Introduction to Border Town

It is not enough for a person to have the real world in this life. He (she) must also have a poetic world, that is, an ideal world.

Border Town is Shen Congwen's beautiful and sentimental homesick dream, and it is Shen Congwen's ideal world and poetic world. People in border towns live poetically.

Border Town tells a sad love story: in a remote town with beautiful scenery and simple human feelings in western Hunan, there are two grandparents and grandchildren who make a living by ferry. Grandpa is over 70 years old and still strong; Granddaughter Cui Cui is fifteen years old, the seed of love. They are warm and helpful, simple and kind. Two years ago, during the Dragon Boat Festival, Cui Cui met the second young master of the local boatman and planted the seedlings of love. Tianbao, the brother sent by Nuo, likes beautiful and pure, and asks people to ask for relatives from his grandfather. The local Wang Tuan has always taken a fancy to Nuosong and is willing to take the mill as a dowry to marry his daughter to Nuosong. I would rather be a ferryman than a miller. I want to marry Cui Cui. So the two brothers agreed to sing and propose marriage, and let Cui Cui choose. Tianbao knows that Cui Cui likes to send promises. In order to fulfill his younger brother, he went out to the beach and died unexpectedly. Northong felt responsible for his brother's death, so he left Cui Cui and ran away from home. Grandpa worried about Cui Cui's marriage and died on a stormy night. Leave a man guarding the ferry and wait for promise to come back. "This man may never come back, maybe he will come back tomorrow!"

Based on Cui Cui's love tragedy, the novel vividly shows the local customs and humanistic beauty of Xiangxi.

Shen Congwen painted a picturesque, dreamlike and idyllic Xiangxi world for us with a giant pen.

Shen Congwen later admitted: "What I want to show is a' life form', a' beautiful, healthy and natural life form that does not contradict human nature'." The novel depicts the idyllic border town world with an idyllic artistic conception. People here maintain the beauty of simplicity, naturalness, sincerity and kindness. They are honest and brave, charitable, warm and generous, value righteousness over profit, and keep their promises. "All they want is peace of mind." Even the temperament of prostitutes in the diaojiao building reveals the simplicity of the border people, just like a peaceful and peaceful Taoyuan fairyland. People here live poetically. This is lyric poetry and genre painting.

The characterization in Border Town is obviously influenced by the freehand brushwork of China traditional art, and its characters are more tranquil and beautiful in the East. For example, Cui Cui is a natural daughter born from the aura of mountains and rivers in western Hunan. She is naive, pure, lively and tender-hearted: Cui Cui grew up in sunny weather, which made her dark skin, eye-catching mountains and rivers, and her eyes clear as crystal. Nature has nurtured her and educated her. She is innocent and lively, just like a small animal that can be seen everywhere. People are so good, like the yellow deer on the mountain, never consider cruelty, never worry, never get angry. Usually, when strangers pay attention to her on the ferry, she looks at the stranger with bare eyes and acts as if she can escape to the mountains at any time, but when she understands that others have no intention, she plays leisurely by the water.

Shen Congwen showed us a genre painting in the mountainous area of western Hunan with poetic words. Cui Cui's body naturally melts between the surrounding mountains and green waters and the spring breeze.

The image of Cui Cui embodies the aesthetic ideal of China people. According to the textual research of Mr. Shen Congwen and Mr. Wang Zengqi, the image of Cui Cui comes from three sources: one is the girl in the velvet shop in Luxi County; One is the girl I saw in Laoshan, Qingdao; Another source is Jenny. The portrayal of other characters in the novel, such as the simplicity, honesty and perseverance of the old boatman, and his enthusiastic attitude of valuing righteousness over profit; The ship is always generous, upright and generous; The handsomeness, strength, knowledge and righteousness of Nuosong and Tianbao are vividly in my mind. With meaningful pen and ink, the author praises the beautiful lifestyle and life form that has not been polluted by modern civilization, showing a value orientation of returning to nature.

The ending of Border Town is vague and distant: in winter, the collapsed White Pagoda was restored. However, the young man who sang under the moon and made Cui Cui's soul float gently in his sleep did not return to the cave.

……

This person may never come back, maybe "tomorrow"!

Every reader is full of beautiful and sentimental hopes when he closes the book, looking forward to the return of his parents and the day when the beautiful Cui Cui gets married with a red skull.

Border Town is the epitome of Shen Congwen's ideal life and his dream of urban life far away from Border Town.

Border Town contains poetic artistic conception and verve. Whether it is early spring, where there are peach blossoms, people selling wine, or early summer, flowers are falling and streams are lingering, showing a harmonious atmosphere away from personnel disputes. The author not only created poetic artistic conception, but also endowed the characters and scenery in his works with profound symbolic significance. The White Pagoda suddenly collapsed and rebuilt on a stormy night, symbolizing the end of a primitive and ancient Xiangxi and the desire to rebuild the future of Xiangxi.

Border Town is an "pastoral" that describes the beauty of human nature of Xiangxi people, and it is such a beautiful and tragic "pastoral" of human nature. Border Town is a pearl bred by Shen Congwen's homesickness complex.

Border Town is a novel, but it is more like a long poem composed of twenty-one broken chapters. The whole novel exudes rich poetry and gives people a very pure reading experience, so that Liu Xiwei praises it as "a masterpiece of pastoral poetry" and "a pearl jade that never grinds" (a collection of drunken flowers). Zhu Guangqian, an aesthetician, commented: "It shows the long-term oppressed ethnic minorities full of fantasy and sensitive melancholy and hidden pain" and "sings the voices of ethnic minorities".

Shen Congwen is a brilliant literary star in the history of modern literature in China, and his masterpiece Border Town occupies a place in the history of modern literature in China.