Literary Master 1983

Chapter 132 Happy Hunting

When the little girl Duanduan came home from school, Li Xiaolin used Yu Qie as an example to teach her: that brother got admitted to Yanjing University on his own ability!
"Look at him, he studies so hard that he forgets to eat and sleep!"

Duanduan observed for a while and said innocently, "He writes really fast. I can't even copy books as fast as he does."

Li Xiaolin angrily rebuked Duanduan: "Don't talk nonsense, Yu Qie's thoughts are flowing like a spring."

Fearing that it would delay Yu Qie's creation, whenever Ba Lao's friends came to see him, he would take the initiative to invite them to the balcony to chat. Ba Lao is the leader of the art circle in Shanghai. For someone of his status, it is definitely not okay if he doesn't communicate with people and participate in activities frequently.

Even when he was in a wheelchair, Ba often held cultural salons at his home.

Writers Shi Tuo (former editor-in-chief of Shanghai Publishing House), Ke Ling (deputy editor-in-chief of Wenhui Daily), cartoonist Zhang Leping (father of Sanmao) and others are frequent visitors here, and other celebrities in the art circle will also come to visit him.

"Why don't you go to the living room?" Zhang Leping asked Ba Lao.

Ba Lao raised his chin and asked Zhang Leping to look inside the house, and asked him to be careful not to disturb others.

Zhang Leping went in to take a look, then came back and said with suppressed excitement: "This guy is so handsome!"

"Hahaha, that's Yu Qie, the others are writers."

"Yu Qie? Where have I heard of that?... Don't writers deserve praise from others?"

Well, that's what happened. Ba Lao no longer cared about his old friend's words, and they talked about the topic of their youth: in the 1940s, Zhang Leping served as an illustrator for some of Ba Lao's publications, and he respected Ba Lao very much; Ba Lao also admired Zhang Leping's work very much and often promoted him.

In 1950, Zhang Leping moved to Wuyuan Road, which was only ten minutes away from Balao. So the two of them often visited each other.

During the war years, Zhang Leping also worked hard to contribute to the country and the nation as a cartoonist. His "Sanmao Wanderings" was serialized in the "Ta Kung Pao", which vividly portrayed the tragic experience of a lonely and helpless street child.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhang Leping was inspired to create "The New Life of Sanmao". The character of "Sanmao" finally had clothes to wear, food to eat, and could go to school.

Zhang Leping said, "I was watching the news today and heard that you were interviewed by college students in Hong Kong a few years ago and were asked which friend you would most like to bring to Hong Kong. Who would you bring? You chose me! Oh, I am so honored."

Ba Lao smiled and said, "I won't take you with me next time."

"Who are you going to take with you?"

"It's better to bring the cotangent than to bring you the other way around."

After hearing this, Zhang Leping sighed: "We should let these young people go. We are all old now."

Both of them are in poor health and have Parkinson's symptoms, which makes it very difficult for them to create. On Ba Lao's wheelchair, there is a wooden board made by his son, which is stuck on the two armrests of the wheelchair.

Although he had many desks in his home, this piece of wood was the only desk he used in the last ten years of his life.

The two old friends looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief, but they did not feel sad.

Suddenly, the wind blew open the door of the living room on the first floor, revealing a corner of the table that Yu Qie and he were using. Yu Qie was writing his novel seriously, looking very young and handsome.

It was a very common scene, but Zhang Leping felt his eyes moisten. He said, "Thirty years ago, some of our friends came to your place to eat and have fun. You were obviously the host, but most of the time you didn't say anything. You just wrote something on the table and occasionally looked up and smiled."

At that moment, at this moment.

Ba Lao nodded and also fell into the memories of that time.

Although he still writes, he mainly writes literary criticism and reminiscences. He can no longer write novels that have a huge world view, several story lines, and a very sophisticated structure, which can be written even if you lock yourself in the house for days.

His body would not allow him to create like this again.

In fact, Ba Lao was not a good guy. He was generally considered friendly and taciturn, but when he encountered his minefield, he dared to risk his life and wrote some articles with quite fierce words.

Think about it, this is the man who wrote the "Torrent Trilogy". How could he be a calm person when he was young? He still has infinite fighting spirit now, but the enemy has become the disease itself.

Although Zhang Leping did not hear Ba Lao's inner voice, he knew what he was thinking. "People say that meaningful moments should be recorded, otherwise they will be forgotten. I will draw a cartoon for you."

