Literary Master 1983

Chapter 320 Child of the Sun

The addition of Hu Houxuan greatly enhanced Yu Qie's creative work.

The two constructed a complete post-apocalyptic world in the book. Yu Qie was adept at writing about the economic system and political structure, but he was unfamiliar with the writing itself.

Hu Houxuan demonstrated his accumulated knowledge; by 1986, over a thousand commonly used characters had been deciphered from the unearthed oracle bone inscriptions. Hu Houxuan participated in this work.

A thousand characters are enough to constitute common communication.

Therefore, throughout the entire novel, the writing system used by humans is this pictographic script. Yu Qie specifically mentioned that the inspiration for this script came from the ancient Chinese oracle bone script.

For some particularly simple and easy-to-remember texts, Yu Qie would ask the publisher to print them in the style of "oracle bone script." He instinctively felt that this would attract Western readers, much like the witchcraft mentioned by Márquez in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

This isn't the only writer who did this.

Tolkien, the British writer, invented Elvish for his novels and wrote this language, which only he understood at the time, in many of his novels, along with translations.

Because the world in his novels is not only inhabited by elves, Tolkien even created languages ​​spoken by dwarves, grey elves, and others, and he also created elven dialects based on different regions... all of this is done in a structured way, and it makes perfect sense within his stories.

Did these things cause Tolkien's novels to flop?

not at all.

The novel he wrote is "The Lord of the Rings".

Years later, these impromptu creations of "Elven language" did not disappear; instead, they appeared in various derivative works within multiple fantasy worlds. For example, some games use language that references Tolkien's "Elven language."

Tolkien was a linguist, and although Yu Qie could not create his own language, he had his own amazing wisdom 2.0 version – Hu Houxuan.

Hu Houxuan told Yu Qie: "Actually, there are many similarities in ancient characters. This is because at the beginning, characters were often pictographic. Take the sun as an example. It is a huge burning sphere. When ancient people used characters to represent the sun, they either used a circle, or a circle with a dot inside to represent sunspots, or they drew many lines outside the circle to represent the rays emitted by the sun..."

“Nobody draws it as a square, right?” Yu Qie said.

"Of course!" Empress Hu laughed. "Was the sun square five thousand years ago? It's been a sphere for billions of years!"

Why did Yu Qie and Hu Houxuan talk about the sun?
Yu Qie discovered an embarrassing thing: the character "核" (core) has not been found in oracle bone inscriptions.

I wrote about a nuclear wasteland, how can it be without "nuclear"?
There was no oracle bone script back then, but there was during the Qin Dynasty. Hu Houxuan wrote a seal script character that looked like a combination of the character for "cough" and the character for "wood". The character before that was a large circle with a dot in the middle, which looked like a woman's breast. Yu Qie thought that these were either hard to remember or not good-looking.

“‘Core’ must be written in ancient Chinese characters, otherwise what’s the point of all this? And it has to look good and be easy to remember,” Yu Qie said.

Hu Houxuan pondered deeply, then suddenly said, "It's not in the oracle bone inscriptions, but it is in Sanxingdui. Do you want to use it? Besides, you're from Sichuan Province. Sanxingdui is near your home."

Yu Qie was shocked: "The ancient Shu actually discovered a 'core' three or four thousand years ago? Did they see aliens?"

In the 1980s, there was a craze for extraterrestrials in China, as well as for qigong. Yu Qie had previously encountered a group of people wearing pot lids to receive "cosmic waves" at the Temple of Heaven—it's not surprising that he said this.

Hu Houxuan laughed loudly: "No, I mean, they discovered the sun and worshipped it. And the sun is the largest nucleus that we humans can see."

Who would have thought that Hu Houxuan actually knew science and engineering?
Truly, this is my extraordinary wisdom!
Following the economic recovery in the 3s, large-scale archaeological work began in China, resulting in numerous discoveries. In March of this year, Sichuan University and the local government conducted a large-scale excavation of the Sanxingdui site. Several national treasures, now widely known, were discovered, including the bronze standing figure, the bronze sacred tree, and bronze masks.

Archaeologists have noted that the ancient Shu people had a clear sun worship, and they used the precious productivity of the primitive era to create a large number of objects that praised the "sun".

Furthermore, they created ritual vessels representing the sun.

Although Hu Houxuan specializes in oracle bone script, he has also explored various ancient Chinese writing systems.

He casually drew two different "sun" patterns: one was a disc made of several intertwined arc lines, and the other was a disc made of five lines, which looked a lot like a steering wheel.

