编者按：为了更好地进行中国文学海外传播工作，让中国作品在海外被发现（Discover）、被理解（Understand）、被传播（Express），中国文化译研网（CCTSS）邀请国内资深文学主编及文学评论家，精选出近两百部短中长篇小说，形成第一期《中国当代文学作品指南》（简称“指南”），从更具权威性、价值性的角度出发，更好地向世界展示中国当代文学精品，传播中国书香。

春读书，兴味长，磨其砚，笔花香。现将“指南”中的精品文学作品以一日一推的方式向读者呈现，让我们不负春日好时光。

格非丨《江南三部曲》

推荐理由

《江南三部曲》是著名作家格非从上世纪九十年代中期开始酝酿构思、沉潜求索，到2011年终于完全定稿的系列长篇巨作。作者在坚守艺术性的同时，用具有穿透力的思考和叙事呈现了一个世纪以来中国社会内在精神的衍变轨迹。

《江南三部曲》以对历史和现实郑重负责的态度，深切注视着现代中国的壮阔历程，以百年的跨度在革命史与精神史的碰撞中处理了一系列重要的现代性命题。三代人的上下求索，交织着解放的渴望和梦想的激情，在兴衰成败与悲欢离合之间，个体的性格和命运呼应着宏大的历史运动。艰巨的价值思考形成了分散、勉励而高远辽阔的艺术世界。这是一部具有中国风格的小说，格非以高度的文化自觉，探索明清小说传统的修复和转化。细腻的叙述、典雅的语言、循环如《春秋》的内在结构，为现代中国经验的表现开阔了更加广阔的文化空间与新的语言和艺术纬度。

《人面桃花》作为“江南三部曲”的开卷之作，悬念迭生，余韵悠长。格非以他一贯的优雅和从容，将一个女子的命运与近代中国的厚重历史交织在一起，通过简单写出了复杂，通过清晰描述了混乱，通过写实达到了寓言的高度。《山河入梦》是“江南三部曲”的第二部，小说以充实的细节、饱满的笔墨和沉静深入的思索，勾勒出二十世纪中期中国的社会现实图景，呈现了个体在时代剧变中的曲折命运与精神求索。《春尽江南》是“江南三部曲”的收官之作，围绕核心人物近二十年的人生际遇和精神衍变，呈现了多元的社会问题，如教育问题、司法问题、新闻宣传问题、官商问题等，其关注点是多维度的，包括家庭伦理、职业操守、为官之道、环境和发展的矛盾与调和等等。作者以令人感佩的诚挚和勇气，用逼近时代粗粝的犀利文笔，深度切中了这个时代精神疼痛的症结。

Reviews

A Trilogy of Jiangnan consists of a series of long, yet masterly composed, works. Having initially been conceived during the middle of the 1990s, they underwent deep changes and were finished in 2011. While staunchly sticking to the art of writing, he presents the transformational trajectory of the inner spirit of the Chinese society for more than a century. He did so with the skill of his penetrative thinking and unique narrative.

With a very solemn and responsible attitude towards reality and history, the trilogy shows its deep concern with modern China’s broad stance towards both itself and the outside world. With a space of one hundred years and through the clashes between the history of revolution and that of spirit, this trilogy deals with some critical themes on modernity. The explorations and pursuits made by the three different generations mentioned in the novel are entwined with their cravings for emancipation, as well as their passion for ideals. Between the rise and fall, success and failure, sorrow and happiness, gathering and separation, the individual’s personality traits and fates find their corresponding reflections in the grand historical events. His deep thinking on the values of society shapes an artistic world that is, albeit piece by piece and heartening, yet broad, noble, and clairvoyant.

This trilogy is Chinese style-specific in that, whilst including an acute cultural awareness, Ge Fei experiments in restoring and transforming the novel writing traditions in the Ming- and Qing dynasties. Its subtle form of expression and narration, elegant language, cyclical inner structure similar to that in The Spring and Autumn Annals, broaden the cultural space, raise the artistic height, and create a new language, all of these being instrumental in expressing the lived Chinese experiences and histories.

The opening novel Human Faces and Peach Flowers of A Trilogy of Jiangnan has at its disposal suspense after suspense, which in turn create more food for thought and imagination. Ge Fei, with his usual elegance, grace and leisure, puts a young woman’s destiny in connection with the thick history of contemporary China. He manages to give full expression to complexity through simplicity, to chaos through clarity, and attaining to an allegorical depth through realistic description.

