Ping Lu: A well-known novelist and columnist in Taiwan, known for his cultural and social commentary. He was the editor-in-chief of the supplementary magazine of The China Times Evening News, the chief writer of China Times, and the director of the Guanghua Culture and News Center in Hong Kong. Representative works include "Death of cornfield", "He Rijun's Return", "Blackwater", "Exposed Heart" and new works "Gap".
Concerned about social issues, percussing people's hearts, until half a life later, he suddenly unveiled the biggest mystery of his life, and turned the problem of suffering from two cancers into a heart path and homework sharing. Taiwanese writer Ping Lu's writing seems to have different contexts, but in fact, he tries his best to explore the truth and the complexity of human nature under the surface of the situation. As Kant said, the curved wood of human nature can never make anything straight. When you look closely, there are always obscure and dark corners, and you can't find the absolute truth. ”
Article / Reporter Deng Yu from Beijing
Edited by / Rain Monk [email protected]
ripples
The smile is sweet, but the killing method is as cold-blooded as a snake and scorpion.
Wearing a gray striped vest and accidentally revealing the red underwear straps, it seems to be hoping that the red underwear will bring good luck and escape death.
To this day, searching the Internet for the news of the 2013 "Bali Double Corpse Case in Taiwan's New Taipei City", about the convicted coffee shop manager Xie Yihan, the media description is still impressive, full of pointing adjectives.
In the same year, Xie Yihan, the 27-year-old manager of Mamazui Coffee Shop, was accused of coveting money, and killed Chen Jinfu, a regular customer of the coffee shop and a 79-year-old wealthy businessman, and his wife Zhang Cuiping, and then threw them into the river.
The murderer was young and handsome; the deceased had financial means and his wife was a university professor. The place where the incident occurred is located in the suburbs of Taipei, on the walking or cycling route of ordinary people. Coffee shops have a literary tone, not the dark corners of other criminal cases. For a time, the city was full of wind and rain, and Xie Yihan became the target of the people carrying the name of "Snake and Scorpion Woman".
Xie Yihan confessed to the crime, but also confessed that she had dealings with Chen Jinfu and was blackmailed by him, who also encouraged her to kill his wife with him to obtain money. The court did not accept this, asking "Why do you still have to appeal, why haven't you atone for it?" ”
In the view of the Taiwanese writer Ping Lu, everyone only feels that the murderer must be a bad person, and the victim must be harmless. As if you could see the mark carved on a person's forehead, "You can see that if you throw a stone at her, we will be safe." Of course, the defendant is not innocent, but why did she kill people? No one is interested. There are even tourists who come to take pictures and punch cards, and some people put unwarranted things on the coffee shop owner and so on. ”
She remembered the sentence written by D.M Thomas in "The White Inn": "The human soul is a distant country, out of reach, and if you want to reach it successfully, you must first create a good harbor between the cliffs." ”
The novel "Blackwater", which is based on this case, was published at the end of 2015. Pinglu found comments on the case from people of different identities on the Internet, memories of the victim's family, interrogation records of prosecutors and judges, and interviews with the murderer's boyfriend. Although he deliberately did not disturb any of the parties, Pinglu often paced at the scene of the crime, asking and answering in his heart, "How did you get to this step?" ”
Her store manager Jia Zhen imagines the ideal picture of opening her own coffee shop after marrying her boyfriend Xian Ming. She is convinced that if she owns a coffee shop, her life will go on with the flow. However, Hong Bo, who often comes to the store, threatens Jia Zhen, who is about to get married, with the abnormal relationship between the two. Desperate, Jiazhen walks toward Hong Tai, hoping to gain understanding. The other party contemptuously regarded her as a "girlfriend" and called her "a slut".
Not knowing how to end and bypass the difficulty of Hongbo, he was stimulated by Hongtai, and Jiazhen in the panic made a big mistake.
