介绍:
Currently living in Toronto, Zhang Ling is one of the most prominent overseas Chinese novelists of our time. From the historical saga "Gold Mountain Blues" or Jin Shan in Chinese to the award-winning fiction "Contractions" or Zhen Tong in Chinese, many of her works are set in southern China.
Yet in 2006, this prolific writer took a shocking turn, by publishing a novel that is set in northern China. The release of the book was a surprise to both her readers and the author herself, since the story begins with the deadly Tangshan earthquake, in which Zhang has no first-hand experience.
"I would say it was quite by accident that I grew interested in this topic. I was born and raised in southern part of China. In 1976, when the Earthquake struck, I was a teenage girl working in a factory as a machine operator. At that time, I had never travelled outside my home province, letting alone Tangshan, which to me is like thousands, thousands miles away. But just like the old saying said, never say never. I (still) remember that day. That day was July 28th 2006. On that day, I was in Beijing International Airport waiting for my flight to get back to Toronto and it was raining all day long. All the flights were pretty much either cancelled or delayed. Out of pure boredom, I didn't know how to kill time, so I just walked into the bookstore. I was quite shocked to find almost every corner of the bookstore was filled with books and memoirs about Tangshan Earthquake. All of the sudden, it was down on me that it was the 30th anniversary of the earthquake. "
The late-blooming interest fueled Zhang's curiosity and prompted her to conduct extensive research, since the writer's understanding about the Tangshan Earthquake around that time was still limited. Among all her readings, the heart-wrenching tales about those surviving children touched her the most, since many of them were orphaned after the deadly quake.
"I mean (they) not only lost their loved ones, but also they lost the best part of their childhood memories. Tangshan Earthquake happened in 1976. That was the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. This was a period when everyone including me was made to believe that men could conquer the nature for sure and stoicism was pretty much the only way to deal with the losses. So those children had not been given a chance to grieve openly. They didn't have that opportunity. As a result, they have carried their emotional scars all the way to their adult life. So in my book, I want to unlock for the tears that have not been shed and the pain that has not been dealt with. Here you go, you got the title Aftershock. That is about the traumatic effect of the disaster that has outlived much, much longer than the disaster itself."
However, instead of pouring down the depressing, calamitous experiences of many foundlings, the novella Aftershock, or "Yu Zhen" in Chinese, solely focuses on one family, an average family of four with parents and their seven-year-old twins. When the grave earthquake levelled the city, the father died and both kids were trapped under the opposite ends of a concrete slab. To lift the slab to save one child, another child would be crushed to death. Caught in this catch-22 dilemma, the mother was forced to make the cruel and agonizing decision in a haste.
Just like the main character in the movie Sophie's Choice, she chose the boy over the girl. Then the tragedy began.
"The girl Xiaodeng was left for dead, but miraculously saved by pouring rain which kind of washed away the dust gathered in her nostrils so that she could breathe again. When she survived, she just naturally felt betrayed, not only by her mother, but also by her brother. This disaster has completely altered her belief system. She couldn't believe (that) anybody who appears to be nice to her would stick around for very long and she couldn't believe anything that happens or appears to be good would ever last. "
Switching between two different timelines, one set in the past, while another following the daughter Xiaodeng's adult life in Canada, the novel provides a magnifier to probe into the mindset of survivors. Just like the title of the book Aftershock suggests, though Xiaodeng's physical scars have long been healed, the crack of the earth, the wailing sounds of victims still haunt and ring in the girl's ears. With her childhood and trust for others shattered by the earthquake, we witness how our anguished protagonist unleashes her anxiety, insecurity and anger, which eventually results in her heart-breaking alienation with basically everyone who appears in her life.
Coming to the first half of the novel, some readers may blame the mother Li Yuanni, as she abandoned her own child in such extreme circumstances. Yet as the story goes on, it's so hard not to sympathize with her as well, since the living has to carry the burden for the dead.
"In those situations, I would think death seems to be a much easier way out. But as a mother, she didn't die and she couldn't die, because her (surviving) child was counting on her. So she just had to bear the much harder task of living and suffering the burden of guilt for the rest of her life.She did what she could to live through the disaster and brings up her surviving son single-handedly with very little help from anybody else, she was a brave, proud woman and she did not have time for self-pity. So in that respect, I would say I have a lot of sympathy and respect for this character. "
The author Zhang Ling admits that by the end of her writing, she couldn't help herself by giving the story a slightly brighter note. So in the story, after 30 years of painful struggle, Xiaodeng finally decides to go back to Tangshan and look for her birth mother.
But does our protagonist find the closure and peace she needs?
"To this day, I just (still) can't be sure (whether) she would actually be brave enough to face her mother or rather, to face the ghost of her past. So that's why the story has an open ending. Yeah, it's a very difficult thing for everybody to say 'I forgive you' lightly, if we happened to be in Xiaodeng's shoes. (So) I don't know. I really don't have the answer for you. "
However, in the book's 2010 film adaptation, Chinese director Feng Xiaogang
provided the seemingly satisfactory answer that people crave for. Wiping out some of the most harrowing moments from the novel, the namesake movie is a tearjerker that features emotional family reunion and a bittersweet happy ending.
As we close the book and leave the cinema in tears, we are amazed by the resilience and strength of humanity. Yet at the same time, more questions pop up, such as how should we deal with the pain? And how to handle the aftershock of the mind?
Having worked as the clinical audiologist for many years and encountered patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder , Zhang provides her opinion.
"Oftentimes, the psychological impact would outlive the trauma itself for many, many years to come. So I really don't have a cure for it. But there are things we can do to ease the pain. For example, we can definitely promote public awareness of the psychological impact of the trauma. We can become the part of the support system for people in pain. We can be good listeners. We can encourage people to open up and talk about it and things like that. However, I would still think the ultimate healer is the time. "
Time does heal.
Today, the once-flattened Tangshan rises again, larger and far more prosperous than ever before. Order is restored and people's lives are back to normal. It's hard for outsiders to believe that the city once went through such great catastrophe forty years ago.
But for those survivors, memories never fade.
Every July, people come to the memorial wall in southern Tangshan to commemorate the 240,000 lives that perished.
"My mom always gets emotional about how fast Tangshan has changed. She was an earthquake orphan. There was no one she could rely on. But now, life gets better. So she wants us to engrave the disaster, remember our lost loved ones. Many people got hurt during the earthquake, but they didn't leave the city. They make Tangshan the city you have seen today. "
"There used to be no tomb. So we burned the paper offerings by the intersection. Now I find my families' names on the wall, which makes me feel like they are standing in front of me. "
"We are both survivors and soldiers. Besides preserving the memory for ourselves, we have the responsibility to pass it down to the future generation."
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