The second novel, Mountains and Rivers Entering His Dream, includes full details, racy language and tranquil yet in-depth thinking, and paints a sketch of a Chinese real society in the middle of the twentieth century. The story then presents the twists and turns of an individual’s fate and his spiritual pursuit at a drastically transformed time.

The third one, Jiangnan in Full Spring, which is also the finishing touch of the trilogy, revolves around the life accidents and spiritual transformations of the protagonist. It displays issues within a pluralistic society. Such examples include educational problems, judicial problems, media issues, issues concerning the relationship between officials and businesses, and much more. Its concerns are multidimensional in the sense that they involve familial ethics, occupational morality, ways to govern well, as well as clashes and reconciliations between environment and development to name a few. With admirable sincerity and courage, and by using his sharp and sensitive pen to approach the epoch, the author shows his firm grasp of the very heart of the spiritual issues which haunted the time painfully. 

作家简介

Author Profile

格非，原名刘勇，江苏丹徒人，1964 年生。

1981年考入华东师范大学中文系，毕业后留校任教；2000年获文学博士学位，并于同年转入清华大学中文系任教。格非从1987年发表成名作《迷舟》开始，已创作出版长篇小说《敌人》《边缘》《欲望的旗帜》以及“江南三部曲”《人面桃花》《山河入梦》和《春尽江南》；中短篇小说集《迷舟》《唿哨》《雨季的感觉》《青黄》《戒指花》等。另有论著和散文随笔《小说艺术面面观》《小说叙事研究》《格非散文》《塞壬的歌声》《文学的邀约》等多部。

格非属于擅长对文学、社会、历史等问题做深入思考的学者型作家，他的作品具有坚韧、优雅、准确、睿智等特质，在中国当代文坛独树一帜、风格鲜明。长篇小说《江南三部曲》获得“第九届茅盾文学奖”，中篇小说《隐身衣》获得 2014年“鲁迅文学奖”“老舍文学奖”。此外，格非作品曾获“2004年度华语文学传媒大奖杰出成就奖”“2004年度长篇小说排行榜”第一名、“第二届21世纪鼎钧双年文学奖”“第三届中国图书势力榜”文学第一名、《新京报》“2011年度文学类致敬图书”等多种文学奖项。其作品被翻译成英、法、意、日等多种文字在国外出版。

Ge Fei is the pen name of Liu Yong, a native of Dantu (Jiansu Province) born in 1964. In 1982 he was enrolled into the Department of Chinese at East China Normal University. Upon graduation he undertook a teaching post at the University as a Chinese teacher. Moreover, in 2000 he received his Ph.D., and thereafter transferred to work at Tsinghua University in the same year.

Since 1987 he has published several works, including The Lost Boat, which brought him instant- and nation-wide fame. Other notable novels include The Enemy, The Periphery, The Banner of Desire, as well as Jiangnan Trilogy (Human Faces and Peach Flowers, Mountains and Rivers Entering His Dream, and Jiangnan in Full Spring). In addition, collections of his short stories and novelettes include The Lost Boat, The Whistle, Feelings in Rainy Seasons, The Blue and the Yellow, and The Flower on the Ring to name a few. Moreover, he has published a number of collections of literary critiques and essays such as Aspects of the Novel Art, A Study of Narration in Novels, Essays of Ge Fei, The Siren Songs, and A Rendezvous with Literature.

Ge Fei is referred to as a scholarly writer or a writer-cum-scholar. He is well steeped in vividly presenting his profound thinking about issues concerning literature, society, as well as history. Moreover, because of this particular attribute, his works are remarkably noted for their tenacity, elegance, precision, and acumen. All these features and characteristics aids in distinguishing himself among the Chinese contemporary writers and marking out his unique writing style. A Trilogy of Jiangnan won him the ninth Maodun Literary Prize. His novelette The Invisible Clothes won him both Lu Xun Literary Prize and Lao She Literary Prize respectively in 2014. In addition, Ge Fei has won the Grand Award for the 2004 Chinese Literature Mass Media- The Outstanding Achievement Award, the first place in the 2004 List of Chinese Novels, the Second 21st Century Dingjun Biannual Literary Award, No.1 Literature Book of “The Third Chinese Books Influence”, and the Xinjing Bao’s (New Beijing Newspaper’s) “2011 Literary Homage Books Award”. His works have been translated into many foreign languages and published abroad.

