Selected Works of Liu Zhenyun · 1

Author: Liu Zhenyun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Xiao Mazi was born amidst the plague. — When I wrote this sentence, a friend with a pointed head and copper-bellied eyes, always watching the world with a predatory gaze, walked in. He glanced at the sentence and immediately said to me, "This sentence doesn't work. How can people still give birth during a plague?" Without his words, I would have written it anyway, but with them, I truly hesitated. This friend with a pointed head and predatory gaze is no ordinary person; we're not afraid of ordinary people, but we must show some respect to the extraordinary. Recently, he has written several hundred-episode TV dramas, each moving hundreds of millions of people to tears. His words carry weight. But finding the right phrase isn’t easy. Big dogs can bark, and small dogs can too; big dogs will die one day, but small dogs will grow into big dogs. So I dug through every box and shelf, citing examples from all over, trying to find a similar precedent to show that this wasn’t my original idea but something companions or teachers had done and written before. In the end, I found it in a book from a remote republic called Zhaowa, titled Love in the Time of Cholera. If love can bloom during a cholera outbreak, why can’t children be born during a plague? Forget children—even lambs, earwigs, cats, dogs, and dung beetles could be born. Where there’s love, there’s seeds; where there are seeds, there are children. Isn’t this an obvious truth? Even the wisest person can make a mistake, and no one is perfect. This predatory friend, though he has worked tirelessly to move a billion people to tears, has a small ignorance—he said that children cannot be born during a plague.
The Yellow Flowers of My Hometown is a meticulously crafted and dedicated long by the renowned writer Liu Zhenyun. In the early years of the Republic of China, the village head of Sun Village in northern China was strangled to death in an earthen pit. A single murder sowed a generations-long feud between two families. With the passage of time and the rise and fall of dynasties, the struggle for power and lust still led to bloodshed in this small village, which vividly portrays half a century of complex social dynamics in ancient China. The novel’s language is concise and humorous, with characters and stories full of charm, fully expressing the author’s literary personality. The Yellow Flowers of My Hometown consists of four parts, covering major historical and political events such as the conflict between Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, the migration under Zhu Yuanzhang, the imperial tour of Empress Dowager Cixi, and the failure of the Taiping Rebellion, as well as the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the natural disasters of 1960.
The Yellow Flowers of My Hometown breaks away from the allegorical style of The Yellow Flowers of My Hometown, instead adopting a parodic form to subvert the stereotypical presentation of historical or political allegories. The author steps out of the serious and orthodox narration of history and politics, like a child shouting that the emperor is naked or like the monkey Sun Wukong playing in Heaven, reckless and unaware of the consequences, casually speaking about the history and politics he sees. The way of speaking is closely tied to the content, and the significance of the novel lies in this breakthrough: by presenting history and politics in a lighthearted manner, they become amusing and entertaining.