I really like Wang Zengqi’s essay "Running the Alarm". It writes about wartime life at the Southwest Associated University. That article said that some students were good at running away from alarms. As long as they saw a clear sky, regardless of whether there was an alarm or not, they would carry water and food on their backs and head for the suburbs. But most classmates and people living in Kunming "are too experienced in running to the police and never panic." When running for the police, many people will bring books or drafts of papers, while others will bring gold or letters from lovers. For young men and women, running to the police is also an opportunity to fall in love. But there are also those who don’t run the alarm. There is a female classmate who washes her hair whenever there is an alarm because everyone else has left and the hot water in the boiler room can be left open for use. "The other is a classmate from Guangdong, surnamed Zheng. He likes to eat lotus seeds. This old man listened to the bombs exploding not far away, and was still stirring him up on the boiler next to the big library of the new school building with a calm expression. Rock sugar lotus seeds." At the end of the article, Wang Zengqi mentioned the "don't care" spirit of the Chinese people, and this spirit "can never be conquered."
Wang Zengqi’s words have a magical calling power. In just 4,000 words, the dusty history leaps out from his writing. He even wrote about how delicious the maltose and fried pine nuts sold by vendors when running for the police were delicious, and the smell in the air. The long-lasting words are so precious, and the wartime life memories of a generation are preserved through them. In other words, the precious national memory is vividly visualized and resurrected in Wang Zengqi's writings. Thirty years later, these memories were retold in the form of images - the scene of the emergency alarm at the Southwest Associated University in the movie "Wonderful West and East" came from this essay.
This reminds me of the way writers conjure memories. There are many ways to evoke memories, such as clothing, smells, music, paintings, images, etc., but prose is probably the most charming and fascinating. With black and white words, the writer magically constructs a space: there, there are the past that we have truly experienced, those breaths, sounds, laughter and pain. In this book "Even if Snow Falls Full of Cabin: 20 Chinese Prose Writers in 2020", 20 writers share their perceptions of life, reality, and history in 2020 with meaningful writing.
There is a kind of memory about this moment, they are the freshest memories of the times. In "Returning Hometown During the Epidemic", Deng Anqing wrote down every detail of returning to his hometown in Hubei from Beijing during the Spring Festival in 2020; Yuan Ling calmly wrote about his travels in "Beijing Drifter" and also wrote about the inner growth of a young man. ; In "The Clouds Turn into Nothing", Shen Nian records the life of an ordinary old boatman, his old age and unspeakable pain; Li Ge records the "bland joy" of life, which is an increasingly lighter taste. , is a movie by Hirokazu Kore-eda, and is a lonely tree seen on a mountain road.
Writing down daily moments is memory, and rediscovering life is also memory. Baoji Yuanye's "Song of the Past" writes about interesting things on the grassland, and the daily life of the grassland becomes a "familiar stranger" in his writing. "Walking Clouds" is about the experience of flying. Those running and rushing at any time and anywhere finally submerged in Zhou Xiaofeng's writing and turned into a kind of thinking about the living situation.
There is a type of prose about history, which is the writer's re-cognition of long-lost memories. "Millet" is a long-standing poetic text. In ""Millet" - Its Author, the Great Canonical Poet", it was rediscovered by Li Jingze: "The wine you drink and the smile you look up to the sky actually have a meaning. The roots are all due to the inability to think about and let go, as well as loss, regret, regret and sadness. This civilization, history, and human tragedy can be traced back to one word in Chinese: 'Sui Li Mai Xiu'." "Qian. "Sorrow" is Li Xiuwen's "Poetry Comes to Meet Me". This text enables us to re-understand mourning poems. Mourning poems are not just poems, they are old friends, they are feelings, they are the "majestic palace" when people are in pain. Ancient poetry is a salvage and washout of memory. It is a re-exploration and explanation of the secrets of things as things, poems as poems, people as humans, and emotions as emotions from the treasure house of national memory.
There is a kind of memory about personal past events. Liang Hongying's "Afternoon Story" and Wang Yao's "The Sound of the Piano is Like a Telling" are stories that are unforgettable in the depths of time, and are very sad to read. There is also a kind of memory soaked in the pain of skin cutting, which makes people unable to face it directly. Liu Daxian's "Hometown and Foreign Country" writes about the scene of his father's death, with deep pain buried deep inside. Siren's "Even if the Snow Falls in the Cabin" is also about his father. His father was once in prison, his father once betrayed his mother, and his father once brought shame to the entire family. Write about Siren's connection with memory, her reconciliation with memory, and her understanding of life. Even if our memories are covered with dust, even if our lives have been covered with snow, one day we will have to raise our heads and try to see the bright moon in the horizon.
Memory is care. Memory is entanglement. Memory is tossing and turning. The memory is always there. There are many ways to treasure our memories, many ways to awaken our memories, and many ways to brighten our memories. How to use all possible means to reveal the unforgettable parts of our lives? In a sense, writing is a struggle against human amnesia, and writing is the writer's "carving a boat for a sword" again and again. Years have passed, and writers rely on writing to realize their "dreams" - making time stand still, developing memories, and presenting those precious moments in our lives, just like Wang Zengqi wrote "Running Alarm".