"Journey to the West"
Xu Zhaoshou
Published by Writers Press in 2021
2010 to the present has been a major turning point in my life. 2012, to be precise. In those two years, I was studying in Fudan.
Before 2012, I was a typical believer in Western culture. Although I majored in Chinese and Chinese dialects, I was full of Western literature. In the winter of 2010, I focused on the work of a few people: Homer, Joyce, Nabokov, and occasionally Günter Glass, Orhan Pamuk, benhard Schlinger, but it was too light to look at. I'm going to write about the Great Northwest of China, which is full of the history of China's ancient prosperity, but now it is deserted. They were all too light and too modern for only Homer's epic to match, but even so, I fused them to write The Wasteland Question. Of course, using the word "ask" in the title of the book is still an attempt to return to the middle Chinese.
In that work, I understood Chinese tradition and modernity in a Western way, and wrote the spiritual history of two generations of intellectuals. In the summer of 2012, it was basically completed. But it was also when I finished it that I turned to the writing of another novel, Kumarosh, which made me turn completely to the Chinese tradition. So I always say that 2012 was the year I turned to traditional Chinese culture.
It's been ten years now.
Ten years from graduation in 1992 to 2002 was a period in my life when I mainly wrote poetry. From 2002 to 2012 he wrote novels. After 2012, the current decade has been academic, of course, but also write novels and essays, mostly essays. I once said to the writer Sun Huifen that every ten years, I always have a big change. She asked me why it was ten years. I do not know. I couldn't answer her at that point. Now I can basically answer. It is related to the Way of Heaven. A cycle of reincarnation is ten years, and many histories are based on ten years as a turning point, and life is the same.
In the past ten years, I have gone west from Shanghai and Beijing, first back to Lanzhou, but from Lanzhou to the west, to the Hexi Corridor, to the ancient western regions of Xinjiang and Central Asia. The Silk Roads were my writing and research path. At the same time, traditional Chinese culture is another sub-line. Later, they came together. In a sense, my cultural studies came out of nowhere, not just from books. In this regard, I admire Sima Qian.
This collection of essays, which is a selection of some of my articles on the study of the west and traditional Chinese culture, is called "The Journey to the West and the Path of Enlightenment." Where to go west? I originally thought that Lanzhou was going west, but then I found out that it was not, it was Shanghai and Beijing, more shanghai.
The time in Fudan is only three years, in fact, two years, and the third year is to write papers, most of the time in Lanzhou. During those two years, I spent almost every day thinking and answering questions about what the West and what is tradition. I'll meet all kinds of people talking to me about the west, or I'll compare the west with Shanghai.
Most of the time it is a taxi driver. They'll ask me, where did I come from? What are you doing? I answered truthfully. They'd say, Fudan University, good, the best university in China, and then, some people say, Lanzhou, I've been there in the eighties, a small city, there's a river, and there are some buildings and buildings on both sides of the river. They just don't talk about the Yellow River. Some drivers also said that they had not been there, I had been as far as Xi'an, and there was no more west. In his tone, further west is not a place where people live.
There are also PhD classmates who have never been to the west, and he has the impression that we are all desert and camels. At that time, I was still at the Institute for Tourism Studies, and our colleagues at the Academy had all encountered the same story. We are always asked, do you have electricity there? At first, we were still a little unhappy, even angry, but later we were not angry, but smiled slightly and said, no. They were happy and asked, "Then how do you get to work?" We said that we westerners generally don't have much to do, so we sleep until we wake up naturally, and then ride a camel and ride a horse to work or school, and after going to the unit, there is nothing urgent to do, and we continue to sing, dance, and read poetry. They said, "Okay, good, how are you going to eat at night?" We said that because there was no electricity, we usually ate with candles. And they shouted, Wow, candlelight dinner? What a romance! We always say to ourselves, well, nothing, we still work at sunrise and rest at sunset.
I know that many people understand the West entirely by imagination, and I certainly know that this is the "effect" of our propaganda. I have never encountered such a scene in the south, just as when we met people in Yunnan and Guangxi, we felt that they had all stood on the top of the mountain and sang, but in fact, they lived in the city like us, there was no mountain top to climb, and some of them could not sing at all. Of course, like the Imagination of The Eastern World by Europeans and Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, Sayyid really couldn't bear to see this demonization of the Eastern World, so he wrote several books. In any era and in any region, people will be obscured by the reception of information, and they will also unconsciously produce feelings of center and edge.
