Wang Lianhua, whose real name is Cai Hengping, was a gifted scholar in Chinese Department of Peking University in 1980s. The book "Jianghu Waishi" contains two series of articles written by him, namely "Manual of Ancient Gold Weapons" and "A Hundred Flowers Blossom as a Treasure". Many people on Douban commented that Gu Long and Jin Yong's martial arts novels were not deeply studied, but they were not. This book is more about the philosophy of life and the choice of life path. Wang Lianhua did, but borrowed Gu Long and Jin Yong's glasses to water his base. What is strange about this book is that it opens two worlds. One world is litterateurs and philosophers, such as Faulkner, Sagan, Benjamin and Sartre, and the other world is charlatans, such as Xiao Feng, Ling Huchong and Lu Xiaofeng.
The readers of ancient and modern novels are mostly our parents, and of course there are our generation. I still remember playing an RPG game called "Jin Yong Hero Biography" in primary school, which was really fascinating. Speaking of the story of "Flying Snow Shoots White Deer Plain, Laughing at Books Leaning against the Blue Moon", and various TV series such as "The Dragon Slayer" and "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" were released in turn at that time, which constituted our beautiful memories.
Why are Kukin's novels so attractive? Before Gu Long and Jin Yong, there were people who didn't write martial arts novels, but their style was not as high as Gu Long and Jin Yong's. Ku Jin created the concept of "Jianghu" and enriched the spiritual world of China people. Everyone has his own rivers and lakes in his heart, where we can set ourselves free. When we came into contact with Kujin's novels, we were growing up and began to think for ourselves, only to find that many things taught by teachers and parents were contradictory and many were wrong. When we were most eager for the knowledge of life, but most puzzled, we met Gu Long and Jin Yong. Their martial arts novels have crossed the cultural desert and moral cemetery, bringing us food of China traditional culture, which is still warm today. Since then, we have written down in our hearts that there is a place called Jianghu. What is loyalty, what is conscience, what is brotherhood, and of course, what is the ups and downs of love, these are all taught by Gu Jinjiao.
Back to "Jianghu Waishi", this book is written on the surface of martial arts, but in fact it is written on the road of life. This is a problem that every one of us has to face. As the American philosopher william james said, "The question of man is not what action he will take, but what kind of person he will become". Below, I will select three representative figures to comment on the life truth that the author wants to express.
There are only three realms in life, one is "seeing mountains is mountains, and seeing water is water". Most people can only see what is in front of them. In the eyes of many people, the world is fame and fortune, written clearly. This is taught by most of our teachers and parents. They think this is a normal life. If you are a college student, ask the elders around you and ask them to point out your life. Nine times out of ten, they will tell you: take the postgraduate entrance examination and take the civil service examination. A stable job is the best job.
The higher realm is "seeing mountains is not mountains, and seeing water is not water". In other words, some people go beyond the secular view, and they must live a shocking life according to their own ideas. We can see more dramatic characters in martial arts novels. For example, Wang Lianhua once liked the flowers in Gu Long's novels. Wu Hua is a character in Gu Long's novel The Legend of Chu Liuxiang. Wu Hua appeared as a fairy figure. "The whole body looks spotless." The whole thing is a work of art, with high value, wonderful words and high martial arts. Even the final ending is unusually "lonely and clean". He would rather kill himself than be touched. What's wrong with living beyond the world? One thing is very bad, that is, such people will waste a lot of their precious time. If a person is too arrogant and refuses to compromise on everything in the world, such a life is actually very embarrassing. When you are busy fighting against secular vulgarity, you have actually caused a lot of nasty things. Other people's spit and sewage will interfere with your practice and make you exhausted.
