[Original] Eliminate prejudice and stereotypes about Chaoshan

Dispelling prejudices and prejudices against Chaoshan

The practical significance of Guo Xiaodong’s work "The Bronze Bowl - The Romance of the Overseas Chinese Pit Bureau"

On the road outside Shantou City, there is a It is a four-story house that resembles a private house. In the center of the house are five large characters "Qiao Pi Cultural Relics Museum" written vertically. "Bi" means "letter" in Chaoshan dialect, and "Qiaopi" refers to the special remittance vouchers that overseas Chinese send back to China through private channels or financial and postal institutions, accompanied by letters from home or simple attachments. Designating such letters and remittance vouchers as cultural relics and building a museum to store them shows the importance of these items. Professor Jao Tsung-i, an international master of sinology, believes that the Chaoshan Overseas Chinese Review is a worldwide topic in studying the economic and political history of Chaozhou people at home and abroad. Although I have been to Shantou many times, it was not until the premiere event of Guo Xiaodong's work "Bronze Bowl - The Story of Qiao Pi Bureau" held in Shantou that I had the opportunity to visit the "Qiao Pi Cultural Relics Museum", and this work is closely related to the Qiao Pi Bureau. Being closely related has changed my understanding of Chaoshan and updated my humanistic perspective on this region.

There was a time when smuggling, tax fraud, and counterfeiting were rampant in the Chaoshan area. The local social and economic order was in chaos. The direct consequences were loss of credit, damage to the image, The economy suffered and people suffered. In the eyes of outsiders, Chaoshan goods have become synonymous with "fake and shoddy", and Chaoshan people have become synonymous with "cheating and abduction". The Chaoshan area, which lacks credit, has gradually lost its former glory. As a media person, I have followed relevant law enforcement officials to the Chaoshan area many times to report on the crackdown on local counterfeit production and sales. Therefore, like many people's prejudices, I once thought that the Chaoshan area lacked integrity. place.

This is just a prejudice caused by the infinite magnification of the shortcomings of the Chaoshan area. In the process of delving into the reasons, it was discovered that the Chaoshan area is a place with rich traditional culture. Chaoshan people are called They are called "Oriental Jews". In this place, the cultural group it contains is related to wealth creation. From Li Ka-shing to Ma Huateng, these are all Chinese wealth tycoons born in Chaoshan area. Perhaps due to some kind of exaggeration, a kind of prejudice and prejudice against Chaoshan area and Chaoshan people is difficult to dispel. How to eliminate such prejudices and stereotypes, as well as truly analyze the Chaoshan area and restore the history and humanity, have been perplexing the official and private sectors of Chaoshan.

?The advent of Guo Xiaodong’s work "Bronze Bowl", I think, to a certain extent, can play a role in dispelling the prejudices and stereotypes in Chaoshan. This effect is first of all Mr. Guo Xiaodong's feelings and true understanding of Chaoshan, because facing Chaoshan, Mr. Guo Xiaodong thinks this way: "The vast and fertile nature of Chaoshan, the city-state Chaoshan formed by thousands of years of cultivation, and the human culture Chaoshan is the mother tongue, the classical Chaoshan is inextricably linked, Chaoshan is a 'leisurely' and elegant woman..." In the face of such Chaoshan, Mr. Guo Xiaodong believes that "any literature will inevitably reveal its small and pale side, and the same is true for the novel "The Bronze Bowl"." To understand Chaoshan from this perspective, the prejudice and prejudice against Chaoshan are so Trivial, even completely enough to dissolve.

It can be said that when society looks at the Chaoshan area with a lack of integrity, the overseas Chinese criticism and its history of overseas Chinese criticism in the Chaoshan area are the best way to confront this kind of prejudice and prejudice. As a literary work based on overseas Chinese criticism, "The Bronze Bowl" further refutes and dispels this prejudice and prejudice from a literary and historical perspective.

