the people's spirit in it. Although "Ancient Ship" reflects the different fates of the three families in Wali Town during the historical changes, and covers quite rich historical and realistic content, it examines the deep existence of Confucianism and Taoism in the psychological structure of the characters and the impact on people. The writing dimension in which real-life behavior is having a huge impact is still quite evident.Moreover, it focuses on excavating the spiritual connotation of Taoist culture and the wisdom of life, which makes people feel refreshed and enlightened after reading it.As a large silk-making family in Wali Town, the Sui family has experienced several ups and downs from the period of the Republic of China to the reform and opening up. Every member of the family has also interpreted different life trajectories in these ups and downs.In Sui Baopu's generation, he began to reflect on his family because of his own mental pain.His power of reflection comes not only from the humanistic feelings of restraint, tolerance, and compassion in Confucian culture, but also from Taoism's "fullness will lead to loss, things will be reversed, and contentment will always be happy." And so on have a new understanding and perception.He finally changed himself and Wali Town.Through the images of Sui Baopu, Zhang Wangshi, Zhao Bing and other characters and the life pictures full of regional colors, the work reveals the author's absorption and acceptance of the Taoist spirit, and shows the great power of a culture.As pointed out by insightful commentators, what Sui Baopu did "symbolizes the power of self-enlightenment in the style of inner sanctity, and what it wants to realize is an introverted value, that is, conscious moral introspection. and self-improvement of personality, as well as self-baptism with the meaning of original sin." [3] His perfection of "moral man" is in sharp contrast with his younger brother Sui Jiansu's pursuit of life, showing that the author wants to use Taoism Concepts such as "a tree that is as beautiful as a forest will be destroyed by the wind" are an obvious intention to correct the loss of values ​​and the excessive expansion of desire for power and material desire brought about by the market economy.Although the belief in life that the author strongly advocates temporarily wins in Wali Town, it ignores the importance of realizing people's individual values ​​in modern society, thus affecting the deepening of its theme.What is certain is that the humanitarianism believed in in the culture of the Sui family will definitely undergo a huge test in the new historical period.In short, the appearance of "Ancient Ship" shows that the narrative mode of contemporary family novels has shifted from "heroism" to "humanism" and "cultural exploration", and to a certain extent, it also shows the great charm of Taoist culture.

The power of the family culture shown is much stronger and more complex than "The Ancient Ship".It not only praises the progress of Confucianism from the heart, but also deeply analyzes its cannibalism. It takes the historical fate and entanglement of the Bailu family as the main line, revealing the powerful family culture. strength.The family culture it shows is divided into two aspects: tangible and intangible. The tangible aspect includes "filial piety" such as supporting children, supporting parents, and offering sacrifices to ancestors. The family ethics order of "Wu Ting, Chang Hui, and You Shun" has become a living teaching material for Bailuyuan; the intangible aspect refers to the spiritual wealth left by the ancestors, such as "farming and reading heirloom", diligence and thrift, and restraint of family property. The family business is prosperous and respected.Of course, there are many other themes conveyed, such as the complexity of human nature, the twists and turns of the Chinese revolution, and so on.However, it is the most important theme to demonstrate the long-term vitality of family culture, reveal its tenacious existence in the deep psychological structure of the Chinese nation, and its great role in reality.If the Confucianism in "Ancient Ship" only influenced Sui Baopu, then the Confucianism in it became the spiritual shackles that controlled many people and affected the behavior of many people.Bai Jiaxuan is representative, his spirit contains the whole Bailu Village, his words and deeds have a great deterrent force, as a cultural symbol, a cultural symbol, he shows the complexity and twists and turns of the Chinese revolution.The same is true for other characters such as Mr. Zhu and Mr. Leng.In them, there is a distinct "sage culture worship" and an idealistic cultural personality.With a clear consciousness of traditional culture and the revelation of the spiritual lifeline on which the Chinese nation depends, the narrative of family novels has once again changed from "exploring culture" to "respecting culture". The traditional culture it shows is especially The meaning of Confucian culture is deeper and more expressive.

