Speaking of which, Haruki Murakami's novels do often have Chinese people appearing, such as "Youth Trilogy", the owner of Zhongjie's Bar, Jie, the Chinese teacher, Chinese girl and Chinese salesman, and generally speaking, they are all Chinese. It is a positive image.Jie doesn't talk much, but he is understanding, caring, and has a sense of humor—“Although he is Chinese, he speaks Japanese much more playfully than I do” ()—he gets along with both “me” and “rat” They got along so well that the "I" in the middle handed him a check for "a lot of money" without even looking at it.The Chinese girl in the book is a 19-year-old female college student that "I" met when I was working. I am very happy ... I think you are very, very authentic."For the Chinese teacher in charge of the exam that I occasionally met when I went to an elementary school outside for the exam, twenty years later "I" can still remember his image and the words he said before the exam: "Keep your head up, hold your chest up, And have a sense of pride!" For the high school classmates who met after more than ten years, and the Chinese who sell encyclopedias, "I don't know why I feel kind." When I met Murakami in Tokyo in 2003, Murakami specifically emphasized that this short story was "written from personal experience" in Kobe when I was a child.

In September 2004, Murakami published this new novel called "Chinese People" and "Chinese Girls" again.The girls are both 19 years old, equally beautiful or even more beautiful, but they are not college students, but "prostitutes" who were smuggled to Japan by illegal Chinese and forced to receive customers.Shortly after the beginning of the novel, a tragic scene appeared: when she was picking up guests at a love hotel after dark, a Japanese named Shirakawa beat her nose and face bruised and swollen because she suddenly had her period. Weeping, the sheets were covered with blood.The heroine Mary, who reads alone in the restaurant at midnight, can speak Chinese, and through the introduction of Takahashi, a college student who plays the trombone, is recruited by the hotel manager as a translator to deal with this "trouble", and the storyline unfolds from this.

It's hard to think that the experience of this Chinese girl is the focus of this novel, and it doesn't take up too much space, but she is undoubtedly an indispensable point in the vertical and horizontal novel space, where fiction and reality intersect.Around this point, different people showed different attitudes.Kaoru, the female manager of a love hotel and a professional boxer, was very indignant at Bai Chuan: "In order not to call the police, I stripped off my body. Despicable guy, worthless!" In order not to spare this guy who "beats innocent girls violently" ", she took a lot of trouble to print out the head portrait of Bai Chuan in the surveillance camera with a computer, and gave it to the Chinese man who was manipulating the "prostitute" behind his back, so that the Chinese could cut off one of Bai Chuan's ears.Mary said, "I wanted to be friends with her at the first sight, very, very much...I feel that girl has completely stayed with me now, as if she has become a part of me."After contemplation, Takahashi believed that Mary's sister Allie was "suffering senseless violence, groaning silently, and bleeding invisible blood" in another place similar to a love hotel.In fact, Ai Li was also sleeping in a room like Shirakawa's office. After waking up, she felt that her body had turned into a hollow. As a result, I became nothing, completely reduced to an existence that only facilitates the passage of external things." Therefore, there is indeed a thought-provoking metaphorical link between Ai Li's situation and the experience of Chinese girls. .As far as the attitudes of these three people are concerned, it is obviously the expression of "goodness" or emotions similar to "goodness".Here, the author undoubtedly affirms the power of "goodness" or something similar to "goodness". "Goodness" (love) finally liberates and regenerates both Mary and Ellie, and may also make Bai Chuan lose one of his ears "not able to wear glasses" The experience of Chinese girls will not be completely reduced to zero on a foreign night.