中文概要

Synopsis

《人面桃花》：

光绪二十六年春的一个下午，因《桃源图》而发疯的父亲陆侃突然离家出走，陆夫人从梅城回来，发动全家寻找，也未见其踪迹。这个时候，陆家来了一个人，四十上下，名叫张季元。母亲表现出异乎寻常的欣喜，只是在辈分上，“表哥”“表舅”的含混不清让人有些摸不着头脑。张季元来陆家寄居，很少下楼，倒是时常说一些奇怪的话。

秀米去丁先生家读书，丁先生从怀里掏出一封信来，让她和谭四送去一个叫薛举人的家里，并嘱咐亲自交给薛举人。秀米在薛举人家见到张季元，搞不清楚这是怎么一回事。她觉得张季元有些奇怪，秀米看到他，听他说的话，总有些紧张。

母亲决定前往长州寻找父亲，张季元、翠莲、秀米同行。在长州的夜晚，秀米和张季元走在林荫路上，她问起梅城的事，还有张纪元之前细细打探过的六指木匠的事，他却总是笑而不答。

张季元来普济有半年光景了，他开始问自己：联络会员，发动起义，天下大同，这些是不是就真的正确，真的值得做？他已经深深爱上了秀米，起义的信念也有些动摇。在他离开之前，把一只金蝉——起义组织用来接头联络的物品——放在小盒子里交给秀米。随着革命党被剿灭，一个月后，张季元莫名惨死。秀米从佣人喜鹊那里接到张季元的日记，花了三天时间看完，昏睡了六天六夜，醒后变得奇奇怪怪。恢复神志后，秀米应承了婚事，中途却被土匪劫持，绑架到花家舍，从屋子主人韩六那里了解到一些秘密。秀米想起父亲的理想：建造风雨长廊，把普济变成桃花源。张季元日记中的大同思想似乎也与此相关。

秀米在土匪窝里遭到强奸完成了初夜，又见识到了真正的风雨长廊。花家舍当家的土匪相继被杀，不久之后，秀米再一次当新娘，嫁给花家舍的新主人庆生。韩六交给秀米一只金蝉后离开。庆生遇害，马倌接替庆生做了新郎。秀米这才得知，一个叫小驴子的人，也就是张季元打探过的六指木匠，策划了这一切，成功瓦解土匪势力，准备起义。

起义失败，秀米被送往日本。两年后，她带着儿子小东西回到普济，给裹小脚的女人放足，成立自治会，设立育婴堂、书籍室、疗病所和养老院，不见成效，改办学堂，也摇摇欲坠。翠莲勾结官兵、出卖秀米，导致小东西死在枪下，秀米被捕，在狱中生下了谭四的孩子谭功达，未满月就被人抱走。武昌起义后，秀米获释，回到普济植花种草，很少出门，最终凄然死去。

《山河入梦》：

一九五二年五月，时任梅城县长的谭功达前往普济。姚佩佩父亲因反革命罪被判枪决，母亲悬梁自尽，佩佩去上海投奔姑妈又遭遗弃，在梅城县公共浴室卖澡票，遇到谭功达，几经周折，被安排到梅城县委办公室工作，成为谭功达的秘书。

谭功达一心要将梅城建成社会主义的桃花源，所谓“家家户户花放千树，灯火通明”的社会主义新农村，提前实现共产主义。他在县里修建公园；六次上书省里和地委争取照明用电，又提议建水库发电；他还构想过连接各家各户的长廊、遍布全县的电话网络，甚至设想开凿人工运河，与母亲陆秀米当年天下大同的梦想如出一辙。然而，在个体无法抗拒的现实中，谭功达的雄心屡遭挫败。人们认为类似这种一路小跑奔向共产主义的论调是极其荒谬的，是右倾机会主义。

此时的谭功达年过四十，尚未成家。姚佩佩让谭功达心生怜爱，但并无过分之举。不久后，谭功达与文工团的舞蹈演员白小娴建立恋爱关系。小娴的叔父白庭禹与小娴的父母另有用心，希望谭功达为白家解决私事，而不谙世事的小娴阴晴不定，终与谭功达中断了关系。省委副秘书长金玉偶然撞见姚佩佩，动了邪念。

谭功达升任县委书记，但周围已是危机四伏。在聂竹风暗中支持下，省里解除了正义直言的赵焕章的职务，而白庭禹、钱大钧分别升任县长、副县长，本是利于谭功达开展工作的举动，却最终变为坏事。精于权谋的白、钱二人与金玉勾结，让白庭禹的侄子白小虎当上代理乡长，公然与谭功达做对。