The highest realm is "seeing mountains or mountains, seeing water or water". The most representative is sweeping monk, a magical figure born in Eight Dragons. What kind of person is sweeping monk? He has no name, and even the monks in Shaolin Temple don't know him. He probably became a monk halfway and belongs to the dirtiest service monk in Shaolin Temple. "He only shaves his head, does not learn martial arts, does not meditate, and does not exclude the mysterious, intelligent, empty and empty generations." There are two enemies in the novel, Xiao Feng's father Xiao Yuanshan and Mu Rongfu's father Murong Bo. They are jealous of each other as soon as they meet. They all want to kill each other. Sweeping monk killed two people first, and then let them use internal strength to resolve each other's internal injuries. After a life-and-death experience, Xiao Yuanshan and Murong Bo realized that Wang Ba's ambition and blood feud were external things, and in the end, everything turned to dust. Sweeping monk, with peerless martial arts and compassion for others, is a nameless existence. Sweeping monk told us to pay more attention to our inner world. If you are willing to look back at your heart, you can see a wider world that belongs only to you. It takes wisdom and courage to reach such a state. There should always be a sweeping monk in our hearts, which we can't reach and yearn for.
How to meet the requirements of one's nature and mind on the road of life is a great wisdom. Most people will be like Murong Bo and Xiao Yuanshan. No matter how high their status and wealth are, they can't stand the temptation of the world of mortals. The best choice in life is to stand aloof like sweeping monk and hide yourself in the forest like a leaf. Is there a suboptimal choice? Yes That's Wei Xiaobao.
If you ask your intellectual friends around you who they like best in Jin Yong's novels, nine times out of ten they will say Wei Xiaobao. That's weird. Wei Xiaobao is a representative of anti-intellectualism. He simply looked down upon the scholar. How can this scholar flatter Wei Xiaobao so much?
Wei Xiaobao is the protagonist in Jin Yong's novel The Deer King. The Duke Of Mount Deer is the last martial arts novel of Jin Yong, and it is also the most wonderful novel written by Jin Yong. Surprisingly, the hero of the novel is neither a martial arts expert nor a hero, but a gangster in an ordinary town. This contrast is too big.
Wang Lianhua has a unique vision. He said that Wei Xiaobao is the antidote for all of us, especially for intellectuals. Wei Xiaobao "is an illiterate without soul and thought, so he has no pain, anxiety, weakness, hesitation, hesitation and self-struggle peculiar to scholars, nor shame, darkness and boredom peculiar to scholars".
Wang Lianhua speculated that Jin Yong finished Wei Xiaobao because he was washed white and because he had been well thought out. What Jin Yong wants to say is that although he knows what an ideal personality is, he also knows that an ideal personality cannot exist in the world. Therefore, we must bow our heads, but this bow is not the bow of losers, but the bow of branches in the wind, and the bow of rivers after encountering stones. This is the feeling after reading History and Life.
So, in the final analysis, Wei Xiaobao's advantage lies in the truth. This is too important for us, because we see more false ideals, false appearances and duplicity. Wang Shuo, a famous writer, once said: "In my prejudice, hypocrisy is the most abominable thing in China society, and the root of hypocrisy is intellectuals." There are many hooligans in his novels. He thinks hooligans are antonyms of "hypocrites", that is, hooligans are "real villains". Compared with "hypocrites", "real villains" like Wei Xiaobao seem more lovely.
This actually reflects a very important issue. This is a social problem as well as a philosophical one. Lionel trilling, a famous intellectual in new york, specially talked about "sincerity". Sincerity means "being true to yourself", that is, keeping the social self consistent with the inner self. As Trilling said, only after the society needs us to play a "role" will personal sincerity become a question worth asking. In other words, in the era of social upheaval, many social "roles" have different requirements for your true thoughts, which will lead to self-torture. Fortunately, our younger generation seems to have a natural immunity to "hypocrites", and we have no interest in playing a well-defined social role at all, which is a good thing.
In a word, sincerity and truth are very important. Sincerity means having your own morality and being loyal to yourself. Truth means that even if we haven't found our own morality, we should be loyal to ourselves. Of course, the truth alone is not enough. We should cultivate ourselves slowly and sincerely, but sincerity and truth are much more precious than hypocrisy.
For most of our lives, we can't reach the height of sweeping monk, and we don't need a balanced life like Wei Xiaobao. We just live every day. Then the question is, how can we survive?