"What do you want to draw?"

"A picture of you when you were young."

"Zhang Leping, why don't you draw that young man?"

Zhang Leping said, "Then I'll follow your advice. Should I paint it for you or..." "Give it to the young man. I have so many of your paintings at home that I can't put them all away."

Li Xiaolin brought them paper and pen and took photos, hoping to remember this rare moment.

Soon, a cartoon was created: a young man was leaning over a table, working on his creation.

Ba Lao himself wears glasses, Yu Qie does not, and the young man in the cartoon does not wear glasses either, but there is a pair of round-frame glasses on his desk.

Obviously, Zhang Leping "created" it and left it ambiguous on purpose. This painting can be said to be a remnant or a painting of Ba Lao when he was young.

Yu Qie also finished writing a novel called "Happy Hunting", which was later written by a Chinese-American writer named Liu Yukun, who translated "The Three-Body Problem" into English. He himself has also won the Hugo Award twice.

This novel was also adapted into the eighth episode of the Netflix series "Love, Death & Robots", and the name was changed to "Good Luck Harvest".

The story outline is very simple: due to industrial development, the world has lost its spiritual energy for cultivation, the fox demon has lost its magic power, and has to transform into a mechanical fox. With the help of others, the fox demon embarks on the road of revenge.

But there are many political metaphors in it. The fox demon's loss of magic power is actually the process of Confucian civilization being shattered by Western warships and powerful guns. The original system no longer works, and it has to absorb foreign systems in their entirety, which means that it becomes mechanized.

As technology becomes more and more advanced, the beautiful fox demon has more and more machines installed on her body, which has made her lose her original beauty. In order to achieve her revenge, she dismembered herself just to become more powerful.

This is exactly similar to the painful cultural transformation and integration that many ethnic groups and countries in Asia have experienced.

In addition, there are some hints of the demise of traditional culture, people’s misunderstanding and reconciliation of traditional culture, and some other characters with political metaphors.

In short, this short story has several things that Japanese people can understand:
First, it opposed Western colonialism.

Second, reflection on and acceptance of one’s own traditional culture.

Third, the original novel was "The Age of Steam", but Yu Qie changed its background to the wasteland. In this novel, he gave a preliminary description of the worldview of the wasteland.

After Happy Hunting was written, I immediately showed it to Ba Lao. The novel has a total of more than 40,000 words, which is just enough to be published as a single volume.

After reading it, Ba Lao didn't know how to evaluate the novel: "I feel it is something completely new. I have never seen anyone write such a novel before."

Yes, isn’t it brand new?
It is too new and may only be popular among the Japanese. Mainland China is still too unfamiliar with these "wasteland, machinery, and organs".

Elements such as cyberpunk and wasteland are also very new things in capitalist countries.

In mainland China, Yu Qie has to continue to work on his new reality.

"Is this the novel that was sent to Japan?" asked Ba Lao.

"Yes, Mr. Kobayashi from Iwanami Bookstore has been waiting for a few days."

Yu Qie then said goodbye to Ba Lao, who gave him a cartoon created by Zhang Leping, on which were written the year, month, day, and the names of Yu Qie and Ba Lao.

This gift is truly worth a fortune.

Ba Lao likes to drink Pu'er tea, especially strong tea. Yu Qie bought a bunch of Pu'er tea cakes overnight and sent them to "Harvest" magazine, asking Li Xiaolin to take them to Ba Lao.

Later, the Japanese Kobayashi saw this novel. Yu Qie said: "I will send you a short story first, and then a long one. We will keep in touch. You can find me at Yenching University or October Magazine."

After Xiaolin received the manuscript, he stayed up all night reading it. When he finished reading the novel, Yu Qie had already flown to Yanjing to prepare for a series of exams.

Yanda informed him that there was a call from Shanghai: "Is this Teacher Yu?"

"Are you Xiaolin?"

"Teacher Yu, I know some Chinese, and I hired a translator to help me. I feel that this novel is much better than the wasteland literature you mentioned before. This is my personal opinion! Please forgive me!"

"why?"

“Wasteland literature is too vast and too far away. Although the company has trained me on this kind of literature, there are still some things I don’t understand!”

Damn! It turns out that this is too new for the Japanese.

In this way, the entire short story is used to introduce the world view, which is actually a coincidence and is just right.

(End of this chapter)