Black and white subway

Author: Zhang Rongchuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Before I knew you, you had your world, I had my world. We lived in two separate worlds, though we were both on the same planet. Unfortunately, after we had the privilege of meeting, we realized that even living in the same world doesn’t mean it’s a world for just the two of us. This book talks about some small life incidents and little feelings. The so-called "fourth person" is actually quite easy to understand—you’ll get it as soon as you read it. In reality, when a person interacts with the outside world, they simultaneously receive their own subjective judgment and an objective judgment of themselves from the outside world. One moment, they’re looking at themselves, the next, they’re being looked at by others—this constant back-and-forth self-examination is quite interesting. This can also be done in writing, and why not in life too! The story is quite engaging, with many scenes that resemble movie frames, like shots, and are very vivid. The author once said, "No one can live a completely ordinary life. Even if others see a person’s life as ordinary, in their own eyes, there have always been earth-shattering events that have happened to them." I agree with this. Everyone has their own story, and everyone’s story is wonderful. The beauty of the world is made up of the brilliance of individuals. The language in the book is like an impromptu, chatty style, emotional—haha, the characteristics of youth—and it reminds me of another youth, the one I experienced and had witnessed. Unfortunately, after growing up, it becomes difficult to truly care about others’ youth. Perhaps because of a tendency to compare horizontally, I might be concerned about middle-aged people who are different from me. This book helped me rediscover some of the emotions from my youth—random, confusing, yet familiar. Even though I also loved writing during my youth, my experience was quite different from that of the author of this book. Back then, I believed that the starting point of writing was learning, and the method of learning was reading. Through extensive reading, especially of classic works, I gradually discovered what was worth writing about and what wasn’t. I learned how to write characters, how to describe scenery, how to write dialogue, how to depict psychological activities, where to begin the story, and how to connect one event to another. What was troublesome was that after writing a passage, I would ask myself: Is it necessary to write this? What do I really want to convey to others? What message do I want to communicate? If these were clear and the answers were definite, I would then ask myself again: Will this passage be interesting to readers? Will this way of telling the story bore them? Is there a better way to present this passage?