"Please find out the moldy green copper incense burner at home, light a furnace of agarwood crumbs, and listen to me tell a story about Hong Kong before the war. When you finish this batch of agarwood chips, my story is over. "

("agarwood crumbs-the first furnace fragrance")

1, gorgeous language and colorful images-wings of genius

(1), numerous images and excellent description skills.

"Pear kang is rolled with clouds, rattan is cold, grapefruit is fragrant and cold ... my father's mother's sister added a child. This is the ancient China he misses. ...

A tree was born in the middle of the yard, and its dead branches were printed high in the light blue sky, like ice lines on porcelain. Chang 'an quietly followed him out. There are pale yellow daisies on her navy long-sleeved cheongsam. "("Golden Lock ")

Today, we should admit that few contemporary novelists who have described urban life and life feelings since the birth of the May 4th New Literature have succeeded in the literary world like Zhang Ailing with their perfect skills, writing skills, profound outlook on life, keen observation and rich imagination. In that era when reclamation was rampant, many writers' literary language remained in the vernacular poetry style initiated by Hu Shizhi and Guo Moruo since the May 4th Movement, and they held a contemptuous attitude towards creative skills. But beautiful and fluent words like Zhang Ailing are rare. It should be said that Zhang Ailing avoided the development trend of our literature and showed us some other aspects of literature. The above features can be said to be the most important features of Zhang Ailing's works, which were recognized by critics in the 1940s.

In writing expression, the most prominent aspects of Zhang Ailing's works are the capture of images, accurate description, and the use of metaphors to write emotional objects to promote the plot and contrast the psychology of characters. These include her careful observation of life, rich imagination, experience and overall grasp of writing background and characterization. This is well reflected in her short stories. For example, a scene description in "agarwood tablets, two stoves incense":

"... the spring inside the wall spread outside the wall, the mountain was full of wild azaleas, and the fiery red burned all the way to the hillside. Beyond the cuckoo, there is a thick blue sea, and there are big white ships in the sea. "

It's not only the strong contrast of colors that gives viewers a dizzy and unreal feeling-there are contrasts everywhere, and all kinds of uncoordinated local backgrounds and atmosphere of the times are strongly mixed together to create a fantastic realm. This is not an objective description, but subjective consciousness and imagination are added to it to contrast the theme of the work with the environment and psychological contrast of the characters, and to show the fuzzy consciousness and fear of the protagonist in the face of sudden blows. Completely integrated with the work, it not only plays the role of foil, but also can be used as a turning point in writing (this is a scene description of the protagonist on the road), which plays the role of prompt and suggestion. As the author's early creation in this period, Fragments of Aquilaria Resinatum, the Second Furnace Incense obviously pays too much attention to and emphasizes the capture of images, the contrast of scenes and the hints of plots, which are noisy and have heavy traces of knives, but on the other hand, it also shows the author's extraordinary ability in this respect. Some descriptions see the spirit in nuances, but they are ups and downs, such as rainbows flying and blue sky falling, giving people a flawless feeling. For example, the description of a gust of wind in Love in a Fallen City:

"Only the cold wind, three different scales ... three parallel gray dragons, flying straight ahead ... summoned later, even the black dragon was gone, just three empty vacuum bridges, sinking into darkness and vanity.

..... The wind stopped, like three gray dragons, lying flat on the wall, shining with silver scales in the moonlight. "

(2) Deep psychological characterization and application of mental synaesthesia.

Zhang Ailing's novels are very successful in describing the characters' psychology. People's movements, dialogues, background changes and even lights and smells all reflect psychological progress. "Every word is an action, and every action is a talk." (4) For example, in The Golden Lock, Tong Shifang fell in love with Chang 'an, which fully expressed the psychological state of the characters falling in love with their eyes, smells and feelings:

"Two people walking side by side in the park, rarely talk, canthus with a little bit of each other's dress and moving feet, a woman's pink incense, a man's light, this simple and lovely impression, is their railing, railing to separate them from the public. On the open green land, many people are running and talking with a smile, but they walk through a lonely and beautiful cloister-an endless lonely cloister. Without talking, Chang 'an doesn't feel any defects. "

In particular, female writers are full of artistic spiritual expression ability in using synaesthesia description, which makes the characters in their works stand out. For example, writing about people's feelings:

"Qiao Qi seems to hang a layer of cold pearl curtain in front of her eyes. A gust of hot air blew and stuck tightly on her face. The wind went away and sucked it back. The air still didn't come in, but the wind came again, and she was ashamed to cover it up-hot and cold, and she just shed tears. "

(The Golden Lock)

This is a woman's suffocating despair. The author transforms people's feelings and psychological state into perceptible behavior, which is easy to arouse readers' * * *.

