Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 307 New Novel "Homeland"

Zhang Chao was relieved after figuring out the meaning of the slogan "Me Too!", but he also lamented the unpredictable world. The same words appeared more than ten years ago, but the connotation was completely different from what he remembered.

After answering a few questions from reporters, Zhang Chao walked through the crowd, followed David Miller and others out of the station hall, got on the taxi sent by the publishing house to pick them up, and headed straight for the hotel.

Thanks to Zhang Chao's "positive contributions" to the new book launch, Simon & Schuster Books booked the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel for them, which is only a 5-minute walk from the Simon & Schuster Books headquarters.

Zhang Chao lived in a luxury suite. From the window of the hotel room, he could directly see the famous Rockefeller Center and also catch a glimpse of a corner of Times Square. It was truly a prime location.

The new book launch was to be held three days later, and the venue was originally scheduled to be the New York flagship store of the famous Barnes & Noble bookstore. However, as Zhang Chao's influence in the United States grew, the venue was temporarily adjusted to the main library of the New York Public Library (NYPL).

It is very difficult to apply for venues here, and you have to apply at least 2-3 months in advance. However, Simon & Schuster Publishing and the New York Public Library have always had a close cooperative relationship. This time, an art exhibition happened to be temporarily withdrawn, and the vacant venue was given to Zhang Chao's new book launch.

However, the time was postponed by one day than originally planned, leaving Zhang Chao and others with precious rest time.

Zhang Chao had just finished washing up and wanted to have a good rest - after all, sleeping on the train for several consecutive days, even in a luxurious compartment, was exhausting.

But soon there was a knock on the door. It was Xu Ruiya. She sent Zhang Chao a long list of people and organizations who wanted to meet him, invite him to dinner, or simply ask him to donate...

The New York Artists' Union, the National Equal Rights Committee, the Chinatown Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and even the Animal Protection Association invited Zhang Chao to follow them to the sea to stop the Japanese whaling ships...

"Isn't this just a matter of trying to get something for nothing?" Zhang Chao was overwhelmed. He stuffed the paper back to Xu Ruiya and said to her, "Push aside anything that can be pushed aside, especially tricking me into getting on board... I authorize you to handle all other matters.

Unless it's about the new book launch, I have to show up. If there's a meeting at the publishing house, go there for me if you can."

Xu Ruiya was very happy and quickly responded, "Okay!" and left Zhang Chao's room excitedly. In addition to those unreliable invitations, there were many other publishing houses and writer-related matters on this list.

Xu Ruiya can use this opportunity to expand the business of "Tide Culture" in the United States and expand her network of contacts.

After seeing Xu Ruiya off, Zhang Chao was no longer sleepy. He moved a chair to the balcony of the room and sat down, holding a teacup in his hand, looking at the hustle and bustle of the traffic below and the undulating city skyline in the distance, and fell into deep thought.

A new novel that had been brewing during the journey and had finally taken shape - "Homeland" - was being repeatedly refined in his mind.

"Original hometown" literally means "the place where ancestors lived before migration". It is the root of the bloodline of a clan and a family, and is deeper and more distant than "hometown".

However, the word "原" not only means "originally, formerly", its original meaning is a verb, meaning "to explore the root".

Therefore, in Zhang Chao's conception, the novel "Homeland" also has the intention of "exploring what is "homeland" and what is the essence of "homeland"? "

Zhang Chao did not want to write a well-known "family history novel" such as "White Deer Plain" or "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Instead, he wanted to find the "roots of the Chinese people's hometown complex" from the history of Chinese people's migration to foreign countries for more than 100 years;
And how this rooting profoundly affects these migrants and their families.

This inspiration originally came from the immigration history and struggle history of Chinese workers in the United States in the 19th century explained to him by Xu Ruiya and Susan, which triggered his thinking about the identity of "Chinese immigrants"——

Zhang Chao is from Fuhai, which has been a major province for Chinese emigration since ancient times. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, families and even clans went to Southeast Asia; in recent decades, they took fishing boats to Fukuoka, Japan to wash up on the beach; and then they squeezed in containers to cross the ocean to the United States...

