Read. Issue 2

Author: Zhu Yong, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-08-01
Features: Time never listens to anyone, and through intervening in reading, it ultimately intervenes in the work—subverting its significance. An ostensibly immortal work may be utterly transformed by time, ultimately becoming a cautionary example. Monopolizing time can be considered the greatest form of hegemony, but it can never succeed; only through its own failure can it prove the absolute authority of time. Time is not material; it possesses fluidity and is uncontrollable. An emperor not only seeks to control vast spaces but also aims to control boundless time. They achieve their dreams of eternity by occupying space. This dream may exist in everyone; for example, writers may have a craving for time, but their means of acquiring it are not through grand enterprises or substantial wealth, but through writing. A work with significant impact allows them to gain both space and time. However, this is a delusion for some writers and an aspiration for others. Even for the greatest writers, time never submits to anyone, and through intervening in reading, it ultimately intervenes in the work—subverting its significance. An ostensibly immortal work may be utterly transformed by time, ultimately becoming a cautionary example. Monopolizing time can be considered the greatest form of hegemony, but it can never succeed; only through its own failure can it prove the absolute authority of time.
This issue continues the theme of "rich in personality but not in subject matter," selecting articles that often extend and "read against" works. Whether it's the familiar "Rooster Crowing at Midnight" or the commonplace Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun, or Benjamin, Pan Jinlian, and the "imperial unconscious" from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings, these examples illustrate the evolution of readers and the immense elasticity of a work's value space.
The rooster that crows at midnight, Jiang Lan, has recently been the subject of online reflections on the feasibility and class nature of "Rooster Crowing at Midnight," with the conclusion being, "Clearly, 'Rooster Crowing at Midnight' defies common sense. It delivers a perfect 'black humor' to the Bible, which advocates that literary creation must 'draw from life but transcend it.' Moreover, it's quite absurd that with so many sensible people in China, no one has ever questioned it?" Since the issue has already reached the point of being the lone voice in a sea of, perhaps we should re-examine this famous novel.
"Rooster Crowing at Midnight" comes from Chapter 9 of Gao Yubao's novel Gao Yubao, published in 1955. The book has been translated into over 20 languages worldwide, with the Chinese version alone having sold over 4.5 million copies. It has been adapted into 24 types of picture books and 12 forms of artistic performances, including the influential puppet film by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, released in 1964. The author pioneered the practice of combining his name with the book title, a rarity even abroad. Overnight, he gained fame, reflecting his relentless effort to transform from an illiterate into a renowned writer.
I have no intention of discussing the class nature or literary merit of this book. The author's aggressive, cartoonish writing style was acceptable in that era, aligning with the writing norms of the time. What interests me are the characters Zhou Bapi and his wife. Zhou Bapi's real name is Zhou Chunfu, but his wife never appears in the novel. Even when Zhou Bapi is severely beaten, shot twice by Japanese soldiers, and incontinent, it is his granddaughter, Daxiangchong, who cares for him. In Zhou Bapi's dialogue, there is only one mention of his wife: "It's all your mother's fault." This mysterious woman is likely deceased, or else she is a traditional, virtuous wife who cannot appear in Gao Yubao's perspective. However, Gao Yubao once held dual roles as a pig herder and a night soil remover, making it impossible for him to avoid meeting the landlord's wife. The conclusion is that Zhou Bapi is a widower. As for the landlord's wife's death, the satisfying explanation is that the two miserly individuals exhausted each other, with one ultimately collapsing and withdrawing from the "miserliness competition." As Pryzhikhin illustrates, widowers are prone to being impatient, miserly, and suspicious, just like Pryzhikhin.
How miserly was Zhou Bapi? In Chapter 10 of the book, there is a rough description of Zhou Bapi being severely injured and hiring a doctor. The doctor, seeing his slow payment and suspicious demeanor, demands 500,000 yuan, with additional fees for house calls. Zhou Bapi suffers from gunshot wounds and financial losses, making recovery seem unlikely. Miserliness is not exclusive to the elderly. A person's behavior in youth, under the relentless drive to amass wealth, only intensifies with age. Chinese people often praise miserliness as "knowing how to manage finances," and Confucius advised the elderly to "beware of greed." It seems that the older one gets, the more greedy and miserly they become. On a downward slope, desires, driven by inertia and momentum, only accelerate.
Interestingly, Zhou Bapi's audacious act of crowing at midnight requires him to overcome immense psychological pressure from traditional ethics. Roosters typically crow three times—once around midnight, again between 4 and 5 a.m., and a third time before dawn, leading to the folk saying, "A rooster crows three times, and the day will break." However, if a rooster crows at midnight, it is considered an inauspicious sign. After deeply contemplating time, Zhou the landlord overcomes the ethical barriers of fate and must also break the natural rhythm. Saving money is no match for saving time; time is not money, but its value is supreme. Naturally, he rises earlier than the laborers, and with his ventriloquist skills, he not only disrupts their sense of time but also confuses the roosters in the coop, making them crow in unison with him. "Rooster crowing" becomes a crucial reference point for understanding time, and its renaming—such as calling 5 a.m. "3 a.m."—becomes a beacon of God in an environment where people lack a sense of time. Under its illumination, the namer's personal value is vigorously cultivated in the fields of hope.
This attempt to break biological rhythms reminds me of popular time management practices abroad. How to accomplish as much as possible within limited time and achieve maximum wealth is a puzzle that time management gurus tirelessly ponder. Looking at the four generations of time management theories so far, Zhou Bapi employs the third generation: simply put, "prioritizing daily planning and arrangements to achieve the ideal of human dominance over fate." Canceling the of time with the crow of a rooster, deleting the right to dream—just like using alarm clocks and other timing devices to urge people to stay ahead of time—the purpose is the same. It can be said that Zhou Bapi, without formal instruction, has become a practitioner of time management.
In the crowded gallery of misers and money hoarders, Molière's Abbot and Gogol's Pryzhikhin, Balzac's Grandet and Wu Jingzi's Yan Gongsheng—all embody their greed for money and stinginess toward others, themselves, and their families. Yet few are as obsessed with stealing time as Zhou Bapi. I believe that through this portrayal, Zhou Bapi has entered this eternal gallery. This may be something the famous writer Gao Yubao never anticipated.
Even more strangely, today's bosses who manage with an iron fist often justify their actions with confidence. Like goldfish in a glass enclosure, they oversee every move of their employees, even regulating specific bathroom times, with water and electricity cut off if the rules are exceeded. According to Gao Yubao's novel, after learning to crow at midnight, Zhou Bapi goes home to sleep. These bosses in "fish tanks" have no place to sleep, staring with dead fish eyes, forced to entertain their employees.
It is reported that Gao Yubao has written several hundred thousand more words for a sequel to Gao Yubao, which is set to be published. I suggest he continue Zhou the landlord's "Rooster Crowing at Midnight" to its climax: Zhou Bapi, dazed and staggering toward the chicken coop, is doing deep breaths when he suddenly hears a rooster crow, shocking him half to death. It turns out his kind but determined wife, unwilling to accept defeat, has joined the race to reclaim the naming rights of time. As for what would happen if these two misers opened a business together, I think many similar conclusions in the business world are well-known to all.
August 29, 2001, while ill