What Ping Lu cares about is not the case itself, but the hopelessness of the women represented by Jia Zhen and Hong Tai in life, the intricate hearts of those who do not add points, and the "black water" that flocks to the victims and perpetrators without adding points. "Fiction is nothing more than the beginning of the journey to the truth, the first port you find. When you read a novel, you may temporarily take off the colored glasses you have worn for many years, and at the same time you see other people's colored glasses. ”
reconstitution
Pinglu's real name is "Luping". There is a passage circulating in Taiwan's literary circles: Once Pinglu lost a bet with a friend, he said that he wrote his name backwards, and also self-deprecating: "Luping's 'ping' is an adjective, and Pinglu's 'ping' becomes a verb, indicating strength and ambition, and going to open the way by yourself." ”
In college, 18-year-old Ping Lu entered the Psychology Department of National Taiwan University, and the atmosphere in the department encouraged students to discover themselves and be the person they wanted to be. "In the conservative Taiwanese society of that year, the inspiration of our department to students was very different." At that time, going abroad was the only way for Taiwanese to succeed, and the peaceful road was no exception. Because of a scholarship from the Department of Educational Statistics at the University of Iowa, she transferred to the Department of Mathematics and earned a Master of Statistics in Mathematics. After graduation, I found things in the big American company in Washington DC, commuted to work every day, and lived on a set track, just like the large cornfield that commuted to work, and saw a smooth road, but also a monotonous and smooth future.
"Is that how the days go on?" What if I forget my native language? Will you be dreaming of speaking English one day? "Go to the bathroom, pinglu was shocked to see the person in the mirror, and the one who told me about Chinese before was two people."
"Speaking English is different from Chinese, speaking English is more exaggerated, and the use of mouth muscles is not the same." I'm afraid that after a while, I may not even recognize myself. ”
In the gap between work, she wrote her important short debut, "The Death of the Cornfield". The reporter in the book, "I", read the obituary in the newspaper about Chen Xishan, a Chinese-American suicide, and his heart was moved, and he wanted to seek the beginning and end of the matter. After visiting chen's people, "I" more and more found that I had something in common with Chen Xishan: "The United States is a dream, marriage is a dream, and all the speculations only reflect my own state of mind." He had lived hard. I, for my part, am becoming more and more distant from the dirt, my profession is hypocritical, and everything is just pompous. ”
Critics often use the "nostalgia" of overseas Chinese writers to define the connotation of this novel. The flat road does not think so. "In fact, there is the look of your youth, the love you miss the most, the feelings for the land, the time that cannot be turned back, and the vicissitudes of the mingzhi." We often say that we are timid, what is cowardice? It's not just the nostalgia of going to the country, there's more you pull with it and can never be achieved again. It's far more complicated than the word 'nostalgia'. ”
After that, Pinglu set his sights on several great people and stars familiar to the Chinese-speaking world, but never wrote from the usual angle. "People always look at these idols from an elevation angle, and even contain an element of narcissism. I just want to turn these elevation angles into equal perspectives. ”
Wang Dewei called Pinglu a "conscious formalist": "Black Water" alternately portrays two women, Jiazhen and Hong Tai; "He Rijun's Return" uses the perspective of an intelligence officer, which is quite peculiar. And her response is: multiple perspectives and parallel structures are just more facts and imaginations. "I have a minimum contract with the reader, you have the patience to let me slowly unfold the story, I will definitely let you stick to your fingers, page by page down." 」
Teresa Teng's death, and her psychological flow under the bright and beautiful, has always been a puzzle for the flat road. She carried plates of song tapes to Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and spent a month in Chiang Mai. In a small boat, cross the reeds and reach the "three disregards" zone of the Golden Triangle. The fresh, humid air, the wooden blocks floating in the Ping River, the casinos along the road and the signs of smuggling, the dazedness and confusion that can be smelled effortlessly. "There was no need to speak, no need to sing, no need to breathe hard, no need to explain anything, no need to deny anything hard. I'm just a fish... Close your eyes, it's just an illusory light, you can't escape..."
Through return visits and retrospectives, Pinglu sees a Teresa Teng who has been bound by different levels of shackles for a long time: on the one hand, the song is transformed into the title of "lover in the army"; on the other hand, she loses warmth and love in childhood, and when she becomes an adult, she is obsessed with and controlled with her French boyfriend out of security.
