Researchers interpret the ＂seventh day＂： when reason is absent, it is normal to curse for days.

　　Interviewee: Hong Zhigang (Dean, Professor, School of Literature, Hangzhou Normal University, author of A Commentary on Yu Hua, specializing in Yu Hua Studies).

　　Hong Zhigang said.

　　-Readers’ expectations of Yu Hua are based on his tragic narrative, not on his absurd narrative. However, the second part of Brothers and The Seventh Day all take absurd narration as the main body.

　　-Yu Hua’s handling of comic scenes is easy to be brief and symbolic.

　　-Four words can sum up Yu Hua’s feelings about reality: "anxiety" and "anger"-you see, all he wrote were innocent and weak, "helplessness" and "despair".

　　-Yu Hua doesn’t distrust human nature, but doesn’t agree with reality. He firmly believes in the beautiful and gentle things in human nature. The Seventh Day is the consistent insistence of Yu Hua’s aesthetics.

　　Overall judgment:

　　A novel with ideas, but it will be controversial.

　　Reading: How do you feel about Yu Hua’s The Seventh Day?

　　Hong Zhigang: It feels ok. It is also a novel with ideas. What is in Yu Hua’s bones has not changed. After reading it, I chatted with Yu Hua. This novel may be controversial.

　　Qing reading: Why do you expect to be controversial?

　　Hong Zhigang: The relationship between Yu Hua and reality has always been highly tense. In my opinion, there are four words that can sum up Yu Hua’s feelings about reality: "anxiety" and "anger"-you see, all he wrote were innocent and weak, "helplessness" and "despair". There is no way for a writer to interpret his feelings about reality with reason. Lue Sa said in A Letter to a Novelist that there is a tense relationship between a good writer and reality. This is true at all times and in all countries.

　　In Yu Hua’s previous avant-garde novels, the reality is just a vague background. For example, Living is far from the present reality. It was in the lower part of Brothers that the reality was first shown positively.

　　At this time, Yu Hua’s writing is completely absurd and funny. People may not like it.

　　Of course, the reality of China in the last thirty years has many absurdities. Compared with the previous absurdity, one is the top-down absurdity and the other is the bottom-up absurdity. What used to be the absurdity of spiritual and political remote control is now the absurdity of remote control of money and desire. Both of them are absurd and there is no qualitative difference. A certain proportion of Chinese people have no idea what rationality is.

　　Yu Hua’s essays have repeatedly expressed this concern. It’s just that these essays by Yu Hua failed to attract enough attention from readers for various reasons.

　　Youth reading: readers may not pay much attention to the writer’s handling of reality, but more attention to their own reading experience.

　　Hong Zhigang: Yes. However, readers’ reading experience is related to the author’s expression strategy of tragedy and comedy. The expression strategy of Yu Hua’s preference is the integration of banter and realism. For example, Shout in the Drizzle is a rogue father who spends all his money and a grandfather who never dies. Another example is Xu Sanguan Selling Blood. Joking and irony have always been there, but the main body of these novels is the touching story of human nature.

　　Let’s look back at the controversy of Brothers. Brothers is completely realistic at the beginning, and tragic narration occupies the main position. The upper part is about a family of four. But in the lower part, it is carnival and realistic. Everyone will say that it is unacceptable.

　　I have an intuitive feeling. In China’s novel tradition, comic narration is not respected. Compared with the tragic narrative such as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Scholars, a comic narrative, is rarely discussed. I have been thinking, why can’t China have rabelais and Don Quixote? There are many reasons for this, which are worth discussing.

　　In the Seventh Day, there are also many playful narratives that many readers will not accept. But in fact, in Yu Hua’s creation, there has always been this taste. Since 1986, Yu Hua’s narrative style, on the whole, has not changed much.

　　Youth reading: Some people call Yu Hua the worst novel since her debut.

　　Hong Zhigang: This is an "irrational absurdity". Even if time is left for evaluation, it is unlikely to be such a positioning.

　　China’s absurdity is everywhere. Many people have not yet developed their rationality and lack real enlightenment. For example, "left" and "right" are funny enough. During the "Cultural Revolution", someone ranked you left and right. Now, line up by yourself and divide it into "left" and "right".

　　I think it’s normal to curse when reason is absent.

　　"news series" and "three dimensions";

　　"Readers expect more places to be restored, but only simplify them."

　　Qing reading: where do you expect the dispute to be initially reflected?

　　Hong Zhigang: I estimate that the most controversial part will be the news. I talked to Yu Hua about this.

　　Youth reading: Some readers do think that this novel is a "news series".

　　Hong Zhigang: Yu Hua’s novel has three dimensions. The first dimension is the underworld, which is what the protagonist Yang Fei saw in "come to a bad end", where everyone is equal and the relationship between them is beautiful, slightly comic and absurd; The second dimension is the growth history of Yang Fei, which is a traditional and beautiful story between people-this dimension is also the humanistic basis of many novels of Yu Hua; The third dimension is the Yang world, which is a reflection of the current reality-the criticism of the so-called "news series" is all concentrated in this dimension.

　　Youth reading: writing without any dimension will inevitably lead to controversy.

　　Hong Zhigang: Yu Hua’s treatment will be controlled by the structure of the novel: Yang Fei, the hero, is not only the victim and witness of the real world, but also the listener of the soul of the underworld. Many wandering souls are telling stories, a listener, and after "my father was terminally ill, afraid of dragging me down, and left alone", it is impossible to write every story so completely with such a structural setting. It’s easy for stories to appear thin. And the "I" in "Living" can listen to Fugui’s story for one day.

