Chen Yingzhen, a pessimistic idealist

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Chen Yingzhen, a Pessimistic Idealist – NetEase News, Ma Wei (Cultural Critic) 【A Sense of Nostalgia】 Editor’s Note: On November 22, Chen Yingzhen, a Taiwanese writer and honorary vice-chairman of the 7th National Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, passed away in Beijing at the age of 79. Chen Yingzhen, originally named Chen Yongshan, was from Yingge, Taipei. He was born on October 6, 1937, and settled in Beijing in 2006. He is an important figure in Taiwanese literature. Her early works often depicted the spiritual distress of a generation. Among the serious Taiwanese literature that mainland readers came into contact with for the first time were Chen Ying-chen’s novels: \"Noodle Stall,\" \"My Brother Kang-Hung,\" \"Apple Tree,\" as well as \"Mountain Road\" and \"The General’s Family\"... At that time, some people regarded her as a representative figure of Taiwanese regional literature; yet in fact, the protagonists of almost all of Chen Ying-chen’s novels are intellectuals, though some of them live in the countryside. Reading his early works, those novels that depict the spiritual distress of a generation, one seems to always detect the flavor of literature from the 1920s and 1930s. When first entering the literary world, Chen Yingzhen’s most direct model was undoubtedly Lu Xun. Compared to the somewhat conceptualized descriptions and character portrayals in Lu Xun’s novels, Chen Yingzhen’s language, as well as his exploration and investigation of the depths of his own psyche, are more detailed. While skilled at depicting the inner worlds of characters in a traditional manner, he also found a more poetic, delicate, and flexible language that better suits such characters’ mental states, which can be considered one of his significant contributions to contemporary Chinese literature. For example, the story \"My Brother Kōo\" is presented in the form of an elegiac monologue. Although beneath it flows an indissoluble sense of melancholy, along with a decadence and helplessness befitting the times, reading it still allows one to appreciate the enduring poetic charm that flows within it. The author likely wanted to use this novel as a way to say goodbye to his own youth: “They none of them knew that this young nihilist died in a utopia destroyed by adultery... Yet my brother Kōo could never forgive his own sins.” Primordial lust and love, as well as Angra Mainyu, God, or Christ, are all his destroyers. ” This sense of unease is actually present in the young people of his generation, as well as in young people everywhere; yet he did not remain stuck in this adolescent sadness, but instead tried to use literary creation to break through the mist that envelops the world. Thus, coming from a Christian family, he quickly found inspiration in the Bible. He retold the story of Judas betraying Jesus and wrote the novel \"The Story of Judas Iscariot\". Judas, from the poor and ignorant region of Galilee, was an idealistic young man who strived to help the oppressed and the needy. He opposed the so-called \"revolution\" in which the Jewish elite sought to replace the Roman elite, and he betrayed Jesus in order to mobilize the revolutionary masses and stir up their anger against the Roman rulers. Yet this religiously inspired act of \"breaking through the net\" seems to still fail to satisfy Chen Yingzhen’s strong longing for an ideal society. He later recounted in \"Backstreet\": \"From the huge contradiction between the red flags of dreams and the fear and despair of reality, he created characters who always held ambiguous ideals… Along with the budding desires of youth, he carefully blended these elements in his creative palette, wielding his brush on the canvas with rapid breaths, sometimes even confusing himself in the process.\" ” Writing tragic novels without doubting his faith – the change came in 1975, the year he returned to the literary world. In works such as “Congratulations, Big Brother,” “A Day in the Life of a Office Worker,” and the “Washington Building Series,” his writing style became more realistic; the themes of disillusionment and despair from his early works gradually faded away, and his novels began to focus on capitalism and multinational corporations’ impact on the human spirit. He also held firm to the belief that capitalism was destined to be eliminated. So not long after, he began to revisit his old \"leftist\" dreams in a novel, which is the famous \"Mountain Road.\" Yet this novel, which depicts the lives of revolutionaries from a side perspective, ends with a tragic outcome as usual: at the story’s conclusion, Cai Qianhui, who out of sympathy for the revolutionaries voluntarily married into the Li family and endured hard labor throughout her life, found herself faced every day with the symbols of capitalism—houses, cars, carpets, heating and cooling systems, sofas, televisions, stereos—and gradually began to doubt the beliefs she once held firmly. She eventually rejected the meaning of her own life and died in despair. Although such an ending was chosen for the novel, Chen Yingzhen himself did not really doubt the significance of holding onto one’s beliefs. As he expressed in \"Congratulations, Big Brother,\" through the voice of the character tasked with delivering a message: \"If you know full well that achieving your ideals will take thousands of years, where can you find the strength to go on living?" ”“No, rather, it is by clearly realizing that one cannot see that beautiful world with one’s own eyes that one can begin to see oneself as just a single drop in the stream of humanity, which has always strived perseveringly for a better, more equal, and freer world. By understanding this, one loses the sense of loneliness and powerlessness… and is able to regain the strength of life, love, and trust. ” This is Chen Yingzhen, the \"old soul\" – an idealist who may seem so outdated these days, yet whose writings still have the power to deeply move people. Yet, despite having warned himself long ago that \"revolutionaries and degenerates, saints and sinners are actually such similar twin brothers,\" he still failed to resist various worldly temptations in his later years; it’s truly hard to know what to say about that.