For another example, some visual and aesthetic descriptions become the highlights of the article, which makes the writer's words have strong reading value, such as:

"The sunny wind got into his silk pants like a flock of pigeons, and it flapped its wings everywhere." (The Golden Lock)

"Treasure felt completely defeated, and she was so proud. She stood there smiling silently. A quiet smile flowed from his eyes and flowed like tears. "

(Red roses and white roses)

2, their own articles-writing methods in ordinary places.

(1), uneven contrast writing skills

"... and the stable side of life has eternal significance, although this stability is not safe. And how often it will be destroyed, but it is still eternal. It exists in all times ... "

"The theme of my writing is such an era, and I think it is more appropriate to use uneven contrast. I use this technology to describe the memory of human beings living in all ages. In order to give an inspiration to the surrounding reality. " ⑤

The above quotation is the author's own understanding of creation. According to the theme of his own creation, the writer chooses the writing technique that he thinks is appropriate. There is truth in hypocrisy, simplicity in glitz, and characters wander between memory and truth. In today's view, the writer's creation is also quite reserved. She devoted her energy to the creation of stories, writing about the demeanor, manners and psychological activities of the characters, and was especially good at grasping the psychological changes of the characters in an instant-a little sad when she was happy, and a little scared when she was brave. The writer draws this psychological feeling from the characters' hearts like silk thread, weaves it, and at the end of the story becomes a butterfly-the eternal wing of the human soul, and flies away.

Based on this, Zhang Ailing's novel creation process gradually faded from the original complex images, strong colors and long plots with many characters, and began to pursue a simple and seamless style. At this stage, the screenwriter's techniques in promoting the plot and connecting the time span are superb. There is a montage transition between longer plots:

"Seven hands with a mirror. The bamboo curtain and a golden green landscape screen reflected in the mirror are still rippling in the wind. I feel seasick after looking for it for a long time. Look again, the bamboo curtain has faded, the golden green landscape has become a portrait of her husband, and Byakki Smoker is ten years older. "("Golden Lock ")

And some are just one sentence:

"... revealing a gray little white room, the smoke in the kitchen rose faintly, and the scaly tiles faded and turned white in the smoke, and some even changed color, like photos many years ago. "("Lianhuantao ")

This writing technique makes the work present a kind of quiet and diluted beauty. Similarly, the ending of Zhang Ailing's novels is also wonderful, with one or two sentences coming to an abrupt end and endless aftertaste extending behind.

"The moon sank 30 years ago, and people died 30 years ago, but the story of 30 years ago is not finished-it can't be finished." (The Golden Lock)

(2) Create an atmosphere.

Because of the use of narrative means and superb psychological description skills, Zhang Ailing's works can create different atmospheres almost at any time. The characters in the works "leave" at any time in the realistic background and become specific characters in a specific plot. Love in the City is an excellent example. In the works, Fan Liuyuan and Bai Liusu are in the troubled times of the fallen city. Once they are alone, they begin to show their feelings. The screenwriter just explained a few sets and made them actors in the stage play:

"At first glance, the wall is so high that you can't see the edge. Liu Yuan looked at her and said,' This wall reminds me of the end of time and so on. "

3. Combination of Chinese and Western-the integration of traditional novel language and artistic conception with modern novel skills.

Drawing lessons from the language and artistic conception of China's ancient vernacular novels is the characteristic of Zhang Ailing's novels, and it has always been a dirty place. To this day, some people still criticize him, thinking that this makes his works not solid enough, stale and dark. It should be said that there are two problems in this evaluation that are debatable. The first is to see whether this kind of learning and reference is worth popularizing. Since the May 4th New Culture Movement, China's old cultural system has been denied, shattered and rebuilt. Novelists have absorbed nutrition from western literature and formed a new cultural language on the basis of modern spoken language. The thirties and forties are the growing period of this language, and it is definitely unacceptable for cultural trends to draw nutrition from the old language at this time. However, even today when the language of new literature is mature, the language style of Zhang Ailing's works still poses such a problem to people. Should we learn the old literary language? Zhang Ailing's literary language is directly drawn from ancient vernacular novels, forming her own unique language style, which is fluent, vivid and vivid, just like Xipi's flowing in Beijing Opera. Although there is artificial babbling, it is as moving as running water. Some words in the works are rarely used in contemporary languages, such as "turning, frustration, being in a fog", but there are many appropriate points. Second, while evaluating writers, we should consider their specific times and conditions. At the time of the writer's creation, the new literary language was still immature. Relatively speaking, the writer's literary language is quite perfect. It is true that many writers directly copy and apply the sentences in ancient vernacular novels, making the language stiff and pretentious and becoming vulgar cliches. But on the whole, the achievements of her short stories and stories have been concluded, which proves the success of learning and learning from one angle. Even in today's mature and rich literary language, Zhang Ailing's literary language still belongs to the best, leaving us with a topic of thinking and learning.

The traditional oriental artistic conception and interest embodied in Zhang Ailing's works will be briefly described in other chapters.