六月暴雨，大坝决堤，谭功达因失职被停职检查，县委大小官员一夜之间都成了敌人。姚佩佩对他心有戚戚，而她自己也一步步落入钱大钧等人的圈套中。她得知金玉的图谋，拒绝调往省里，离家另谋生路，给谭功达写信得到冷淡的回应。此时谭功达已与寡妇张金芳相好，向上级提交了结婚申请，一个多月后偶然发现佩佩见面的邀约，追悔莫及却为时已晚。

中秋晚上，佩佩被同事汤碧云下了迷药，被金玉强奸，在羞辱和愤怒中杀死了对方，自此踏上逃亡之旅。谭功达被任命为地级巡视员，前往邻县的花家舍人民公社考察工作。离开梅城之前，他和张金芳的孩子出生，取名谭端午。在花家舍，谭功达发现自己多年梦寐以求的“桃花源”已在此实现，但这个“理想世界”其实并不完美，充斥着自杀的阴影。他与姚佩佩的情感经历磨难却不断展开，通信密切，直至双双被捕，佩佩执行枪决，谭功达因包庇罪一直被关押到一九七六年。他仍然向往着理想的世界，同年九十月间病逝。

《春尽江南》：

青春懵懂的少女秀蓉迷恋文学，在编辑徐吉士的怂恿下到招隐寺，拜访在诗歌界小有名气但很落魄的谭端午。秀蓉爱上了谭端午，留在他身边，而有过多次性爱经历且根本不打算和她结婚的端午，只是把满足、不屑和冷笑掩藏在心里。夜晚狂欢后，端午趁着秀蓉高烧熟睡，拿走她身上所有的钱物，抛下秀蓉只身搭上开往上海的列车。经过十几年打拼，已经拿到研究生学历的端午又回到了鹤浦，进入地方志办公室，成为一个无事可为而享受国家工资的闲人。

秀蓉置办结婚嫁妆时，偶然从商场三棱玻璃的反照中看到端午，即将举行的婚礼戛然而止。几天后，端午和秀蓉步入婚姻。秀蓉更名叫庞家玉，已成为小有名气的律师，为人处事雷厉风行，而曾被文学青年追捧的端午，因为时代对诗歌的冷落，光环黯淡。社会地位的翻转使两人在家庭中的地位和角色逐渐偏移。

庞家玉对端午冷嘲热讽，对孩子若若以强权驯化，一厢情愿地做出安排。至于婆媳关系，则各怀心思，有时甚至到了勾心斗角的程度。夫妻间的冷漠、母子间的隔阂、婆媳间的冷战构成生活的主色调。因与端午结婚时有“互不干涉各自私生活”的约定，庞家玉得以在社会上利用自己的身体达到目的：对案件中起关键作用者投怀送抱；为让若若进入全市有名的实验中学最强班，与教育局长春宵一夜；为排遣寂寞，与刚结识不久的男人缠绵直至堕胎。

在当时的鹤浦看来，庞家玉并不是个例，女人都以不同的方式消费着自己的身体和情感：小史似傻非傻的轻佻，随意献身；绿珠在其“姨夫老弟”的色诱和骚扰下挑逗端午……整体的社会风化把她们推到了那样的境地。若若的班主任百般打击挖苦，庞家玉为了所谓的面子，利用各种猫腻，以财色攻破教育局长的堡垒；官商勾结，张守仁成为暴发户，对自己的内侄女肆无忌惮地意淫；徐吉士成为花家舍的VIP，把属下当成自己的私人产品，把杂志社当成自己消遣娱乐的窗口；老冯表面上满口之乎者也与道德教化，暗地里却让丧夫的媳妇为他自己生了个儿子。

他们过度消费自己，任意地突破社会底线，也各自付出了应有的代价：庞家玉患不治之症客死他乡，张守仁被仇家砍得血肉模糊，小史虽怀胎几月仍大腹瘪瘪神色黯然，端午的哥哥住进自己建造的精神病院，后来精神病院被开发商征用，他便无家可归。谭端午在认真研读了欧阳修的《新五代史》之后，掩卷开始构思以花家舍为背景的小说。

Human Faces and Peach Flowers

It was one spring afternoon during the twenty-sixth year under the reign of Guangxu, when my father Lu Kang, who had gone crazy because of A Picture of the Source of Peaches, suddenly left home and went off. Mrs. Lu came back from Mei Town, mobilizing the whole family to search for him. Sadly this was all in vain with no tracks of him found. At this very moment, from the Lus came a person, who was roughly 40 years old and named Zhang Jiyuan. Mother showed a kind of unusual happiness towards his arrival, but the blurring of the seniority order in the family between “cousin” and “uncle” was quite confusing. Zhang Jiyuan then stayed put in the Lus, seldom coming downstairs, but more often than not saying something quite bizarre.