"Which one do you want to use? These aren't the sun right now, so treat them like nuclear bombs. After all, the sun is the biggest nuclear bomb."

Yu Qie chose the "steering wheel" design, partly as a joke, and partly because the design was simple enough, and the simpler the design, the more popular it would be.

At this point, things are starting to seem more and more like "Indians were descendants of ancient China," because a prominent characteristic of Native Americans is their worship of the sun.

Another characteristic of Native Americans is their "hunter worship," which led them to respect physically strong warriors who dared to fight wild beasts. They adorned these warriors' heads with feathers as decorations, essentially because "the eagle is a top predator with no natural enemies"...

While writing this novel, even Yu Qie himself was a little confused: Could there really have been a relationship?
Me? An Indian?
A week later, the novel was completed, and the first person to see it was Momadi, the Indian idea king.

This is a short story of over 100,000 words. In the United States, it would be considered a short story, and it just happens to fit into a book.

Momadi was overjoyed upon seeing it, and clasped his hands together, saying, "You are a genius, you are the child of the sun god."

This novel is quite a patchwork, yet the patchwork is just right, with historical references found throughout. The story follows Lee, a Chinese-American who accidentally arrives on the surface of the world in the Boston subway and begins his quest to save humanity.

Boston was the first city in the United States to have a subway system, built in 1892, which later connected to the famous New York City subway. The story takes place here, providing a familiar cultural context for readers across the country.

Yu Qie considered writing a story set in China, but firstly, readers wouldn't accept it, and secondly, it could easily backfire.

This kind of novel is a bit too urbanized.

Momadi said to Yuche, "Thank you, thank you."

He said this in Chinese, and in a very obscure way, but Yu Qie didn't laugh.

"Old Mo, you can speak Chinese now?"

“Now that I have embarked on this journey home, I must learn the language of my ancestors.”

Yu Qie was surprised by Momadi's enthusiasm for the concept of "descendants of the Shang Dynasty." He suspected that Momadi was trying to find a patron for the indigenous people, hypnotizing himself into believing he was a descendant of the Shang Dynasty, and then actually starting to believe it. The Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong took place last year, and it's hard for people on the mainland to imagine the impact this event had on the rest of the world. The British had previously given Argentina a sound beating, but later they actually backed down.

Therefore, Momadi saw that even when the Chinese were very poor, they were able to unleash tremendous power.

The idea that more people means more power is not necessarily true.

Native Americans were once a very large ethnic group, even larger than the Chinese mainland on the other side of the Pacific (Song and Yuan dynasties) at one time. However, they were a scattered group without their own common beliefs, and as a result, they have fallen to their current state.

Momadi said, "I have been doing one thing all my life: building our Native American nation. It seems so difficult today. The novel is my only tool, and I can only use it to its fullest potential."

Afterwards, Momadi left Boston and went to the administrative capital of the United States. Because of the numerous major events that have occurred in Latin America this year, this year can be called the year of Latin America. In recognition of Momadi's achievements in reviving Native American culture, the President of the United States awarded him a special contribution award.

Yu Qie saw Lao Mo's image on the hotel's television station. He barely glanced at the country's president, instead pulling out a small piece of paper with a "steering wheel" drawn on it and muttering to himself:
"This is the sun, friends. We are a people who believe in the sun and the eagle."

Then hot tears fell.

This was certainly not due to the "special contribution award," but rather because Momadi believed he had found the magic formula for uniting nations.

The CCTV crew was surprised: they could hardly believe that the man in the bespoke suit who was giving the president the cold shoulder was actually "Old Mo," whom Yu Qie had been seeing frequently recently.

How many more foreign celebrities will be featured in this documentary?
Although the Chinese at that time knew nothing about it.

Carmen told Yu Che, "Momadi was a very influential figure among the Native Americans. The reason the Native Americans accepted him was because he was a great man who truly grew up in the tribe, went to college, and then returned to the Native American community."

“That’s really impressive. If you asked me to go back to Wanxian to work in literature, I definitely wouldn’t do it,” Yu Qie said.

Carmen added, “His tribe has no written language, only pictures. They communicate only orally. Therefore, Momadi strongly believes in the power of writing and language, and he has always promoted this view.”

In that sense, Lao Mo is truly a great man from a small place.

But Yu Qie had never heard of Momadi in his previous life.

This shows that what he did didn't go viral.

