Time: 6-8pm, April 19
Location: 205 E Garvey Ave, Monterey Park, CA 91755
A book encompasses a dual nature of
a series of overlapping elementsFirst layer: Two major narrative techniques
1. ‘Petitioning for the People’ is also called the ‘big framework,’ or a grand narrative of the era’s culture
2. Car accidents, soul separation, and calamities, are personal emotional themes, also known as “private state of mind”;
The alternation of these two techniques formed the “Twelve Years and Nine Books,” 2013–2025: “Preface to the Soul Departure and Tribulation,” “Lonely Delaware Bay,” “The Era of Dragon Slayers,” “Ghost Pushes the Mill,” “West Studio Deep Alley,” “Plague World,” “Morning Light Whirlpool,” “Sea Grief,” “Rain Smoke, Snow, Salt.”
The second layer: the writing cycle
1. ‘Rain Smoke, Snow, Salt’ is precisely a rewriting of ‘Preface to ‘Soul Departure and Tribulation
.’Fu Li, who finally came out to accompany me in exile in 1991, was involved in a car accident just over a year
laterNineteen years later, she fell again on the stairs
In fact, one of us is a patientwith depression, caring for a paralyzed patient;
Twenty-three years ago, I sadly said goodbye to Princeton
Another ten years later, saying goodbye to Delaware was also sorrowful;
2. ‘The Age of Dragon Slaying’ was written unknowingly during the five months I was treating Fu Li; Tradition is a declining dragon, Mao Zedong is a human dragon;
3. I was wanted by China because of ‘River Sorrow’ and have been exiled overseas for thirty years;
After three years in exile, he suffered another car accident and his wife was left disabled. Hajin said I “left the best comment on the uncontrollable fate.”
Actually, I rely on writing to overcome emotional torment, swallowing my blood and tears, but the sorrow I write still needs someone to help publish it
A Taiwanese publisher took on my confession—a reader on an island who, across the Pacific Ocean, stayed with me in tears, accompanied my wife in healing my wounds, and published my ‘A Handful of Bitter Tears.’ Is there any writer luckier than this?
Third layer: The historical circle game: another duality emerging from the transition between old and new
“The repetition of history,” which Li Zehou repeatedly lamented as the “circle game of modern Chinese history.”
Isn’t Xi Jinping returning ideologically to Mao Zedong, institutionally returning to the pre-Cultural Revolution period, and economically returning to communal meals
?Such an obvious big circle—wasn’t Li Zehou predicting it again?
Fourth layer: The appearance of historical events and figures twice
The Empress Dowager—Deng Xiaoping
On thenorth side of the road west of the Ganqing Gate in the Forbidden City stands the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the famous site of the ‘Regency from the Curtain.’
The scene of ‘ruling behind the curtain’ in the late 1980s is clearly described in Zhao Ziyang’s oral record ‘The Process of Reform.’ He used the term ‘mother-in-law above the Standing Committee,’ which is very vivid. In terms of age and gender, ‘mother-in-law’ is similar to ‘Empress Dowager.’ The ‘Modern Hall of Mental Cultivation’ refers to the Deng residence.
Guangxu—Hu Jintao
According to the power structure, the ‘Haipai’ operated for twenty-five years, during which time it could even control a ‘child emperor’ for as long as ten
yearsJiang Zemin’s logic was: if your field army marches into Beijing to kill, asking me to ‘restore legitimacy’—is that really that easy? I don’t want to talk about propriety, righteousness, integrity, or shame—even if you employ rogues, spies, and gangsters, it doesn’t work. That’s why I rely on someone as reckless as Zhou Yongkang. But in the end, you have to pay the bill—this is the ‘get-out-of-death’ card he received from the ‘Eight Elders’ from the start.
A century of beginnings and endings—succeeding Bao Tong
Bao Tong is the contemporary Tan Sitong, because Deng Xiaoping wanted to kill Bao Tong. Thus, the moderate reform of June Fourth in 1989, also carried out by Deng Xiaoping’s bloody massacre, was a complete repeat of the Hundred Days’ Reform a hundred years ago, brutally suppressed by Empress Dowager Cixi, and the Six Gentlemen were beheaded at the market entrance.
Portraits of a Mass
Scholars, leaders, and charlatans transform myriad forms between angels and devils, swinging and navigating countless extremes
Pioneers farfrom their homeland…
Source: Wang Dan’s Facebook