Xiumi made off to Mr. Ding’s home to have her usual private tutoring sessions. Mr. Ding brought out a letter from out of his chest and told Xiumi and Tansi to send it to the home of a person called Scholar Xue (Juren). He strongly encouraged that the letter should be handed over to Scholar Xue in-person and not anyone else. However, when Xiumi saw Zhang Jiyuan present at Scholar Xuees house, she could not really understand what was actually happening. She felt Zhang Jiyuan was somewhat outlandish. Moreover, when she saw him and heard what he had to say, she would then come to feel sort of nervous.

Mother decided to go up to Changzhou in quest of finding Father, with the company of Zhang Jiyuan, Cuilian, and Xiumi. On the night in Changzhou, Xiumi and Zhang Jiyuan walked together on the boulevard. When she asked him about what had happened in Mei Town and about the six-fingered carpenter whom Zhang Jiyuan had inquired about before, he merely smiled and did not give a reply of any sort.

It had been half a year since Zhang Jiyuan came to Puji. Now he began to ask himself, “Are we right in having liaisons with members of the society, setting in motion the uprising, and pursuing the ideal of Great Harmony in the world? Are they worth our efforts?” He had already been in deep love with Xiumi and his conviction in the uprising had already somewhat gone away. Before his departure, he put a gold cicada--an article used by the uprising organization to make connections or to maintain liaisons--in a little box, and then presented it to Xiumi.

Later on as the Revolutionary Party was routed, Zhang Jiyuna died mysteriously a month later. Xiumi obtained Zhang JiyuanJi diary from Magpie, a housemaid, and took three days to finish reading it. Then she slept lethargically without any energy or interest in doing anything for six whole days and nights. When she woke up, she turned very freakish. However, when she finally came back to her senses, she agreed to a marriage arranged for her. Halfway to the bridegroom’s home, however, she was unexpectedly kidnapped by bandits and taken off to Huajia Village. She then got to learn some secrets from the owner of the house, Han Liu. Xiumi recalled his father’s ideals where incorporated building a “long Wind-and-rain Corridor and turn Puji into the Source of Peaches”. Moreover, the idea of Great Harmony expressed in Zhang Jiyuana diary seemed closely related to this ideal.

Xiumi lost her virginity after being raped at the banditsse, Han witnessing again the socalled Wind-and-rain Corridor. The bandits in power at Huajia Village were murdered in succession. Before long, Xiumi took on the role of a bride again, marrying herself to the new owner of Huajia Village, Qingsheng. Han Liu went off after handing Xiumi a gold cicada. Qingsheng was then assassinated and his hostler took his place as the bridegroom. Xiumi had not learned until then that it was a man called Little Donkey, who was actually the very six-fingered carpenter and about whom Zhang Jiyuan had made inquiries before. This was the man who had orchestrated all these accidents successfully, disintegrated the banditry force, and put in place the uprising.

After the uprising failed, Xiumi was sent off to Japan. Two years later, she returned with her son Little Thing to Puji. Xiumi helped to persuade women to loosen up their foot-binding, and set up autonomous societies, nurseries, libraries, hospitals, clinics, and houses for the elderly. However, sadly all these effort and programs failed to achieve what they had been intended to. Because of this she shifted her efforts to have schools built. Again, her efforts went in vain. Cuilian betrayed Xiumi by co-opting with the governmental soldiers, and in consequence, Little Thing was shot dead, and Xiumi was arrested. Xiumi, however, came to give birth to Tansirt’s baby in prison. Sadly the baby was taken away from her when it was not even one month old yet. After the Wuchang Uprising, Xiumi was set free and made her way back to Puji. She lived her life by planting flowers, growing grass, and rarely went out of her house. In the end she died a wretched death.

