Ge Liang's My Cat is a collection of short stories, including three novels, namely, The Bookstore, Scud, My Cat, The Bookseller who Restored Ancient Books, Two Hairdressers before Tradition and Innovation, and Historical Romance of The National SouthWest Associated University in Southwest China. The protagonists here are booksellers, hairdressers, craftsmen and scholars of that era who are connected in series by "Wamao".
Ge Liang said that he wrote Bookseller because he rescued the manuscript of my late grandfather's posthumous work "several times" and learned about the industry of "ancient book restorer". "Keep it the same" is their working principle. This is a group of people who live in the old days. Their lifelong efforts are only to get the books they handle back to the date they should go to, to maintain their old appearance and to dilute the traces of the times.
The "dignity" of books is also the dignity of calligraphers who repair ancient books.
The two restorers written in the stacks have different learning, inheritance and origins, representing two different cultural contexts of China and the West, but they reach the same goal in different ways. "If you don't get a good job, you still have old things" is the biggest tacit understanding between book collectors and book revisers. All the retention and waiting are the marks of several cycles in the years. Coupled with their stubbornness in life, it is also closely related.
The background of "Scud" and "Wamao" is Lingnan and Southwest. With the participation of artifacts, the writer interweaves The National SouthWest Associated University's magical historical destiny with the lives of the masters vividly in history, and is of course subject to the indelible hope and loneliness in the text. In Ge Liang's view, these people are idealists in this unforgettable historical era. "I will walk to the water to check my way, and then sit and watch the rising clouds."
Jane is a female calligrapher living in Hong Kong. She is a little old and has her own style and principles. The "I" in the story is Dr. Guo Mao. She went to visit her friend Professor Ouyang, a student of Guo Mao's grandfather. The two of them chatted first. Guo Mao told Professor Ouyang that he had found his grandfather's manuscript, but some scattered pages were stuck together. Professor Ouyang immediately beamed and took Guo Mao to see it on a whim.
Embarrassed, Jane refused, saying that she couldn't afford it if it wasn't repaired properly. Professor Ouyang knows that this means Fujian. They didn't have any help, so they had to leave. Guo Mao accidentally bumped into a book on the shelf and it fell to the ground. Guo Mao quickly picked it up, dusted it off, smoothed a corner of the page, and then put it back. This move touched Jane unintentionally. Jane asked him to take the old books to her house in a week, and she wanted to help repair them.
Dr Guo Mao came here to reach an agreement with Jane on the restoration of books. Jane told Guo Mao that he changed his mind because he found that he really liked books. The doctor suddenly thought of who his habit came from, Lao Dong from Nanjing, another bookseller and ancient book restorer.
The second chapter of this novel, "Old Dong", is about an ordinary-looking master who repairs shoes by the roadside with his childhood eyes, but he never thought that one day one of his awards was accidentally stained with a large piece of ink by an ink bottle, and the child was very upset. Father suddenly said that he had an idea, so he took his son to Xiqiao to find the old Dong who repaired shoes. Old Dong lived up to expectations and restored this award to its original state, leaving no trace in most places where the ink was soaked. From then on, Lao Dong's magical life was integrated with his father's story in Guo Mao's eyes, and we met a calligrapher whose lifelong pursuit was to restore ancient books.
Ge Liang's words are very vivid, which will make you forget that you are just reading a novel when reading, but it is like walking with Ge Liang in the space built by the words.
In fact, Jane and Lao Dong, who seem lonely, are persistent people in their bones. Therefore, one feels that the love with Le Jingyi's father seems to be owed to the little girl there, although the divorce of Le Jingyi's parents is inevitable, because the marriage between the two people is only an agreement between the elders and has nothing to do with feelings. Le Jingyi's father had planned to go to Hong Kong to marry Jane, but he had a heart attack and died in his own apartment. In fact, my father's wish before his death was that his daughter Jingyi could learn ancient books with her lover Jane. Jingyi has also been to Hong Kong, visited Jianmen and studied ancient books, but she didn't know anything at that time. It was not until two years later, when she was a full-time teacher, that she saw a book ticket for taking a photo with her father in a book sent by Master Jane, and then remembered that the teacher always paid homage to an important person every three days, and her father was also the anniversary of that time. Jingyi realized in hindsight.
Lao Dong lived a single life, picked up a daughter, but got his foster mother back. Lao Dong's lonely wandering is also a deliberate exile to himself.
The last article in this collection of Wamao's works is the novel of the same name "Wamao", which reproduces the history of the national Southwest Associated University moving to the southwest, reproduces many touching moments in that history for us, interweaves artisans and scholars, and links history and reality with Wamao, a local handicraft with a long history, and reproduces a history that future generations should not forget in the magnificent long history.
"Wamao" is a sacred animal to protect craftsmen. It can see the vast past and the endless future. There is a folk custom in rural Kunming, that is, putting a tile cat on the roof right above the residence. Wa cat is a cat with a big mouth made of pottery. It looks like a fierce monster.
The use of tile cats is regular, and not all houses should be placed. If you are outside the front door of your home, or facing a family's house, the local people will think it is unlucky, and may be "embarrassed" by the other side in their fortune, which will affect their fortune and even bring disease or disaster. So put a tile cat on the front door and purlin roof of your home.
In the novel "Wamao", we can see many traces of the evolution prototype of famous figures in China's modern history. In the ancient town of Longquan in Kunming, Yunnan, there are actually more than ten former sites of The National SouthWest Associated University period, such as Zhu Ziqing, Wen Yiduo, Pujiang Qing, Feng Youlan, Chen, Liang Sicheng and Lin ... These famous figures have spontaneously followed suit among local young people after the National Southwest Associated University moved here. The marriage between Ning Huaiyuan and Rong Ruihong also used a symbolic technique with some metaphor, which led to the later statement. The descendants of Ningjiahe and rong family were later two, one was a craftsman and the other was a scholar.
Ge Liang's words are brisk, lively and tense, and the nourishment of the words obtained when reading is quiet, comfortable and natural.
The fate of Rongjia daughter and Ning Huaiyuan is intertwined in the novel and fulfilled in history. These craftsmen and scholars are idealists. They are trying to do what they are doing for their dreams.
Their dignity, persistence and belief, like a prism, reflect most of us in this world; They are idealists of this era. I will keep walking until the water blocks my way, then sit down and look at the rising clouds.
Flying Hair is a novel about hairdressers. Two generations of father and son used the same business to seek survival capital, whether it was just a job or a lifelong pursuit, the results were different. Father and son, ideal and reality, understanding and misunderstanding, only silently resolved those discordant voices in the persistence of two generations.
Ge Liang's novels are what good literature should look like. They are not bloody or vulgar, but they have a strong flavor of life in the streets and lanes. In those quiet and long smoke waves, words give our readers a peaceful or complex world, which makes us sigh about life and know ourselves in those detours. I recommend this good novel to you and teach you what literature should look like. (End)