This is a splendid saga of Guanzhong Plain as well as a colorful painting scroll of Chinese village. Bai Jiaxuan, the protagonist marries six wives who all died. This weird destiny indicates ill omen. Two generations of a family put on soul-stirring plays for ruling White Deer grabbing geomantic field, taking honey-trap for malevolence, dutiful son becoming gangster, kind father-in-law killing his daughter-in-law, struggles of brothers, lovers becoming enemies...Great Revolution, the War of Resistance Against Japan, three-year civil war...The place changes dramatically-time changes, enmity of family and nation are entangled and complex. The revenge wrongly goes from generation to generation. The antique soil is trembling in the throes.
Ótimo livro, referência para se mergulhar na história da China do início do século XX. Todavia, sofre muito com algo que costuma me incomodar quando leio épicos: o fluxo temporal. Algumas coisas, por vezes fatos importantíssimos para o enredo, que demoram anos para ocorrer, acontecem rápido demais, se passando em duas ou três páginas.
After reading "The plain of White Deer", I close the thick book, in front of my eyes, I can still see all of the lively characters in the book. The story took place in a small Chinese village called the white deer plain, the author narrated the village's tragic experiences and history to show a nation's history and culture. From the subversion of the decadent Qing government to the establishment of the new regime of the People's Republic of China, the book demonstrated this grand historical background and both of its bright and dark side. This novel reflected to the darkest aspects in our vicious nature and our society, it really left us with a question of the containment of our savageness within. I would highly recommend this book to young adults who is up for a challenge for a really deep book.
ps.there are english translation copies to this book
La historia transcurre en una aldea ubicada en las afueras de mi ciudad, por eso culturalmente me resulta muy cercana. La obra tiene múltiples protagonistas, cada uno retratado con una vitalidad extraordinaria y un lenguaje que encarna perfectamente sus rasgos. Los conflictos se desarrollan en múltiples capas: luchas de clases sociales, la dignidad de la mujer, sentimientos patrióticos, valores nacionales e incluso dilemas familiares. Me encanta esta forma de narrar, donde a través de personajes comunes y corrientes de una aldea insignificante, se logra explorar la naturaleza humana y reflejar la sociedad.
——"A novel is considered to be the secret history of a nation."
The first edition of " White Deer Plain " was released in 1993. It used the stage of White Deer Village on White Deer Plain in the Guanzhong area of Shaanxi Province as a stage and shows the historical scrolls from the early years in the 20th century to the seventies in the 20th century.
Chen Zhongshi, born in Xi'an, Shaanxi in 1942, died in 2016. Representative works: "White Deer Plain", "Village", "Four Sisters" and so on.
The beginning of the novel has a certain fantasy color. Bai Jiaxuan's fate conflicts with his wife. The plant in the slope is transformed into a real white deer. It is inaccurate to say that the Chinese have no faith or worship. Most of us believe in Confucianism and worship ancestors.
A writer only writes vividly about his familiar life and writes realistically about the characters he has seen. As for the prototype of the story and the prototype of the characters, I don't think it's necessary to investigate. Even if these things didn't happen to Bai Jiaxuan or Lu Zilin, it probably happened to someone else. Therefore, the reader feels that the story of the work is true and that the characters in the work carry the shadow of someone around them.
Most people are easy to accept what is visualized, but resist accepting what is abstract. So, storytelling is one of the best educational methods. I think the difference between pure entertainment works and valuable works is that the only goal of entertainment works is to make people happy, while readers know clearly that such people and such things are contrary to the logic of reality.
So, when we finished watching AV in Japan, some romantic dramas in South Korea, and online novels in China, we were greatly satisfied. But we also knew that this was impossible in real life. When we finished watching Pride and Prejudice, we knew that we and the people around us often made mistakes made by Darcy and Elizabeth, thus promoting the process of introspection.
Mr. Zhu said that repairing the ancestral hall is a small good deed while setting up a school is a big good deed. In the era of farming, if even ordinary farmers can abide by such simple family management principles, then the folk customs are generally honest. The hope of a nation and a country lies in its minors. What kind of education a minor has received will determine where they will lead this nation and country in the future and how they will educate their next generations.
Bai Jiaxuan's parents are willing to pay all the savings to make their son get married. This reflects the Chinese's extreme attachment to lineage succession. From the fact that many young people are forced to marry by their parents, it can be seen that this kind of thinking still has a large number of supporters today, but the current family structure has changed from a large family to a small family, and the parents have little binding force on their children. When it comes to the middle of this century, this kind of thinking should be even weaker.
A person ’s own life is limited in length and width, and he cannot step into two rivers at the same time. But he can see the living conditions of other people in time and space through books. In the beginning, what attracted him was stories that made him feel strange. But in the end, he was usually impressed by various characters who were active on the historical stage. This makes the reader have a deeper understanding of human nature.
What is the significance of this realization? I think it probably makes us live more clearly. "The Analects of Confucius," says, "Only the wisest men and the most ignorant man are unchangeable." Most people are in between, so they are suffering. If we don't plan to walk in the direction of foolishness, then we will walk towards the goal of wisdom.