Mountains and Rivers Entering His Dream 

In May 1952 Tan Gongda, the then head of Mei Town County, went down to Puji. Yao Peipei’s father had been shot dead because of his counter-revolution crime, and her mother then committed suicide by hanging herself to death. Peipei went down to Shanghai, in the hope of seeking help from her aunt. To her surprise she was solely met with her aunt’s flat refusal. Peipei was forced to make her living by selling tickets at a public bathing house in the county town, where she encountered Tan Gongda. After overcoming bouts of trouble she was finally arranged to work on the county committee, acting as Tan Gongda’s secretary.

Tan Gongda was intent on building Mei Town into a socialist Source of Peaches, a new socialist countryside “where lights shine everywhere and each household has their trees in full bloom”, and where communism could be realized ahead of time. Tan had parks built in the county’s downtown, and he wrote to the province and to the prefecture committees six times respectively. As he was struggling in finding ways to provide electricity for civilian use, he proposed to build reservoirs to generate electricity. He even hatched the blueprint ideas of building long corridors that could link each household together, ideas of building a telephone network spreading across the whole county, as well as digging an artificial canal. His ideas with to be joined rightly together with the Great Harmony long dreamed by his mother Lu Xiumi over the past. Nevertheless, Tan Gongda’s ambitions had naturally been stopped time and again as the public could neither reject nor oppose when confronted with the start reality. His tone of argument was considered quite similar to rushing all the way to communism and therefore utterly absurd. In essence it was deemed to be a form of right-leaning opportunism. 

Tan Gongda now was over forty years old and still a bachelor. Although Yao Peipei invoked Tan Gongda’s sympathetic love, he never went so far as to do anything indecent about it and with him. Not long before though, Tan Gongda took interest in Bai Xiaoxian, who was a dancer in the Recreational Workers’ Ensemble. Soon a formal love relationship with her was established. However, on this relationship Bai Xiaoxian’s uncle and parents pinned the intentionally hidden motive of hoping that Tan Gongda would be able to settle some private issues. But the unsophisticated Xiaoxian was a whimsical woman, whim in the end severing her tie with Tan Gongda. Jin Yu, the vice secretary in-general of the provincial committee, chanced to see Yao Peiei and stirred in his heart evil ideas towards her. 

Tan Gongda was promoted to the secretary general of the county committee, but he was already soon besieged by crises. With the hidden support of Nie Zhuofeng, the provincial committee came to Zhao Huanzhang, who was a righteous and straightforward man, of his position. Moreover, Bai Yuting and Qian Dajun were brought up to the positions of county head and deputy county head respectively. This action should have been favorable to Tan Gongda’s work which was to be underway, but in the end came out to be the worst possible outcome. Very skillful in wielding power and intrigue, Bai and Qian conspired with Jin Yu in bringing Bai Xiaohu, the nephew of Bai Yuting, into the post of surrogate county head. With this action they managed to pit him against Tan Gongda in public. 

June saw a raging rainstorm, which overwhelmed the big dam and made it collapse. Tan Gongda, for being negligent, was forced to stop his work and to await investigation as well as punishment. This incident had made all officials within the county committee, high-ranking and low-ranking, turn into his enemies overnight. Yao Peipei, although fearful of him, went step by step further into the trap set by Qian Dajun and his associates. When learning of Jin Yu’s scheme, she refused to be transferred to the provincial capital, and with that leaving her home to make her own independent living somewhere else. She wrote to Tan Gongda, but only received a cold shoulder from him. At that time Tan was already been in love with Zhang Jinfang, a widow, and had already submitted an application for marriage to the superior agency. Over a month later when he happened to come acress Peipei’s letter, asking for a meet with him, he came to feel irrevocably regretful. But sadly it was too late. 

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Peipei was raped by Jin Yu after being druggerby her colleague Tang Biyun. Peipei, in fury and disgrace, killed the rapist had since become a fugitive. Tan Gongda was appointed to be the ombudsman at the prefecture level. He went up to Huajia Village Commune in the neighboring county to perform an inspection. Prior to leaving Mei Town, the child of his marriage with Zhang Jinfang came into the world and was given the name Tan Duanwu. In Huajia Village, he saw that the “Source of Peaches” dream, which he had been craving out for years, had been come to be and materialized. However, the “ideal world” was still not perfect, and was still ridden with the shadow of suicide. His emotional experiences and hardships thereof with Yao Peipei were constantly unfolding. They had very close contact up until the two were arrested. Peipei was executed and Tan Gongda was sentenced to imprisonment for aiding the fugitive until 1976. The idealistic world he was then still hankering after. Later on he passed away of a disease somewhere between September and October of the same year. 