In the book "Ho Ri Jun's Return", Ping Lu intersperses the manuscript provided by the hotel attendant through the perspective of an intelligence bureau worker, supplemented by only phrases such as Chiang Mai locals, hospitals, Paul, newspaper reviews, etc., giving readers multiple clues to interpretation and imagination. The intelligence officer not only spies on the star, but is also a super fan of her, saying "We are sorry for her", and even reading her lips and imitating her gestures. The book even leads to the possibility that the big star is not dead, and that she (or the intelligence officer helped her) fled from the waterway to a distant place.
She admitted that the intelligence officers carried their own projections. "Yes. That was my expectation, and I wished she could run away. ”
Exposure and clearance
(Partially) the mystery about Teresa Teng was solved, but the mystery of the writer's own life was not opened until he was 53 years old.
Pinglu's parents were both professors of psychology, and his father's academic achievements were particularly revered. However, when she was young, her parents rarely smiled at her. When her father saw her, he often frowned and looked unnatural; her mother looked kind in front of people, and covering the door was a different look. What often hangs on the lips of the daughter is "To whom is a bitter face?" Pinglu had broad shoulders and a thin body, and his mother said that they were all signs of suffering. When it comes to the topic of the body or menstruation, the mother's reaction is also extremely disgusting, "women are dirty."
In his freshman year, Pinglu committed suicide by swallowing sleeping pills. She sent a letter to her girlfriend, the friend received the letter and rushed into the living room of the Pinglu family, the mother idly beckoned the friend to sit down, but said to the friend, pinglu went out shopping, no need to look for it. On a business trip to Moscow, my colleague encountered an air crash, and I was lucky not to take that flight. She was horrified and undecided to call home to report safety, and her mother only faded back four words: "Ancestral Jide".
Senior year Flat Road and girlfriend at the beach Photo/Interviewee provided
"Why doesn't my mother love me so much?" She wanted this answer for the first half of her life.
Ask for it, the anti-bone is tough and prominent day by day. The mother loves to show her singing voice in front of people, and she never sings on the flat road. Dreaming at night, stuffing his mouth with cotton, choking. In middle school, she ran away from home, took long buses and trains, and went to relatives and classmates to spend the night. My father chased after him with a stick. When it comes to love, she also likes men who don't follow the rules. "With a razor in my hand, I know how easy it is to break the silver wire of life."
Until her father died of illness, the ashes were temporarily stored in Taipei for a year (Note: Pinglu's father's ashes were later buried in her father's hometown of Shandong). One day the mother and daughter were having breakfast on the balcony, and the mother suddenly asked her: "If you don't bury your father, do you suspect that you were not born to your father?" Pinglu didn't think much for a second: "No." Then there was a flash of inspiration: "So, am I your own child?" ”
The air froze. In the middle of the night, the mother opened her mouth. "You were born to our maid."
In the meantime, life broke a big hole. It turned out that the maid was pregnant with her father's child, and in October, the family moved from Hsinchu to Kaohsiung to hide from others. After giving birth to Pinglu, the adoptive mother gave the maid some gold ornaments, and the birth mother hurried away.
Two years after the balcony conversation, Pinglu desperately tried to listen to information about her birth mother, but her adoptive mother did not say much. After three years, Pinglu finally found a half-sister and three younger brothers, and the birth mother had died of a cerebral hemorrhage a year before that.
Friends Liao Yuhui and others said that Pinglu spoke softly, slowly and leisurely, but had a firm will. "Even if you complain, you are smiling and spitting out bitter water." After knowing his life, he is still as clean as usual and does not say a word. Pinglu said that she did not feel self-pity and self-harm because of family affairs from childhood to adulthood, and she carried things up when she encountered them. "Because no one will come to take care of you, you are more reliable." By the time she had a pair of sympathetic children, she finally made up for the mutilations of the first half of her life, and the children even became a bridge between her and her adoptive mother.
The strong adoptive mother lived past a hundred years. Until the last two months, the flat road was taken care of day and night. "I became a mother, and my adoptive mother became my daughter." In those days, Pinglu often found an opportunity to lie down beside her and say to her adoptive mother, who could not speak, "Mom, I'm sorry!" Finally let go of decades of resentment and hatred.
