Chapter 7 Chapter VII

Zha Jianying: However, if four generations cultivate a gentleman, then maybe two or three generations can transform a nouveau riche into a real rich man... Liu Suola: The key is not to be rich, but to become a normal person... Zha Jianying: Yes, a civilized person who is "rich and well-mannered" with a normal mind, a magnanimity, and rich material and spiritual... Liu Suola: Become a healthy, normal, and bright person.Normal people, ordinary people.The process of changing from a trendy person to a normal person is actually very painful, but once you become normal, it is indeed very comfortable. This is the mentality that many people in the 1980s sometimes struggle with. For example, you are no longer a person. , how do you live?It's not that the characters can still live happily. This mentality is the best mentality.

Cha Jianying: Yes.We have been talking about it for a long time, but it is actually a disease of the times, because Chinese society has been abnormal for a long time: from the abnormality of the "Cultural Revolution" to another abnormality in the 1980s, and then went to the sea to seek gold after 1989, And experienced all kinds of business abnormalities.How can you stabilize your mentality if you are always chaotic and coaxing you to sing and then I will come on stage?Not only artists, many people are in a state of anxiety, like ants on a hot pot, they have to go to this hot pot, for fear that they will be pulled down and burnt.If life becomes a big casino, everyone acts in a short-term, easy to come and easy to go, then even a good man will feel guilty, wondering how many days he can be good...

Liu Suola: Yes, even ordinary people have a mentality that they cannot live without characters.In fact, the less you are a character, the better you can live, because you have no burden, and you can happily enjoy a little fun in ordinary life.Now everyone likes to calculate, how much money is needed to reach the standard of the middle class; how much money is needed to reach the standard of a wealthy person, the more you calculate, the less you feel safe, it is a kind of insecurity of nouveau riche, you must reach a recognized level Otherwise, it would seem that you dare not straighten your waist.There is no cultural foundation to face the reality. In fact, a little money is enough, a little happiness is enough, and a little basic security is enough to make people capable and willing to do things.

Zha Jianying: Then I think carefully about how to do the things I want to do well. Liu Suola: Yes, it must be done well.In fact, this is the psychology of a healthy ordinary person.I think Chinese education has very little psychological training for this kind of ordinary people, and it may have something to do with the exaggeration of the 1980s, or it may simply have something to do with the revolutionary heroism education. Zha Jianying: Going further, it may have something to do with the imperial examination culture. "The book has its own golden house, and the book has its own Yan Ruyu", what I am talking about is not the pleasure of reading for the sake of reading, but utilitarianism, and it is a great utilitarianism.At that time, there were no international awards, but there were champions and candidates. First, they were named on the gold list, and then they were immortalized.Think about it in Confucianism, there are many discussions and distinctions about a gentleman and a villain, all of which encourage people to be a gentleman and not a villain. Being a gentleman is better than being a villain, but are there only these two choices?What about being a normal person?Normal, dignified, tasteful ordinary people, no good?

Liu Suola: In fact, everyone is insignificant in front of the sky.Being willing to be small is the essence of people's enjoyment of happiness.Our education has made no one willing to shrink himself, for fear of becoming a small person.After the artists in the 1980s achieved exaggerated success in China, they faced a very practical challenge as soon as they went abroad-how to live a small, happy and free life?After I came back to China, I saw the reaction of some successful and unsuccessful people in China to life: Some successful people don’t like to think things deeply, and they are resolutely ignorant of things they don’t understand. It seems that new information will threaten the safety of success while more unsuccessful people think that only celebrities and rich people are successful, if they are not such people, they will curse the world.The whole problem is that people are unwilling to shrink themselves and life to enjoy.In fact, all the fun in life lies in the little things you like.The joy of life does not lie in superficial success and wealth. Nowadays, many people do not praise ordinary people's lives. They regard ordinary people's lives as failures and work in vain. This is really a waste of life.

Zha Jianying: You are not just talking about "returnees", right? Liu Suola: What I'm talking about is a common phenomenon, which is the atmosphere around me since I came back.Not necessarily an artist or a "returnee".Today's commercial heroes are in the same situation as the artists in the 1980s, they are all trendy.It was not a link between the past and the next, but an explosion in mid-air.This kind of accidental phenomenon has always occurred in China.So the media hyped up the rich-style lifestyle, completely imitating Hong Kong and Taiwan, muddling over some western fashion concepts, putting minimalism and nouveau riche lifestyle together for promotion, and comparing Marilyn Monroe and businesswomen put together comparable.

Zha Jianying: Yes, many new buildings in Beijing are like seven-color imported ice cream: European style, Palm Springs in California, Windsor Avenue, post-modern city... In fact, multiculturalism and exoticism are good things, otherwise life would be so monotonous. It's a pity that we first got rid of our own cultural traditions, and lost our vitality. Before we could recover, exotic flavors fell from the sky, making it a bit overwhelming, but we didn't have the foundation.Long Yingtai from Taiwan talked about the cultural issues in this wave of globalization. She asked a reasonable question: You should be in line with the world, but after you get on the track, the trains that come in and out are filled with other people’s goods. Where are you then?

Liu Suola: Our generation grew up in a social system without private property and modern culture, so the modern artists who came out in the 1980s and the businessmen who came out in the 90s were like spring thunder and snow in June.Successful people in the 1990s would not recognize those in the 1980s, because the people in the 1980s were innocent, had no business experience, and were too enthusiastic, but now they seem stupid and rustic.A lot of success in the 1990s was economical, whether they went abroad, returned to China, or did not go abroad, that kind of success was more commercial. Cha Jianying: Smarter.

Liu Suola: People in the 1990s were more mainstream—commercial success must be mainstream, and there is nothing to play with.Their negation of the 1980s is also: You are not the mainstream, we are the mainstream now, representing the mentality of the majority.People in the 1980s never dared to think that the world in China belonged to them, not to mention that art has never been the world, and it would be nice to have a roof that belongs to you when you go abroad.In the 1990s, people had the air of occupying the world, because those successes and benefits were visible.They also disdain to go abroad to hit a wall, they understand life better.The tragic situation of people in the 1980s is enough to make people in the 90s laugh. You think so deeply, what have you got? !Engage in art?Do you have a house?Look down on Hong Kong and Taiwan music?Is music that doesn't make a fortune music?How dare you talk about art without making money?ridiculous!Is a person who doesn't talk about money a person?Look at my house, my car!They desperately attack the deep-seated culture and those who discuss it, which also shows another kind of insecurity.This insecurity affects society more than people in the eighties.A person who can see himself clearly, knowing what he has and what he does not know, can live a calm life.Living calmly and happily is not measured by money, nor by superficial success.If a person always emphasizes whether he is successful and whether he is in the mainstream in his life, he will always have a great sense of insecurity, and a spiritual crisis will appear from generation to generation.I am not opposed to success, but I think success is a matter of course. If you do a good job in something, you will naturally get good results.Enjoy but don't show off, this is a style, a kind of civilization, and there is no need to use your status to attack others.