Life is Lu Yao's first mature work, published in 1982. The novel takes the protagonist Gao Jialin's pursuit of dreams and love as the main line, and his emotional entanglements with rural girl Liu Qiaozhen and urban girl Huang Yaping as contradictions and conflicts, and shows the life of young people like Gao Jialin on the Loess Plateau in an artistic way during the reform and opening up period.
Gao Jialin's life is the life of rural youth in the Loess Plateau and the life of mainstream youth at that time. His thoughts represent the mainstream thoughts of rural youth in this era.
They are independent, brave, determined and uneasy about the status quo, and want to realize their dreams through hard work. However, although life is short, it is full of choices and variables. Inadvertently, the colorful dreams that have just been woven are torn to pieces by reality, and life returns to zero, and everything returns to the original point.
However, they didn't give up. They fell down somewhere, got up, packed their bags again, picked up a piece of loess in their hometown, and turned their experience of hitting the south wall again and again into that of future generations.
In Life, Lu Yao took Gao Jialin's ups and downs as a model, and made a profound interpretation of career, love, dreams and reality in the simplest language.
Gao Jialin, the hero of the novel Life, failed to graduate from high school and became a private teacher in society. At that time, he was half a "public servant", a representative of mainstream intellectuals in society, and an object of envy.
However, Gao Jialin has a fatal weakness in his heart, that is, he was born in the rural areas of the Loess Plateau, and he felt deeply inferior to his peasant background. Whenever he stands in front of city people, he always feels a little short, which is the deep-seated reason why he has to return to the countryside after desperately fleeing from the countryside.
He became a private teacher in the village for the first time, relying on his own ability and his own level of cultural knowledge. He takes the starting point of private teachers as his basic point of entering the city and is full of expectations for urban life.
However, there are variables everywhere in life. His position as a private teacher was quickly replaced by Samsung, the second son of Gaominglou, a village party secretary. Samsung took this position entirely by "social relations", which is the so-called "back door".
In the Loess Plateau of reform and opening-up, the idea of "making things easy in the DPRK" is still burning for thousands of years, and it is this relationship that Samsung has replaced Gao Jialin.
Gao Jialin, who just stood at one end of the seesaw, suddenly lost his balance and instantly returned to the original point, which made his original inferiority complex more and more intense and almost broke the jar.
Life is like a play. Just when he was at ease as a farmer, his uncle, who had been in the army for decades, returned to his hometown dressed in gold and became the director of the local county labor bureau. Gao Jialin's fate is once again in chaos.
Ma Zhansheng is a perfect apple polisher, and he was soon promoted to county reporter. Faced with such an opportunity, Gao Jialin met a life-saving straw in the vast sea. He thought his uncle was a clever man and seized the opportunity with a clear conscience.
But life played a joke on him. When he felt that his future was in full swing, he was reported by the mother of Zhang Kenan, a high school classmate. The reason is very simple, that is, he robbed her daughter-in-law, and she wanted revenge. In this way, Gao Jialin's life once again returned to the original point.
In fact, Gao Jialin was caught up in the pursuit of his career. He wants to get out of the countryside so badly that he will spare no effort to fight for it once he has the opportunity, even without considering the legitimacy of the opportunity.
It can be seen that Gao Jialin is easily confused by superficial phenomena and fails to think deeply about the influence of every step he takes on his future life, which is also the root cause of his tragic fate.
Love is the eternal theme of life, and Gao Jialin's life is no exception. His emotional entanglement with Liu Qiaozhen and Huang Yaping is the main conflict point of the novel.
These two touching love stories make readers feel sympathy and indignation for Gao Jialin. They sympathize with his career ruined by blind "love" and resent him for abandoning real "love". Is that really the case? I personally don't think so.
At the low point of Gao Jialin's demotion from private teachers, he met his first love in life. Liu Qiaozhen confessed to Gao Jialin on the Damahe Bridge, which is the so-called "barrier yarn for women chasing men". When he first looked at this "golden" woman, he was mercilessly captured and plunged into this river of love.
However, Gao Jialin and Liu Qiaozhen came together, which was supposed to be a suitable love, but was not favored by the villagers. The problem is not the family background, but the cultural level of both sides. After Gao Jialin graduated from high school, Liu Qiaozhen didn't know a word, which became the ultimate shackle between them.
In fact, in Liu Qiaozhen's heart, he knew that Gao Jialin would jump out of the farm sooner or later, but he didn't want to face up to this problem, just as Gao Jialin didn't want to face up to his own background. All this was in the guise of stealing the bell, and it was the bitter fruit of love between the two sides.
Later, when Gao Jialin returned to the county seat, this was confirmed. He still needs a literate companion in his bones, but he is not a complete Huang Yaping, and only her culture and her thoughts can communicate with his own thoughts.
This is like what Liu Zhenyun said in "One sentence is worth ten thousand sentences". When Gao Jialin was in the countryside, he talked to Liu Qiaozhen, but he didn't talk to Huang Yaping. When Gao Jialin arrived in the city, he talked to Huang Yaping, but not to Liu Qiaozhen.
So, here's the problem. Gao Jialin and Liu Qiaozhen can only discuss "daily necessities sauce vinegar tea", while Gao Jialin and Huang Yaping discuss everything except "daily necessities sauce vinegar tea".
From this perspective, Gao Jialin loves a simple and educated woman, and these two characteristics, Liu Qiaozhen and Huang Yaping, are equally divided, so they are doomed not to come together. Lu Yao seemed to see this, so he gave a clear conclusion: Gao Jialin could neither marry Liu Qiaozhen nor marry Huang Yaping.
But the ending of the novel is open, and Gao Jialin will continue to go out of the countryside. Maybe one day he can meet a woman who is integrated and start his new love.
Life is amazing. Its magic lies in: when Gao Jialin is desperate, it can turn his dream into reality and let him realize the beauty of life; When Gao Jialin got carried away, the reality tore up his dream and brought him back to the starting point of his life.
On the surface, it seems that Lu Yao never described the reality and dreams deeply in the book Life, which embedded the ups and downs of Gao Jialin's life.
In fact, there is no appearance, life is the life of reality and dreams, and it is also the struggle between reality and dreams.
In career, the two kinds of life in rural areas and cities are reality and dreams. Gao Jialin wandered between reality and dreams, struggling. Reality and dream are not high or low, but a question of whether you enjoy it or struggle with it.
Gao Jialin is happy when he really enjoys country life. He captured Liu Qiaozhen's heart and lived in reality every day. He can temporarily forget the pain caused by dreams. Later, when he realized his dream, Huang Yaping appeared in his sight again. He also enjoys it and overdraws the joy brought by his dreams.
In love, it can also be said that Liu Qiaozhen was the reality he faced, while Huang Yaping was actually the woman in his dream, but he didn't want to face the reality and couldn't realize his dream. Finally, he passed them by, which made people sad.
For Liu Qiaozhen and Huang Yaping, Ma Shuan and Zhang Kenan are their reality and Gao Jialin is their dream.
The source of people's pain is often the pursuit of things that do not belong to them. In life, Lu Yao explained the difference between reality and dreams in a brand-new way.
The novel neither beautifies dreams nor belittles reality, but presents dreams and reality to readers. Although it doesn't warn readers, it always warns readers. This is the magic in Lu Yao's works.
Life is full of variables. Although short and tortuous, dreams and reality are not far away. It can be said that it is a step away, and it can also be said that it is separated by a wall. If you enjoy it, reality is also a dream; If you struggle in it, your dream is still a reality.