Reading and Writing Workshop on "Exposed Hearts" photo/Hui-en Deng, May 21, 2017
At the meeting of readers of the book "The Heart of The Exposed Heart" about his life, Pinglu recalled that after he found his birth mother's family, he had no regrets and spent more effort on his adoptive mother. "But she was already in bad health by then. I regret that I didn't take care of her feelings earlier. Readers reassured her that she had done enough, but Pinglu still felt that "she could have been able to do better."
"In fact, the greatest meaning of writing for me is to make myself a more sensible person and understand that it is not easy to understand the world."
This alone commitment and understanding, two years ago was once again tested: insisting on exercise, a stable mood, and suffering from lung cancer and breast cancer in half a year. This time, she no longer carries the anxiety and expectation of publishing, but constantly examines and re-appreciates, and many things have different appearances and meanings.
When the needle hurts, she thinks of the spirit leaving her, "I am me, but not all of me"; when she sees the "linear accelerator" during radiation therapy, she imagines herself as a lunar rocket waiting to be launched at NASA, about to accelerate its take-off...
The new work "Gap" has become the fastest and most comfortable book she can write. She was also shocked to realize that when she saw the "golden edge of the dark clouds", she could also become an energy field and bring gifts to others.
People Weekly: Some people say that "Blackwater" not only challenges the "people's public trial" of netizens, but also challenges Taiwan's free mental evidence system. (Note: Taiwan's judiciary adopts a "free-mind evidence system," in which the law does not pre-set mechanical rules to instruct or constrain judges.) The judge is free to judge the evidence and determine the facts according to the rules of thumb, the rules of logic and his own rational conscience)
Pinglu: Yes, I do have a lot of questions. The stereotypes of the judiciary copying the media are actually unfair to both perpetrators and victims. At the beginning of the trial judge's acceptance of the case, he gave Xie Yihan a translation of the death sentence "Struggle with Despair", and also said: "People say that it is unfaithful to read the "Table of the Teacher" without crying, it is ruthless to read the "Farewell to The Wife" without crying, and if you read this book without crying, you are unintentional. At that point in time, when the trial had just begun, how could the judge publicly divulge his or her own testimony and violate the principle of the "presumption of innocence"? However, the judicial and public opinion circles have been silent, and no one has raised this most basic and professional ethical question. Taiwan's judicial circles are often a closed circle, and when they encounter such so-called "bad people" that everyone knows can kill, even the principle of "presumption of innocence" is quickly abandoned, let alone accept the challenge of multiple views.
People Weekly: Jia Zhen killed Humbol because there was no way out, but it didn't seem to be forced into a desperate situation?
Pinglu: So to speak. But life is always intertwined with chance and necessity. Perhaps some fortuitous factor would prevent the murder from happening. But imagine jiazhen, a migrant worker from the countryside to the metropolis, no one to provide advice and help, it is difficult to make close friends, she is actually very lonely. The conclusion is that the reason why she became the perpetrator and caused such a big tragedy should not be attributed to the evil in nature, but to turn the wrong corner where it should not be turned, weakness, loneliness, and confusion were once her situation, and the intentions of others hooked her, and one mistake pulled the next wrong, and finally cast a big mistake. On the other hand, I think the reason why I didn't become Jiazhen or Hong tai myself was not because I was kinder or wiser, but just because I had more choices in life, better luck, and a more sound support system. But I'm not fundamentally different from them in the case.
People Weekly: Can you talk about the character of Hong Tai, you wrote about her dilemma in marriage?
Ping Lu: In Taiwan, the character of Hong Tai has resonated with many female readers. On the one hand, she bets the stability of the second half of her life on marriages that do not necessarily have many feelings, and the structure of marriage set by society provides a certain stability. It seems to be more hassle-free and effortless. Later in marriage, there may be warmth and inertia, but also some calculation and uneasiness. But most people don't have the courage to tear it down or go out. It's not because of love, it's not worth nostalgia, it may be an inertia or inertia. But often it is also like this so-called "white head with old age", living a lifetime.
