Xixi at the Kowloon City Pier Picture/ Southern People Weekly Reporter Dashi
Xixi’s life has been wonderful, enjoyable, beneficial and meaningful.
This article first appeared in Southern People Weekly
Article / Southern People Weekly reporter Sun Lingyu
editor / Li Qimiao [email protected]
Can female writers not fall in love? Yes, Xixi seems to have little love experience and doesn’t write much about love. But apart from her intensive writing, she also developed a large number of hobbies, and through study, she was able to transform all of these hobbies (traveling, reading, sewing doll animals, building Georgian style dollhouses) into her works - a beautiful model of lifelong celibacy. Of course, if you want to live like this, you must have the corresponding talent and perseverance. Xixi did it, Xixi is so cool.
Xixi’s life is undoubtedly an inspiration to young literary and artistic people, especially young women. There is no Birkin, no Tiffany, and failure to go out for a three-Michelin-starred French meal before the age of 30. There is nothing to fail about; you can just be open-minded and live in your own taste. This is feasible even in a city like Hong Kong.
is more fortunate, and can still gain close friends. When he passes away, there are still people who understand the profound meaning behind the seemingly ordinary way of life. On December 18, 2022, Hong Kong Suye Workshop released the news: "Xixi passed away peacefully in the hospital due to heart failure at 8:15 this morning. Xixi's life was wonderful, enjoyable, beneficial and meaningful. We will all miss her."
is not yet common in personal consciousness. In the 1970s, this short teacher began to serialize a story about "me" about Hong Kong in newspapers and periodicals. She looked at the life of Hong Kong grassroots people from the childlike eyes of a middle school graduate, A Guo, and later compiled it into a novel of the same name, "My City". In the same year that the novel was published, she retired early to focus on writing.
Decades later, she still has short hair and a serious smile, "I like not to bother me and let me live my own quiet life." "The weather is very good today. Later, you go do what you like to do, and I will do what I like." "
Once, Xixi had a gathering with her friends who co-founded the monthly magazine "Suye Literature". Everyone was drinking heavily and scrambling to write poems with brushes. Only she left three words neatly: I am happy.
Some people can't stand it and criticize her for hiding in her own world and not caring about society. She ignored this and did not argue. When she published a short article in the newspaper, she still did not talk about saving the country and the people, and she did not even use an exclamation point. In fact, she also wrote about social movements, hunger and poverty in the novel, but she did not want to use the cold social reality as the core of criticism, nor did she want to adopt a tone of sadness and indignation. She gave Hong Kong and the people living in this city some cute names, such as "Feitu Town" and "Mai Happy". She once said, "When there are too many tragedies and they are all written like this, I want to write more happily."
I started reading Xixi when I graduated from college. The first book was the eye-catching title "A Woman Like Me", a novel The protagonist of the book is a woman who puts on makeup for the deceased. This way, she gets rid of the suspicion of frivolous moaning and pretentiousness. Such a woman is very reasonable and interesting. Most of the other novels in the book are like this. Just when she is worried about being unconventional, she will shine in terms of structure or language. At that time, I felt that this was a work from the 1970s, and many of the younger generations could only pick up the pieces. ( Click to read "Sissi's Revelation" )
More than ten years later, she wrote "A Reader Like Me", which excerpted the "Letter to the Cobbler" by a Mexican novelist (she especially liked South American writers), "You are still young. If you have forgotten how to mend shoes, you can start again. We need good artists, just like all those people in the old days, they do not only care about making money, but value excellent craftsmanship.""
Seeing such sentences, I couldn't help but think of Xixi herself. We also need good writers like her who can "write anywhere" (there is no study room, so after eating the fried chicken rice takeaway, I turned around and set up a small stool in the kitchen to start writing). Due to illness, "I can't write with my right hand, but I can write with my left hand" and with solid knowledge. A writer with a naive vision who revisited Beijing at the age of 80 and went to the ancient observatory for a new work.
Xixi's vision is far broader than those who think she is "limited by her ego" imagine. She not only writes about reality, but also about ancient and modern times at home and abroad, such as the story of Qianlong going to the Mulan paddock in Jehol to hunt deer; For example, the novel "Qintianjian" published in 2021 is set in the Kangxi Dynasty in the 17th and 18th centuries. It tells the story of a young man who entered the Qintianjian to study from childhood to adulthood.
In addition to human affairs, she also cared about the endangered bears and the apes who also lived hard. She wrote books for them and hand-sewed a batch of dolls of various shapes; in July 2022, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press launched "Animal Carnival", which collects poems that Xixi has written for more than twenty species of animals in recent years.
Two years ago, Xixi was unable to accept interviews due to physical illness. She looked at me orally. The emails he sent were answered one by one, and his old friend He Furen, whom he had known for half his life, hit the send button. In her reply, she revealed that if she did not make a living by teaching, she would actually like to be a wildlife park administrator and be busy managing gibbons, golden monkeys, ring-tailed lemurs which would also be good. At the same time, she also sold a question that now seems like she may never get the answer. She said that she was making a doll of a third animal. What it was, she couldn’t say yet.
A travel companion who once traveled to Suzhou with Xixi said that she was a very lively person who would look for what she wanted to see, including later writing about Chinese culture. It is for serious research, but simply because I like it and want to create a happy life.
In Xixi's writings, the humble telephone cable workers in the city are important, the women who are not good at words and deal with dead people every day are important, those ordinary happiness are important, and every "I" is important. This is probably what Xixi has brought us.
She once cared for her tenderly in her poem:
In my free days/if you remember me/please write to/let me know/your news/please send me/your own stories/your own poems
