Aesthetic Appreciation of "Black and White"

Zhiyao, 2024

As someone with an engineering background, I venture today to share my thoughts and reflections on reading the novel "Black and White" from an aesthetic appreciation perspective. Consider this an attempt to cast a modest stone to attract jade [note: Chinese idiom meaning to offer humble thoughts to elicit better ideas from others].

The first volume of this novel contains a university scene where Lang Tao gives a lecture on Heidegger. This brought back memories of the late 1980s when we also had various intellectually vibrant, interdisciplinary lectures at our school. One aesthetic lecture I particularly remember was on "Lu Xun's Aesthetic Appreciation of Tragedy and Comedy." Lu Xun wrote in his essay "Further Thoughts on the Collapse of Lei Feng Pagoda" a critical standard: "Tragedy shows people the destruction of what is valuable in life, while comedy tears apart what is worthless for people to see." The lecturer analyzed Lu Xun's works and characters, citing authorities like Aristotle and Chernyshevsky, arguing that tragedy has the educational significance of purifying the soul. "Everyone acknowledges that tragedy is the highest and most profound form of the sublime," so tragedy's impact on the human heart—its influence and lasting memory—is more profound. This explains why tragedies outnumber comedies among many literary classics that have stood the test of time. This made a deep impression on me.

The book's back cover includes an "Author Introduction" mentioning that Mr. Liu Jiming graduated from Wuhan University's Chinese Literature Department and later worked as a playwright at the Hubei Opera and Dance Theater... When I first read this novel, I had the feeling of experiencing a particularly grand, complex multi-act drama. I can't recall if it was in a previous three-person discussion or some review that mentioned this book being like having many folding screens—opening one screen reveals a series of scenes, characters, and their stories, then opening another screen reveals yet another scene, characters, and story... The characters, stories, and plots behind each screen are organically connected and interrelated... This creates an immersive experience where readers shuttle through the changing sets and characters, their emotions rising and falling. I wondered at the time if this was the kind of aesthetic effect and enjoyment one gets from appreciating a magnificent stage drama or "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" [note: famous Song dynasty painting depicting bustling city life].

Though reading a novel, I experienced the feeling of drama. So if we were to treat it as drama, or adapt it into a period drama, would it be tragedy, comedy, or serious drama? After much thought, I believe it should be a serious drama with tragic elements. Although the author uses realistic writing and restrained, objective strokes to describe many people's ordinary yet profound lives—the reading process is oppressive and heavy—the ending is not so bleak; there is light. Some readers and even film and television professionals have suggested that, whether to give readers confidence or facilitate future adaptation and censorship approval, they hope Teacher Liu could write a brighter, more "positive energy" ending. Setting aside whether such revision would conform to the work's tone and realistic principles, from an aesthetic perspective, it would greatly diminish this masterpiece's tension.

This is the overall aesthetic feeling this novel gave me. More specifically, we can roughly experience this work's aesthetic power from four aspects: form, content, humanity and society, and spiritual exploration and ultimate contemplation. However, lacking professional training in literary appreciation, I can only speak from an ordinary reader's perspective about my superficial understanding.

The Beauty of Form

Through understanding Liu Jiming's collected works, we know the author is not only a novelist and scholar but also a poet. Much of the language in this book—including background exposition, scene descriptions, dialogue, and character psychology and personality portrayals, as well as the aforementioned screen-like structural presentation and transitions—gives readers a vivid, immersive feeling that deeply moves and attracts them. During my first reading, I was almost to the point of forgetting to eat and sleep, eagerly following the author's brush strokes to explore and experience each character's joyful and sorrowful life... The novel employs flashbacks, interludes, associations, metaphors, dialogue, monologue, memories, new-style poetry, letters, popular songs, excerpts from classic and non-classic dramas and novels, sometimes using plain description, sometimes detailed character and story portrayal. All these provide readers with aesthetic pleasure through form.

The Beauty of Content

Form alone is insufficient to make readers reluctant to put down a book; the author's skillful use of various expressive forms all serve the content. Many articles have already reviewed this novel's content, and everyone knows that "Black and White" is rich in content with a grand layout—at least three main storylines, more than ten fully developed character images, nearly a hundred characters throughout the book, with even minor characters brought to life in just a few strokes, spanning over a century, covering three major periods of turbulent historical change. These diverse character images and their experiences seem to occur around each of our family, growth, study, and work environments—so realistic and authentic that many people feel this is not artistic novel creation but truly writing history. This gives us a tangible understanding of how literature and art originate from life yet transcend life.

