Golden beetle

Author: Zhu Yaining
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: The main works in the short story collection are roughly divided into three series.
1. "Heihe Series": Includes The Great Assembly, The Bull Market, The White Cabin, The Rural Teacher, etc., all sharing a common background of a fictional world, "Heihe River Basin."
The White Cabin: With burn marks on a "Land Reform Manual," the protagonist's Han identity/erroneous ethnic features, the landlord Ran Mi/strong-willed owner of the White Cabin, the mother's solitude and hesitations, and the narrow encounter with a "wild woman" by the deep pool at the Dao Waist Village—such enchanting characters/details and suspense require bold assumptions and imaginative connections to piece together the truth. The plot of searching for the source of life (bloodline/ethnicity) is shrouded in mystery. All clues/queries ultimately converge on the "young man" born in the provincial capital and a graduate of the Geology College. The form of the work is ingeniously crafted, especially rooted in multi-perspective, multi-layered/multi-angle narration—autobiography/narration/secondary narration/virtual presentation, allowing readers to savor the mysteries of existence in the world/history and human life through following, reasoning, and even re-creation. The Bull Market: Despite detailed descriptions of the withered river, sandbars, transactions, killings, bull fights, old men, broken straw hat men, and plastic aprons, the "bull market" that seemingly appears out of nowhere still feels illusory and independent, revealing its "non-transitive" and "holographic" nature—compassion for all living beings, the metaphor of "a flower is a world" (though the soil and air between plants in the garden and the water between fish in the pond are not plants or fish, they are often so subtle that we fail to notice them). The Bull uses montage-style scene transitions, precise descriptions of scenes/dynamics, and rich, poetic language to become one of the most flawless perfect texts in the author's novels.
2. "Zhe Series": Includes The Watchtower Builder, The Stalker, The Breakout, etc. These works have no connection or limitation in subject matter or era, their only similarity being the focus on the different fates of their protagonists, followed, explored, and imagined from nothing to something. The Watchtower Builder: When false appears as true and true as false. Against a backdrop that seems certain but is actually illusory, the "colonel's staff" Tang Yougan presents a "fortification strategy" to the "suppression headquarters" to encircle and suppress the "Soviet area" and becomes an obsessive or compulsive person in the end—refusing even to use force against his superiors' repeated orders to stop building the massive "Gumaling" ( means "three-dimensional offensive and defensive engineering"), still stubbornly pursuing the "watchtower building" (his subordinates also become roles similar to the natives in the film Apocalypse Now who kneel before the American Colonel Kurtz). This reveals the hidden depths of human/humanity's darkness—fragmented, chaotic, unknown, incomprehensible, and unbelievable aspects like obsession, ambiguity, anti-logic, anti-rationality, and utopian illusions. Of course, we cannot ignore the influence of the external world's madness. The art of the novel: Through reminiscence, a slow narrative tone, and restrained, calm language, it reveals the confusion, absurdity, and unpredictability in the growth of the world/humanity. The Breakout: Describes the "Chairman Mao" trapped in a bandit ambush circle, driven by survival instinct, using all his wits to escape the nine-death journey. From the courtyard to Hat Mountain, from Hei Yang Ping to the riverside, Mao first sacrifices himself to break through the net, then uses a "golden cicada" escape, and later encounters danger while staying overnight with the villager Tu Laoer. Finally, he struggles to get close to the county town, just one river away. Unexpectedly, fate is not favorable—just as Mao is about to break through, his own sniper mistakes him for a bandit spy and shoots him from the other side, ending his life with a single bullet. A person's fate is thus lightly marked with an end by "chance." The Stalker: The person being "stalked" (possibly delusional) leaves home to escape and travel, but the "stalker" (possibly imaginary, hallucination, or misidentification) follows relentlessly and cannot beed. Out of desperation, they have no choice but to return to the "dangerous" home. The Stalker uses a "zero-degree writing" "objective presentation" technique to unfold daily life scenes and narrate events, as if readers are following a camera, satisfying their ambiguous psychology by secretly others' secrets.
