Monkey Cup: A Brief Analysis of Crime and Punishment of Chinese Families in Nanyang from the Perspective of Functional Description and Magic Cruel Aesthetics.

Zhang Guixing is a heavyweight writer who can rival Li Yongping in Malaysian Chinese literature. His representative works include Khufu, Song of Celine, Naughty Bag, Elephant and Monkey Cup.

Zhang Guixing, 1956 was born in Sarawak, Borneo, East Malaysia, and is the third generation of Chinese immigrants. Zhang Guixing was forced to study in Taiwan Province Province on 1976 because of family disputes and local living environment. During World War II, when Japan invaded Malaysia, the contradiction between Malays and Chinese increased sharply. This background is the historical background of Zhang Guixing's monkey cup leading to the "rainforest".

The novel Monkey Cup tells the story that the hero pheasant quit his job as a school teacher and returned to his hometown Sarawak, Malaysia from Taiwan Province Province, looking for his sister who had just given birth and entered the rainforest. He was warmly received by Dayak people, and had an emotional entanglement with Dayak girl Yanini.

The Monkey Cup is known as the magic classic of China literature. Zhang Guixing unfolded the story of crossing the rainforest with functional description, and interpreted the legendary history of a magical real family. In this book review, I will analyze the crime and punishment of Nanyang Chinese Family from the perspective of functional description and magical cruel aesthetics.

The biggest feature of the novel Monkey Cup is that Zhang Gui uses functional description in the whole novel. Whether describing the emotional entanglements of characters or the humanistic life of rainforest aborigines, readers will always feel the historical background stage of tropical rain forest woven by Zhang Guixing.

(1) Cultural Life of Indigenous People in Rainforest

Li Mei, the sister of the novel's protagonist pheasant, gave birth to a deformed baby and kept it in an incubator in the intensive care unit. When the doctor suggested giving up treatment, Li Mei left the hospital with her baby in her arms and disappeared into the tropical rain forest behind the hospital.

A pheasant embarked on a journey to find her sister, and entered the rainforest with Ba Du, a Dayak, and Yanini, a Dayak girl. On the banks of Banan River, Batu visited three long houses along the way. Zhang Guixing used functional description to describe the humanistic life of coastal residents.

The urchin hung a foreskin penis and a watermelon-like smooth ass and rolled on the shore like a live fish. Girls wash their hair naked, chase each other, and their breasts are smiling. The tattoo of the young man is like a bat flying at night, and the harpoon handle on his hand is mottled.

There is lust in the words, which also reveals that the aborigines in the rainforest still retain their ancient way of life because they are isolated from the outside world. It is an ancient way of life for girls to wash their hair naked, which is also related to marriage customs and indicates Li Mei's emotional entanglement.

(2) the dayak hospitality.

Dayak people have the custom of killing pigs and feasting on relatives, and take out the most precious things to entertain guests. If the guests are older or weaker, they will be treated with piglets. If the guests are kind and can't bear to kill, they will invite warriors to kill for them. Yanini greeted the pheasant with a warrior-level adult pig.

The whole pig killing ceremony lasted for a long time and was horrible. The pheasant picked up the spear and stabbed the pig a dozen times. The pig was covered in blood, but the Dayak people clapped their hands and laughed. This kind of scene is really cruel to us ordinary people, but it reflects the customs and hospitality of Dayak people and exposes the wild side of human nature.

Yanini ate his forefinger and thumb, so he touched Yanini's lips, which were softer and fatter than elephant trunk meat.

Besides, there are all kinds of meat and rice wine at the party. Zhang Guixing's description of Yanini eating elephant trunk meat not only aroused the pheasant's appetite, but also made the pheasant's appetite castle completely captured by pigs, snakes, chickens and ducks. Zhang Guixing's functional description describes the living habits of Dayak people, but it hides the lust of human nature.

Zhang Guixing's novel "Monkey Cup" has something fishy between the lines. It uses exaggerated words to compare the violence and lust between various wild animals and plants, which makes us feel like being in a tropical rainforest when reading, stimulating our senses. It is worthy of magical cruel aesthetics.

Violent aesthetics originated in the United States, and is mostly used in film and television creation. Mainly in the sense, violence is presented in an aesthetic way, and the violence and violence of human nature are expressed in the lens of fantasy. Audiences are often amazed at artistic expression and will not feel uncomfortable with the content.

Zhang Guixing's monkey cup combines this technique, which symbolizes the violence of human nature in rhinoceros, lizard, monkey, pitcher plant and silk floss tree. The magical and cruel aesthetic style of rain forest also broadens readers' horizons in China's creation.

① Metaphor of Nepenthes

After reading the novel Monkey Cup, I found that the title is also metaphorical, referring to Nepenthes, a tropical carnivorous plant, commonly known as Monkey Cup, which was officially named "Worry-Free Girl". The overflowing fragrance of Nepenthes can attract bees, butterflies, flies and so on. If Nepenthes grow wantonly, other animals and plants will also breed violently.

Li Mei has a Nepenthes tattoo on her arm, and her friend told her to call her a scorpion. Ba Du is struggling with copywriting all over, and the Nepenthes tattoo on his arm is even more striking. Tattoos seem to have become the totem and belief of local people.