"Bronze Bowl" is a literary work with Qiao Pi as a clue, and the Qiao Pi Cultural Relics Museum in Shantou City is a museum displaying Qiao Pi cultural relics. Every piece of Qiao Pi on display is not only It contains family stories and physical evidence of integrity. From the history of overseas Chinese approval in the Chaoshan area, we can completely discover the integrity and creation of wealth in the Chaoshan area and certain genes among the Chaoshan ethnic group that can produce the richest Chinese. These genes are actually the spirit of contract that is missing in society, and this spirit of contract The embodied material genre is Qiao Pi.

? The process of wealth creation by Chaoshan people is closely connected with Qiaopi. Qiaopi is an important object for transferring wealth. The emergence and widespread use of Qiaopi have given rise to industries such as Shuike and Pijiu. The work "Bronze Bowl" portrays the life of water guests and pundits. Shuike is a person who frequently travels between China and abroad and specializes in delivering overseas Chinese batches or items on behalf of overseas Chinese. It is a special occupation that mainly focuses on collecting and disbursing batches of money. Shui Ke traveled far across the oceans, made his home all over the world, and lived by water, hence the name "Shui Ke". The batch foot is equivalent to the role of the overseas batch delivery person. In the period before the establishment of financial postal institutions, communication and remittances (qiao batch) between overseas Chinese and their relatives in their hometowns relied on these batch mails. A letter of overseas Chinese approval needs to be transferred from the foreigner to the supervisor, who then delivers it to the party concerned. Most of the immigrants and immigrants came from poor families and lived a difficult life. Sometimes they had to travel hundreds of miles every day to deliver hundreds of letters to overseas Chinese, but the remuneration was very meager. Even so, in the numerous materials and textual records about Qiao Pi and the history of Qiao Pi, we have not seen any embezzlement or false identification of Qiao Pi so far. The high degree of piety and integrity in the process of delivering Qiao Pi has become the most vivid and solemn character in the history of Qiao Pi. Qiao Biao is a kind of exchange voucher, a kind of contract spirit, and there is another kind of oral promise, that is, it is purely a verbal entrustment, without any proof, and it relies on promises and entrustments to travel around the world. This is a tangible or intangible contract spirit embodied by Qiao Pi in the hundreds of years from its birth to its disappearance.

? In the work "The Bronze Bowl", Guo Xiaodong focused his writing on the living beings in the middle and lower classes, praising the Shuike and Pijiao for their spirit of adhering to the contract, and criticizing them for dead or wrong things. Even a sealed silver letter without an address was praised for his lifelong spirit of "keeping faith and seeking". And this kind of promotion and praise of the spirit of contract is actually a powerful attack on the lack of integrity in today's society.

"Tongbo Bowl" is Guo Xiaodong's 12th novel. It is also a novel named after a place in Chaoshan. Tongbo Bowl is a small village in Chaoshan area. Before "The Bronze Bowl", the novels written by Guo Xiaodong always wrote about Hainan Island, where he went to become an educated youth at the age of 15. His 11th novel "When the Sun Becomes a River" is still related to Hainan Island, and "The Bronze Bowl" is still related to Hainan Island. "Alms Bowl" returns the perspective to his hometown and his family.

The themes of Guo Xiaodong’s works range from the Taiyang River in Hainan Island to the Bronze Bowl in the Chaoshan Plain. This is a return of the writer’s hometown spirit. If Hainan is Guo Xiaodong’s memory of youth, “The Bronze Bowl” must be his The return of his hometown spirit is not a gorgeous turn from the themes of educated youth and urban themes in his creations, but a sublimation of a writer's deep soul in creation.

? Guo Xiaodong used the work "Bronze Bowl" to carry the native spirit of Chaoshan area, just like a city needs to establish a museum to carry the history and culture of the city. A literary work with depth and thickness has a different effect than a museum in disseminating and in-depth telling of history and culture. If the Qiaopi Cultural Relics Museum in Shantou City is a material and solid record of the integrity and contract spirit in the Chaoshan area, then the "Bronze Bowl" is another vivid record in words, and the spread of this record The effect is broader.

"The Bronze Bowl" plays an important role in recording Chaoshan civilization and even Chinese civilization. Its in-depth interpretation of the history of human civilization has an effect that other literary and artistic works do not have.

? January 20, 2016