Jiangnan in Full Spring

Xiurong, a girl with great vigor and vitality but ignorant to worldliness, became very obsessed with literature. Moreover, via the instigation of editor Xu Jishi she once came to the Zhaoyinsi Temple (Hermit-recruiting Temple) and paid a visit to Tan Duanwu. Tan Duanwu is a, in the lack of a better term, a fallen guy, albeit one who enjoys a kind of moderately good reputation in the circle of poets. Xiurong came to fall in love with Tan Duanwu and decided to stay with him. Duanwu, however, although having had many sexual encounters with her, did not intend to marry her. Therefore he merely concealed in his heart his physical pleasure, contempt, and satire. 

After a night of orgasmic ecstasy Duanwu took away all the money and articles from Xiurong. He did this during a time when she was running a high fever and sleeping like very deeply. He then proceeded to get on a train bound for Shanghai, and with that leaving Xiurong all alone.

After more than ten years of struggle, Duanwu made his way back to Hepu. He was now a postgraduate and obtained got a job at the local chronicle’s office. With the new post he’d become a bit of an idler, but was still enjoying a public sector’s salary. 

When purchasing dowry for her marriage at a department store, Xiurong ran into Duanwu by accident. She then brought her wedding affairs to a sudden halt. Several days later, however, Duanwu and Xiurong got married. Thereafter Xiurong changed her name into Pang Jiayu and became a renowned lawyer. She had developed a great style to deal with people and the world. Duanwu on the other hand, once having been admired by some literary youths, was now eclipsed by her because at that time poetry was not as highly regarded anymore. The switch of their respective social statuses gradually altered their respective positions as well as roles at home. 

Pang Jiayu would publicly criticize and ridicule at Duanwu, as well a discipline their child Ruoruo through her authority and power. Moreover, now she also made all arrangements according to her own wishes. As for the relationship between the mother in-law and the daughter in-law, they harbored their own purposes. Sometimes they went so far as to anger each other on purpose and fight. The indifference between wife and husband, the gap between mother and son, and the cold war between mother in-law and daughter in-law set the major tone of their life. 

Since there was a sense of “non-interference with each other’s private life” between Duanwu and Peipei when they got married, Pang Jiayu was now able to realize her own ends by taking the fullest advantage of her own body. With that said, she went into the arms of those who played a key role in some crime cases, and she spent rosy nights with the director of the county’s education bureau in order to send her son Ruoruo to the best class of the best school within the prefecture. Furthermore, in order to kill her loneliness, she also had an affair with a newly acquainted man. The affair even went so far that she was forced to have an abortion. 

In Hepu then, Pang Jiayu’s situation was not single and unique. All women there consumed their body and emotions in their own different ways. Little Shi, for instance, was very flirtatious. Foolishly or not, she was always standing ready to offer her body to someone. Lvzhu stirred Duanwu under the seduction of and harassment of uncle-like brother. The whole social atmosphere pushed them to that situation. Ruoruo’s class counselor did all there was to criticize and satirize him. Moreover, Pang Jiayu, to save her face, tried all tricks to break the wall and gain the trust of the director of the education bureau. She succeeded in attaining her end. 

During that time in Hepu, officials conspired with business people everywhere. Zhang Shouren, for example, became an upstart and indulged in his imagined pleasure from the body of his niece on the maternal side. Xu Jishi became a VIP in Huajia Village, using his subordinates as form of private property, and the magazine agency as his window of entertainment and pastime. Old Feng was superficially a priggish scholar and always stood on high moral ground, however in secret he had an affair with his widowed daughter in-law who gave birth to a son for him. 

They overly consumed themselves, broke social bottom lines and ethics, and did so with no repercussion at the time. However, they soon came to pay their respective due costs for their actions. Pang Jiayu died of an immortal disease in a strange place. Zhang Shouren was beating so harshly by his enemies to the extent that you could not identify where blood and flesh was. Little Shi, pregnant for several months, had a swollen belly but looked depressed. Duanwu’s elder brother resided in a mental hospital, which he built himself. Later on, however, the hospital later on was expropriated by a real estate developer, which left him homeless. After having carefully read A New History of the Five Dynasties written by Ouyang Xiu, Tan Duanwu shut the books and started to produce a novel with Huajia Village as its backdrop and inspiration.