When the simplified Chinese version of "Direction" was released a few years ago, it was amazing because mainland readers have not read similar novels about the history of the times for a long time. Guo Qiang-sheng mixed the laughter and tears of himself and his peers, and wrote a blood-wrenching story that can prove the times in a gloomy style. Now his collection of essays "The Far Where I Will Go" has also been introduced to the mainland, and also focuses on the situation of single young and old people based on their own experiences.
"The Far I Will Go", written by Guo Qiangsheng, Houlang Literature· China Friendship Publishing Company August 2022
takes care of his elderly father,
makes him a better person
The first few chapters write about taking care of his old father, which makes people empathize with . Anyone with an elderly dementia at home knows that the solution to this problem is far from being as simple as "spend money to hire a nanny" or "sending it to a nursing home". Guo Qiang-sheng's reflection on this point to a fact that is often overlooked: his father is getting old, and the father who takes care of his old father is also getting old.
It turns out that aging is not a distant target, but a fast arrow; it is the tunnel in front of you, not the abyss at the soles of your feet. M·Knight Shamalan 's extreme rapid aging setting in "Aging" magnifies the contrast between aging as a result and aging as a process to an extreme state, arousing the viewer's fear. The two different aging of Guo Qiang-sheng taking care of his father made him reexamine the father-son relationship and the aging itself.
He also gained more understanding of his father's elderly disability. For example, I believe that my father is not dementia, but degenerate, slow, and weak, "living to 90 should be tiring." I even used a wonderful metaphor to say that the father's self-consciousness in his soul has not disappeared, but is just trapped in a space capsule where mechanical failures and buttons often fail, and it is difficult to receive messages and convey instructions. This way, it is quite gentle to understand aging.
Guo Qiang-Cheng-Cheng-Cheng-Cheng depicts some delicate scenes, such as instructing the new Indian servant to feed the meal, "You should still give him a pair of chopsticks, even if he doesn't use it. You can't feed it with a spoon, and the spoon makes him feel like he is disabled. I supervised and watched the Indian servant slowly practice using chopsticks, one bite of food, one bite of rice, not all the rice and dishes are placed in the spoon, and stuffed them all into the father's mouth." The undercurrents in such details are related to trying to preserve the dignity of his father in adversity, and are definitely not made up by people who have not experienced it. Even compared with the movie " Father Trapped in Time" which is famous for its delicate performance, Guo Qiangsheng's writing is not inferior.
However, there is another special feature in Guo Qiangsheng's family, that is, he is single. This is of course the result of sexual orientation and historical intertwining, but it is also affected by personal experience, temperament and accidental factors. The problem is that when the mother and brother passed away one after another and the boyfriend suddenly broke up, the heavy responsibility of taking care of his father for the rest of his life would inevitably fall on Guo Qiangsheng alone, and there is no plan B to choose from.
As a son/carer/middle-aged/single Guo Qiangsheng, on the one hand, he was afraid that his father would die before his father would die, and that his father would have nothing to support and only the wind and rain; on the other hand, he would inevitably have to bear pressure and discrimination from society. For example, some seniors said without any hesitation that the situation where the old father had no one to entrust was a "punishment" for Guo Qiangsheng not to get married.
. Guo Qiangsheng politely retorted against this attack on the spot, saying that all this was not a punishment, but instead made him a better person. Like many people over fifty years old, he learned to let go of his strong feelings, reexamine his life, accept being single, and accept loneliness. After years of washing, he can finally say frankly: I am fine now.
By taking care of my father and feeling the feeling of being single, Guo Johnson created a very different author style from "The Distant Place" in "I Will Go", which is very emotional and tenacious. Occasionally there is a chicken soup flavor, without hiding sincerity, and there is no need to be harsh.
"Break Times", written by Guo Qiangsheng, Houlang Literature· Democracy and Construction Press June 2018
written to young people:
You don't have this luck yet
00 Other chapters in the book seem to be dispersed, but in fact they are still centered around the theme.The most exciting thing is the last chapter of "Lao Quei Xing", which calls out to young people, from the lines to the lines without feeling and disdain, to almost resentment and contempt. Most of the middle-aged and elderly people on the table will say that they understand, appreciate and love young people. But Guo Qiangsheng dared to take the big flaws in the world and posted a letter to the young people almost from a distance: "Someone has to tell you the truth, instead of blindly affirming and encouraging."
Just such a direct attitude is worthy of praise. Guo Qiangsheng pointed out as an experienced person that young people have not experienced history, so they do not know how to avoid repeating the mistakes of history. The style he used is quite unpleasant, and it is easy to give people the feeling of relying on their seniority, and even deliberately said provocatively, "You don't have this luck yet."
If the young man feels disgusted by this, he might have really misunderstood him. The target of his firing was not the young people, but the era they lived in. He reminded young people to be wary of dichotomous thinking, and said that they would not join their battlefield and would rather be a guardian. Mainland readers have no way of knowing the background of this article, but his disdain for the present is conveyed to readers in its entirety.
Guo Qiang-sheng does not hide his outdated many aspects of his life, such as getting in touch with smartphones very late and using fashionable social platforms very late. He is even more doubtful about the mobile Internet dominated by algorithms and big data, as well as the standardized contemporary urban life. From the perspective of ordinary people, this is clearly a stubborn middle-aged and elderly person who refuses to take the high-speed train of the times.