Here are my meta-thoughts about how to read such books:
Starting point) There are two possible mentality that can feel it difficult when reading stories like this:
Possible audience 1: Many people are used to reading non-fictions, such as Poor Economics [My Review] which introduces the actual situation of poor people and common mentalities. When they encounter a novel that is just in the form of a story, they feel that (a) this is unreal, what am I expected to get out of it? and (b) this is only one story, and induction (inferring a pattern from one example) can be erroneous.
Possible audience 2: More people enjoy reading fictions and enjoy the journey together with the story. A story being a story brings them fun.
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Benefits of reading books like this) This novel is created based on the author's observation of real-world phenomena. There are several features of composing the context.
The baseline is to do the documentary / journalism / case study way, recording real stories, such as What I Have Seen.
Creating novels based on real-world patterns has the following pros and cons: Pros) - The author can compile a high density of events together in one story, and this arrangement can stimulate the readers to capture the pattern better and more easily. - By wrapping up things in fictions and metaphor, the author can avoid attack from censorship, to some extent. - There are way more readers that are in the type 2 audience above, so wrapping the factual patterns in stories might be the only way to bring these concepts to them, otherwise they wouldn't read such books at all. - The artistic effect of the literature can strengthen the ridiculous-ness, e.g., Animal Farm [My Review].
Cons) When the author is not capable enough to capture the laws behind what is happening in the real-world society, then the novel can be misleading.
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What can readers do) Books, in essence, are about information passing. It is a collaboration between authors and readers. After the authors put the above efforts, the readers should try their best to "decode" the message that the authors want to send along.
Caution) I should take care of my induction process, and do not overgeneralize. One way is to find similarity of this story with other facts I observe in real world or history. Another way is to reason and check the validity of the patterns I extract.
In the meantime, feel free to set free our sensors, and over-generate some hypothesized patterns. We can filter them later on.
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Takeaways from this book) Below seems to be some patterns that this book wants to imply:
- Social contract of a village in the context of 1900s China, a rural province with relatively rich soil to do agriculture. E.g., having 1-2 big families to lead the village, promote Confucius moral values, keep some superstitious beliefs and keep the rituals. The emergence of local leaders, i.e., 中国乡绅. Related books to inspire social contract: The Social Contract, The Spirit of the Laws, 近代中国土匪实录 [My Review], 血酬定律 [My Review].
- The stability of such village is weak under perturbations (since culture and norms usually require i.i.d. and overfits to the context, as Montesquieu observes), e.g., wars, endless taxes, robbery, pandemic, starvation, etc. In war time, temporarily, military is the only dependence that one can rely on. Related facts: The Death of Woman Wang [My Review], 饥饿的盛世 [My Review]
- Individual desires are always there, e.g., sex with non-partners, indulging in drugs.
- Selfish, dirty traits are also there, e.g., greedily wanting the property of the other family, jealously wanting to make the others less advantaged.
==== Related books: - About social contract in villages: 乡土中国, 中国乡绅 - To keep social contract, people must do lots of work with social relationships: 金翼, 面子与人情. - About the perturbance that ruins stability: 活着 - About the natural disasters that make people struggle on the survival line: The Death of Women Wang
Remotely related books: - About social contract in other subgroups of the society: 红楼梦, 金粉世家, 潜规则, 大宅门 - About the 1700s Chinese society: 饥饿的盛世 - Books that also use fictions to reflect the real world: Animal Farm, 1984, 黄金时代,青铜时代,白银时代,黑铁时代.
Bạch lộc nguyên của Trần Trung Thực. Tác phẩm này đạt giải thưởng văn học Mao Thuẫn lần thứ 2 (giải thưởng văn học danh giá nhất của Trung Quốc). Tác phẩm hay và được biết đến vì chuyển thể ra phim khá nổi tiếng. Độc giả Trung Quốc thường đùa rắng muốn biết thành thị Trung Quốc như nào thì đọc Phế đô, còn muôn biêt nông thôn Trung Quôc ra làm sao thì đọc Bạch lộc nguyên.
Ótima leitura . Uma odisseia pela história complexa e intrigante da China. Costurada em uma pequena terra, contada através da geração de uma família! Uma leitura muito interessante e envolvente
I can't believe I read this book when I was a middle schooler, so like 12, 13? DO NOT READ THIS BOOK WHNE UR THAT YOUNG. THE END. UMMMMMMM. The show is good.
还有一点我想吐槽的是女性角色在书里往往是要么“天生知性”(比如白孝文的媳妇在新婚之夜就已经知道怎么进行性事,而白孝文则被描写成一个笨拙纯洁对性一无所知的人,借以凸显他的“正派”),要么“长期渴性”(比如书中让兆鹏媳妇因长期守活寡而在性压抑中逐渐疯癫,我就想请问男的是不是以为女人都跟他们一样没了性活不了)。她们承担着引诱和性启蒙的角色,when in actuality 我们都知道男人才是那个时刻渴性又恨女的那一方。