Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 273 "We are all 34 gods"

(Is the title of the previous chapter so unpopular? It was too careless...)
Zhang Chao and Lan Ting looked at the person who came. He was a young man in his 20s, with semi-long hair parted in a : ratio and curled at the ends. He wore a pair of black half-frame glasses, had fair skin and a delicate face.

When Lan Ting saw this person, her expression turned unhappy, but Zhang Chao didn't care and asked, "Who is this?"

Before Lan Ting could speak, the young man said, "I am Professor Iizuka's graduate student. My name is Wang Zhenxu."

Zhang Chao asked: "Japanese? Chinese?"

Wang Zhenxu said: "My ancestral home is in Yanjing, and I became a Japanese citizen following my father."

Zhang Chao frowned and said, "It is very impolite to interrupt others' conversation. Are you Japanese so rude?"

Wang Zhenxu didn't care at all. He pulled a chair over and sat next to Zhang Chao and Lan Ting. He said, "Tsk, who cares about that Japanese thing? I'm not that pretentious!"

Zhang Chao: "..."

Lan Ting only spoke at this time: "How do you know I'm here?"

Wang Zhenxu said, "I didn't see you in the cafeteria. I asked your classmates and someone said they saw you rushing over here, so I came over to take a look. ——I haven't introduced you yet, who is this?"

Just as Lan Ting was about to speak, Zhang Chao reached out to stop her. Zhang Chao said, "I am Lan Ting's high school classmate. I just happened to come to Ludao to do something. I came to meet and chat."

Zhang Chao just thought that Wang Zhenxu was a wonderful person. He didn’t want to reveal his identity for the time being and wanted to see how he would perform.

Wang Zhenxu said, "Oh... I heard you guys talking about literature when I walked over here. How come you also understand literature?"

Zhang Chao said, "I know a little bit. Lan Ting was the president of our school's literature club when she was in high school."

Wang Zhenxu said: "Lanting's literary accomplishment is indeed very good. - She is now the president of the literature club! Lanting, are you hungry? Otherwise, I will treat you to a restaurant, how about 'Xiaolin Pai Dang'?"

Lan Ting said calmly: "No, I will treat my classmates myself, so you don't have to spend any money."

Wang Zhenxu said, "Don't worry, isn't this embarrassing for me?"

Lan Ting ignored him and said to Zhang Chao: "How about we leave first?"

Zhang Chao also felt that such an inexplicable person had come here, so he nodded and said, "Okay, you decide the place."

Lan Ting stood up with the half-finished cup of tea and said to Wang Zhenxu, "I'm treating my old classmates to a meal, so don't come with me." After that, she took Zhang Chao out.

Wang Zhenxu was speechless after being scolded by Lan Ting. He only chased them to the door of the milk tea shop, but he didn't really follow them. He could only watch Lan Ting and Zhang Chao disappear around the bend of the road.

Wang Zhenxu stood there for a while, feeling lost, and then left alone.

Lan Ting took Zhang Chao out of the school gate and only breathed a sigh of relief after making sure that Wang Zhenxu did not follow them.

Zhang Chao laughed and said, "He is pursuing you, right? Why, don't you like this?"

Lan Ting patted her chest and said with relief: "He would 'run into' me whenever he had time, either in the cafeteria or on the road. He even came all the way to attend our undergraduate class."

Zhang Chao said: "This is human nature."

Lan Ting glanced at him and didn't respond. Instead, she said, "Is this your first time in Lu Island? What do you want to eat? I'll take you there."

Zhang Chao thought for a moment and said, "Let's have shacha noodles. They're both in Fuhai, the ingredients and cooking methods are similar, but shacha noodles are a bit more unique."

Lan Ting said, "Okay. Then come with me, I'll take you to an authentic traditional old shop."

After that, he took Zhang Chao across the road and into the alley. After walking around for five or six minutes, they arrived at an old residential building. On a storefront on the first floor hung an old, rustic sign with red letters on a white background: Aunt Xia Sha Cha Noodles.