Nepenthes, one like an orangutan's arm and the other like a rooster's neck, are parasitic in the bushes. Some of them have not developed their own killing mechanism, some have just opened the bottle cap to hunt virgins, and some have died like broken radishes, but most of them are as young and sophisticated as carnivores in this field, full of blood and pulse under the hot southwest monsoon.

Nepenthes is also a symbol. At that time, in Malaysia, some people were planters and some were coolies. Nature has exploitation, violence, treachery, greed and cruelty, and it also exposes the dark side of human nature.

(2) the metaphor of tropical rain forest

Zhang Guixing compared the tropical rain forest to "mother". The rainforest is broad-minded, and all the unhappiness and pain in real life are diluted by the rainforest without a trace, and it is also a place for spiritual healing.

Walking in the dark rain forest ... animals, birds and insects are gone, but in this place, shapes and images are completely useless. Boys must distinguish them from sounds by hearing. At this time, the sound is more concrete and real than the image, and it has more blood and flesh, which makes the boy touch, smell, lick and chew each other's meat, bones, blood, feces, saliva and so on.

In fact, behind the description of the rainforest is the struggle, killing, lust and violence between human beings and nature, manor owners and migrant workers, men and women, colonial government and reactionary class. The seemingly peaceful tropical rain forest actually hides violence and buries many innocent lives.

In the novel Monkey Cup, Zhang Gui intends to construct a dynamic rainforest space with realistic scenes, human life, rainforest legends and imaginary magic, and to relate human desires and violence to the rainforest with functional descriptions. Rainforest not only witnessed the expansion of desire, but also hidden the plot of sin and evil.

The bright line of the novel monkey cup is that Li Mei gave birth to a deformed child and ran away with it. Luo went to look for Li Mei, who escaped, and had an emotional entanglement with Yani on the way. There is also a hidden line in this story. The love between Luo and his students, and the affection between his grandfather and his beautiful sister are the love and hate of four generations of a family.

(1) The emotional entanglement between my grandfather and my beautiful sister.

Great-grandfather gave the gold to the British governor in exchange for the owner of the plantation. In order to expand the land, opium dens, gambling dens and brothels have appeared in the manor, which seems to provide convenience for migrant workers, and this is also a kind of oppression and exploitation of migrant workers.

Zhou Fu, a migrant worker, was beaten for stealing opium paste, so he was forced to mortgage his daughter Xiaohua Yin to the plantation and signed a contract of 10. After Xiao Hua Yin entered the manor, grandpa fell in love with Xiao Hua Yin, but he couldn't marry her. Later, grandpa failed to escape with Xiaohuayin, and Xiaohuayin swallowed the poisonous bacteria and died.

Li Mei is not a pheasant's sister, but a gambling friend owes his grandfather a huge gambling debt and uses Li Mei to mortgage the gambling debt. Coincidentally, when my grandfather first met Li Mei, he thought of Xiao Huayin. Li Mei is wearing small white cloth shoes, a small shirt, shorts, her navel exposed, and Nepenthes tattooed on her arm. From then on, my grandfather often took Li Mei under the silk floss tree and invaded her.

Li Mei gave birth to a deformed baby. The doctor checked out that Li Mei had a thick cocoon on her abdomen, which seemed to be walking on her abdomen. Li Mei's behavior is undoubtedly a kind of resistance and hatred.

Li Mei is just a substitute for my grandfather's emotional transfer to Xiao Huayin, not real love. But my grandfather ruined my sister's life to satisfy her lust, which is an unforgivable moral betrayal.

(2) the love between pheasant and Yani.

In the novel Monkey Cup, Zhang Guixing describes the emotional entanglement between the pheasant and Yanini, a girl from Daillac, and describes the emotion between the pheasant and Wang Xiaoqi, a student. It is also immoral for teachers to fall in love with students.

On the way to find her sister, Yanini took care of her day and night because of her shoulder injury, treated her and fed her, and spent four nights together. According to Dayak custom, the pheasant will marry Nini in five nights. Nini didn't show up on the fifth night in order not to embarrass the pheasant.

At the end of the story, Luo and Yanini were supposed to be lovers, but Zhang Guixing's final arrangement ended in tragedy. Yanini came to the pheasant's hometown and asked him to marry him, but the pheasant was shot three arrows by Batu and died.

Grandfather was avenged and killed by Ba Du's grandfather because of his disagreement with Dayak. Emotionally, the pheasant not only made mistakes made by his grandfather, but also got involved in a feud with the Dayak people, and was finally shot by Batu. Behind this feud is the family history and colonial history of this family, as well as the violence and killing of aborigines in the tropical rain forest, which is the crime and punishment of the Chinese family in Nanyang.

Conclusion:

When Zhang Guixing was a child, he lived in a floating house, with pineapple orchards and corn orchards on the left front, banana orchards and vegetable gardens on the left rear, pepper orchards on the right front, orchards on the right rear, and endless awns and rainforests on the rear. Later, the floating foot building became a resting place for many passers-by, submerged by the jungle, crumbling and haunted. All this is reflected in the Monkey Cup, which depicts the legend of a Nepenthes family with magic and reality.