Another scenario is my own comparison. For example, Shanghainese people's international vision, efficiency, civilization, practicality, faithfulness, etc. are all learned by westerners, and when they eat a meal from you, they will definitely do something for you, or they will not eat. Unlike us, when the meal is finished and the wine is drunk, the matter is not said, and it is said that we must wait for the next meal to say it again. It is not possible to say that the wine is not good. Many southern merchants came here with discomfort. I have also carefully studied, from the Xiqiang, Yueshi, Xiongnu and current Northwestern people recorded in the "Records of History", it seems that some fundamental things have not changed, such as righteous qi, which is unique to northwestern people, because they live in the northwest, and the northwest is golden in the five elements, and it is dry in the bagua position, born to be a place where heroes grow, look down on small money, but often can not earn big money. When it comes to war times, the northwestern people have encountered good times, but in the Taiping era, the northwestern people are like heroes at the end of the road. So I sometimes think, a lot of people want to make the northwest into Shanghai, is this possible? If it loses its attributes, it is not necessarily a good thing. But behind this righteousness and heroism, there is another side, a shortcoming that is difficult to tell, not to mention.
In that lonely doctor's dormitory, blown by the sea breeze day and night, especially on cold winter nights, I saw myself walking on the wasteland almost night and night. That's probably why I wrote Wasteland Ask. And when I returned to the Northwest after graduating from my ph.D., I did not hesitate to lock my eyes and actions on the ancient Silk Road, and no longer to the east, but all the way to the west, to the ancient times, to the sky. There is the tallest building between heaven and earth: Kunlun.
All thoughts and emotions were written in the process of turning west. Maybe some are too enthusiastic and therefore too narrow- some are too lonely to be understood; some are even too esoteric and cannot avoid being misunderstood. But I accept such intolerance and misunderstanding. This is my limitation as a person, and I am self-sufficient in this limitation.
The ones I would like to thank most are Fudan and Shanghai, and my teacher Mr. Chen Sihe. Without those years of study in Shanghai, I would not have been able to stand in the distance and look at the west, nor would I have been able to think deeply about the west and constantly answer to the people in the east what the west is. Especially when I lived in my student dormitory in Fudan and wrote "The Wasteland Question", I seemed to have completely surrendered my soul to the west. Geologists say that 280 million years ago, the entire northwest was a rough ancient sea, and the current Gobi and desert are the underwater worlds at that time. What a vicissitude! It is a joy to say so. I also understand that in the depths of my life, there is an ancient sea that has been surging and surging. It was in Shanghai that it mysteriously met and resonated with another sea that is now there. My teacher, Mr. Chen Sihe, has always told us the story of his teacher, Mr. Jia Zhifang, who has worked in Xinjiang and has a special affection for the western region. A few years ago, Teacher Chen donated Mr. Jia's books to Hexi College and built a library in the middle of the Hexi Corridor. Teacher Chen once took a group of our students, some of whom are already famous scholars, to the west many times to study and feel the western land that Mr. Jia walked through. Teacher Chen's father also died in the northwest while supporting the Great Northwest, so he has a special affection for the west. He once said to me that in the northwest of China, there are vast mountains and rivers, which are filled with great tragedies and historical stories, and are the places where great works can be produced. Many times I think that I actually responded to his words to return to the northwest, or from Shanghai to Lanzhou.
And, of course, Beijing. Especially the late critic Mr. Radar. He has read most of my articles and even referred them to some publications. I also said in an article at the time of his death that I would continue to take him on a tour of the ancient Great Northwest.
Therefore, I dedicate this book to the desolate Great Northwest and the bustling Shanghai, to my teacher Mr. Chen Sihe, and to the late Mr. Radar.
(This article is the preface to "The Gathering of the Northwestern Association")
Xu Zhaoshou
Xu Zhaoshou, Ph.D. in Literature, Fudan University. He is currently the dean, professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Communication of Northwest Normal University. He is the president of the Gansu Contemporary Literature Research Association, the chairman of the Gansu Filmmakers Association, the new century talents of the Ministry of Education, and the "four batches of talents" in Gansu Province. Chief expert of major projects of the National Social Science Foundation, judge of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award.
In recent years, Xu Zhaoshou has re-embarked on the road to the west, starting from the aspects of cultural form and geographical ecology, and written a large number of cultural essays, which are collected as "The Path of Enlightenment in the West", defending the western culture, with a strong style and unique style; looking for the cultural spirit of ancient China, looking for the future road of Chinese culture in the contrast and integration of Chinese and Western cultures.
Author: Xu Zhaoshou
Edit: Jin Jiuchao