She and the silent majority

There are two writers surnamed Wang who are very popular in the public eye, one Wang Shuo and one Wang Xiaobo. Wang Shuo is still alive and well, and has been on shows, interviewed by the media, and made a lot of fuss, so it's natural for people to pay attention to him. But Wang Xiaobo has been dead for ten years, and although he is still alive, there are still many people who miss him. Whenever you look at those nostalgic activities, memorial articles, inevitably confused: who is Wang Xiaobo? What did Wang Xiaobo do? What did he write? What influence did he leave behind? Why has he become a myth and a symbol? And who is the Wang Xiaobo under this symbol?

Many people say that Wang Xiaobo was hyped up, before his widow Professor Li Yin launched a retracing Xiaobo road activity, looking for a group of Wang Xiaobo fans, from beginning to end to walk through the road Wang Xiaobo once walked, this activity is considered by many as a "pilgrimage", some people simply say it is " hype. Hype". After Wang Xiaobo's death, every year, many people renew their interest in him and commemorate him. On the tenth anniversary of his death, publications such as "Southern People Weekly" and "New Century" published a cover feature to reorganize his story. In addition, there were artists who made a nude portrait of Wang Xiaobo, sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, revealing a genitalia, and pulling it down softly. This move was considered by many to be an insult to Wang Xiaobo, but the artist himself said he felt that this was the most authentic and honest tribute to Wang Xiaobo, because Wang Xiaobo is very honest and real in his writing.

In the past, there was an online group called "Wang Xiaobo's Dogs", and one of them was called Happy Song, who was interviewed by the magazine and talked about why he would rather be Wang Xiaobo's "dog". On the one hand, he said that he would not worship Wang Xiaobo and treat him as a god, but on the other hand, he said that he loved literature and felt that his generation could not catch up with him in any way. If this is not treating him as a god, what is it?

Frankly speaking, my feelings about Wang Xiaobo are different from those of many readers, who see him as a maverick, very liberal, and an enlightener of his generation, including some critics I know, who frankly bear his influence. But no matter how I read his stuff, I just couldn't produce the kind of "touch" and "touch" that everyone said. Only later did I realize that because I live in Hong Kong, the context in which my mainland friends live is a bit different, so my feelings are naturally different.

Wang Xiaobo once said that the writers who influenced him most were Foucault and Russell, and I was already reading these people's stuff in the late 80s, so I didn't feel particularly shocked when I read Wang Xiaobo again. This makes me tend to look at Wang Xiaobo's works and the "Wang Xiaobo fever" with a kind of a detached attitude.

People often say that Wang Xiaobo is a liberal, but this view is worth exploring. First of all, he gave up a fairly stable career opportunity in college and chose to become a freelance writer, which people think is very valuable, which is freedom. But this kind of freedom existed before 1949 and still exists today, only after decades, his kind of freedom seemed very special at the time. And this freedom is another kind of unfreedom, because you have to sell your articles and works in the market to make a living, and there are writers all over the world who are not in such a state of so-called "freedom" or "unfreedom".

Secondly, he is a very good writer. Many people say that he is a bit like Van Gogh: in his life he was poor and no one knew him, but after his death he became more and more popular, and over time he became a myth. They say Wang Xiaobo is a maverick, good at this, good at that, good enough to win the Nobel Prize for his writing, etc. I agree with Wang Xiaobo's writing. I agree that Wang Xiaobo's writing is beautiful and I admire him, but I wonder how many of those who keep praising him and even quoting him have actually read his work.

He encouraged people to be mavericks, to stick to their own ideas, to master the joy of thinking for themselves, to think independently, and to be brave enough to break taboos and foolishness. Ten years have passed since his death, how much have we been influenced by him? How many people can we see now who dare to think for themselves? Dare to break the taboos and ignorance? On the contrary, I see people pretending to "dare" rather than really thinking. Many people do not want to think deeply, but only want to think in a gesture. If anyone really dares to break the taboo, it is his widow, Professor Li Yinhe, but why do so many people still want her to keep her mouth shut today? Have these people ever respected free thinking? If we conclude that a person is a hype, does that negate everything she says or does? Is it no longer necessary to think whether what she says or does is otherwise justified?