Starting from the current real life, "The Gate of Sheep" describes the living conditions of a family in Hujiapu, a small village on the plain.They take blood relationship as the bond, family consciousness and family culture as the code of conduct, maintain a strict hierarchical order, and live in harmony according to the clan.However, this seemingly peaceful and peaceful small village is controlled by a harsh patriarchal culture. All the words and deeds of the people are in line with the requirements of the feudal family culture. People's lack of self-awareness and The cult of power has reached appalling proportions.Hu Tiancheng, the leader of Hujiapu, seems to be thinking of the masses everywhere, leading them to live a relatively affluent life, but the reality is that deep down in his heart, he has always regarded the masses as worthless, and suppressed them with extremely superb means. Their spirits rule their minds.His "rule of benevolence and virtue" made many people feel grateful and deeply admired him. At the same time, they also became a group of ignorant and blind followers. Before they knew it, they lost all their self-awareness and became prostrate. The numb, closed, selfish and cowardly walking dead in front of rights and desires.The work extends its touch to the current people's life, profoundly criticizes the cruel and backward aspects of Confucianism that imprison the human soul, and reveals the great flaws in the national character of today's society, which has a huge warning significance.

"Moving to Human Shape" opens up an extremely novel perspective to reveal traditional culture.Starting from the collision of Chinese and Western cultures, it examines the backwardness and cruelty of Confucian culture and the spiritual pain of each character in the process of resisting the impact.Although its style of writing does not directly point to Confucian culture, it highlights the tragic situation of people who live with the essence of this culture with the help of fierce conflicts.As a woman who is well versed in the purpose of traditional culture, Jing Yi sacrificed her life's happiness without knowing it; Jing Zhen piously guarded the feudal ethics, but she didn't know what made her fall into the abyss of life.And the phalanx formed by them to guard the traditional culture ruthlessly strangled the life of Ni Wucheng, who yearned for fresh air, quality of life and freedom of existence.In this cycle of "killing" and "being killed", all people fell into despair, struggling and unable to extricate themselves.What needs to be explained is that "Movement Becomes Human" is the same as "The Gate of Sheep", which intervenes in the core of traditional culture from a critical perspective and strips and exposes it. It makes traditional culture surface again like the tip of the iceberg. Accept the scrutiny and review of modern rationality.From another perspective, it also provides a considerable depth of ideological resources for cultural inquiry in the 1990s.From "Ancient Ship" to "The Gate of Sheep" to "Moving into Human Shape", we have clearly captured the trajectory of the internal changes of cultural factors, that is, from "Heroes' Triumph" to "Cultural Exploration" and then to " Cultural Admiration" and "Cultural Criticism".This gradual and in-depth theme evolution not only shows the great charm of culture, but also shows the characteristics of the times in contemporary family novels.

Folk survival is an important expression position of family novels. This kind of works mostly focus on expressing the difficult and impoverished living conditions of ordinary people. Undoubtedly, the recasting of the national soul is faced with huge difficulties and reality. Works in this category include: ,,,, "Lights of the City" and so on.Survival is the first priority of human beings.The existence created by different folk rationality and life suffering is even more colorful and unique.As we all know, literature is the study of human beings, and it must take the display of human existence as its basic element.Although the living space of human beings is broad and grand, family life is undoubtedly the best place to contain living conditions, because in the family environment, people's living conditions are the most natural and real.Therefore, the writers placed the true existence of human beings in the family environment and copied it in all directions.However, these works have presented their own characteristics by revealing the extreme living conditions of human beings.The depiction of this extreme state is divided into two dimensions: first, through fictional historical scenes, to place the existence of human beings composed of desires; second, to use suffering as the background color, to place the existence of human beings composed of suffering.The former is represented as and, the latter is represented as and.The contribution of these texts lies in that in the process of re-expressing history, it reflects the author's questioning and dismantling of authoritative historical discourse with new understanding and experience; it reflects the establishment of new historical discourse with a new concept of literary theory; The great effort of the writer to reconstruct the historical value and aesthetic order with new literary discourse.Taking "Macun" as the background, it captures the most representative historical periods in modern and contemporary China, and shows the inferior cultural accumulation of the Chinese nation and the sick national character nourished by this cultural state.The entire history of Ma Village is a history of power struggles. The changes and displacements of the times have no effect on this kind of fighting that people are used to. What people feel is just a series of fights for the throne of the village chief. The farce and the great enthusiasm of the rural people due to political struggles, as well as the ugliness and cruelty of human nature reflected in it.This is the history in the author's eyes, a folk history that rebelled against the "official history" with clear ideology and authoritative characteristics.Through the connection of a series of absurd historical fragments, the author dedicates the following theme to readers with a writing attitude against the "deep mode": "All history is