Han Shao Gong's Self-Selected Collection

Author: Han Shao Gong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: Han Shao Gong's recent novels are solitary, and their value does not need to wait for future recognition. At the turn of the two centuries, Han Shao Gong's novels appropriately express the contemporary intellectual dilemma. They stand alone, with no support before or after. — Wu Liang
Han Shao Gong's Preface: In this selected collection, both the novels and essays are signed with the name "Han Shao Gong," but a significant portion of them seem quite unfamiliar to me. The past is hazy, and I find it difficult to recall how these works came to be written. Their flaws and merits are both familiar yet astonishingly surprising. What kind of life experiences and intellectual inspirations do they stem from? How did certain sentences, out of sheer foolishness or cleverness, turn out this way? I am somewhat lost in this mystery. One question arises: If these works are indeed by "Han Shao Gong," then I am no longer the same person now. If I am determined to uphold my name, then they should have no connection to it—purely the voice of another person. Out of curiosity, I wish to learn everything about this namesake. I want to know how he embarked from the station, how he fell ill in a rainy night, how he hurried or sat motionless on the street, how he once squandered his days without a second thought, until one day he was startled by the adult weariness he saw in the mirror. I feel an inexplicable sense of sorrow and apology toward him. With my current experience, I am certain I can point out many of his immaturity, recklessness, superficiality, and blindness. On many issues, I might even engage in fierce debates and arguments with him. The Romanian writer E.M. Cioran must have written this line before his old works: "After certain experiences, we should change our names, since we ourselves are no longer the same" (After certain experiences, we should change names, since we ourselves are no longer the same). Unfortunately, it is difficult to change our names, just as it is hard to erase the birthmarks bestowed by our parents. Thus, we and our past share a name but are not truly the same—we are more like two, three, or four people who reluctantly share the same name. Our cells are constantly renewing at a microscopic level, yet in the grand scheme of time, they endure eternally. Within us flows a multitude of selves, each occupying its own position in different life circumstances and cultural lineages. Yet once time passes, they are forgotten and reduced to a single entity, frozen in the present body. That is all. The irreversibility of time prevents us from returning to the past and becoming the same unfamiliar namesake again. Similarly, the irreversibility of time prevents us from anchoring in the present, for at some future moment, we will again become an unfamiliar namesake, gazing back at our past with bewildered eyes. In this process, "this me" is not "me," and "that him" is not "him." Deaths without funerals and births without cries occur frequently, and in our hasty, busy lives, we repeatedly divide or reincarnate spiritually, habitually claiming the past in memory—claiming those namesakes. Just as we habitually distance ourselves from or even reject many namesakes, thinking they have nothing to do with us.
As evidence of time, writing records all of this, bringing together the many selves within a person for a parting reunion. It allows members of this namesake club to observe and examine each other closely: Who are they? Why are they like this? This does not mean we are free from responsibility toward one another. What matters is that we may gain an additional measure of detached awareness—both in the present and in the future.
This selected collection, enthusiastically published by Hainan Publishing House, has given me the chance to search for my lost past, as if picking up scattered shadows and arranging them in a mirror to form almost someone else's likeness. Writing is a strange mirror like this. I have no choice but to accept the urgency, vastness, solemnity, and helplessness of every life reflected in it.