Hou Lei's The Man Under the Ice.

This book is a collection of short stories by young writer Hou Lei. The novel focuses on the lives of the middle and lower classes in Beijing, showing people's difficulties and helplessness in life, as well as their fate and struggle in social changes. For example, "Teenagers Flirting" is about bad teenagers in Beijing in the 1990s. "Activist" writes about the aunt of the neighborhood Committee; "Female Driver" is about female taxi drivers; The author has been engaged in editing for many years, writing poems and literature and history. Now I am studying in the College of Literature of China Renmin University, majoring in creative writing, and studying novel creation under the famous teachers such as Yan Lianke, Liu Zhenyun, Hong Liang and Zhang Yueran.

About the author:

Hou Lei, born in 1983, is a young writer, poet and friend of Kunqu opera. Born in an ancient family, he began to publish his works in middle school. He used to be an editor, a teacher, a reporter, etc. , focusing on novel creation, literature and history, drama, folk research. He is the author of a long historical novel "Return to the Sun", a collection of notebook novels "The Case of Yan Douqi" and many essays. His works were published in Poetry Journal, Mangzhong and Youth Literature. Sina has a column on literature and history. Phoenix net. Com, everyone. And Beijing Youth Daily. Member of China Cultural Relics Society, currently studying in the Creative Department of China Renmin University.

Wonderful book review:

One: Short comments

#? Whether you like it or hate it, old Beijing has almost disappeared.

#? We are all people under the ice, looking up at people on the ice.

#? People thought Beijing local literature was dead, but Hou Lei's works appeared. What makes people feel dumbfounded is that Beijing literature is still alive!

#? The article "Female Driver" is very poor, and the short story of the whole book is very interesting to read. There is such a Beijing.

# I personally don't read this collection very much, but I can't read this book, I can't read it, I can't read it, I can't read it, I can't read it ... What should I do? I must read it and recommend it to everyone!

If you are grounded, then publish more ordinary people in the middle and lower classes. Ordinary people are the backbone of our people and the people we need to pay attention to most.

Two:

What is the man under the ice? The whole era is like a frozen ocean. Some people live on the ice, others live under the ice. People on the ice are thinking about the quality of life and how to make money to invest in healthy immigrants. People under the ice consider food, clothing and even life and death. Dead or alive? This is something worth pondering. First of all, we should eat and wear warm clothes before talking about other things.

Even today, as long as I mention people under the ice, I can't help thinking of Lao Wang.

At that time, I lived in my classmate's house, which was an old alley located in the inner ring of Shanghai, and the four members of Lao Wang's family also lived in this old alley. According to the age of the house, many houses in this alley are already dangerous buildings. The Lao Wang family has two floors and the stairs are made of wood. When you step on it, it squeaks and sounds like a complaining old lady. After dinner, Lao Wang usually takes a nap on the sofa in front of his house in his pajamas. From the open door, you will hear Wu Nong's soft-spoken opera. Lao Wang sometimes grunts and occasionally burps loudly.

One day I chatted with Lao Wang and talked about Shanghai. He waved his hand and said, "The taste of Shanghai has changed now. There are tall buildings everywhere. Neighbors don't even say hello when they meet, but they are still people. " Hey, I'm telling you, our house is always a little old, but the location is good and it's hard to cut down. Those new houses are far away, so I don't like living in the country. "

I said that there are many Shanghainese living in the suburbs now, especially young people. Lao Wang snorted in his nose. He said, "Do you know what a Shanghainese is? Let me tell you, you must have lived in Shanghai for four generations before you can be called a Shanghainese. This is called Genzheng Hong Miao. You're right, Lao Zhang? His father came to Shanghai from Jiangsu to make a living, Ning Wu! "

I saw that he was very excited and wanted to change the subject, so I asked casually, is his work going well? "Work, just do it casually, and work can't make money." Halfway through, I didn't want Lao Wang to suddenly sigh, and his tone eased a lot. "It's hard to find a job now. Even those jobs with two or three thousand yuan were taken away by the country people. How many jobs are left in Shanghai? " He looked into the room. "How much can my son earn after graduation? Can you find a Shanghai girl to marry in the future? I dare not think about it. "

In fact, I know that Lao Wang also has a clear goal. What he is most looking forward to these years is demolition. Only a few decades later, he changed from Xiao Wang to Lao Wang. His family still lives in an alley and uses a spittoon to go to the toilet. Only after the demolition can the whole family live in a new house. Only after the demolition can his son marry a local girl in Shanghai. Only after the demolition can he hold his head high and become an upright Shanghainese. So only demolition is the most important thing in his life.

At this time, a burst of music sounded, which turned out to be a Shanghai travel advertisement on TV. Looking through the open window, I saw the modern Oriental Pearl and Lujiazui with high-rise buildings, as well as the rebuilt Tianzifang, but there was no old alley for ordinary people, no crowded and messy Qipu Road, and no people under the ice. At the end of the advertisement, there is a sweet female voice: "Welcome to Shanghai."

Three:

This dusty thread-bound book is crisp in paper, grayish yellow in color and broken. But every page with petals is intact, without any traces of moth. Petals are often used in ancient books to prevent moth. It seems that this statement is true. When the ancestral home was built in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were many contemporary old objects in the attic, so these petals should have been hidden in books before the Republic of China. If calculated by flower age, it may have a history of 260 years at the earliest, and it is conservatively estimated to have a history of 100 years. I stared at these hundred-year-old losers, and suddenly my thoughts came to me. ...

As the saying goes, a tree is a thousand years old, and it is only a cold summer when flowers bloom and fall. However, it seems that time has stood still, and these people are far away from the reincarnation of the world, and they are integrated with pen and ink, cotton paper and classics in a Zen silence. Just like the sentient beings described by Hou Lei, they are always fixed in the gloomy and desolate hutongs and quadrangles in old Beijing.

Most of the characters described in The Man Under the Ice come from Hou Lei's own daily life. Are at the bottom of society. They lack the right to speak and few people write for them. Hou Lei described them as "frozen people" or "people under the ice". They are the frozen people of that era, and they have a colder sense of reality than the characters in traditional novels.

Bai Juyi once said: "The article is timely." It is not only an ancient maxim, but also a concentrated summary of the historical mission of literati in past dynasties. For Hou Lei, this sentence reflects his concern for old Beijing and the real society. He "wrote for the times", got rid of the secular cycle with awe-inspiring literary mind, and showed a real history to future generations across time and space.

Some people think that Mr. Liang Sicheng studies architecture, while Hou Lei writes stories. What they have in common is their strong feelings for old Beijing. They call such people "mourners in Beijing".

However, unlike Mr. Liang Sicheng, who knelt on the ground and cried with the broken bricks of Zhonghua Gate, Hou Lei wrote the story of old Beijing not for crying, but for introspection. In his own words: "Don't forget which alley you came from. Although I studied and hid in school, I will never forget my hometown and my neighbors and aunts in the hutongs. I will ask myself again and again, is it necessary to write every novel in this book? After getting a positive answer, I will contribute. "

This trip is like petals of a century-old agarwood. Throughout the ages, most authors have an empty heart of "working for time", but they rarely pursue it persistently, and fewer authors can be as quiet and indifferent as those who have fallen into England. Besides daydreaming, I wrote this essay to express my feelings.

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