contemporary history"; [4] History is extremely blind; Various accidental factors will cause the reversal of history to a certain extent; a person's life will be manipulated by the invisible hand of fate into a sad situation.It should be said that it has won the essence of "New Historicism", and shows readers a brand-new view of history with the effect of defamiliarization with allegory and ridicule. It is also a work of writing folk history.He reveals a living reality of Gaomi Township in Shandong Province with a purely folk attitude, and contributes to readers a perceptual and intuitive text world, a folk society in the sense of survival composed of life instinct and desire.The work presents the characteristics of folk rationality without obvious value judgments, reflecting the author's deep understanding of existence and survival.Although the text intends to show the century-old history of Dongbei Township, Gaomi, Shandong, the history is only used to better show the complexity and richness of human existence. In an irrational or chaotic state, they complete their lives with intuitive feelings. Their life concepts, ways of life, and attitudes to life all come from their own physical desires and direct experiences. They treat love, family affection, war, parties, etc. They all have their own standards of right and wrong, and the progress of history is not their concern. They are swaying their lives and showing their painful lives in an unreal and magical behavior.The difference is that although the former "contains the macroscopic grasp of society in the microcosmic description of the countryside, and shrinks the huge figure of history into small village history romances" [5], it reveals a "new historical perspective" to a certain extent. ", which reflects the influence of a certain cultural context on literature, can inspire people deeply through vivid descriptions, but is deeply influenced by the market economy, and is keen to satisfy the reading desire of ordinary people in the market. It scruples to show the endless desire and greed of human beings.Although the historical clues are relatively clear, the life it depicts is weird and vulgar.The author seems to want to show the suffering of the people and the high vitality caused by the wandering of the Shangguan family in Dongbei Township, Gaomi, Shandong since the Anti-Japanese War, but the description of the flood of desires has long since diluted this theme. What is seen is only "the feast of breasts and the ravings of sexual perverts" without any elite consciousness of "taking responsibility for morality and benefiting the common people", and the spirit of post-modern digestion has been greatly displayed.From this low-level text, we have obtained the following enlightenment: the theme of the work must be established in a rigorous structure and lofty conception, in accurate language and real images, otherwise it can only be entangled in vulgar taste and was eventually submerged by it.The same is to show the history of subjective fiction, to show a kind of stagnant life state that seems to be still and to move, under the vigorous and lively surface, to reveal the ugliness and cruelty of human beings, and to change from monochromatic history to colorful stories. A kind of excess can make people feel a novel and unique interpretation of history, but it can only make people feel the lack of authenticity and moral feelings.Here, the presence or absence of historical vision and moral concern has become the best yardstick for measuring the value of texts.In short, the splendor of colors cannot conceal the emptiness of the spirit, the mysterious legend cannot resist the flood of desires, and the history of non-social reality revealed cannot withstand scrutiny. Its appearance at the end of the century illustrates the great power of "commodity fetishism" , showing the extreme indifference of literature to its due moral value under the impact of the tide of commodities. Different from and, it shows people's strange life in a special era with an extremely grim narrative, which has a real artistic effect.For a long period of time, all members of the Sun family lived in extreme ignorance and indifference. They were born without the ability to "love", and hated and hurt each other; their hearts were extremely barren, There is no good factor, only selfishness and greed, lust and longing.Their existence reflects a kind of ugliness and despair of human existence.Witnessing their desolate inner world, people will feel shudder.It also shows an extremely miserable state of existence, that is, people's existence is always entangled with suffering, death, fear, sorrow, etc., and they experience various fatal blows from the body to the spirit.The life of the rich old man is a life of humiliation and hardship. He has experienced all the suffering and despair that human beings can encounter. His life course has included all the disasters of human beings in the ultimate sense. After the incident, he became stronger and more calm.This image embodies the author's ultimate concern for human beings, and shows the survival of human beings in the ontological sense, which has a strong artistic appeal.At the same time, through the life of the wealthy old man, the work shows the innate tenacity and patience of human beings, which has a shocking power.Its enlightenment to people is obvious, that is, the survival of weeping blood can only destroy the material conditions of human life, but cannot destroy human will. live. "Lights of the City" is a work in which the paranoid fanaticism of the concept and the vividness and fullness of the image are intertwined and integrated. The lives of the characters in it, such as Feng Jiachang and Liu Hanxiang, also present an extreme state. Holiness is contrary to the normal state of human existence and is difficult to describe.In short, this kind of works with post-modern meaning takes family life as the fulcrum, and shows the extreme living conditions and spiritual characteristics of human beings in a multi-faceted manner. They echo the cultural poetics at that time and show the multiple possibilities of text writing. It reflects the active exploration of various artistic techniques and styles in the contemporary literary world, especially family novels.