Hidden Corner | After Reading "Submarine at Night"

Before reading "Submarine at Night", I had never heard of Chen Chuncheng. Or heard that he was the champion of the Blancpain Utopia Literary Award after all, but the list of winners was searched for the purpose of writing Shuang Xuetao and Shen Dacheng.

Once, I was reading a book live on a platform for entertainment, and someone exchanged book lists with me and highly recommended this book. At that time, I owed a huge amount of reading debt, and he said that he did not like to read foreign books, because of cultural barriers, I felt that maybe we were not the same in terms of reading tastes, and we did not pay much attention to this recommendation.

But after all, that was the first, and so far, the only person who exchanged reading with me, and this should be taken seriously. So, I found it and stored it in the kindle.

But it wasn't until two days ago that it was opened to read. It was the end of the month, and it seemed that the reading plan for this month could not be completed, and a book that was not so large was needed to make up the number. In "The Brothers Karamazov", which is struggling, everyone talks too much. I feel that if I put it now, Dostoevsky and his old man might be suspected of dragging the number of words and cheating the royalties. (Just kidding, never mind!)

Unexpectedly, this book used to make up the numbers has become one of the most surprising Chinese literary works in recent years after Shuang Xuetao. Especially, considering that the author is still born in the 1990s, he is much younger than Shuang Xuetao, and there are infinite possibilities in the future.

"The Submarine at Night" is a collection of short stories. Yes, it's very strange. In recent years, the Chinese contemporary young and middle-aged writers I have liked seem to be better at short stories. Shuang Xuetao also has only one full-length novel. In my opinion, it is rather so-so than a short one. When I read Shuang Xuetao, I often feel that his words and sentences are simple and unpretentious, but his emotions are strong, and there are hidden secrets between the lines.

Chen Chuncheng is another matter. His words, and imagination, are flying. He is very good at writing scenery, and the scenery in his pen is alive and emotional, not very strong, and it is silent. An excerpt from "Bamboo Peak Temple":

On the side of the side hall, there are many stone components of Ming and Qing Dynasties scattered in the deep grass, lotus column bases, and cloud-patterned water troughs. Most are damaged. A stone lion has already fallen, lying on its side, its face buried in the grass, and it looks like it is sleeping soundly. The other is still standing, stepping proudly on a ball, the stone has turned black, and its eyes are staring straight ahead. I yawned, walking lazily through these waste rocks and grass, the stone lion yawned as if infected by me, and then continued to look straight ahead as if nothing had happened.

"Zhufeng Temple" is one of the short stories that many people like very much. He writes about a temple hidden from the world. At first glance, I thought it was ancient, but slowly I found out that it is actually contemporary. I think Chen Chuncheng's classical literature skills are very good, so he has the ability to take you away from the hustle and bustle, and escape into the empty door together without realizing it. Until he suddenly threw out a contemporary thing, such as when he mentioned Baidu and games. The emergence of "Baidu" especially terrifies me, I have never seen this word in serious literature before, although it has long been inseparable from the daily life of most Chinese people. I don't know whether to say that my reading orientation is far away from life, or Chinese literature itself is far away from the present. I believe both, but it is likely that the latter is the cause of the former.

The appearance of "Zhufeng Temple" looks very "born", but I prefer its intricate reality mapping. This temple is such a hidden place, and it still cannot escape the ten years of turmoil. At that time, in order to protect the cultural relics from being destroyed, the monks hid the stele somewhere. The past history has gradually become a legend, and it is hard to tell whether it is true or false. As for the protagonist in the novel, his home was demolished, and there was only a key left without a lock. He hid the key everywhere in an attempt to preserve evidence of the past.

If the reality mapping of "Bamboo Peak Temple" is a bit cliché, then "Musician", the finale of the novel, let me see "1984" in it. After reading it in the morning, I shed two lines of clear tears. . "Musician" wrote music censorship, although it was a "Soviet joke", it was on an unprecedented scale. I don't know if any Chinese writers have dared to dabble in this topic before, I haven't seen it anyway. So I was shocked to read it, just like I don't understand why Animal Farm and 1984 haven't become banned, I don't understand why The Musician passed the trial. Maybe, the censors think that Britain, the Soviet Union, and Oceania are none of my business. Or, there are people with unshakable conscience in the censors who are willing to raise the muzzle an inch. Or, it was Chen Chuncheng's cleverness that played a role.

The protagonist of The Musician is a censor who censors himself while censoring others. It was an accident that I found out that I am a musician, and I have been creating, but because of self-censorship, I have never dared to make it public. At the end of the story, it is a wild imagination. The musician goes to heaven and earth, avoiding the KGB everywhere, just to complete his four movements in his mind. I don't know how the story ends, if the inspiration came from "The Bird of Thorns". "The thorn bird searches for a tree full of thorns all its life. Once it finds such a tree, it smashes its chest against the sharpest thorns, and before dying, it will release a moving sound of nature." "Music" Home also tells a similar story.

She said she heard the legend of the starling told by a church organist as a child. It is said that every time God made a starling, he made a melody, which was exactly the same as the shape of its soul, and was hidden somewhere in the world for the bird to find. Maybe in the spring, maybe in the swaying of the treetops, maybe it's circling in someone's head. The starling screeched all day long, exploring new tunes and learning any sound it heard, just to find its melody. Once it is accidentally sung by it, the starling's body will instantly turn to ashes, and its soul will get into the melody and never come out again...

Like Shuang Xuetao and Shen Dacheng, Chen Chuncheng's works are also full of similar fables. This is of course caused by the political situation. If you want to talk about some real issues, you can only dress them up in a different way. Therefore, every story in this book involves a "hidden corner". In Submarine at Night, it's a submarine. In " Chuan Cai Pen ", it is a pen. In "Zhufeng Temple", it is a key and a tablet. In A Dream of Red Mansions Mass, it is a book. In Li Yin's Lake, it is a lake that has disappeared. In Chibo, it is a sword. In The Musician, it's music. These hidden corners are not enough for outsiders, but a person can get absolute freedom there.

Sadly, this freedom, in his world, can only be imagined because it is not available.