Acheng： Eye of Heaven

Acheng didn’t want to appear in the literary world. For decades, he couldn’t be seen in Beijing’s literary activities. He hides in our time and talks to us in words. Thirty years ago, I read his Chess King, Tree King and king of the children, lamenting his excellent lyrics and profound enlightenment. At that time, critics thought it was a strange man coming to the world, but the deep secrets were hard to crack. The publication of Acheng’s Anthology gives us a chance to get to know him comprehensively.

"out of cavity"

There are many topics involved in the book. Apart from novels and essays, archaeology, China history, folklore, geography, art history, film history, etc., are connected into a pearl, which is rich in wisdom, which is rare among contemporary literati. These non-literary factors seem to explain the existence of its true nature of the world.

Good writers are a little special in terms of knowledge structure. Wang Zengqi, Wang Xiaobo and Acheng all belong to such people. Many years ago, I saw Acheng’s pamphlet on elegance and vulgarity in literature, swinging between history and reality, with many surprising thoughts, and the impression was stronger than Zhu Ziqing’s article on the distinction between elegance and vulgarity. At that time, I thought that this article was extraordinary because the author was a novelist. When novelists talk about literature, they have more dimensions than the literati in the study, and they are not all based on bookishness. Acheng was born in a family of literati and read a lot since childhood. The "Cultural Revolution" suffered many hardships, but the inner feelings had an element of resisting vulgarity, so we knew the dislocation between culture and life and had an inner pursuit of spirit. This is very different from the writer’s spirit at that time, and its characteristics gradually show up in future writing.

Acheng regards his writing process as a process of "out of tune". There are similar literati accents everywhere, which makes him feel bored. He appreciates figures like Wang Zengqi and Mu Xin because they have no "literary accent". People who don’t have this kind of accent are mostly interesting people with extraordinary spirit in their hearts. He looked at the philosophers in the pre-Qin period and the literati in the Six Dynasties, and what he appreciated was probably the innocent and natural charm. These, since modern times, may only be possessed by a few people such as Lu Xun.

He is a good writer and understands the inner rhythm of China’s words. "Romantic Everywhere" describes all kinds of things in the world, the calmness of literati in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the interest of literati, all of which are different from those who have experienced the "Cultural Revolution". In the depths of his thinking, he hated the false words of the "Cultural Revolution", and he had a rhythm in his heart, and he would sing and sing to himself in boring years. Only those who have been bathed by the old school have this state. His precocity surprised his contemporaries.

"Wandering in art"

When I read his works, I felt that each article had a different number of ways, which was inherent outside the thinking of ordinary people. As soon as Chess King came out, it shocked everyone. A return to the traditional novel was as compelling as the fresh wind. The Tree King reveals the chaos and ignorance of the educated youth’s life, which goes beyond the general model, but actually has an irony of social choices since modern times. King of the children is an absurd description throughout, but the absurdity in the absurdity makes people see the irrationality of existence, and the reason why the alternative is the alternative has a moving explanation.

Acheng dealt with people’s shared memories in a very personalized way at that time, and the scenery was completely different. When people can only express their thoughts in public discourse, he sees the possibility of individualization in the anachronists. The failed hero depicted in "The King of Trees" makes those ignorant young people from outside look extremely pale. Collective ignorance comes from blind obedience, resulting in the desolation of nature and the desolation of human nature.

For our author, the process of writing is the process of overcoming this desolation. What won him a wide reputation was Chess King, a novel about the fun Wang Yisheng, a marginal young man, got in chess. The years written by Acheng shed the heat of a lonely life, but it was not a popular idea, not a popular theory, but an ancient thinking movement wandering in art. The way in which Chess King tells the story is not novel in modern novels, but the voice is old vernacular. Here, I wrote about the lonely lives of several educated youths. The days are as monotonous as the desert, but there are miraculous intellectual flashes in people’s hearts. Acheng thinks that in an era when there is almost no way out, if people can still enter aesthetic and spiritual pleasure because of their skills, the spirit will be barren and there will be a place for redemption. This is an ancient style in Taoism and Zen forest, leisurely in troubled times. If the spirit does not fall, or even there is a miracle flashing, you can be calm and regretless.

