Hometown in the evening wind

Author: Ba Yi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: He is a scholar, and that's no mistake; scholars must also consider efficiency. He is a businessman, and that's equally true; merchants must pursue culture. So, is "scholar diving into business" and "businessman engaging in literature" all of Ba Yi? At least I don't think so. In my opinion, Ba Yi's essence is creation—the writer, the celebrated writer Huang Ji Ren, a man born into poverty yet now wealthy. He didn't just quietly run his own business; instead, he drove at night to write novels. Most of the manuscripts in his secretary's computer were his own works. To me, this is already a legend of our time, and that alone is enough to impress you.
—Wei Bi Hong, Editor-in-Chief of Novel World
Looking back at the past, Ba Yi's narration has always been restrained and measured. Like life itself, it is plain and unadorned, yet it exerts a lasting influence on us, reflecting the universal imbalance between material and spiritual worlds.
—Wu Bingjie, Renowned Literary Critic
Ba Yi is a writer who expresses his emotions through traditional narrative methods. He strives to depict the people and events from the depths of his memory in his novels, highlighting the distinctive regional culture he is familiar with.
—Yan Jingming, Renowned Literary Critic
I strongly oppose purely self-indulgent personal writing. I myself would never write such trite prose, just as business requires integrity to be honest with one's conscience. Writing must also be clean and honest. I believe there is a criterion for this cleanliness: whether you are willing to show your writing to your parents, wife, and children. Any text that requires concealment in front of them does not meet this standard.
—Ba Yi, from his short essay Hometown in the Evening Breeze
The profound emotional impact of Ba Yi's short essay lies in his skillful and natural choice of a childhood perspective. Through the eyes of an innocent child, he observes a world where black and white are reversed. The tremors of a child's heart and the innocence of their suffering are truly heart-stirring. Some say that studying a person's childhood helps accurately portray their character; studying a nation's childhood helps accurately grasp its spiritual direction. We were once a nation whose spirit was twisted and lost, unable to find a path forward. Many of us paid a terrible price for this. Ba Yi's essay takes this as its starting point, delving deeply into the suffering of the rural poor in his hometown and its surrounding villages. His pen touches the folds of the nation's spirit, describing how it was twisted while introducing three "street spirits" from the small town of Zhao Miao in northern Anhui—Zhang Peiyi, Lao Zhuang, and Mad Grandma. They exist as "outsiders" in that mad era. On the surface, they appear mad, simple-minded, and disabled, yet they seem to transcend their time, standing as the three most authentic individuals among all the people. It is precisely because of their authenticity—of thought, emotion, and action—that they stand in stark contrast to the overall falsity of the era and the "collective unconsciousness" of the masses. As a result, they are seen as "crazy" and "silly" by the "street people," becoming the ridicule and leverage of those "normal" individuals. At the same time, they release the burden of suffering on others and extract a faint, bitter joy from it. It is this very quality that makes these three "outsiders" indispensable figures in the rural town. When they leave one after another, "everyone sighs with sorrow," their tone filled with helplessness and compassion for them.