There were six or seven tables inside and outside the store. A fat middle-aged woman was busy at the stove at the door.

Lan Ting was obviously a regular customer. She sat at a table near the back as soon as she entered and called out to the middle-aged lady, "Sister Liangliang, one beef dish and one seafood dish."

Zhang Chao was surprised and asked, "Isn't she Aunt Xia? Why do you call her 'Sister Liangliang'?"

Lan Ting smiled and explained: "Everyone here calls her husband 'Liang Liang', so she is 'Liang Liang's wife'? 'Auntie Xia' is 'Liang Liang's' biological mother, that is, her mother-in-law. She opened a Shacha noodle restaurant here for decades, so the name has been used ever since.

At night, Liang Liang will set up a barbecue stall called Liang Liang Barbecue, which is also delicious. During the day, the Shacha Noodle House is run by Liang Liang’s wife.

Zhang Chao said "Oh" and admired: "Cooking is hard work, this family must work from morning till night, right?"

Lan Ting said: "That's right. Aunt Xia is old, and now she is responsible for the logistics...." Before she finished speaking, Sister Liangliang came up with two servings of shacha noodles.

Lan Ting asked: "Which one do you want?"

They were all old classmates, so Zhang Chao didn't act pretentiously. He ordered beef satay noodles and gave the seafood satay noodles to Lan Ting.

Mrs. Liangliang looked at the two of them and said, "Xiaolan, who is this? I've never seen you bring a boy here before!"

Lan Ting blushed and said quickly, "Classmate, high school classmate. I came to Ludao for something and stopped by for a while."

Mrs. Liangliang covered her mouth and smiled, saying, "That's really rare. You guys take your time eating!"

Lan Ting stirred the noodles in the bowl again and again, and after a while the redness on her face faded away.

Zhang Chao seemed to be unaware of it. He mixed the shacha sauce in the noodles, picked up a chopstick, and slurped it into his mouth. The moment he took a bite, he could smell the sweetness of the shacha sauce, the mellowness of the bone broth, the meaty aroma of the fresh beef, and the aroma of the noodles...

Mixed into an extremely impactful taste, it impacts and reverberates in the mouth, impacting the taste buds wave after wave.

This sauce originated in Southeast Asia, was modified by the Chinese who went to Southeast Asia, and then brought back to Fujian and Guangdong provinces. For those who eat it for the first time, it is indeed a refreshing taste experience.

Although Zhang Chao had eaten it several times when he traveled to Ludao in his previous life, he had long forgotten what it tasted like. This time, he tasted it again and found it really delicious. Especially the soup base, which was made from large bones, cuttlefish bones, and dried shrimps, and was not made with MSG, so he didn't feel thirsty after eating it.

Zhang Chao ate half a bowl of noodles in one breath, then looked up and asked Lan Ting, "That Wang Zhenxu is quite interesting. He said he was Professor Iizuka's graduate student?"

Lan Ting also put down her chopsticks, with a strange look on her face, as if she had a very complicated opinion of Wang Zhenxu. After a long while, she said, "He can be considered a post-80s generation, either 80 or 81, a few years older than us.

His father went to Japan to work in the 80s and later became a Japanese citizen, so he followed his father to Japan. Because he went to elementary school in China before going abroad, his Chinese and Japanese are very good. There are no translated versions of the Japanese works in China this time, so he translated them all.”

Zhang Chao said "Oh" and then asked, "When I heard him say 'Chinese literature is destined to lag behind Japan by a hundred years', I thought he was a Japan-fawning person. But his attitude in the following sentences was not what I imagined."

Lan Ting sighed, "This is the strangest and most special thing about him. On the one hand, he believes that Japanese literature is the most advanced in Asia and that Chinese literature must learn from Japanese literature. On the other hand, he also... I can't describe it well, so you'd better listen to what he says in person.