People Weekly: What was the reaction to Blackwater after its publication?
Pinglu: Two years after publication, I met the psychologist who was doing a psychological assessment of Xie Yihan at that time. She agreed with my writing, and I admired her. In such a one-sided case, she held a different opinion, believing that Xie Yihan had a reason for committing the crime and also had the possibility of indoctrination, although it was not accepted, but it also required great courage.
Before the e-book was published, I received a message from a stranger. The other person told me that he was very surprised and admired. The ins and outs of what he can think of are exactly the same as what I wrote in my novel. The person who sent me the message was Mr. Lui, the owner of the coffee shop. When the case was exposed, he was mistaken for a murderer, and when he walked on the street a few years later, he would be caught, "You should be in prison, how did you get out?" And because of "poor management of employees", he had to lose millions. The impact on him was very great.
People Weekly: Mr. Lui said that he was not angry with Xie Yihan. Why?
Pinglu: I did ask him. He said that he was not angry with Xie Yihan, but angry with those who talked about gossip. A few years after the book was published, Mr. and Mrs. Lui had dinner once. They are a couple of integrity and kindness. He felt that Xie Yihan did that for no reason. She is not without a chance to grow into a person with a good future. Because most people in this world do not send charcoal in the snow, they feel that they can send a little warmth. Xie Yihan went from being sentenced to death twice to being sentenced to life imprisonment. I heard that Mr. Lu would write to Xie Yihan every once in a while to encourage her.
Writing "Black Water" is actually hoping to throw a stone into the water like a stone and make a little ripple. Later, I also went to the judicial system and gave lectures to lawyers. If more people could better understand another corner of society and other people because of their written works, maybe there would be fewer tragedies.
People Weekly: Your Teresa Teng was squeezed in her childhood and after she became famous; she participated in the "labor army" and was instrumentalized; she once wanted to sing on the mainland without success; she liked Paul in France, but in the end the two were entangled with each other. When was the really good moment in her life?
Pinglu: There should still be. For example, in terms of life, she said that she likes to eat delicious things, huh. There are also some cute boys to pursue. But, really, she may never get the love she wants, so famous, carrying the emotions projected by many people, including the narcissism of fans, as long as she faces the masses who look up to her, it is difficult for her to be truly comfortable. When Paul met her, it was a simple mutual attraction, and Paul would not understand or mind that she was a superstar in the Chinese world, which was also the part of pure affection between them. But even so, after arriving in Chiang Mai, she and Paul would have friction over time in that closed, almost isolated place. After all, the backgrounds, experiences, and ages of the two of them are very different. In this sense, the author of the novel is carrying out the story around the protagonist, thinking day and night in his heart always wants to understand her, and in the few years of writing, he will feel self-righteously that he is really the person who understands and pities the protagonist the most.
Pinglu with adoptive mother when I was in graduate school (about 25 years old) Photo/Interviewee provided
People Weekly: Did the forgiveness of the adoptive mother begin in the last two months, or?
Pinglu: Knowing the truth, true understanding begins. After that, I looked at my adoptive mother, from the eyes of this woman, to understand what another woman had gone through, to understand that she was not easy, instead of asking her to be like a mother, to be an ideal mother who would love her children, from her point of view, that was not fair to her. I would think that if it were me, faced with her situation, I wouldn't necessarily have coped better than she did, and I might have handled it worse than she did.
People Weekly: Some readers have seen that she didn't treat you like that before, and her heart was not at peace. No matter how resentful, the birth of this adopted daughter was innocent.
Pinglu: Many times, people behave irrelevant to "how it should be", we will be jealous, we are insecure, we are afraid that things will get out of hand, we will also overreact, many of our behaviors are related to emotions, but irrational. The love we usually think we have is just as complicated. Love, also a black box, when opened to see, mixed with a lot of manipulative desires, not what I originally thought. As Kant said, man (sex) is a curved wood, and it is impossible to demand it to be a good material, to demand absolute truth in it. Whether it is a legendary person or an ordinary life, when you look closely, people's hearts are often not so black and white, and there are always some obscure and dark corners, which may be parts that they can't say clearly.
