Migratory bird mood

Author: Canghai Houyue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: A must-read guide for young people entering society, the masterpiece that shook the advertising industry, jointly recommended by the media, literary, and advertising circles! Also known as "Cried, Drifted, Laughed, Hurt," it moved and touched 5 million people, completely subverting the image of online literature. The Heart of a Migrant is a book that I couldn’t put down once I started reading. It focuses on the growth, struggles, pains, and joys of a generation, as well as their current living conditions. It is profound and authentic. While reading The Heart of a Migrant, I thought of another heavyweight figure—Haiyan. Although aside from that resounding sense of sorrow, I couldn’t find much similarity between their works. As a writer, I am stubborn, and as a reader, my obsession has even reached the point of irrationality. Strangely, being deceived is strange. I seem to be unable to let go of every word in their works: for Haiyan, it’s because I worry about missing every suspense he sets; and for Canghai Houyue, it’s because I worry about missing every trace of authenticity. Authenticity is truly precious. This is a book that could give advertisers food for thought and inspiration. Changing China with drift, struggle, and passion—perhaps this is one way to describe our generation of advertisers. For a long time, I’ve been wondering which word could better describe advertisers. The author’s thinking and practice have given us a great answer: migrants.
In the program Entertainment Links, I once mentioned Daniel Bell, who said that the most rebellious characteristic of capitalist culture is its rebelliousness, and all success is achieved by negating the success of predecessors. This negation and rebellion diverges greatly from traditional Chinese culture, so when China took a generation to transform from traditional agricultural civilization to modern industrial and commercial civilization, it experienced the pain of a torn and reborn civilization. The Heart of a Migrant is precisely such a masterpiece that expresses the pain and flight of a generation through rebellion. A teenager born in the 1970s, driven by ideals, escapes the old system but faces wave after wave of unexpected difficulties. Forced to drift from city to city for survival, he fights against the current and never gives up—his resilience deeply moves people.
I once said in the program, "Melancholy is productivity," meaning that in this kind of pain, people can be inspired to unleash infinite potential. If millions of people have stories like this, China will gradually form a culture of bold individuality, greatly enhancing its ability to create wealth, and having an irreversible impact on the nation’s progress. It can be seen that Canghai Houyue is making a great effort to record a piece of contemporary social history. Perhaps in thirty years, when our generation looks back at the transformations brought by reform and opening up, as well as the related achievements, we will gradually realize that each of us is a part of creating history. People born in the 1970s are generally wealthier than those born in the 1960s and richer than those born in the 1980s. But this won’t last forever—things will eventually follow a sequence, with those born later becoming wealthier. The 1970s generation has limitations; they are the last to experience poverty and also the most individualistic. Because of their imperfections, they have the motivation to constantly strive for perfection. They care deeply about themselves, their bodies, their dreams, the fate of the era, and their relationships with others. They are undoubtedly a transitional generation, bridging the past and the future, and also the most differentiated. Those who adapt will forge ahead, while those who don’t will be buried in the sand.
Society is increasingly becoming a fast-food era, an age where primal desires are masked and distorted. In the past 20 years, entertainment tastes have undergone earth-shaking changes. While we grew up reading comic books 20 years ago, today’s children are raised in front of TVs and computers. Twenty years ago, Chinese people were shy to talk about sex, but now young people in South China gather together at night to watch Sex and the City. This brings up another question: when social conditions change, what defines the value of a literary work? How does literature retain its readers? Due to the competition from other forms of entertainment like TV and movies, literature’s entertainment value has declined, but like other forms of entertainment, it still possesses a core competitive advantage: ideas or the ability to genuinely connect with the times and readers in a private manner.
Although The Heart of a Migrant deals with very personal feelings, I believe these very things are the essence of communication with others. I think successful literary works, like successful TV programs, succeed when they can speak to a thousand viewers but still whisper to just one—yourself. If you can convince yourself, if you can communicate with yourself, then you can communicate with others. Only in this way can you view yourself as an observer, revealing the "flaws" within—such as laziness, unfinished tasks, half-heartedness, and all the shortcomings of an adult—making the characters vivid and lifelike.
In The Heart of a Migrant, Canghai Houyue excels at portraying the richness of human existence. He deviates from official moral ideologies while drawing from various perspectives, resulting in a narrative that presents a multi-layered composite of existence. The novel depicts five metropolises with distinct personalities, showcasing diverse lifestyles, reflecting the appearances and different values of cities in the west, central, and east. Simply weaving these together into a story would be incredibly difficult, yet he handles it with ease, demonstrating his ability to create different characters. More notably, the characters in his novel show a trend of change and growth, revealing his effort to step out of himself and delve into the minds of different characters, allowing him to describe them in ways that align with their identities and personalities.