Professor Han Yunbo's preface for this book
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The benchmark of wisdom
Han Yunbo
Fang Baiyu was born in the military. He once commented that he was "good at writing wisdom and strategy" and "challenging the limits of imagination". I agree with his own two comments, thinking that this is exactly his characteristic and strengths.
Whether it is writing an intelligent plan or an unprecedented imagination, I think the common essence of the two is actually a manifestation of wisdom and spirit. In today's new martial arts novels in mainland China, Fang Baiyu is undoubtedly the most prominent one in this regard. Therefore, I call his creation a "benchmark of wisdom".
Fang Baiyu has now created millions of words of novels, including the series Iron-blooded Catcher, The Great Gamblet, the long biography of White Lotus Heroes, the series of Game Age, etc. A considerable part of his works have aroused strong repercussions.
Fang Baiyu's creation is concentrated in his pursuit of wisdom and becomes a kind of intelligent writing. Intelligent writing starts from the cultivation and spirituality of writers and penetrates into human noumenon, and has become a profound way for people to think about the world from modern to post-modern. This is an important feature of the new martial arts writing in the mainland in the 21st century, and thus constitutes a historic transcendence of the old martial arts of the Republic of China and the new martial arts of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
So, what is wisdom and intelligence? In modern thinking science, wisdom refers to the ability to generate new ideas. In literature, wisdom is reflected in a writer's unique understanding of the world and life. Intelligence is a literary feeling embodied by writers, works and readers, which is different from temperament. As I once said, "It is different from the direct life expression of 'sexuality' through 'human desire', and 'intelligence' is the individual's feelings about the world completed from 'cosmic phenomena' to 'historical structure'."
Literature is humanism. This means that literature should show both people's situation and their meaning. The expression of human condition is human survival, and the expression of human meaning is human existence. These are originally two philosophical problems, but in the literary realm, the same philosophical solution can be achieved through a visual intelligent expression. The search for human survival leads more to realism and historicism, and the search for human existence leads more to romanticism and modernism. This is also obvious in martial arts novels and fantasy novels. And survival and existence will eventually lead to the "heavenly question" about human existence.
A long time ago, on a sunny afternoon, I looked at the erect tree trunk outside the window, holding Zhuangzi in my hand, and suddenly thought: Can the cells on our bodies feel our existence as human beings? If exercise is absolute, is "existence" relative? Later, looking at the Buddhist scriptures, a grain of sand is a thousand worlds, and the scientific community also has the theory of infinite reclassification of matter. Well, in literature, Fang Baiyu's novels, especially Game Age, I think are a profound discussion of the infinite existence of this world.
The beginning of Game Age is an ancient scene in the yellow sand desert, followed by a strange treasure-grabbing legend, which intersects the political and military struggles between Xixia and Jin and Song. Later, the interlaced narrative of reality and games pushed Fang's questioning of the world to the top. Fang Baiyu's basic design of the game is "ununderstandable", which is the core factor of his charm. In the textual expression of illogical thinking, the inspiration of wisdom flashes like lightning. Fang Baiyu, who studied electronics, has a special feeling for the Internet era. The advent of the digital era has made our world break the original stability and balance and start a new round of leap from uncertainty.
The development of science has brought new spiritual conflicts, and the reflection on science caused by this conflict has become an integral part of the reflection on modernity in recent decades. Moreover, reflection is not only a negative revelation, but also a hypothesis, which is already somewhat metaphysical. Game Age is a typical example, which is quite similar to Cyberpunk scientific novels. Western astrology and Eastern easy learning are just the two most powerful cheating codes in real fantasy games. So, is our current world in the game or outside the game? Just as Buddhism obtained the "King Kong Prajna Paramitsu" by emphasizing "empty" and "nothing", that is, the great wisdom to the other side. Its significance is not only to establish a kind of knowledge, but also to sharpen human wisdom and stir up the human heart.