Although "worship Mazu and get visa-free entry worldwide" is a joke, it basically reflects the impulsive mentality of Fuhai people to "run away from home" which is beyond the people in other parts of the country.

The total local population of Fuhai is only over 3500 million, while the recorded number of overseas Chinese exceeds 1700 million.

It seems that the people here have no obsession with their "homeland" and are ready to leave this land at any time.

But what’s interesting is that after these people go to a foreign country, they often show extremely strong "hometown complex" and put it into action.

In almost all countries where there are large Chinese populations, there are neighborhoods called "Chinatown", "Chinatown" or "Little China". These neighborhoods are highly culturally closed, and are almost the same as those in China, from customs to daily necessities.

Some of the elderly people who come here may not even know a word of the local language and live their entire lives speaking the Fuhai dialect.

At the same time, these people were also very keen to use the money they earned abroad to give back to their hometowns. From the Westernization Movement to the Anti-Japanese War, there was an endless stream of people going to Southeast Asia to raise funds, and almost all of them received generous support;
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, countless overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia brought their own weapons, money and food, returned to the mainland to join the battlefield, fought bravely and shed their blood on the land of China.

There are also many Chinese businessmen like Mr. Tan Kah Kee who are willing to sacrifice their homes and wealth to build the motherland.

Even without mentioning these kind-hearted and righteous people, the ordinary fellow villagers Zhang Chao met working abroad, no matter whether they would come back in the end or not, would always use the first money they earned to build a big house in the village - even if they could only live there for three or five days a year.

If we were to ask which region in China has the strongest, most complex, and most contradictory "local sentiments", then Fuhai would undoubtedly be the region.

Then, Zhang Chao talked about Stephen King’s open-minded attitude towards novel themes, Li Yiyun’s entanglement and indulging in the motherland/mother complex, and then Kiran Desai’s in-depth thinking on the “immigration theme”…

The scenery seen along the way, the history talked about, the people met, the troubles encountered, and the problems pondered finally condensed into Zhang Chao's conception of the work "Homeland" -

He wanted to show the complex entanglement of three generations of an ordinary family in Fuhai with their "hometown" spanning two centuries.

After listening to Xu Ruiya's story about the history of the Chinese gold rush, a scene from this novel had emerged in Zhang Chao's mind:

"In a coastal town nestled between the mountains and the sea, a mother lives alone with her son. The mother strictly abides by the centuries-old tradition and dares not have any resentment towards her husband who has traveled across the ocean. She can only look forward to it.

But the son's feelings towards his father are much more complicated. In his heart, his father is not a real person, but an illusory symbol, a strange voice, a string of changing numbers...

His classmates at school envied him for having American chocolate and Transformers toys, but they also laughed at him for having "no father" and "a small mother"...

Finally, on the day of his son’s wedding, a mysterious man appeared at the wedding…” At this time, the relationships between the characters were still very simple, and the scenes were not complicated. Zhang Chao just wanted to write it on the scale of a novella.

But after some experience along the way, he felt that there was much more to be explored, and he decided to write in the genre of "science fiction", which he had never touched before.

This is Stephen King’s gift - don’t care about pure literature or popular literature, the most important thing is to write a good novel that both you and your readers agree on.

So Zhang Chao opened his laptop, created a new document, and wrote the beginning of the novel:

[This is the second time Gu Feng has seen Lin Xiaohai. Unlike the first time he saw Lin Xiaohai, whose face was full of wrinkles as deep as ravines and whose eyes were as turbid as sewage, this Lin Xiaohai in front of him is only 22 years old, which should be the prime of youth.

But his face was covered with thick, pale makeup and his lips were painted red. If he hadn't been wearing a shabby white suit and a big red flower on his chest, one would have thought he was a paper man.

This was Lin Xiaohai's wedding. But the young man had no joy at all, his face was serious, and he completed the ceremony step by step like a puppet under the guidance of his elders. Gu Feng noticed that when he kowtowed to the parents of both parties, the seat next to Lin Xiaohai's mother was empty, with only an old-fashioned gentleman's hat.

……

As usual, it was time for the bride and groom to toast each other at the table. Lin Xiaohai's mother and two uncles filled the newlyweds' glasses with wine and introduced the relatives and friends at the table to them.