But in contrast, the author's attention seems to be more on the "evil" reflected by the "point" of the encounter of Chinese girls.The incarnation of evil is of course Bai Chuan, but Bai Chuan’s evil is different from that of the Chinese man who rides an off-road motorcycle, wears a black leather jacket and wears a brown ponytail and forces his compatriots to pick up guests.To sum up, Bai Chuan's evil or Bai Chuan's evil has the following characteristics: First, "height, body shape, and hairstyle are all very ordinary, and it is almost impossible to leave an impression when you meet on the street." He is an ordinary guy without any personality traits. , but in Kaoru's words, "Ordinary guys are the worst".And this "faceless man" who uses a translucent mask to hide his facial features in Ellie's room-this is also its "truly frightening part"-is essentially the exterior and interior of each other.Second, well-dressed, neat and tidy, and well-mannered, you can't tell that you are a prostitute, "not like the type who brutally beats the other party and strips her clothes away."Third, as a computer technician, he is not only dedicated, but also a "top expert" technically.No matter how complicated the fault is, it can be cured by hand. In his words, no matter how bad the situation is, he can "hit the ball into the acupuncture point.".Four, almost cowardly nervousness, mental stress."Long stern stares" and checking your own face in the mirror before leaving work.After returning home, he couldn't sleep, "the body was complaining of real fatigue, but there was something in his head that prevented him from sleeping, something was blocking him, and he couldn't avoid that or something."Fifth, there is no sense of evil or guilt.Before returning home, he took out the clothes stripped from the prostitutes one by one in the office, with a look of "why are these things here?" on his face from beginning to end, calmly as if he was "discovering the shabby relics of the not-too-distant past. ".

These characteristics show that Bai Chuan is indeed an ordinary company employee, and his strengths and weaknesses are also the strengths and weaknesses that ordinary people may have. It is completely impossible to see that he is a "despicable guy", and he himself is not even aware of his own despicableness.Perhaps, he viewed his behavior purely from the perspective of exchange value—I paid for it, and in exchange, you provided sexual services; but you failed to provide it because of the sudden menstruation, and in exchange, you deserved to be beaten. Just as I am a computer technician, so I should work overtime to repair the computer if it breaks down, and the company should pay for me to take a taxi back because I am working overtime late.In other words, Shirakawa-style "evil" is no longer conventional, traditional, or "absolute evil." A more common, more terrifying evil.

In fact, "evil" has appeared in Murakami's works a long time ago, and it is another main stream that traverses the world of Murakami's novels—although we have paid attention to the "goodness", love or warmth of the protagonists in his works besides self-care— For example, "Mr." in "Night Ghost" in "Night Ghost" in "Watanabe Noboru" and Boris in "Skinning", and "Father" in "Father" or "Jonny Walker" and so on.But the evil in these works is generally "absolute evil", and it is relatively vague: the image of the characters is vague, the behavior is vague, and the time and place are vague.But the middle one is "relatively evil".And the character image is clear: thirty-five or sixteen years old, wearing a tie, wearing leather shoes, and wearing a pair of small gold-rimmed glasses, "the appearance gives people an intellectual impression."The way of behavior is clear: punching and beating, stripping clothes and taking them away.The time and place are clear: 10:52 p.m., room 404 of the "Alpha City" love hotel.The only thing that is blurred is the boundary between evil and good or the true face of evil, and this vague evil or the evil of the "faceless man" is probably the main form of evil in a pluralistic modern society where exchange value is paramount.It is not only different from the evil of terrorists and Saddam-style totalitarianism, but also different from the evil of hegemony on the other side of the Pacific, and it is also different from the evil of general criminals such as murder and arson. It occurs in Japanese society and is not limited to Japanese society, therefore, should be more vigilant against evil.

And Murakami himself has already disclosed this information.In an interview in 2002, when he talked about his plans after writing, he said: "I want to write about evil in the novel, and I want to think about the manifestations and forms of evil from various angles... Next time I want to It is evil that is both symbolic and detailed. In the final analysis, evil does not exist independently, but is associated with qualities such as meanness, cowardice, and lack of imagination." ("Haruki Murakami: Youth Kafka", Shinchosha June 2003 edition) Why did Haruki Murakami arrange "evil" as a main stream flowing through his works?Why is it so obsessed with the discovery of "evil"?I think first of all it is because of the needs of the creation itself.He said in an interview shortly after publication: "I have always been thinking about evil. I think that in order to make my novels have a sense of depth and extension, evil is probably indispensable. I have been thinking about how to describe evil. "He believes that writing novels is to seek the Sympathy (sympathy) response or soul response between others, "for this reason, you must go deep into the really dark place, go deep into the really evil part of yourself, otherwise you can't produce that. A kind of resonance. Even if you can enter the darkness, if you stop in a place that is neither deep nor shallow, it is still difficult to arouse people’s resonance—I think I seriously conceived evil in this sense.” ("Haruki Murakami talks about "Kafka on the Shore"", see the April 2003 issue of "Literary World" magazine) Murakami mentioned more than once that Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" is "in my own mind. The novel with the most ideal form in "(followed by "Demons"), he just wanted to write this kind of "comprehensive novel" with multiple points of view including evil.As we all know, these two works of Dostoevsky are outstanding works in terms of spying, digging and analyzing the connotation of human nature.