Let me speak from my personal experience and feelings. I should say that since the late 1990s, I haven't seriously read novels. Apart from childhood picture books, major storytelling works, and the Four Great Classical Novels [note: traditional Chinese literary canon], my more systematic reading was Jin Yong during high school and Lu Xun and Li Ao during university. Back then, I would listen to serialized novels like "Ordinary World" and "Funeral of a Muslim" during lunch breaks in the playground. After graduation, I only read popular works of the time like "Abandoned Capital" and "White Deer Plain," browsed literary magazines like "Novelette Monthly" and "Harvest" for a few years, then basically stopped reading books after the late 1990s—strictly speaking, stopped reading literary works. I hadn't read novels for about twenty years.

Why was this novel so captivating at the time? Besides the pandemic years when everyone had more time to stay home, the overall social environment also prompted more reflection and emotional resonance. I feel this novel initially attracted me because it instantly drew me in, making me feel as if I had suddenly returned to eras I had personally experienced. Whether the late 1980s campus life or the dazzling changes after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour [note: 1992 speeches that accelerated China's economic reforms]... it was like watching the people I'd encountered, events I'd experienced, and paths I'd walked over the decades.

Through the perspectives and growth experiences of characters like Zong Tianyi, Hong Zhun, Wang Cheng (Sheng), Tian Fang, Gu Zheng, Ba Dong, Meng Fei, and Du Wei, Teacher Liu Jiming depicted the changes over decades in places like Pi Town, Red Stone Valley, Chu Prefecture, Phoenix Island, Niangzi County, and Dajiang City, giving all of us who lived through these times a powerful shock. These contents and character images are too real, too ordinary, yet too representative. Through the artist's processing, almost every reader can see more or less of themselves in certain characters. I certainly feel I see myself in more than one character in the book.

This content aspect gave me great impact. Though I haven't seriously read novels in these twenty years, I've watched many film and television adaptations. I feel this work's richness, authenticity, brilliance, depth, and profundity—gripping and soul-stirring, thought-provoking—deeply moved me and is extremely rare in recent decades. It's incomparable to the covert or overt fabrications and even inventions in the scar literature films and television of the past forty-plus years. This covers the formal and content beauty I mentioned.

Reflection on Humanity and Society

We began by discussing the aesthetic power of tragedy from Lu Xun's perspective, and this power accumulates and erupts through characters' various storylines in social life. This novel's portrayal of human complexity and society's true face possesses tremendous soul-shocking power and beauty. First is the character portrayal. Teacher Kong Qingdong recently mentioned in a conversation that although this book is called "Black and White," the author didn't write characters as either black or white labels and stereotypes, because real people are mostly in complex states between black and white (roughly). After reading this novel, though we all know who's good and who's bad, there's no clear distinction between good and bad people. Each character has multiple facets of complex humanity; everyone has both Buddha and demon sides, good and bad aspects, bright and dark sides. This probably better reflects human nature and truth. What we've encountered over the decades, including problems within ourselves. Such character creation is more vivid, realistic, and easier to move, touch, and resonate with readers, giving them deeper understanding of human nature. Particularly when readers deeply contemplate and compare the various characters' performances in different social stages, they discover that in the dust-sealed years of Phoenix Island's Little Dragon Mountain, the class feelings described through young Black's perspective were so beautiful. Perhaps our current indulgence in lamenting human nature isn't very scientific, correct, or persuasive, thus rediscovering progressive power.

As for the novel's realistic reflection of society, it's more like removing the deceptive veil that commanded literature and certain narratives had deliberately covered readers' hearts for decades, letting readers see the true appearance. This expressive technique either continues the socialist literature tradition of Hao Ran, Liu Qing, and Ding Ling, or what critics call new socialist literature or people's realist literature. In any case, after reading "Black and White," I went back to read novels like "Tempest," "Golden Avenue," and Liu Qing's "The Builders," and could more clearly feel how this novel's perspective on reflecting society, character setting and portrayal, selection of events representing social development, and capture of era characteristics all provoke deep thought and bring clarity—a clarity within oppression, with shocking beauty that combines penetration and tension, possessing tremendous spiritual impact.