The film crew of "East Wind Prevails Over West Wind" still followed Yu Qie. They saw Yu Qie spend an afternoon reading Momadi's novel "The Land of Birth," and then sigh and shake his head.

No wonder Momadi was so enthusiastic; no wonder he reacted so strongly to the sun.

Holding the book "The Land of Birth," Yu Qie said, "I don't have time to translate this novel into Chinese, but other translators who are interested can do it. It mainly tells the story of a little Indian boy who can't speak and can't express his thoughts; he's a 'voiceless' person... and gradually regains his ability to speak during his journey."

"What is he saying? He is actually writing their national history."

"Comrades, in fact, there are some niche writers in every country. They may not be very famous, but they are great in their own region. We now live in a huge world constructed by the West. Anyone who is not famous in the Western world is not a world writer... I seem to be like that too."

"But we all know we shouldn't think this way. From this perspective, is modern Chinese literature really lagging behind the world? I used to believe it, but now I have some doubts."

Yu Qie's words were seen as having a hidden meaning, because "experimental literature" is currently popular in mainland China. It is a group of inventors who conduct literary research and use Western writing techniques to write Chinese novels, which of course makes it difficult for readers to understand.

Wang Shuo and Wang Xiaobo rose to prominence in this environment. Their "casual" novels sold extremely well, breaking the defenses of many in the literary world.

After filming, the main crew prepared to return home. They had captured a satisfactory amount of footage, enough to make several episodes of a documentary.

Yu invited them to dinner in Chinatown. There is a Chinatown here that is ranked fourth in the United States.

Everyone had a great time and got drunk.

Mu Qing asked Yu Qie when he would return to China.
Yu said, "Mr. Neruda's second investigation results are about to be released. After the truth comes out, I will return to my country."

Mu Qing nodded and sighed, "I want to stay with you forever, but the organization has summoned me, and I have to go back to Yanjing. The longest we've ever filmed a biographical film is a week, and you've already far exceeded that. But the documentary we're filming for you is only halfway done; the ending will have to be witnessed by others."

Yu Qie already knew that Mu Qing was creating a "story-like documentary," and he was inspired by elite media figures like Liu Xiangcheng. Mu Qing hoped to learn from developed Western media like Time magazine. However, Mu Qing was no longer a young man, and everything in the United States left him feeling lost.

He introduced Yu Qie to Shao Qi, a female reporter from Xinhua News Agency, who would be taking over Mu Qing's job. Shao Qi was in her thirties, with a fashionable short haircut like a news anchor.

“She studied in Serbia and speaks several Eastern European languages ​​very well. She wanted to be a war correspondent. We told her that Yuqie had been fighting all along, so we transferred this heroine here,” Mu Qing said.

Shao Qi looked at Yu Qie with a mixture of eagerness and barely perceptible admiration, after all, Yu Qie was a rare Chinese writer who was famous in the world.

Shao Qi introduced herself to Yu Qie. She was the daughter of a cadre, but she was eager to prove that being the "daughter of a cadre" was not something to rest on one's laurels.

Shao Qi also easily obtained valuable opportunities as a "foreign correspondent," so she specifically chose dangerous and remote places to go. "I was originally going to Serbia, but after you went to Colombia, Comrade Yu, I volunteered to come to Colombia, but unfortunately the organization did not approve it... Chinese reporters were unable to photograph your handshake of the century with Márquez."

"This is a disgrace to Chinese journalists, and I am determined to change this."

Then, Shao Qi couldn't help but laugh. It sounded like he was implying that "Yu Qie would encounter something more dangerous than Colombia," which was obviously impossible.

After that, the huge CCTV production team split into two parts. One part returned to China to edit and review the film—because several of their bridge-playing friends were very interested in what Comrade Yu had actually done in the United States and couldn't wait to see it! The other part stayed in the United States, led by female reporter Shao Qi.

"When will this documentary be broadcast?" Yu Qie asked.

"Before New Year's Day, because the Spring Festival is coming up after that. This year, I heard that Professor Yu Guangzhong will be on the Spring Festival Gala stage to recite the poem 'Nostalgia' to the people of mainland China. Professors Wang Meng and Qian Zhongshu will also be on stage, and oh, and Liu Shahe too! This year is a glorious year for you writers!"

Shao Qi said disappointedly, "But you're not here! When are you going to the Spring Festival Gala? Comrade Yu! You're clearly the key figure!"

Why did CCTV send one of my readers to be the leader? Can she be objective?
Yu Qie felt uneasy; was this documentary going too far?

(End of this chapter)