As a "writer", Li Zhen has been looking for it. Of course, here, "searching" does not mean that he is a novice writer and is still on the road of finding what he is most suitable for writing, but emphasizes that after he has determined that he wants to write a biography for those who are disappointed, lost, and losers around him, he is still looking for a greater majority hidden beyond his reach. So we can read about Li Zhen's attempt to expand the scope around a certain group in his **world. On the other hand, he also found a focus on this plane, focusing on the record of the group portrait, and also on the huge mental dome behind it.
In Li Zhen's previous writings on the emotions of youth, the sense of devouring caused by the huge vortex between verbs such as struggle and hard work and incompatible acquisition is one of the aspects he often writes, such as the story of "Jingpiao" written in "The Door Didn't Be Opened by Me", Wu Yong who is running for a living in "Good Luck", and the pervasive adolescent confusion such as "Me, Wang Haopeng and the Dead Zhang Dong", all constitute his literary refraction of social reality.
Whether young or middle-aged, chasing dreams in the city or farming in the countryside, most of Li Zhen's characters experience frustration, loss or even failure, but when it comes to the "I" in "Night Walking Girl", we are surprised to find that that "frustration" is no longer the center of the story's prospects. On the contrary, they have all gotten it, but unfortunately, this state of "getting" is often not recognized by those around them.
* Maintaining Li Zhen's usual narrative style, the twists and turns of the story are not the center of his attention, and the secrets revealed in the words and deeds of those characters are the most important. The story begins with "me" resigning and changing careers to become a security guard. Because a special female friend left her job (or maybe she didn't exist, it was just "me"'s imagination), her departure made "me" once rich and poetic life wither in an instant, and finally "I" also quit the job of writing unknown product introductions in a food factory. "I" came to the beach and finally took over a job as a security guard at a private university. Soon, this job became synonymous with "unsuitable" in the eyes of everyone, and everyone was selling me a "suitable" life logic, but no one cared about "me" thoughts, and no one could understand the peace and tranquility I gained in this identity or profession. On the grass of the campus, on the beach by the sea, "I" found the sleep I had not seen for a long time. It was also here that the landlord girl took "me" to experience the world of sleepwalking and lived in peace together.
Li Zhen is very keen to maintain a kind of stratospheric resonance with the group, and the spiritual confusion that pervades the youth is exactly what he wants to express. It can be said that the incomprehensible behavior of the "I" in the story and the illusory love story contain precisely the process of "I" (or the writer himself) searching for the value of life.
In the story of "Night Walking Girl", the forty-meter-long chicken coop appears again, and "I" is also nicknamed "Robinson of the Chicken Country" by friends. In the original book, Robinson's drifting shows the exhilarating spirit of a person who struggles to survive after being left out of the group society and finally succeeds in returning, while in Li Zhen's case, "Robinson" becomes a clever metaphor, a large number of chickens, seemingly living a worry-free life of eating and drinking, but under the captivity of the chicken coop, the final fate cannot escape the slaughterhouse. And the "I" outside the chicken coop, ordinary and speechless, has the freedom that the chickens in the cage can't crave. It is just a metaphor for what the "I" in the story wants is a kind of active abandonment, which is a rejection of the world of the rules, and it is also the state of "withdrawal" mentioned in **. "I" instinctively chose the job of security guard, which is a withdrawal, and the landlord girl's arrival in the "other world" with the help of sleepwalking is also a kind of withdrawal. This detachment becomes the ultimate defense, like the stones that have been polished off the edges and corners of time and become smooth, and there are still faults inside.
No one can say exactly when young people's yearning for simplicity, ordinariness, and "naturalness" has become an unattainable dream, or even a taboo. These young people are still in the intertwining of the initial youthful germination and the confusion of ideals in their own lives, and what they are looking forward to is a kind of unrestrained self-expression and growth of individuals, rather than a rigid and solidified assembly-line production life from the outside world. And when this inner spiritual growth and yearning collides fiercely with the invisible discipline of the external era, we can see the rejection of assimilation and discipline by young people, although full of helplessness.
From this point of view, with the help of the story of the night girl, Li Zhen just wants to tell us simply and directly that "ordinary" is also extraordinary. If in the past, Li Zhen had been trying to write about the "small emotions" of young people who were frustrated and lost for some external things, now another "big emotion" has begun to appear, that is, he has touched more deeply with the group in which he is trying to return to the simplest state of self to fight the huge shadow of post-industrial society. The recall of the "ordinary", the yearning for simplicity, and the steadfastness in the slowness are their emotional resonance. Although this group of "ordinary youths" is always left out intentionally or unintentionally in the inertial classification of society, they have always maintained an inner abundance in their own spiritual world. The resonance with these emotions makes it impossible for Li Zhen to avoid it, as he himself says, he "also wants to plant a few trees for those losers who have dreams in their hearts", albeit slowly, but it has always worked!
Li Xiaowei, School of Literature, Journalism and Communication, Shandong University of Technology.
Li Zhen, born in 199, is a native of Zibo, Shandong. Contracted writer in Zibo City, student of Zhang Wei Studio. **Published in "Youth", "Youth Literature", "Shanxi Literature", "Anhui Literature" and other magazines, "Night Walking Girl" was published in "People's Literature" Issue 4, 2023.
Editor in charge: Li Zhongli.