Spiritual Exploration and Ultimate Contemplation

As an excellent work, "Black and White" not only makes us think about oppressive, heavy reality but also leads readers to a crossroads of ultimate contemplation: like Shakespeare's "To be or not to be, that is the question," after experiencing so much social reality and through the life stories of numerous characters in the novel, we must consider how life should be lived? What kind of love should we pursue? In this society, what is the value of our decades of life? Everyone must seriously face such ultimate contemplation. Should we live in a daze like walking corpses? Or like clothed beasts in a jungle society? This novel is an awakening work for the vast majority of ordinary people.

The other day I saw a social media post from Comrade Lao Jing about the relationship between sheep and wolves. Must sheep be eaten? From a fatalistic or jungle society perspective, perhaps. But in human society, why must some people become two-legged sheep [note: derogatory term for humans treated as livestock], while others wear human skin but are actually wolves? Let's also reflect on ourselves. Some say that in market economy, we should encourage employees and entrepreneurs to become wolves. Many enterprises, including Huawei's wolf culture, advocate similar competitive concepts or corporate cultures. After decades of such value system indoctrination, should we consider whether it's right? In the novel, one-armed factory director Wang Shengli led workers in high-temperature brick kilns for production competition, collapsing from heatstroke. Today we constantly hear about "996" culture and "single kings" [note: extremely hardworking individuals] dying from overwork—which is superior, the novel's labor competition or today's wolf-like competition? When I did related work before, I also promoted wolf-like competitive values to others, so I say many characters in this novel reflect ourselves. Whether Wang Sheng, Gu Zheng, or even Gu Ying—I have considerable petit bourgeois thinking myself. In Zong Xiaotian, Zong Tianyi, even Du Wei, Wu Dashi, and Ba Dong, when we once worshipped market economy, didn't we also have those demonic things? Extreme egoists like Wu Bozhong and Du Wei are like jungle beasts in society, viewing everyone as objects to exploit and devour. If society believes in such people, doesn't it lead to everyone feeling unsafe like now? Though "Black and White's" strokes are very restrained, the development of various plots under this calm description presents us with such a silent picture. Looking back now, I feel I once walked such a path, only fifty or a hundred steps away from becoming beasts possessed by demons like Du Wei, Wu Bozhong, Ba Dong, even Hong Taixing and Lu Shengping. Isn't that terrifying to think about now?

The deaths of Wu Bozhong, Lu Shengping, and Li Hong's parents are undoubtedly tragic; though Hong Yanbei might spare Ba Dong due to his psychogenic impotence, whether he can safely escape from Master Hong remains a mystery. Judging from his prototype being thrown out as a scapegoat, the outlook isn't optimistic. The fallen Du Wei might be recruited by Master Hong to replace Ba Dong—this is also tragic for most readers, with a depressing future. Wang Shengli, the old principal, and Luo Zheng died with their regrets, helplessness, and defiance—this is tragic. The scholar-like pure Wang Sheng falsely accused and imprisoned for three years, Guo Youcai whose family was destroyed and imprisoned for five years over a stolen watch, A Mao executed for resistance—their experiences are heartbreaking. The drowned Tian Fang, Gu Ying, Zong Xiaotian, and numerous violated, humiliated, exploited, and toyed-with Cheng Leis, A Yings, and Phoenix Island villagers evoke pity... Gu Zheng with his spiritual obsession with cleanliness and hatred of evil, Tian Qingqing who inherited the teachings of Tian Fang, Wang Sheng, and the old principal through trials, and Liang Tian whom she influenced, in the brilliant morning light, welcomed Wang Sheng—"a person who shouldn't bear misfortune"—emerging from high walls' shadows but still confused, "through the negative experience of human existence, thus revealing the affirmation of human existence value." These are the tragic and serious dramatic aesthetic collisions and shocks this novel brought me.

Conclusion

Generally speaking, jungle society has its laws, and human society naturally should have the path human society ought to take. We can find our own answers to such ultimate contemplation in the novel's hundred-year historical narrative. Today I've made superficial analysis from aspects of form, content, humanity and society, and spiritual exploration and ultimate contemplation. I welcome everyone to discuss from an artistic appreciation perspective how this novel moved you, and through your sharing, move more people.