Finally, a character in Jin Yong's novels: Xu Zhu.
When Xu Zhu appeared, he was just an ordinary young monk, plain in appearance and average in intelligence, that is, an honest man. But in Jianghu, honesty is probably not an advantage.
With the development of the story, Xu Zhu embarked on a road of no return. When he didn't know it, he accidentally solved the "Linglong Bureau". "Linglong Bureau" is a mystery that all Go experts want to solve. In Jin Yong's novels, there is a bureau outside the bureau. When the "delicate bureau" is unlocked, Xu Zhu breaks into another bureau. When necessary, he was injected with the lifelong skills of his predecessors. His background is also necessary. Xu Zhu was an orphan since he was a child. Later, I learned that he was the illegitimate son of Xuan Ci, a Shaolin Temple monk, and Ye Erniang, the four villains. He just learned about his biological parents, but they died again. His love was even forced: he was thrown into the cellar, but he met his dream lover in the cellar.
Is Xu Zhu's life worthy of our envy or sympathy? Perhaps, a mixed life is the real life. Since life is irresistible, many factors, such as our origins, talents and times, are beyond our own decision, so we can only adapt to life. Wang Lianhua wrote: "Obey the arrangement of fate and stick to it in involuntary breaking of precepts;" Xu Zhu's way of life is to accept the gift of fate and bear it in the helpless reality. "
Since we can only resign ourselves to fate, it depends on luck what cards we get. Since we often can't quit the game, we must think about our own play. Wang Lianhua talked about a realm of life in "Jianghu Waishi", which is called "talent is above ambition, and civil engineering is destroyed".
Look at ambition first. If a person is ambitious, but actually has no talent, it may be doomed to tragedy. How many people feel that they are incompetent all their lives, and finally they fall into a slump, and how many people are ambitious and talented, and finally they end up in a disgrace. Even those who seem to match their talents and ambitions are actually walking on thin ice every day. But if a person is talented, is it easy to satisfy what he expects? This is the true meaning of happiness.
When learning to be a man, we should strive to improve our talents, but we might as well lower our ambitions. After all, people live by skill, and no one will pay you because you have great ambitions. To lower one's ambition is also to have a humble attitude and get used to lowering one's figure. The more immature you are, the less willing you are to lower yourself for fear that others will look down on you. But when you reach a certain level, you will find that lowering yourself is a sign of self-strength.
It is relatively easy to be above ambition, and it is a higher realm to be civilized. The word "civil skeleton" was first used to describe Liu Ling, one of the seven sages of bamboo forest. His most famous name is drinking. Unlike other seven sages of bamboo forest, Liu Ling wrote few articles. "In the end, there was only one ode to wine." People in that era have understood that only articles can be immortal. Liu Ling did not write articles, but deliberately did not seek immortality, so his realm was above several other seven sages in the bamboo forest.
Only higher than ambition and civil engineering, this is the life of subtraction. Of course, the higher level is that you can do both addition and subtraction, and do subtraction when it is time to add.
One way is to treat our life as a game. Let's imagine a child playing house games. Children are very serious and devoted to playing games. They feel and blend in wholeheartedly. However, they know that they are playing games. Children all know that it is meaningless to care about the truth of the game. What really matters is whether the game is fun or not. The so-called dance academy is to experience life like a child playing a game. Many times, adults do things just like children. It's a game, and it's all fake, but it doesn't matter. What matters is whether you agree or disagree with the rules of the game. Do you think this game is interesting? What you really pursue is not in the game, but outside the game. You have to figure out what that thing outside the game is. So try to change a mentality, like a child playing a game, and treat life with devotion and detachment.
Generally speaking, in this book about the truth of life, Wang Lianhua is in no hurry to teach. What he wants to express is that his understanding of life is more of a kind of "local knowledge", that is, the life experience shared by specific people at a specific time and place. Knowledge about life cannot be taught directly. Every generation has to re-learn and explore for themselves in life before it can be realized.
So, what kind of life path will you choose to take to spend your life?