　　Readers will see a lot of fragmented things, and feel that the world of each character is a few fleeting strokes. The so-called "news string burning" may be related to this structural setting of the novel. You will find that hot news events in recent years, such as selling kidneys on the black market and concealing the real number of casualties, have been integrated into Yu Hua’s novels. Yu Hua tried to show the world in width.

　　I often say that the place where news ends is the place where writers think. When the news is over, it is time for writers to think. Perhaps due to the limitation of the protagonist’s role, the novel failed to think more about the news facts. Yu Hua’s collection of essays is better at this point.

　　Youth reading: It is no wonder that the Seventh Day is far from readers’ expectations.

　　Hong Zhigang: Many readers’ expectations of Yu Hua are based on his tragic narrative, not on absurd narrative such as "The Lower Part of Brothers".

　　But this is actually the consistent feature of Yu Hua when dealing with the present reality. In Yu Hua’s bones, there has always been "Lu Xun’s cold humor", which is clearly reflected in the lower part of Brothers.

　　In this way, it will cause a contrast between readers’ reading feelings and expectations.

　　Youth reading: The readers’ dissatisfaction is not only related to the restrictions on the structure of the novel "The Seventh Day" you mentioned, but also to the readers’ expectation of tragic narrative. Is it directly related to Yu Hua’s writing itself?

　　Hong Zhigang: Personally, I think that Yu Hua’s handling of comic scenes is easy to be brief and symbolic. Readers expect more places to be restored, and Yu Hua only simplified them.

　　Qing Reading: Is this related to Yu Hua’s own cognition of social reality?

　　Hong Zhigang: I still find it hard to agree that Yu Hua didn’t think deeply about reality. Give an example of China’s "shanzhai" and "fudge" in his essays. In Yu Hua’s understanding, "shanzhai" legalizes "piracy" in speech; "Fudge" makes "deception" farce. The word "fudge" means that you should not take it seriously.

　　Yu Hua also said, "Imagination helps us bear the immediate pain." In Yu Hua’s view, social pain is like inflammation after illness. Yu Hua hopes to take out the pain, not just cover it up. Cover up, but let the damage gradually expand; Timely treatment may lead to a faster recovery.

　　Yu Hua’s characteristics:

　　"It’s not that I don’t trust human nature, but I don’t agree with reality."

　　Qing Reading: What does Yu Hua think of the controversy caused by The Seventh Day?

　　Hong Zhigang: Yu Hua said that it was expected. "I have never written a novel without controversy." "In that year," Living "was still controversial." He doesn’t mind being controversial. Didn’t you see that he doesn’t give interviews to any media now?

　　Youth reading: Can’t we have more courage to communicate with the public?

　　Hong Zhigang: It’s not about courage. It is a question of the possibility of reality. Personally, I don’t think it’s easy for him to make an in-depth interpretation of this novel-although he wrote a novel, not a documentary literature. Even if it is a novel, he is not a "frontal attack." How clever Yu Hua is, writing absurdity with absurdity.

　　Qing Reading: Give an example of Yu Hua’s writing that you think is clever.

　　Hong Zhigang: There are many metaphors in The Seventh Day. For example, Xiaomin, a homeless man, said to Yang Fei, Call Dad, "He knows where tomorrow is"; Yang Fei "doesn’t know how he died"; Said, "I suspect that I have given the blind the wrong direction, because I am lost."

　　Yu Hua wrote the number of the undead waiting to enter the cremation furnace. The VIP number starts with V, the ordinary number starts with A, and the luxury VIP number may not need a number, which gave birth to the saying that "money is ashamed of itself in front of power". Then, in his works, a new warm story will begin in "come to a bad end" when all kinds of helpless ends of life come-where "everyone dies and is equal".

　　Reading: I noticed that everyone’s praise of The Seventh Day focused on the deep affection between Yang Fei and his adoptive father, the "rat sister" love and so on. Why can Yu Hua write these warm colors when he is full of reality and absurdity?

　　Hong Zhigang: Yu Hua doesn’t distrust human nature, but doesn’t agree with reality. He firmly believes in the beautiful and gentle things in human nature. From "Shouting in the Drizzle", Yu Hua is like this at this point. The Seventh Day is the consistent insistence of Yu Hua’s aesthetics.

　　Youth reading: Is the description of the undead in the Seventh Day related to the memory that his parents worked in the hospital and he would sleep in the morgue when he was a child?

　　Hong Zhigang: Theoretically, this is true. From the perspective of literary psychology, childhood will affect the life of the creator.

　　(Zhu Ling)

　　What did the Seventh Day write?

　　Yang Fei, who is dead, got a call from the underworld and urged him to be cremated-he knew he was dead, but he didn’t know how. Waiting for him to queue up at the funeral home to get the number, he had to give up cremation because he didn’t buy a cemetery, and became a "come to a bad end" ghost. He was killed in a restaurant fire. At that moment, he was shocked by the news that his ex-wife who had become an executive mistress committed suicide on TV.

　　In the underworld, Yang Fei began to look for his adoptive father. He was adopted by Yang Jinbiao, a railway worker. Father and son love each other deeply, and Yang Jinbiao is always sick, afraid of dragging him away silently. Along the way, Yang Fei met the dead of all walks of life. Many of these passers-by were the protagonists of various news events-demolition, concealing the death toll, discarding dead babies, "rat family" life, Yang Jia’s murder of police, underground selling kidneys … These times of pain were brought together by "The Seventh Day". In Yu Hua’s "come to a bad end", people love and help each other, and food is safe … "Everyone dies equal".

　　The seventh day/by Yu Hua

　　Xinxing Publishing House, June 2013

(Source: Beijing Youth Daily)