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Harbor Book Review | "To the Upside Down": In Hong Kong in the seventies, our "yesterday" way of getting rich was written into the novels of the 70s who did not want to be "factory sisters" and lived in the dream of stardom

Harbor Book Review | "To the Upside Down": In Hong Kong in the seventies, our "yesterday" way of getting rich was written into the novels of the 70s who did not want to be "factory sisters" and lived in the dream of stardom

"Harbor Business Observation" Qiao Rui

Compared with the novel itself, "The Opposite" may be far less popular than the film "Fancy Years" made by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai under its influence. When it was released in 2000, "Fancy Years" appeared at the end of the film with the subtitle "Special Thanks to Liu Yihuan (chàng)", and Wong Kar-wai also said: "My understanding of Mr. Liu Yihua began with the novel "Opposite". ”

Hong Kong literary giant Liu Yiman's novel of only about 110,000 words, developed in parallel in a two-line manner, portrays the various sentient beings of the 1970s through the perspective of a man and a woman, a middle-aged man who moved to Hong Kong from Shanghai, and an adolescent girl who grew up in Hong Kong. Everywhere in the words, the author's observations of society, the record of history, and the "gentle criticism" of human nature can be revealed everywhere.

"Pairing" began to be serialized in the "Sing Tao Evening News And Star Evening Edition" on November 18, 1972, and the author Liu Yihuan said, "Most of the responsible persons of Hong Kong newspapers attach importance to economic benefits, and the serial novels published must have bizarre twists and turns or lingering plots to attract readers to read, and novels without entanglement like "Toppling" cannot be praised by the newspaper library even if they are innovative (at least I think this is an experimental way of writing). So after writing for more than a hundred days (a thousand words a day), I ended it. ”

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The way to get rich was written in the novels of the 70s

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The reason why "Opposite Down", which is only 110,000 words, has a lofty status in the literary world is not unrelated to its portrayal of three points into the wood. What is more significant is that some of the phenomena and human nature of Hong Kong in the 1970s outlined by Liu Yihu in 1972 seem to me to be like yesterday:

Chun Yubai, a middle-aged man who had just moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong, heard four Shanghainese women talking about property prices in a Restaurant in Hong Kong.

"My aunt bought a five-storey new building in Wan Chai last year, each floor is 20,000 or 30,000, and now each floor has risen to more than 100,000, and she has unconsciously earned more than 100,000 yuan."

"Why are property prices rising so high?"

"Who knows?" ...

Hong Kong is really a strange place, some people do nothing, just by flipping the house, you can get the highest material enjoyment." ”...

"I still don't understand, how can the property price rise so high?"

"The higher the property price rises, the more people buy the property!"

I wonder if people who read this book in the 1970s will occasionally sigh when looking back at the rise in house prices in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen in the past few decades: "The original method of getting rich was written into a novel of only 110,000 words." ”

Since the Central Economic Work Conference at the end of 2016 first proposed "housing and not speculation", a number of real estate regulation and control policies have landed. The two centralized land supply before and after, from the popularity of high premium land acquisition to the flow of auctions and cold silences everywhere, occurred in the same year. At the auction site of the second batch of centralized land supply in Beijing on October 13, 26 of the 43 cases of land that were originally planned to be sold were auctioned because no one bid. Just five months ago, on Beijing's first centralized auction day, all 12 plots reached the upper limit of land price.

Compared before and after, the speculators who "do nothing, rely solely on speculation to get the highest material enjoyment", the good days seem to have gone.

In that era of speculation, "Pairing" is full of fanaticism, fantasy and unrealistic "pathology" of individual fate, which can be described vividly.