The second reason lies in Murakami's thinking and worries about Japan's history and current situation, as well as the resulting sense of responsibility.In his conversation with the famous psychologist Hayao Kawai in November 1995, he repeatedly emphasized that "despite many reconstructions in Japan after the war, the essence has not changed at all" and there was no liquidation of the Second World War. Instead of relativizing that violence, he adopted an "ambiguous" and even "cunning" and "hypocritical" attitude. Therefore, he had a deep sense of crisis about the future direction of Japan, and he began to write from the age of twenty-nine. I've had it since the novel.But during the "Cold War and economic take-off period, after all, there was a social framework, and there were things like natural healing power in society, but now the natural healing power is shaking and weakening in the chaotic state of society, and frustration (disappointment) is deepening day by day. There will be an Aum Shinrikyo incident." (Quoted from "Literary World" above) This made him feel more and more that Japan may undergo considerable changes in a short period of time, and what may happen is even already happening. This also prompted him to abandon the previous detachment (detachment) and start Think deeply about the issue of commitment.And if you want to commit, you must point your pen at "evil"—historical evil, realistic evil, absolute evil, relative evil, and even evil that surpasses good and evil. "Finding lines that are different from the norms and norms of good and evil prevailing in society is an important motif (theme) of Murakami's works." (Sendaya "Resisting the Dualist Society", "Asahi Shimbun", November 12, 2004) It should be said that this theme has been quite fully reflected in the book.

Of course, there are also different views on the theme of this novel, and here are a few for readers' reference. On September 19 and November 12, 2004, "Asahi Shimbun" published comments by Miura Masashi and Kayama Rika respectively.The former believes: "In the final analysis, the subject is the secret that everyone harbors, the secret that cannot be resorted to language, the secret that cannot be talked about with each other. No, the secret itself is not the subject. For the sadness that comes from having secrets that cannot be talked about with each other. , others can’t get rid of it at all, all they can do is sit quietly side by side. This is Haruki Murakami’s unique theme, unique melody, and unique philosophy.” The latter expresses another point of view: “What the new work tells It is the story of a young girl who was reborn in one night. It seems to say that the regeneration and growth of young people today no longer take place in places related to society, but can only happen within the range of people they come into contact with in a small space like a restaurant Here, Murakami probably wants to face the inexplicableness of young people and the inexplicability of Japanese society through instant description.”

Regarding this book, one last interesting point needs to be pointed out: Mary, the heroine in the book who regenerates her sister and herself with love, is a girl who can speak Chinese. I am studying Chinese at the University of Foreign Studies, and I am going to study in Beijing soon.In a novel written by Murakami more than 20 years ago, "I" sits on the stone steps of the port, "waiting for the boat to China that will appear on the empty horizon sooner or later. Grasslands of Skyrim".Now, the boat to China finally appears from the horizon, and the protagonist is about to set off towards China...

Finally, I would like to say that some of the views in this translation preface were formed during a telephone conversation with the responsible editor of this book, Mr. Shen Weifan of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, so we might as well regard them as our common views.In addition, Mr. Kobayashi Kobayashi from the Japan International Exchange Foundation and Mr. Yan Jun from Beijing provided enthusiastic and professional help for my difficult problems in music and other aspects during the translation process. I would like to express my sincerity here thanks. Readers and friends are welcome to point out the inappropriateness of my writing or exchange views on this work with me.Please still send letters to: School of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China, No. 23, Hong Kong East Road, Qingdao, 266071.I look forward to it. Lin Shaohua In December 2004, Yu Haizhai When seagulls fly in Qingdao, the water and the sky are the same color