The east wind of things slowly came to the world again. Peach Blossom couldn't hold back her blushing face and leaned drunkenly on Aunt Feng's arms. Liu Si took advantage of the wind and leaned down, Scratching the hair of passers-by, the clumps of catkins are like the light clouds falling from the feet of the God of Spring. They form a team, imitating the light snow dancing all over the sky in February and flying into the curtains everywhere.
The lush green grass is soaked with the smell of Qingming wine, leaving behind traces of tourists' clogs and cars. Everything is extremely exciting, maybe a little crazy, right? ——In this colorful and prosperous spring!
There is only a lonely shadow, she, leaning on the railing; her eyes, which have just woken up from the dream of youth, are still hazy and sleepy, looking at this crazy world, Bewildered, as if unable to understand the mystery of life. She is a laggard of the times. In the warm world of youth, she has been abandoned invisibly. She no longer has the qualifications and the mood to follow those who stand in front of the times! When she first wakes up from her sweet dream, all she has is emptiness and regret; she regrets the loss of her golden age.
Cough! The blue sky has already given people life and the green and red color to create society, so why does it stingyly only give us the most precious and fleeting era of creation of just more than ten years? It seems that the butterfly that lives and dies in this way is enviable.
They dance happily among the flowers in a short spring. Once the spring is over and the flowers are withered, they will die happily in the spring, as if they live just to dance and dance. It's better to be happy when you have fun. As for human beings, after the long passing of youth like running water, how will they spend decades of gray and windy life?
She has unknowingly fallen into the garden of the elderly. When a hint is discovered, how embarrassing it is! Moreover, how can one struggle in a movie-like life? Especially her, who hated the elderly ten years ago! She once traveled overseas, screamed on the high mountains, skated in the frozen harbor, and talked loudly in the factory. But what now?
The past is long, and the heroic deeds of the year have disappeared like smoke, leaving no trace. She can only sigh, and the youthful appearance and arrogance have gradually faded away. She was afraid of meeting her old friends. She changed her appearance and temperament only to add to their surprise and whispers. In order to escape, she came to this secluded corner, but the flowers, birds, wind, and sun also made her sad. She began to curse this overwhelming spring light... The dim green light made the desolation of the night even more apparent.
In a corner of the dark room, there was a mournful and solemn sound of chimes, accompanied by a soft murmur of vague chanting, "Yellow scrolls and green lanterns, beauty grows old and twilight, the same thing through the ages." She thought about it over and over in her mind, and a cold teardrop flowed to her lips, sealing her trembling mouth that wanted to speak but couldn't.
"Twilight" is Zhang Ailing's first essay published in Santa Maria Annual in 1933. Published in the 1933 issue of "Feng Zao" of Shanghai St. Mary's Girls' School.
Extended information:
Reading "Late Night", who would have thought that it was written by a child. It is really surprising that a twelve-year-old child, at the age when children of the same age are playing house, begins to try to use her pen to carve an adult's life.
The title tells the time. "Twilight" is a classical image in Chinese literature. It allows readers to imagine more than just the dusk gradually rising from the edge of the sky. With such a title here, the author writes about space and the scenery in space. Write about the east wind, the bright peach blossoms, the twisting willow silk, the catkins like light clouds at the feet of the spring god, and the delicate grass printed with the marks of clogs and cars.
Using unable to hold back, scratching people's hair, getting married, smelling of alcohol... to imitate them, a spring of indulgence, indulgence and madness is fully described. This first paragraph seems to focus on describing the beauty of spring, but at the beginning there is the sentence "the troubled east wind", which implies that someone is angry about spring, so a character flashes it in a flash, "Taohong is drunk in Aunt Feng's arms" " inside" and suddenly disappeared. But the resentment hidden in "Troublesome" was put to rest due to the appearance of Aunt Feng.
After writing enough about spring, the character who hates spring appears reluctantly in the author's writing. "There was only a lonely shadow, her, leaning on the railing." This was Aunt Feng. She "had just woken up from the dream of youth" and was at a loss to understand what was happening in front of her. The author described her as a woman who has lost her youth! The spring in front of her is just a shadow of her past. The author can read the character's state of mind at this moment from "her" sleepy eyes.
"She" is wandering, hesitating, and struggling on the edge between dream and reality, refusing to believe in the reality of reality, just as she cannot believe in the illusion of dreams. However, ruthlessly, the dream of youth is fading away little by little, leaving only the naked reality. What is real is the lively, prosperous and competitive spring and the eternal farewell to the warm youth. She is no longer qualified to dance with spring. All she has is the emptiness, melancholy and sadness of those left behind.
The author closely follows the emotional changes of the characters. The emptiness, melancholy and sadness after waking up from the dream all turned into sighing questions, and the hatred for the injustice of spring turned into a weak accusation against the Creator.
: "Ahem! The sky is like the sky; it has given life to people and given them the blue and red to create society, so why is it so stingy that it only gives us the most precious and fleeting era of creation in just more than ten years?"
Compared with the recurring natural spring, the fleeting spring of life is so inconsistent, which shows that the creator is unfair. Because I thought it would be better to be a butterfly that lasts forever, my emotions were ups and downs. Why bother with a human being? After a short period of youth there is a long gray life! It’s back to blaming and questioning the Creator.
Fruitless questioning. The author lets her protagonist look for the traces of youth for the last time in the trembling longing for the future, and make a final tribute to youth. Her thoughts traveled aimlessly through the time and space of life, and she became increasingly aware that she had fallen into an embarrassing situation in life.
She seemed to see an old woman, muttering sutras under the dim green light in the middle of the night. Only the dark room belonged to her, and only the desolate and monotonous sound of the chime accompanied her. "Yellow scrolls and blue lanterns, beauty grows old and matures, the same thing through the ages." Is this still her life? "A drop of cold tears flowed onto Leng's lips", marking the end of her youth.
Beauty ages, beauty ages easily, and youth is hard to come by. This is an old and hot topic, and the idea is not new. Using spring to compare is also a common method. What is rare is that a twelve-year-old child can control language and techniques so freely, and his writing style is so ups and downs. What's even more rare is that she has such an insight into life.
She quietly sneaks into the adult's inner world, examines it calmly and repeatedly, and effortlessly tells everything she has learned. Zhang Ailing blends a lot of sadness and desolation into this familiar topic and her usual techniques. She seems to want to push this life experience to the extreme and prevent anyone from writing about it again.
You might as well read this essay as a miniature psychological novel. You see, in the first paragraph, the author cleverly only lets the character show her face inadvertently and then hides it, but makes you feel that she is still there, but she just doesn't want people to peek. She peels back the character's psychology layer by layer, bit by bit, until the character's inner activities are fully unfolded, allowing the past, present, and future to unfold freely in the character's thoughts.
In the layer-by-layer psychological description, we never forget to let the image of youth provide some hints, so as to avoid the disconnection between the previous background description and the subsequent psychological descriptions. You will also find that there is also a climax of the novel, which is a specific scene composed of an old woman, a dark room, dim lights, the sound of chimes, and the sound of chanting scriptures that appear in the characters' hallucinations.
This character looks very much like Zhang Ailing’s mother. The woman in the work has traveled overseas. When Zhang Ailing was very young, her mother also went abroad to study for several years. She did not return to China until she was eight or nine years old, and later divorced her father. She had ample opportunity to experience her mother's state of mind. At this time, her mother was also around thirty years old, similar to the character in the work. Said her mother is the prototype in the work.
Reference material: Baidu Encyclopedia - "Chimu"