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时代三部曲 #3

青铜时代

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A group of people seeking personality, loving freedom lived their lives according to their own life and spiritual values. They were full of strong desire to create and humanitarian needs, but they were controlled by the temporal power struggles and their psychology and behavior were distorted , thus the wisdom and love were transformed into a farce. In this voluminous works, the writer intermingled love at present and legends in Tang dynasty to modernize Tangs legends through secret stories of the Tang Dynasty such as the gifted scholars and beauties, midnight elopement, seeking love far away, starting magnificent business. In this book the author absorbed modern taste through the recounts of past things and integration of history and art thus to establish the ultimate value of life and lead to the dialogical narrative through which the narrator can go through from the ancient time and the present time at their pleasure. ""Bronze Age (last revised illustrations Collector's Edition)"" is a series of works of Wang xiaobos Time Trilogy and is the latest illustration of this collection. This series were chosen as ""one hundred twentieth-century Chinese novel"" in the ""Asia Week. They were also the most beautiful harvest"" in contemporary literature.""Golden Age"", ""Silver Age"" and ""Bronze Age"" is the essence of Wang Xiaobo works. ""Time Trilogy"" seems a collection of Wang Xiaobos works on the surface. It seems that there is no relationship of each book, but they are logical in order. The order is ""Golden Age"" is about he real world; ""Silver Age"" is about future world; ""Bronze Age"" is about the past world.

669 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

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About the author

Wang Xiaobo

104 books157 followers
Wang Xiaobo (Chinese: 王小波) was a Chinese writer who became famous after his death.

Wang Xiaobo on paper-republic.org.

Wang was born in an intellectual family in Beijing in 1952. He was sent to a farm in Yunnan province as an "intellectual youth" at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1968. In 1971, he was sent to the countryside of Shandong province, and became a teacher. In 1972, he was allowed to return to Beijing, and he got a job as a working in a local factory. He met Li Yinhe in 1977, who was working as an editor for "Guangming Daily", and she later became his wife. He was accepted by Renmin University of China in 1978 where he studied economics and trade and got his Bachelor's Degree. He received his Master's Degree at the University of Pittsburgh in 1988. After he returned to China, he began to teach at Peking University and Renmin University of China. He quit his job as a college lecturer in 1992, and became a freelance writer. On April 11, 1997 he died suddenly of heart disease at his apartment.

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Profile Image for Zhijing Jin.
347 reviews60 followers
January 2, 2022
Wang Xiaobo's books are very highly rated. In his series of novels that reflects the political situations, including the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, he depicts different contexts of history, ancient, 1900s, future, but makes a call that authoritarianism will cause all kinds of harms to society. In this book, he composes three stories in the context of ancient China.

1) In the preface and the story, the escape of Lady Hongfu 红拂夜奔, my main takeaway is that due to the political pressure, talents
- are not cultivated enough to do more creative things, and their mindsets get interfered with other ideology that they are forced to pick up
- cannot write what they want, and their publications cannot be rewarded or spread
- do not have the time because they are forced to do other things.

In terms of good thought exercise, I really like how sad but real this story is. It forms a sharp contrast between the story of Leonardo da Vinci [My Review] and the story of the General Li Jing who has no way to go when he was a creative scientist, due to the political system. It also reminds me of the points Xiaobo makes in The Silent Majority (沉默的大多数) about the suppressed intellectuals (with literally no way to do science, art, or even honestly voice out their opinion) in China from 1949.

Some tips:
- Due to political pressure, many of the best writers are doing translation. So read the translated literature to see their writing, e.g., 王道乾, 查良铮, and do not fully follow what is famous because the reward system is inverse.

2) The other story, the Longevity Template (万寿寺), is more of an artistic play of story. It brings the reader to a journey of a story inside a story inside a story, with many possible branches explored with a depth-first search. The many possible developments and ends of the story also feel like many parallel worlds. It conveys to me a beauty similar to that of the movies Inception, and Memento. It is a beauty that is almost a visual art, or, more precisely, the beauty of geometry.

3) The final story, Searching for my fiancé whose name is the Incomparable (寻找无双), is a bit too complicated. There are some deeply hidden metaphors, and the inspiration to real world things is not very easy to grasp. But still great work!

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Below is a poem made for Xiaobo's death:
今天早晨,我为自己
冲了一杯浓浓的咖啡
破天荒地没有加糖
似乎我早有正确的预感
为小波的死准备了悼词
面对你信中的悼亡诗
我满口苦涩
我怀疑自己的眼睛
看到的
是我熟悉的字迹
还是一座陌生的坟墓
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