Homeland Noodles and Flowers (4 Books)

Author: Liu Zhenyun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-09-01
Features: Liu Zhenyun's long novel Hometown Noodles and Flowers took eight years to write, spanning two million words, and underwent numerous revisions before being published by Huayi Publishing House. This can be considered a notable event in Chinese literature at the end of the 20th century. We view it as a truly significant novel at the turn of the century in China, with the following three reasons, or rather, three aspects of artistic innovation.
First, it is China's first truly "spiritual novel" in the proper sense. French writer Georges Duhamel, when describing the development of the novel from the 19th to the 20th century, pointed out an important change: the transformation from a plot-driven novel to a spiritual novel. He said, "The modern novel, in its essence, is a spiritual novel." Duhamel's description applies to the entire world literary scene, and it is undoubtedly insightful and innovative. In China's literary scene since the 1980s, whether it was works that revived traditional realism or new realism and those labeled as the "wave of realism," the best of them mostly only achieved a relatively unique and serious depiction of the objective world. Young writer Liu Zhenyun also followed this path, and thus he recognized its limitations. In the creation of this new long novel, he attempted a new approach—focusing on excavating the "deep-seated and hidden reality" and dedicating his main efforts to exploring the minds of his characters in a modern spiritual novel. This is the path pioneered by the 20th-century French novelist Marcel Proust in his monumental work In Search of Lost Time. In this sense, it is reasonable to consider Hometown Noodles and Flowers as a work in the style of In Search of Lost Time, or even as its Chinese version. We see that Liu Zhenyun uses so much seemingly mocking yet actually severe writing to dissect the mind of "the World Restoration of Propriety and Decency Committee" Secretary General Nao Jiu (Liu Laonao) and the various characters around him—such as Nao Jiu's wife Feng Dama, blind Uncle Lu, Little Ma, Six-Finger, and others like Liu Quanyu and the dirty man Han. In reality, this is an analysis of rural culture in China at the end of the 20th century and an examination of the soul of our nation. Broadly speaking, it is also a profound analysis of the human soul at the turn of the century. It is precisely from this perspective that we recognize it as the first truly modern spiritual novel in the history of China's new literature.
Second, Liu Zhenyun's Hometown Noodles and Flowers is also a meaningful experiment in the style of the modern novel. I believe that the novel, as a literary form with unlimited length and narrative quality, should pay more attention to style—how it is written. As China's novels transitioned from the 20th to the 21st century, the most important change should be the strengthening of writers' stylistic awareness and the diversification of the novel in style. In a sense, the coming new century will be an era that values style, and the creation of the novel, in particular, will be even more so. In Liu Zhenyun's new long novel Hometown Noodles and Flowers, we seem to glimpse some new insights. Liu Zhenyun has a relatively conscious awareness of style, and he treated the creation of Hometown Noodles and Flowers as a meaningful experiment in the style of the novel, achieving inspiring results. The novel completely breaks away from the traditional linear or block-combined narrative structure. Its structural methods are not limited to spatial and temporal interweaving or linearity but also include (three-dimensional crossroads) and other forms. It is based on a new concept of the novel, blending tradition and modernity, combining narrative, commentary, and lyrical expression. It merges the "Lao Zhuang" of Hometown Yanjin with the grand stage of the entire world. It employs various narrative forms such as descriptions of objects, letters, teletype messages, appendices, songs, folk tunes, and more, creating a new structural form that is dazzling yet orderly. The characteristics and significance of this new structural form, of course, await more thorough and in-depth research to elaborate, but simply browsing the work is enough to be captivated by its new artistic style. As for the novel's unique and diverse narrative methods, the successful use of parallel structures, and the setting of a mocking tone, it is difficult to elaborate on all of them in this short essay.
Third, the magnificent and rich artistic imagination in Liu Zhenyun's Hometown Noodles and Flowers is also astonishing, constituting an important artistic feature or demonstrating significant artistic value. Since the early 1980s, the revival of traditional realism, the rise of new realism, and the emergence of the "wave of realism" have, in terms of their spirit of focusing on real-life and reflecting the times, been commendable. However, people generally feel that as literature grows closer to reality and becomes increasingly realistic, it sacrifices the imagination that is an important expression of literature, which cannot but leave one feeling insufficient and regretful. When reading works by Liu Zhenyun, such as the representative new realist novels A Patch of Hair and The Unit, on the one hand, one is impressed by their subtlety and realism, but on the other hand, one also clearly feels the lack of artistic imagination. Hometown Noodles and Flowers, however, corrects this. Opening to any volume or chapter of it, one can feel the artistic brilliance illuminated by artistic imagination. For example, in the first volume, chapter "I" (Xiao Liu'er) and Nao Jiu riding the donkey of the "World Restoration of Propriety and Decency Committee" to visit the Lijing Times Square, the description of the donkey and the square is full of extraordinary artistic imagination and exaggeration. Similarly, in the second volume, chapter 3, the story of Big Shot Blind Lu and Bārā Bābā is also rich in romantic artistic imagination. This artistic imagination, combined with the satire and parallel structures in the novel, creates a boundless artistic style. And this is exactly what is needed for a grand work.