But later people couldn't control it. Readers need legends, because the fashionable middle class needs a cultural idol to lead a new way of life in the material age; Media needs legends, because publishers and editors need higher sales and attention to enrich their wallets; The world also needs legends, because the dullness, rigidity and triviality of life have strangled people to the degree of suffocation that it is difficult to breathe smoothly.
It is doubtful that a writer's private life rather than his own works has become the focus of public attention, especially when the writer is still a woman. If she is a feminist, she may proudly say "no" because she thinks it is the public's desire for privacy and the collective exposure of male chauvinism. However, for Zhang Ailing, all this may be exactly what she likes to see, or even deliberately designed. Just as her articles like "writing by comparison", life is not a kind of creation in her eyes: if it is not so noisy and prosperous, how can it show the original pale simplicity and loneliness in the background of life? She may be proud, but that kind of pride is also a little woman's style, more like a dam that she painstakingly manages between fragile dreams and heavy reality. Once she meets the man she loves, she will collapse without a fight and feel "very low, as low as dust". Her works seem to show women's concern, but more like an emotional instinct as a woman. Obviously, she has never had the political narrative ambition to act as a social spokesperson for those "insulted and hurt" female compatriots. For the women who are undoubtedly in a weak position in her own works, what she shows is more like the same fate than sympathy and pity. Her gesture is not the condescension of the forerunner to the latecomer, but an equal head-up view. She deliberately keeps a certain distance from the line of sight of the story characters and quietly looks at the joys and sorrows of secular life.
This may be related to Zhang Ailing's own understanding of the times and history. Her view of the times, like her view of life, is full of a strong sense of nothingness, but also full of disbelief and doubt. She doesn't think that the general trend of the times is constantly advancing. In her eyes, "the times are hasty, they are already being destroyed, and more destruction is coming. One day our civilization, whether lofty or flashy, will be a thing of the past.
Perhaps it is because of this deep disappointment and pessimism about history and times that she is convinced that there is no problem with women's life concepts and values in her works and they need to be improved. That's just the instinctive reaction of the weak to the huge and unpredictable external world. Just like a frightened mole, it is only when she closes her door in a narrow cave and keeps the last point stable that she is practical and reliable, and it is also in line with the truth of life and the world-this is probably her own attitude towards life! In the desolation caused by the constant destruction of an era, individuals are so weak and insignificant. "But this era sinks like a shadow, making people feel abandoned." It is better to settle for the second best than to be disappointed because they expect too much. What can be grasped desperately is only some real material pleasure and the warmth of secular men and women. However, for a woman who is in a dominant position in a patriarchal society, this desire is often unreliable, and she needs to expect charity from others-life is so fatalistic and powerless.
The sense of fatalism and powerlessness is reflected everywhere in Zhang Ailing's literary creation, which has become the eternal tone and background color in her novel world, giving people a sense of frustration and heaviness that can't escape and nowhere to escape. Man Zhen in Eighteen Springs was overwhelmed by his sister and brother-in-law, but after all, he was willing to go that way. In the end, he didn't look back, nor did he struggle and resist at all. In this way, the characters in the story survived calmly and meekly under the pressure of the times and fate, and still continue to live so quietly and meekly. It seems that they are not the inheritors of fate themselves, but just an indifferent bystander-there is no legend in the world of "legend". Zhang Ailing's novel creation is not transcendental, but a sketch of real life. There is no meaningful completion, no sublimation of the realm, only heavy fate and powerless reality. However, even this fate and powerlessness is only an obvious pallor. The reason why tragedy becomes a tragedy lies in the presence of onlookers, and everyone's life is nothing more than "drinking like a fish, knowing it in cold and warm." The lack of attention dispels the original tragic meaning of life, leaving only a desolation of self-pity.
Desolation is Zhang Ailing's attribution to herself, and it is also her unique taste of the times and life under the times. It is no exaggeration to say that Zhang Ailing is the forerunner of the petty bourgeoisie in modern society: unlike the bourgeoisie, she is not completely eager for material things, but always elegant and yearns for her own spiritual world; But without the moral passion and cultural ambition of idealists as spiritual martyrs, they show extreme patience and talent in the material details of life. Even Zhang's writing style inspired the later petty bourgeoisie to imitate. But there is a distance between Zhang Ailing and the modern petty bourgeoisie, which is probably the desolation of her ideological background.
Writers can't be born out of thin air in their own time. Lu Xun is like this, and so is Zhang Ailing. The turmoil and gloom of the times gave birth to Zhang Ailing's precocity and precocity, which not only refers to Zhang Ailing's early family background and childhood experience, but also includes her life in Hong Kong during the Anti-Japanese War. Perhaps even it was that experience that painted Zhang Ailing's perception of life with the strongest color. When Japanese planes whizzed past Hong Kong, Zhang Ailing's mind certainly passed over the puzzles and shadows of metaphysical issues such as times and individuals, life and death, truth and humanity more than once. Zhang Ailing, like Lu Xun, bears a heavy sense of nothingness of the times and life. The heavy sense of nothingness pushes Lu Xun to action and becomes a practitioner of existentialism philosophy that resists nothingness with action. However, Zhang Ailing's personality, as a woman, made her turn around, taking the constantly pushed nothingness as the aesthetic object, and seeking a stable spiritual shell from the infinite taste of life desolation-the desolation of the times made Zhang Ailing gorgeous desolation. Perhaps Zhang Ailing herself has a similar feeling to some extent, as she said at the end of Love in a Fallen City: "The fall of Hong Kong has made her complete, but in this unreasonable world, who knows what is the cause and what is the result? Who knows, maybe it's because she wants to help her, a metropolis has capsized, thousands of people have died, and thousands of people are suffering ... "
The product of Zhang Ailing's era. The uniqueness of the times determines that Zhang Ailing cannot be copied. Many people in later generations were impressed by Zhang Ailing's talent and personality, and imitated her writing style, personality temperament and lifestyle intentionally or unintentionally. However, the background color of the times in the depths of Zhang's thought cannot be imitated. The reason why Zhang Ailing's desolate scenery is enduring is that the stormy times behind her are so melancholy and sad. Without the background of the times, desolation no longer has historical dignity and vicissitudes, but degenerates into cliches of emotional flooding and frivolous display of talent.
Zhang Ailing undoubtedly has a deep attachment to this land of China. In the eyes of other modern writers, it is just a secular picture showing the decadent situation of China, but in Zhang Ailing's works, it often has a unique China classical charm and amorous feelings. This kind of emotion is becoming more and more pure because it is completely derived from the self-identity of cultural identity without political elements. However, the strong local feelings can't stop her from finally leaving. It was not so much because she had a clear understanding of the political situation in Chinese mainland at that time as because of her calm and realistic attitude towards life. It is this anti-legendary realistic attitude that finally makes her lucky to escape from political movements again and again and complete this "legend" of Zhang Ailing-perhaps this is the elusive part of fate.