Lin Xiaohai had never left the 10-kilometer radius of the town in his years of life. His mother and uncle knew everyone he knew, even his classmates. But when they saw Gu Feng, everyone was obviously stunned.

No one knew him, but no one thought he was just eating and drinking for free.

Because Gu Feng was too clean, so clean that he didn't look like a resident of this fishing port town, or even belong to this era. It was like a corner of an 18th century oil painting with a figure dressed in 20th century clothes quietly painted on it. At first glance, there was nothing wrong with it, but once noticed, it would stick in the sight like a nail, and it was hard to ignore.

Time stands still here.

Lin Xiaohai's uncle was pouring wine into the newlyweds' glasses, and the wine was just hovering in the air; Lin Xiaohai's mother seemed to want to ask something, her lips slightly raised, her teeth half exposed; the little child crawling under the table stretched out his dirty little hands, about to take the candy handed over by the old man...

Gu Feng stood up from his chair and waved his hands lightly in front of him. The entire scene flowed and disappeared from his side like a melting oil painting, and finally only emptiness remained.

Gu Feng said to the void: "File number 0001, emotion is judged as negative, temporarily blocked." ...】

……

In this novel, Gu Feng is a "memory album organizer" in the future world, and Lin Xiaohai's son is his client.

The "memory album" was a technology that emerged in that era to commemorate the dead - all it took was a complete brain to extract most of the memories.

The "Memory Album Organizer" will dive into these memories, get close to the deceased at different times, observe their living conditions and emotional reactions when they were alive, select the most "memorable" scenes, and export them.

Eventually, these scenes will be compiled into an electronic photo album and handed over to the relatives of the deceased, who can choose to "flip through" those beautiful memories at any time and feel the warmth of family affection.

Because it involves the privacy of the deceased and their families, the requirements for "memory album organizers" like Gu Feng are very high - they must be humans with some kind of obsessive-compulsive personality and mental cleanliness.

This way you won’t get lost in the memories of the deceased, nor will you reveal secrets that the deceased doesn’t want others to know.

Lin Xiaohai is the person Gu Feng is sorting out his memories for this time.

Unlike Gu Feng, who was obsessed with order and highly rational, Lin Xiaohai was an extremely complex character - he suffered from severe schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder during his lifetime.

Lin Xiaohai's memory is neither linear nor single-line.

In his mind, there are the memories of two generations: him and his father Lin Rongsheng.

Lin Xiaohai spent almost his entire life in that ordinary fishing port town, but he relied on his mother and family's descriptions of his father, the letters his father sent him, and his imagination of his father...

He formed a complete personality of Lin Rongsheng, and simulated the life memory of his father Lin Rongsheng in his mind.

From being baptized by a storm on a fishing boat when he was born, to being discriminated against because of his poor family in his youth, to traveling across the ocean to make a living and money in his youth, to returning home to marry and have children, and then going abroad again. From then on, only checks and letters were sent to him...

In Lin Xiaohai's memory, the image of his father Lin Rongsheng is both tall and vague, both intimate and distant. He longs for his father's company and love, but has to face the reality of his father's long-term absence. These contradictory emotions are constantly intertwined in his memory, forming a series of insurmountable obstacles.

Lin Xiaohai's schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are not accidental, but are caused by his deep desire for the absence of his father and his helpless struggle against reality.

Lin Xiaohai constructed a complete image of his father in his mind to fill the void in his heart, but this form of self-deception made him fall into deeper pain.

And what supports all of this are almost all the few words sent by Lin Rongsheng.

As an adult, Lin Xiaohai used Internet technology to search the Internet again and again for the American place names mentioned by his father in the letters - Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York... In this way, he tried to piece together his father's life trajectory in the United States, and then perfect the image of his father in his mind.

However, reality is always cruel. Although Lin Xiaohai found many pictures and videos about these cities on the Internet, he still could not find any trace of his father.

The place names his father mentioned in the letter were just cold symbols that could not give him more information. Lin Xiaohai felt increasingly depressed, and he began to doubt whether everything he had done was in vain. …

All of this constitutes the first dimension of the novel "Homeland".

(End of this chapter)