However, he didn't think it was strange, but his tone was rather proud. He often was like a white-headed palace maid, muttering to himself about the grand occasion of the old days. He has a lot of knowledge about the collective memory of fifth-grade students, especially talking about his youth (like all older people). At that time, Taiwan’s campus folk songs rose and the economy was taking off. He said that his generation once believed in the struggle of love and would win better tomorrow, but he seemed to have lost everything because in his opinion, these values and ideas have now failed.
It is difficult to determine the specific mentality of Guo Qiang's conclusion based on this text alone, but his melancholy style reminds people of similar paragraphs from Zweig's "The World of Yesterday". It is better to compare the statements of the two: in the 819th century, I sincerely believe that I am walking along a carefree and relaxed road to the "best world". ("Yesterday's World")
Once upon a time, we naively thought that human beings must be evolving in a better and more civilized direction, and tomorrow will be better. ("The Far Where I Will Go")
Another example:
That is a generation of people who are confused by idealism. They hold the fantasy of optimism and believe that human technological progress will inevitably lead to the same rapid improvement of human morality. ("Yesterday's World")
Once upon a time, we believed that scientific and technological civilization and civic literacy were elements to improve the quality of life. We never thought that the weapon that should have complemented each other has become the spear and shield of each other's subversion and destruction. ("The Distance I Will Go")
The problem is that the things that the two authors have experienced in different eras, cultures and societies, a century apart, are basically incomparable, so why do they have extremely similar feelings? If you have to explain it, perhaps it is because human nature always has something in common, and scientism and rationalization sometimes do backfire on freedom.
However, what Zweig never forgets is the old European cultural spirit. As a result, the world collapsed and all order collapsed during the two wars. Zweig finally chose to be martyred with his martyrdom and despair, and he still feels sad and stubborn. However, in "The Distance I Will Go", Guo Qiangsheng talked about the shortcomings of the times, but only pointed out the shortcomings, did not list the facts and analyze them in depth. Readers leave a vague impression, it is difficult to grasp his specific meaning, and naturally they cannot understand why he was in the same grief as Zweig.
The female teacher who solves the problem
Why has it become a problem itself
It would be a pity if Guo Johnson didn't watch the Danish movie "The Worst Man in the World" last year, because the protagonist's ex-boyfriend Axel might resonate with him.After Axel got cancer, he no longer became interested in new things and began to relive things from the past. He recalled his free student days and hated the kidnapped of young people today by mobile phones. He prefers the culture inherited from specific objects and dislikes the empty and noisy Internet. He re-watched his favorite old movies over and over again.
It seems that Axel will be Guo Johnson’s soulmate. But Axel said he did this not out of nostalgia, but because of fear of death - after all, he was still young when he was sick. Guo Qiangsheng is different. He is almost sixty years old. He is not just a panic about aging, but more of the courage to face aging.
"The Distant Place I Will Go" also writes many characters, including amateurs such as the night market boss, ex-boyfriend, middle school teacher, and celebrities such as Yasujiro Ozu, Emma Niu Liva, and Camus. In short, they are all related to old age, illness, and death.
Guo Qiangsheng, who emphasizes spirituality and neglects material enjoyment, is certainly familiar with literary and artistic stories. Ozu and Camus are unmarried and live with their mother; Riva faces aging directly, and her later years of work "Love" focuses more on the sadness and cruelty of the care process of disabled elderly people. Guo Qiangsheng specifically praised Riva for her courage to return to the screen in her decay. "It is not only brave, but also a kind of generosity and compassion. She finally made the world's eyes face to face what old things are." Through the special filter of taking care of my father in person, Guo Qiangsheng is sympathetic about the situation and choice of literary and artistic celebrities. Interpreting them from this perspective is a layer of understanding and sympathy than ordinary literary and artistic comments. The second half of
is well written, and the first one is "Feedle and Rose". This article returns to Guo Qiangsheng's victory. He regains his gloomy pen and his feelings are full of thoughts. "A person like an angry wild dog will always be me, and you will always be me like jade and shines with cold light." The words are extremely heavy. Even if you just recall the intersecting scenes with a glimpse of light, the characters created in the second person have already appeared on the paper. Although the simplified version replaces some words in the book, it retains a few peach blossoms and roses, so readers cannot just use their hard work to criticize them.
"Chalc and Huafa" is also eye-catching. After retirement, the beautiful and literary female teacher thought she could start the second half of her life, but in order to take care of her mother, she lost her hobbies, expertise, privacy, and personality, and even lost her dignity as an independent individual. She allowed her mother and brother to be humiliated as "neurological abnormality" and suffered stigmatization for a long time. The teacher has changed from a person who wants to solve the problem of family care within the family to a problem in the eyes of his family. This story that Guo Qiangsheng experienced is shocking to read. Although the case is not typical, Guo Qiangsheng wrote it with his unique insight to remind readers: the social issue of caring for the elderly has a more complex dimension than the surface.
In the early years, Guo Qiangsheng also had another autobiographical essay collection "Why not be sad seriously", which revealed more about the stories of his family. "The Distance I Will Go" takes care of my old father as the main line, and through further understanding of old age, illness and death, we rethink the dignity, mission and answers of the second half of life.
After all, getting old is a universal dilemma and no one can escape it.
text/Ke Xiaoshan
editing/Zhang Jin Shenlu
proofreading/Wang Xin