"To the Contrary" is easy to remind of the TOP TV series of that era - "Genesis", and what people remember is Xu Wenbiao's classic angry comments on the real estate industry:

"It's not that I haven't tried, I've tried to keep to myself and work hard!" Earn that little bit of money! I tried! But those people out there, those people out there! Do they understand architecture and building buildings? They just take a little bit of money out, spend a little time, and make a lot of money by inflating house prices! Is this called fairness? You go and ask them! Feel free to ask someone! Ask them what they need! Their answer is simple, they just want a very ordinary and ordinary house! Why would they spend their whole life providing for a house? Because it's the rich people who are playing them! The richer you are, the more you can play! Is the world fair? Is the world fair? ”

From written works to film and television dramas, real estate issues are undoubtedly an important sentiment of Hong Kong society yesterday and today. In the same way, today's Chinese society is also deeply involved.

<h1>The girl who does not want to be a "factory sister" lives in the dream of stardom</h1>

Of course, not only real estate, the young girls in the book have a good yearning for "money worship" or "beautiful society", which is also quite meaningful.

Ya Xing is a native of Hong Kong adolescent girl, no study, no work, she indulges in fantasy, chat to live. Even if she just sees the posters posted on the street wall, she thinks, "Will I marry a factory owner?" If he were a factory owner, I would be against street tricks. He could advertise in the newspapers; he could install neon lights in lively areas; he could use trams or buses for publicity..." When Ya Xing, who was still a young girl, fantasized about her future partner every time, the groom was always handsome, "a bit like Ke Junxiong, a bit like Bruce Lee, a bit like Dillon, a bit like Alan Dillon." ”

When the young girl Ya Xing saw a middle-aged man selling horse tickets on the street, she would think, "If I can win the horse ticket, I can live happily." Just now, several fashionable outfits in the clothing store can be bought all at once... After winning the horse ticket, buy a new three-storey building: two floors in Mong Kok District and one floor in the semi-mountainous area of Hong Kong Island. I live on Hong Kong Island with my aunt; the two floors of Mong Kok are handed over to Abba to collect rent. ”

Whenever Ya Xing looked in the mirror, she could not restrain herself from thinking, "She is more beautiful than Chen Baozhu, and there is no reason why she cannot become a movie star; she is more beautiful than Yao Surong, and there is no reason why she cannot become a red singer." And Ya Xing's original intention to become a red singer is only to have "many handsome men like Ke Junxiong, like Bruce Lee, like Dillon, like Alan Dillon." These men would send me big diamond rings. These men would send me big cars. These men would send me the Ocean House. These men will send me many, many things. ”

Ya Xing's fantasies are in sharp contrast to her real life. In Ya Xing's memory, his father was an inexplicable person who went out on the street at noon every day and did not come home until late at night or in the early hours of the morning. No one knows what he's doing outside. Ya Xing did not know. Ya Xing's mother didn't know either. And the mother who supports the whole family alone is also gradually stretched, and wants to go to Ya Xing's aunt to get a little money to cope with the rent.

But how does Ya Xingxing, who lives in the dream of a star, know that life is hard. When Ya Xing came home from watching the movie, in the face of her mother's roast meat stir-fried vegetable heart and tofu boiled fish, Ya Xing said that she was tired of eating, when her mother asked her what she wanted to eat, "Ya Xing only pretended not to hear, did not answer." She remembered shark fin soup. ”

The mother of "Single Wood Is Difficult to Support" has repeatedly asked Ya Xing to go to the factory to work, but Ya Xing is always not interested, and she is willing to use fantasy as fuel for life force and survive in fantasy:

"I don't go to work!"

"You can't just stop working."

"Why didn't you tell Abba to go out and work?" Ya Xing's words blocked her mother's mouth and made her dumb...

Ya Xing, who is reluctant to go to the factory even if the family is in difficulty, pins his future on fantasy. In the fantasy world, Ya Xing can be a movie star, can be a red singer, can be pursued by handsome men like Ke Junxiong, like Bruce Lee, like Dillon, like Alan Dillon, can get rich, can buy gold and buy real estate...

If Ya Xingxing is fortunate to grow up in the era of "Internet celebrities everywhere" in which we are located, will she "bo out" on an Internet platform? Before there was Zheng Shuang, after Wu Yifan this year, the rice circle culture was hammered head-on. Can reality wake up the apricots from their dreams of stardom? Can the apricots who have left the fantasy adapt to the "factory"? (Produced by Harbor Finance)