Ox Cart Chatter: A collection of reader reviews II, and in their midst Little Xie's fresh grace shines again-a review of "A Refined Scholar of the Cold"

I had knocked around Qidian for years, with Jiutu's "Ming" as my first guide to time-travel fiction. Though I liked many novels afterward, my tastes had always leaned toward weighty, unadorned writing.

The soul of this kind of fiction lay in just two words: "wish fulfillment." It was extremely easy to write, extremely difficult to write well. With so many people writing it, the field had grown muddled; even now, two hands were enough to count the truly fine works.

Fiction had its schools. For grandeur and substance, Ning Zhiyuan's "Spring and Autumn of the Chu Clan" deserved first place.

This novel was the Cao Cao of the Three Kingdoms era: rigorous in its logic, substantial in its background, with a plot that rose and fell and humor that struck the right note. Though it was a harem novel, its strength lay in restraint and moderation, and every heroine had a distinct personality. The sole pity was that, like Cao Cao, it was the offspring of a eunuch-an unfinished work.

Jian'an had its Seven Masters, and "The Strategist" was Cao Zhi. Suibo Zhuliu's "A Generation's The Strategist" had a lucid, elegant style, but beside Cao Cao it lacked the sweeping grandeur of military campaigns. It also had obvious flaws: the God's-eye perspective, for instance, and the author's praise of the protagonist. Once everyone else had finished praising him, he praised himself; it gave me goosebumps.

"Return to the Ming Dynasty" differed from "Spring and Autumn of the Chu Clan" and "The Strategist." Its first volume was plain and smooth, but unexpectedly, the further it went, the more ornate it became. There were many chapters, with much the same plot; after the protagonist reached the heavens in a single bound, he sang his way from triumph to triumph, with beauties crowding in by the seven and eight. All that wealth and splendor left it without any lingering resonance. It was just like a Han rhapsody, spilling expansively across an entire sheet in gorgeous language, yet once you finished reading, you could recall practically nothing. This novel was very famous. I thought it deserved praise, but not such towering fame.

"Joy of Life" was Pan Yue: handsome in appearance and fine in prose, but unfortunately its protagonist's outlook on the world, life, and values was unsound. In writing, the guiding conception mattered most, and this novel committed that cardinal sin. No protagonist disgusted me more than its Fan Xian; what was rare was how brilliantly the supporting characters shone.

"Ming" and "New Song" were like twin jewels and could be grouped together. The courses their plots took were also very similar, except that one leaned toward the humanities and the other toward the sciences. Their characters suffered repeated setbacks but were grounded in temperament; unfortunately, the prose was somewhat inferior. Shen Qingzhi and Cao Jingzong of the Liang dynasty were spoken of together: both came from military backgrounds and could also write. They made a very fitting comparison for these two novels.

Compared with the preceding works, "Cold Scholar" could not count as the best, but it was my favorite.

However they dressed themselves up, the time-travel and alternate-history novels I had read always carried an air of worldly clamor. Perhaps it was because their protagonists, willingly or otherwise, always brought along a modern person's sense of superiority. They were too deeply embroiled in worldly affairs and achieved success too early. Under such circumstances, lofty ambitions notwithstanding, there was always something terribly ungrounded about them. I meant the writing, not the people; "Return to the Ming Dynasty" was a typical example. When some authors also accelerated the pace to keep the plot tight, it added still more haste.

The writing in "Cold Scholar" was exceptionally unhurried. The era into which Chen Caozhi was reborn had an inherent advantage: it was the Eastern Jin of Xie An and Wang Xizhi, the age of Wei Jie and Pan An. It was that dynasty of cultivated charm and understated elegance in "A New Account of Tales of the World."

In that era there were elegant gatherings, discussions of the mysteries, calligraphy, painting, powdered faces, mineral drugs, and a penchant for women's clothing. People rebelled against the classics and strayed from orthodox ways, disregarded conventional propriety, and revered only "beauty." The aristocratic clans possessed vast tracts of land and estates; green mountains and lakes were merely views in their back gardens. Household slaves provided their food and clothing, and private troops guarded their homes. Ah, the Wang-Xie clans of those days-money was "that stuff." They had no need whatsoever to concern themselves with material things; their lives were poured entirely into the realm of the spirit. Thus there were He Yan's commentaries on the mysteries, Wei and Yue discussing dreams, Wang's calligraphy, and Kai Zhi's paintings.

In such a dynasty, withdrawal from worldly affairs prevailed, and every movement had to be natural and elegant. Chen Caozhi acted that way, and the author wrote that way too. Playing the flute on Lotus Isle, discussing the Way at the Thatched Cottage, painting in the Plum Grove-scene after scene brought forth a world beyond the dust. At court, one saw its nobility but not its vulgarity; among farming households, there was the elegant pleasure of returning to the fields, but little coarseness. Rarer still, the feelings revealed in the novel also harmonized with its style.

Whether it was the love between Chen and Lu or the affection among family members, it was like fresh spring rain and delicate flowers, pure, mellow, and fresh, a delight to behold. Other novels might also have excelled in their portrayals of feeling, but "Cold Scholar" far surpassed them in one word: "purity."

The feelings of first love, the deep bond between mother and son, Caozhi's respect for his widowed sister-in-law, his nephews' closeness to their uncle. The affection that slowly deepened beside West Lake was just like the lake's waters, clean and limpid, with nowhere for dust to settle.

I still remembered Daoist Master Du asking Chen's mother what she had done wrong in her life. Mother Chen first shook her head, then slowly said that her only wrong had been lighting a life lamp before the Buddha to pray for her youngest son's safety. Only a true believer would know that this act was no different from Judas's betrayal of his faith. It reminded me of another story: during the Holocaust, a Jewish man prayed to the devil for his daughter's safety.

So many days unfolded like paintings, one after another, without sensual entanglements decked in thick rouge and gaudy colors, without nobility exaggerated and raised on a pedestal. There was only the person in the painting, telling his story simply and quietly.

Firmly grounded, understated yet full of flavor.

The writings of Penglai, the bones of Jian'an-did this work not resemble Little Xie alone in his fresh grace?

Posted by: reader square77