I am a little embarrassed to say what he said. It sounds silly, a bit like those Japanese comics that you guys like to read.”

Zhang Chao was puzzled. There are so many Japanese comics that boys like to read - from "Dragon Ball" and "Hunter" to "Slam Dunk" and "Captain Tsubasa", they are all "Japanese comics"; "I'S" and "DNA2" are also "Japanese comics".

There is a big difference between "Japanese manga" and "Japanese comics"! But it is not convenient to ask which one it is.

Zhang Chao changed the subject and asked, "What do you think I can do this time?"

Lan Ting did not answer directly, but said: "The Chinese Department of our university was divided into linguistics and literature in the third year of college. Chinese itself is not the school's trump card major, and the teaching resources are more inclined to linguistics, which has a greater academic influence and is easier to achieve results.

Most people who choose literature do so out of love and interest, so everyone likes to write something. Now, influenced by the works of Japanese writers born in the 80s, I think both the direction and style of creation are becoming more and more extreme.

Look, this is something a member of the literature club wrote recently." As he spoke, he took out a few sheets of manuscript paper from his bag and handed them to Zhang Chao.

Zhang Chao took it and looked at it——

Title: 3/4 of God

"Have you ever seen a slit wrist?
I haven't seen it. Haha, it actually looks like a mouth with red lipstick on it smiling.

Pain? That's just the beginning. Soon, you feel like you've been immersed in a hot spring, warm all over.

What, you mean I really tried it?

Oh, I just heard it from others.

But don’t you think that’s “cool”?

Everyone says that what people cannot control are birth, aging, sickness and death.

This is God's power.

In fact, except for birth, we can control the other three.

Through death.

What if you die at the height of your youth?

Aging and illness will stop here.

Therefore, each of us who is young is 3/4 God.

What Haichen said seemed to make sense, but it was a pity that he wouldn't say it anymore.

He has become the god he claims to be.

It's just that I haven't got the courage yet.

... "

(Fuck, I thought I couldn’t write something like this, but I was able to write it)

Zhang Chao quickly read through a few pages of manuscript paper and found that it was the beginning of a novella or a long novel, and his brows knitted. In his previous life and this life, he had not read much of the works of Japanese writers of the generation of Kanehara Hitomi. He had only heard of them but had never seen their works.

But reading these words, one can indeed smell a sense of "danger".

I have to say that although the language of "3/4 of God" is still relatively immature, the feeling of decadence, despair and confusion has been conveyed, and the entry point of the conception is also quite ingenious.

Using death to curb aging and illness and letting youth end at its peak has a bit of the flavor of what Watanabe said in Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" when he recalled: "Only the dead are forever seventeen years old."

And it's darker and more depressing.

Zhang Chao has always felt that youth literature is not incapable of discussing death, because death is an ultimate thought. Whether it is a sidelong glance or a brave face, it can make the lives of the characters in the work more profound.

In his own creations, he neither deliberately creates death nor deliberately avoids death. From "Youth Like You" to the recent "The Boy and the Meteor", death, or the shadow of death, has always been one of the driving forces behind the development of the story.

However, there has never been a novel that so openly "whitens" death as the one Lan Ting brought out - but from a literary point of view, it is really well written.

Lan Ting carefully observed Zhang Chao's expression, and after a long while she asked, "What do you think of the writing?"

Zhang Chao sighed and said, "If you ask me, it's a pity."

Lan Ting asked, "How do you put it?"

Zhang Chao said: "Such a unique imagination, and the way of writing that completely integrates dialogue and psychological activities into the narrative, shows that the author is very thoughtful and insightful. But such insight is wasted when used to write such text. - Is the author still mentally normal now?"

Lan Ting was relieved when she heard Zhang Chao say that, and replied: "There is no problem at present, she is also imitating." She is not without the ability to appreciate words, and knows that "3/4 of the God" is indeed of a certain level. She is worried that Zhang Chao really starts from "literariness" and agrees with this writing style.

Lan Ting took out another stack of papers and said, "Take another look."