3. "Luo Xiaomeng Series": Includes Early Summer, The Ridge with Oak Trees, Returning Home, etc., which can be considered a type of "coming-of-age" novel. In the special background of the 1970s, the shy and taciturn teenager "Luo Xiaomeng" grows silently in the desolate, impoverished mountainous area: "curling up by the fire in winter, staring out the low wooden window of the kitchen at the lead-gray sky and the dark-green mountains," "sometimes lost in some unfounded speculations." Chronologically, they belong to the author's later works (late 1990s to early 21st century), the most prominent feature being simple, plain, and natural language, with the earlier avant-garde posture seemingly replaced by a meticulous, realistic style. However, if we pause for a moment, we will find an unwavering dedication to the secrets of human nature and linguistic style hidden within the text. Taking The Ridge with Oak Trees as an example. The oddity lies in this short story of over 6,000 words, two-thirds of which are repeatedly blurred and painted on the environment (natural environment—seasonal climate ecology, etc.), with only one-third of the text telling the story of Luo and his friend Chen leading a relative to "the ridge." Through this seemingly disproportionate structure, readers can easily discern that breaking the usual "rules" and "norms" after gaining free expression grants a broader capacity to encompass life (everyday life). To view it merely as "prose" or "excessive environmental description" is far from enough, because the words outside the characters and plot do not play a supplementary role like "" ( means " and embellishment"); they have become an indispensable part of the work.
4. The Golden Beetle: One day, a strange pattern appears on the back wall of the cultural relic protection unit Lüyin Xuan in City A, the first to notice it being the vegetable farmer Qi Laoppi in the suburban Damaichong. In the next two hours, thousands of people gather here to speculate, with various theories and even rumors spreading. Over the following week, nearly 10,000 tourists from B, C, and G provinces flood the small town, causing traffic congestion, supply shortages, and accommodation difficulties, leading to social disorder. At this time, from the government to the public, all kinds of people make all kinds of strange, absurd, and even ridiculous judgments and interpretations from their own perspectives (positions, interests, illusions, biases). To find the so-called key figure "Green Nail," official and civilian, business, and underworld factions begin to engage in a complex, friend-enemy indistinguishable, open and covert struggle—among which, the small-scale, the misdirected, the self-obsessed, the real and the fake, the serious and the absurd, the off-key and the misplaced, the reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, the tracking and counter-tracking ("stamps, magic cubes, wormwood, flying saucers, dice, local opera, witchcraft poetry, astrology, three-segment yoga, and the study of unearthed silk texts all mixed together"), until the seemingly resolved but actually unresolved ending, a ridiculous spectacle is formed that is both laughable and inescapable. The rich, complex, and diverse philosophical meanings combined with the parody of detective/crime fiction texts make The Golden an "oddity" that is both readable and deeply philosophical. Its constituent elements are absurdity ("absurd" is the discovery and amplification of small facts/truths in daily life, the expression of non-real/reality, reflecting some pitiful, laughable, terrifying, and frighteningly alienated things). The Golden attempts to explore the blind nature of human beings—blindness, recklessness, and blind obedience—and their obsession with creating something from nothing, transforming the magical into the ( means "rotten"). Beyond the initial concept, the hybrid of various characters/phenomena/details/props and the juxtaposition of different genres in the writing may generate unforeseen new meanings. The author's writing spans the late 1980s and the entire 1990s, skillfully using realistic, allegorical, legendary, and symbolic techniques to blend regional groups, folk customs, nature, and historical reality into one. He also pays attention to balancing relationships such as adherence and rebellion, tradition and avant-garde, the subject's exploration consciousness and the reader's reception psychology, and ethnic heritage and cross-reference. The works are either absurd, eerie, magical, or simple, and have won the "October" Literature Prize twice and been included in the annual selection of "National Outstanding Short Stories" published by Shanghai Literature and Art Press, possessing high artistic value and market appeal.