Understanding of Zhang Ailing's Novels

Zhang Ailing, one of the four talented women in modern China

Zhang Ailing was born in September, 1921 in a family in the north of Shanghai. Her grandfather Zhang focused on nylon, and her great-grandfather was a famous figure in modern history, Li Hongzhang.

Zhang Ailing's father is a typical young woman, deeply influenced by the ethos and traditions of the old society, while her mother is a rebellious woman influenced by western culture, who went to France to study with her sister-in-law several times. After that, my parents finally divorced. His father took a "stepmother" like a prostitute. She lives in this crevice and is influenced by both eastern and western cultures.

She has three families, one is her father's, the other is her mother's and the other is her sister-in-law's. She grew up in this special environment. On the one hand, due to historical changes, the golden age of feudal literati is gone forever, and the Zhang family is declining day by day; On the one hand, these old aristocratic families still keep up appearances and live a ostentatious and luxurious life. On the other hand, colonial culture brings romantic freedom advocated by western society. On the one hand, smoking opium, raising aunts and visiting the hall, on the other hand, playing the piano, dancing and women's liberation. She grew up in such an environment.

When I was a child, influenced by the old family, I studied classical Chinese in a family "private school". Later, I went to Santa Maria girls' school run by Americans to learn English, mathematics, science, western history and other courses. Her mother wanted to train her to be a "western lady" and teach her to paint the piano. Her growth is also accompanied by China's colonial history, with the intersection and integration of things.

Since he was a child, he was smart enough to contribute at the age of 8, write novels at the age of 9, and many works were published in middle school.

However, her life is unfortunate. Her father and stepmother smoked opium every day, so naturally there was no education and care for her. Under her, there was a younger brother. The stepmother was a person with little self-cultivation, and her father was angry with her because of her mother's rebellion.

She was imprisoned for dozens of days, and finally escaped, followed her mother's life and fantasized about the free life in the West. Her mother taught her all the life in the West, but she soon found that she could not adapt to the "western lady" school, and finally gave up on her because she had no source of income.

After the fall of Shanghai, she studied at the University of Hong Kong, where she felt a lot of changes in gangs, family affairs, state affairs, secular cultural conflicts, and the exposure of human nature, all of which made her feel desolate about this society and the world. These two words are the most prominent in her works. These are particularly prominent in her prose. "Zhang Kan" and "Gossip" all have plain sentences about the common people's words, but there is a cold and profound resistance to the secular.

The characters in her works are also ordinary people around us. Bai Liusu in Love in a Fallen City is not as ethereal as Qiong Yao's characters. She is intelligent but also a person in life. Her feelings are for survival. The destruction of a city has made her a marriage. Can it be said that it is a much-told story? "Red Rose. White Rose" The pale smoky bird, those once vivid red roses have turned brown in life. Ni Xi in the comic book, the countless sadness and the seven clever tricks in The Golden Lock used to be many fresh flowers, but they all became vulgar hay after a short period of gorgeous. What did the squeezed aura become?

Her "Fragments of Aquilaria Resinatum" is told in the faint incense, telling the helplessness of life, the deeper incomprehensible emotions in human nature, what is normal and what is abnormal, and it is difficult to determine. What kind of life is a satisfactory life, how to choose the path of life and what kind of sacrifice to use? Wei Long sold her whole life to her feelings, just as she said to her husband when she saw a teenage prostitute being rudely taken away by several sailors: In fact, I am just like her, except that she was forced and I volunteered. That kind of painful heavy knock on people's hearts.

The desolation and sadness of her Farewell My Concubine can't be expressed by the words "I won't cross Jiangdong". Her "Jasmine Fragrant" is blocked by people's throats after reading it, but everything in it is not a portrayal of life.

How many people have praised her prose "Love": I met the person you met among thousands of people, and in the boundless wilderness of thousands of years, I happened to catch up, neither earlier nor a little late. There is nothing else to say, but to ask gently, "Oh, are you here?" A few short words can lead to many helpless feelings in people's hearts.

Her "Whispering" tells her feelings about home, her helplessness and her sadness about the old family. Talking about painting, reading, dancing, music, women, writing, and changing clothes all make people feel what a special woman she is. Her prose is colorful, her words are handsome, sharp-edged, humorous and witty. In terms of writing style, it is very different from other female writers, and it has become its own. Everything written is the daily life of the citizens, and both men's and women's diets are fading out. The general statement is well-founded, and the inner spirit of human nature is expressed in unadorned sentences.

Perhaps her love affair with Hu Lancheng ended with the word "desolation", which made her spend the first half of her life alone. Because of her intelligent knowledge and self-experience and perspective of the loss of family relations and feelings, she has thoroughly seen through this, and summed it up in one sentence: "A chic and desolate gesture". She tore the hypocritical coat with her own endurance and consciousness, and she was the one with a more solid consciousness: breaking the female myth and "standing naked under the sun".

Although she has peerless talent, she can't help being lonely all her life. When she was young, she had the same spare hate as in the old days because of a relationship with Hu Lancheng and his affection. Only in old age did I find a person to rely on, that is, "laya". He was ten years older than her. He was also a writer and a war writer. "Two frozen snakes were close to each other to keep warm." That life was ordinary and difficult, but she found her heart, but he died soon.

Her life is a legend, and her unconventional writing style is unparalleled. She restored the true nature of love between men and women, the essence of marriage and family, and the ideal state of romance to the real state of human existence, giving it a naked true nature, and all the romantic affairs were attributed to the dust customs of life. Zhang Ailing surpassed that era. She is a miracle among female writers, and her ideological and artistic influence will be profound and lasting.