People Weekly: Have you ever wondered what kind of woman your mother was before she married her father? Did she treat you that way because of his cheating?
Pinglu: If I think about it, she cares a lot about the identity of her wife. Maintaining the role of "my father's wife" is very important to her, or she grasps the matter too tightly, she cares too much. As the days go by, how much is love, how much is possession, lust for power? It's hard to tell.
I can only piece together what my adoptive mother used to look like, not necessarily the truth. I know she's been a very spoiled child at home since she was a child. I remember she didn't have any friends and wasn't social when she was old. From another point of view, it is difficult to say what is the cause and effect, for her to think, she holds such a big secret, any occasion must be inconsistent. "I don't feel sorry for this daughter, but I want to do everything I want to love." This secret prevented her from communicating with any outsider, she had no friends, no opportunities to learn and improve, and no nourishment of feelings between people. For this secret, she paid and suffered even more.
The flat road of childhood with father and adoptive mother Photo/Interviewee provided
People Weekly: When you were young, you asked your father if your mother was born to you? But the father just replied, "She was spoiled and wouldn't hurt anyone else." "If the father does not say it until his death, does he feel guilty about his wife, or is he afraid that you will be hurt and resentful?" With his knowledge of his adoptive mother, it is impossible not to foresee the hardships of your growth. But he didn't do anything to lubricate and repair between you?
Pinglu: Facing my wife, of course my father has a weak heart. He was wrong. But he didn't know what to do. He was sorry for his wife, and I had the impression that he had always been quite afraid of my adoptive mother. I thought for my father, he must have been afraid that once the truth was told, the foundations that underpinned the family structure would be shaken, or even collapsed completely. Will his tacit understanding with me for many years be affected. I suspect that he doesn't have that confidence: if the mother-daughter blood relationship is false, will the daughter doubt the affection between father and daughter? So he had to keep it hidden. But I still feel that as long as you face your child truthfully and tell your child what happened that year, most of the children will be able to understand. My father's disposition was to hide from me, in order to rationalize the original decision, and later, the concerns became more and more numerous, and the things that were hidden became higher and higher, and it became more and more impossible to tell the truth when I grew up.
Later, I learned about the history of my father and my uncle and their generation. I grew up thinking that my father was my deepest feelings, if I put my father back to the era he experienced, he saw so many lives and deaths, growing up in Taiwan, I was actually unfamiliar with the first half of my father's life, then, how much did I know about him? Can I say I know him? Lack of understanding of the first half of his life, how much can I love him? Their generation, after the war and displacement, through the most difficult era, their later life still has some traces, may be rough, frightened, full of insecurity, etc., even if there have been romance and dreams, crushed by the times, I am afraid that it is completely unrecognizable.
People Weekly: When writing "Gap", you rarely focus on illness, but write about how to constantly seek revenge on yourself, look at the disease from a different perspective, look at the past, and so on. He even set up a "Homework" column on how to do breathing and how to adjust his psychology, and placed it after the main text of each chapter. How is this psychological transformation process from patient to helpful?
Pinglu: For me, the English title of "Gap" is gap, which is when you suddenly walk halfway through, there is a small hole in the road, you have to pause before you cross over, such a moment, there is a chance to think through a lot of things. As the book says, if you think that being sick is a color film turning into a black and white film, you feel very sad, but this is not the case. There are a lot of things that really go through, and they're not what we thought they were. For example, from childhood to adulthood, we are implanted with canning programs, and we think that the purpose of life is to achieve happiness and happiness. Especially women, must get married, must have another half or children to love me, raise me to be happy. But when you think about it, it's actually a burden on you. All attachments or dependences that think they must have such an indispensable have their implied weight. Conversely, the dark clouds you see will also have Phnom Penh, and everything that passes, including the tribulations that have passed, is a hidden version of the gift. After suffering, in fact, it is like stepping through a small hole, so stop and think, if there is a so-called goal in life, will it not be the pursuit of happiness and happiness? It's about all kinds of experiences, all the things that can be at ease in all situations.
(Reference: Works related to The Flat Road.) Thank you Ms. Kim Do-sung for your help)