Wang Xiaobo has been dead for ten years, but when we look at his works again today, we find a lot of interesting things. You can see how the concerns of that time differ from those of today, and what issues we still have to face today.

The collection The Silent Majority showed me that Wang Xiaobo also had blind spots. In the book, there is an article about Beijing film and national self-confidence, criticizing the fact that more and more mainland program hosts began to learn the accent of Hong Kong and Taiwan more than a decade ago. "At that time, the culture of Hong Kong and Taiwan was invading the mainland, especially those shitty TV serials. That said, Hong Kong and Taiwan are indeed rich, but no culture. We don't look like much here, but people still look up to it." The article argues that people should stick to speaking good Beijing dialect, which from today's perspective is a form of phonetic discrimination. For example, if we speak Cantonese, sometimes in Hong Kong we discriminate against people who do not speak Cantonese well, always thinking that they do not speak authentic Cantonese, and even look down on Cantonese in Guangzhou, thinking it is very rustic. Such an idea is a failure in Wang Xiaobo's work, but even so, most of the words in this anthology still seem new today.

In the last decade, our intellectual and cultural circles like to engage in debates, and when they do, they categorize people, and sometimes Wang Xiaobo is assigned to this side and sometimes to the other side. When we look at those debates, especially the online forums, a big problem is that they are very emotional, and they criticize people to death at every turn. For example, if you are not satisfied with an article written by someone, you can discuss how you are not satisfied with the article without going to the level of character attack. There is an essay in this book called "Polemics and Morality". More than ten years ago, there were few socially sensational new cultural events, but Wang Xiaobo found that people's way of arguing had not changed greatly, and they still had to fight to find out who was good and who was bad. He said that when a TV series called "Tang Ming Huang" was staged, some people said it was not good, and members of the cast and crew held a seminar with journalists, and the minutes were to be published in the China TV News "...I remember the producer's speech explored the national spirit, national education, moral standards and other aspects of those who opposed the drama "Tang Ming Huang", and even thought The only fortunate thing was that the ancestors of those friends had not been explored. Since then, I no longer dare to watch any of the Chinese TV series, because I am afraid that my old gray-haired mother suddenly know that she gave birth to a stupid son and sad - because of good academic performance, my mother always thought I was very smart. There is a similar danger in going to the movies, especially domestic movies. This danger manifests itself in two ways: if you don't feel good after watching a good movie, you're not good enough; if you don't feel bad after watching a bad movie, you're a bad person. There are some movies that won awards internationally, and I didn't think they were bad after watching them, but some critics said that they were simply selling out the country, and in that case, I was also in the mood to betray my country - who dares to take such a risk with his own character?"

One spring, Wang Xiaobo met a group of monkey performers in a small city in the north, "They used the tone of Yang Xiuqing of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and said, "In order to prosper socialist culture and satisfy everyone's spiritual needs, I am now performing monkey shows for everyone." In Wang Xiaobo's view, this was the cultural spirit and cultural flavor of his generation. I think it still seems to be the case today, we love to hold ourselves very high and sacred in the cultural debate and occupy the moral high ground. In this way, anyone who opposes you is bound to be morally dubious.

The book mentions the need to beware of nationalist sentiments, and the article is titled "Be Wary of the Demagogic Propaganda of Narrow Nationalism," and rather than asking people to be wary of nationalism, it is more like being wary of demagogic propaganda. He thinks it's problematic for people to promote nationalism in a way that is demagogic: "If there are many conflicts in our society, it's very difficult to solve the real problems, and the easiest way is to incite a kind of hatred, to encourage people to hate some people, to maim some people. For example, the promotion of narrow national sentiments, which can appeal to the sinful nature of people's barbarism, incite hatred, killings, and can even reach the extermination of foreign peoples do not cost anything. The demagogues can only use this method to provide realistic pleasure to the masses, because it is the only feasible method. If there was a harmless method, I'm sure they would have used it, and we should be sympathetic to demagogic propagandists, they can't help it." Although the whole article seems to be about Nazi Germany, he ends by saying, "This place, China, is a place where propaganda and compulsive propaganda are especially welcome, and everyone is especially vulnerable to the poison of compulsive propaganda, so we should be careful." This is the warning Wang Xiaobo gave to everyone ten years ago.