Unlike science, the task of literature is only to show and experience. What literature wants to express is an uncertainty that is different from the certainty of scientificism. This uncertainty constitutes our eternal fiction, a disruptive challenge force, that is, the power of diversity and rich innovation. Science provides an inexhaustible impetus for the development of human civilization. In a sense, the history of human civilization is the history of scientific progress. The development of productive forces promotes the development of production relations and the development of ideology. Of course, it will also promote the development of aesthetic ideology, in which science plays an important role. In the field of literature, although it has been distinguished from science due to differences in ways of thinking, the entry of scientism into literature has received many positive confirmations around the world. Although this is still a rare attempt for martial arts, this further proves the significance of Fang Baiyu. I think this will form a feature that distinguishes the new martial arts of the mainland from the previous generation and become a dynamic opportunity for the development of the new martial arts in the mainland.
Just like Milan? Kundera said: "The novelist teaches his readers to understand the world as a problem. In a world based on sacred certainty, the novel dies. Fang Baiyu's idea is obviously different. His ending is open-ended, and we can't find an end, as if the online game itself has not designed an end program. Fang Baiyu raised the uncertainty of the world with his grand narrative and left it to readers to understand and think about it. In this sense, Age of Games is a living novel rather than a death novel.
From science to philosophy, the combination of philosophy, science and novels will naturally shine brilliantly under the light of wisdom. At this time, Game Age went beyond the novel itself and became a richer and more splendid intelligent cultural complex. Fang Baiyu is ambitious. He once said, "Although I am writing games, I will never dare to have any game heart. In fact, the world of that game has surpassed the concept of any game. It is already a kind of life, a kind of thinking, a kind of ideal, a kind of ambition, and a life experience." He also said, "I suddenly found that the wonderful story is far from over. All the culture, legends, history, mythology, religion, science, fantasy, etc. of human society can be integrated into this game world with its own structure without difficulty. A familiar and strange, close and distant, ordinary and magical world is in my heart. Slowly, "Game Age" has just begun..." In fact, novels and literature are just one of the many ways for us to experience the world. The real meaning and value of all roads lead to Rome, not in how we have to perform, but in the experience of ** and wisdom.
Online games are exciting. How many people are addicted to it and how many people sigh. Game Age is also exciting, and the bold hypothesis and wanton subversion in Game Age are also exciting. Reading Game Age is an exciting experience.
The sky is hot, the ground is dry, and there is no wind in the fields. People are like steamed buns in a steamer. They feel like they are being steamed little by little, but there is nowhere to escape. I huddled in the corner of the shady wall, buried my head between my legs, curled into a ball, and the noise around me seemed to come from another world, which had nothing to do with me. I only thought of the most desired clear water and steamed buns.
This is the scene at the beginning of the novel, but it is not a virtual poetic expression of our modern human beings due to material development and spiritual closure. Heidegger once excitedly appreciated the human beings who "poeticly live on this earth", but we found that suffering and confusion are "poetic". Even in the virtual, life itself is full of difficulties and challenges.
People need to be a little energetic. The spirit of the character lies in his face of those sufferings and challenges, the spirit of the writer lies in his own way to express the existence and survival of human beings and the existence and development of the world, and the spirit of the reader lies in resonating with himself, the characters and the writer to experience a unique spiritual and intellectual process.
Today, the mainland's new martial arts have gone through half a decade. From the scattered sand at the beginning of the 21st century, after the stage of "following the feeling", to today, in the depths of the horizon, the magnificent and spectacular scenery can be clearly felt. New martial arts writers in mainland China have begun to show their own characteristics and form an obvious diversion trend. I thought this was an inevitable sign before the arrival of prosperity.
"Xiao Li's skills, the feeling of the vicissitudes of the moon, the imagination of Bu Feiyan, and Fang Baiyu's philosophy", Fang has become one of the best members of today's martial arts fantasy world with his profound questioning about human existence and world ontology. Although he wrote the Digital Network's Game Age, his characteristics are not the instant wit and cleverness of the network, nor the hibiscus and **-style network star effect. He not only writes to meet the game-style impulse and star-chasing excitement of a generation of Internet kids. His works have not found a complete document on the Internet so far. He is writing for a profound and contemplative pursuit in his heart. In a sense, he may pay more importance on the "ideal reader" who can understand him. The experience of reading his works, I think I can pay more attention to chewing rumination rather than just temporary excitement.
Finally, I say again that Fang Baiyu brings us an aftertaste, which may be different from the mechanical replication of current popular culture. However, he is in line with the theme of progress and development in the modern world, which undoubtedly requires profound and innovation of wisdom.
So, I call it a "benchmark of wisdom".