Selected Prose Works of Jin Yi

Author: Xu Baorong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: Traditional Chinese prose, some lyrical, some narrative, and some reflecting on the vicissitudes of human life. Regardless, they all maintain a detached and transcendent perspective beyond the realities of life, creating works that are elegant and refined. We cannot deny their literary value, as they hold their own place in literary history. However, compared to them, Jin Yi’s works are different. Jin Yi immerses himself directly into life, running alongside it. Struggling, sighing, his works emerge from the soil of life, filled with the earthy and smoky aroma of existence. This was true before liberation and remained so after. However, due to the stark differences in life before and after liberation, the style of his prose also varies greatly. His prose writing can clearly be divided into two periods: before and after liberation. Before liberation, the author’s heart was filled with melancholy and indignation, with a primary effort to expose the darkness of the old society and pursue light. After liberation, it was a world of sunshine, as the author unleashed his voice to sing praises of the new era.
Excerpt: A few days before the rain started, we could still see people walking in raincoats across the work bridge in front of the arch dam foundation; in some places, we could even walk down to the earthen piers and gaze at the water surging through the like clusters of white snow, bubbling up from below. Scattered water droplets splashed and sprayed mist; water flowing back into the arches collided with the arch walls, roaring and breaking the waves, sending them crashing back. The earth beneath our feet was constantly being washed away in large chunks, and we had no choice but to hurry back up. A couple of days later, work was suspended, and security was tightened at the entrance of the work bridge, allowing entry only for those on duty. More people came to watch from both banks, especially near the dam foundation. At this point, the water flowing through the had become indistinguishable, turning into a mist that obscured the dam. Even raincoats couldn’t protect us from the water droplets blowing from above and below, and the lenses of our glasses became foggy. Workers were driving wooden piles ashore to reinforce the embankments, while others rushed to move equipment and machinery that were still a few feet away from the water. Before long, the upstream water was flowing down like a small waterfall from Arch No. X. I asked my colleague, Xiao Wang, a technical cadre beside me, with concern, “What’s going on? Is there danger now that the water is passing over the arches?” He replied quickly and confidently, “No problem. We’ve been prepared and deliberately left two arches for the water to flow through during heavy rains.” He added, “Now, the water is listening to us.” This made sense. During the construction process, I had already seen how the Shen River would shift east or west according to the project’s needs. But this was a continuous downpour, and the water level upstream had risen to 2,000 cubic meters per second, far different from usual. I glanced around at the others and noticed that some shared my concern. The wooden bridge connecting the east and west banks was almost touching the water’s surface, and the electricity poles in front of it swayed gently like fine grass, a sign of potential danger. Pedestrian traffic had been banned. The political commissar and the senior engineer had also stood on the shore for a long time, their expressions calm neither with joy nor worry, which put me at ease. But on a construction site where work was usually tense, with everything now halted and only the roar of the great water echoing, there was an unusual sense of unease that couldn’t be entirely dismissed. Even when I returned to my quarters, I couldn’t settle down. Sitting was uncomfortable, lying down was impossible, and work couldn’t proceed. Though I had only recently arrived at the construction site and hadn’t been involved in the actual work, my heart was tightly connected to the arch dam. I thought: If the flood, like last year, were to sweep away three months of progress before the flood season, the downstream people would still face disaster when the summer flood arrived.