Acheng grew up in a special era, and literature pursued greatness and perfection. But he prefers to write about a short and imperfect life. He knows that fake literature that is far away from the world is not the nature of life. Only in daily life can you see the true meaning, and the power of the spirit can also be obtained in daily life. There are several wonderful points in Chess King that are unforgettable. First, it is written and eaten, and the aroma attacks. The mystery in the plain is quite decent, which has a legacy of A Dream of Red Mansions. The aesthetic display of appetite is a gaze on the oriental outlook on life. Only the old-fashioned note novels occasionally have such fragments, but Acheng is no less vivid than the ancients. The second is to write about the realm of playing chess, the meditation of completely forgetting myself, which contains the sun and the moon, including the atmosphere of heaven and earth, and the vast universe rotates under the wrist. Under the rhyme of the novel, it is the mundane sound that flows, and it is no longer ordinary; But elegance is like the language of fairyland, solemn as a god, and wonderful. The third is to write about people’s extraordinary taste, which is quite mysterious. For example, the old man who picks up rotten paper is like a hermit, hiding a mysterious atmosphere. These are marginal people, who are despised, but the more marginal they are, the more profound their thoughts are, which is probably what Zhuangzi said is useless.

But the most attractive thing about the novel is not the sanctification of mortals, but the sadness behind the sacredness. After Wang Yisheng shone brilliantly on the chessboard, he wept bitterly. His vulgar body is still in the dust net, and everyone is still in the poor world. We can’t help but take a breath of air-conditioning when we collect the pen here. As usual, the misfortune of heaven and earth lingers. Can we forget that sad thought? At the end of the novel, it is worth pondering, and there are endless implications. After reading this novel, Wang Zengqi was amazed, but at the same time he said that there were some failures. The implication was to expose all the mysteries, but it was a pity. But I don’t think so. If the novel is written like this, it will return to the secular world and pull its eyes down. The literature of the "Cultural Revolution" is to elevate the characters, and some of them are out of touch, so they are too high to be cold. What Acheng wants is probably the result.

Thoughts are separated from the times.

In the literary world of the 1980s, if there were no such figures as Wang Zengqi and Acheng, we would not have realized that the beauty of ancient style is also touching today. When talking about note novels, Wang Zengqi specifically talked about Acheng’s achievements, thinking that he had his own cardinal and was above the vulgar forest. This feeling hits the core of the topic. In Wang Zengqi’s view, it is a great pity that the May 4th Movement overthrew the Kongjiadian and lost the ancient prose. He felt that Acheng and Sun Li were both rare people. They got the charm from the ancient words, and the spirit was modern, which expanded the space for expression. Acheng was a pioneer at that time. He completely ignored the cold around him and completed an alternative communication with the times by talking to himself.

A good writer’s thoughts are separated from the times. I remember reading Zhang Taiyan’s letter to Qian Xuantong and mocking the popular style of writing at that time. Zhang Taiyan said that the styles of Liang Qichao and Lin Shu hurt the readers because of the traces of affectation. In his view, the articles of the Six Dynasties are good, because there are expectations and anxieties in the heart, not pretentious confessions. This view gives Qian Xuantong a lot of inspiration. His way of speaking in the new culture movement is mostly from Zhang Taiyan, which is strange and interesting. Lu Xun’s later success was that he avoided the words of that era and even changed his thinking. This rule is also reflected in Wang Zengqi and Acheng. It is also inevitable that their hearts are connected.

It is of great use for writers to learn more miscellaneous subjects. When Acheng was a child, he haunted Liulichang, spent time among antiques, and had an eye for being close to history. Since the 1980s, the average person has taken a new path, only one or two steps: going back to the seventeenth year and the May 4th Movement. However, he returned to the Ming Dynasty and before it, and studied ancient architecture, ancient furniture, ancient paintings and ancient poems. The recently published River Map of Luoshu — — Exploring the Origin of Civilized Modeling, we put our eyes into ancient civilization. When he thinks about artistic problems from the perspective of anthropology and archaeology, he shows a great atmosphere. Few contemporary writers have entered this field. If you think of Chen Mengjia’s entry into the archaeological field from poetry writing and Shen Congwen’s immersion in the world of costume history, you have deep feelings. Literati fleeing from downtown are much more genial than us laymen. They have a penetrating eye and see the finiteness and infinity of existence. We have not studied this phenomenon enough, and such people are rare. What can be explained by the existence of Acheng and why there are so many shallow writers in contemporary times?

This article was published in the hot air edition of Beijing Daily on June 12, and reprinted by the supplement department of Beijing Daily.