Zhang Chao took it and looked at it. It was a printed manuscript with the words "Slit Tongue - Kanehara Hitomi" printed on the cover. He said, "Is this the translation by Wang Zhenxu?"

Lan Ting nodded. Zhang Chao flipped the page and looked down:
"Have you ever heard of a forked tongue?"

"What? Tongue, split? There are split tongues?"

"Yes, it's like a snake or a lizard's tongue. A human tongue can also become like that."

As he spoke, he took the cigarette from his mouth into his hand with relish and playfully stretched out his tongue.

His tongue, like a snake, was split in the middle.

I wanted to get closer to take a look, but he immediately rolled up the right piece of his tongue flexibly and clamped the cigarette in his hand between the two pieces of tongue.

... "

Zhang Chao quickly read the first part and returned the manuscript to Lan Ting, saying, "Not only is the imitation very similar, it's even better."

Lan Ting said: "This film, Split Tongue, is about a girl who is obsessed with body modification and splits her tongue like a snake, and the painful relationship between her and several young men who pursue the same alternative goals.

The whole novel is filled with pain and joy, violence and death, love and despair. I couldn't help but tremble after reading it. To be honest, I really can't imagine that there is such a life and such a corner in the world. "

Zhang Chao said: "The author of "3/4 of the Gods" wrote along the feelings of the darkest part of it. It's just that she wrote like this..." Zhang Chao didn't finish his words, and for a moment he couldn't find the right words to describe it.

Lan Ting said: "I think our Chinese Department and our Literature Club can't go on like this. Creative attempts are one thing, but affecting our attitude towards life is probably not the original intention of our love of writing."

Zhang Chao agreed: "Writings like Kanehara Hitomi's should come from her own life experience. To some extent, writing is an outlet for her emotions and a kind of redemption in her life.

Therefore, it has a strong impact. Just by reading the beginning, I can feel the determination between the lines to not succumb to the secular world, to use pain to defeat numbness, to wantonly burn life, and to no longer pursue meaning. "

Lan Ting said, "Yes, Kanehara Hitomi herself is a 'crazy person'. Wang Zhenxu told me that she wears 6 earrings in her ears, has her tongue pierced, and has tattoos all over her body - but she is a girl, only one or two years older than us."

Zhang Chao laughed and said, "Don't words like this need to match a life like this? If I were an ordinary reader, I would also be fascinated by this novel."

Lan Ting didn't expect Zhang Chao to approve of her so much. She became anxious and couldn't speak clearly: "But...but..."

Zhang Chao took another mouthful of noodles and a sip of soup before saying, "I know what you mean. Our society has not reached that stage yet. Blindly infatuated with this kind of 'subculture' and 'marginalized people' is indeed not a healthy spiritual lifestyle."

Lan Ting finally felt relieved and asked, "Then what do you think we should do?"

Zhang Chao ate the last bite of noodles and drank up the soup before asking, "According to the time agreed in the email, I will report to your department next week. Does your literature club have any activities this weekend?"

Lan Ting thought for a moment and said, "Of course!"

Zhang Chao was amused and asked, "Why, you made one up?"

Lan Ting said: "I am the president, so I can organize activities at any time. As long as it is held in our own office and not outside the school, it does not require approval from the Youth League Committee.

Recently, Professor Iizuka and his graduate students have come, and we already have a lot of impromptu lectures and salons, so it’s no problem for me to add one more.”

Zhang Chao said: "Okay! Then I'll wait for your notification."

After eating their fill of noodles and soup, they wiped their greasy mouths with tissues, then stood up and walked out.

At this time, several "Shamatte" people walked by. Not only did their hair stand up in bright red and green, very exaggerated, but their faces, ears, and lips were also covered with metal rings and metal nails...

Zhang Chao and Lan Ting: "..."

The words Zhang Chaogang said a few minutes ago rang in my mind: "Our society has not reached this stage..."

(End of this chapter)