James Wertsch, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of the best contemporary scholars of collective memory, and he is particularly interested in issues such as collective memory and identity as demonstrated in Russia. He once conducted an experiment in which he asked Russians from three eras to describe the Second World War. The three eras were the Soviet period, the post-Soviet period, and contemporary Russia. It turned out that the narratives of these people, though different, shared a pattern of national narrative-making, namely, Russia’s “Great Patriotic War,” in which Russia did not interfere with other countries, but rather it was a foreign invasion of Russia that Russia fought against to achieve a great victory. Although contemporary Russians do not describe specific events as clearly as those of the Soviet era, they have retained this narrative template. This narrative template is provided by the national narrative, which can be reproduced again and again for individual memory and specific narratives, i.e., it becomes a “cultural gene” that is reproduced and inherited, forming the framework of collective memory, within which any individual memory will be confined. Thus, “one can see the influence of narrative templates, and the ability of power to create narrative templates, thus generating a powerful power-knowledge transmitted from generation to generation within the creator or group.” Thus, controlling such a meme largely determines the power hierarchy.
The morning I read JamesWertsch, I had just finished watching the “2014 Ivy League Chinese New Year Gala for the Year of the Horse in the United States” in Boston. The party was hosted by the Ivy League’s eight mainland students and scholars associations, i.e., a Chinese New Year party organized by a group of the best mainland students from eight of the best universities in the United States. If we disregard the poor microphone and the very ungrateful equipment of the director, as well as the bilingualism, the program and the language and style of the hosts, this Spring Festival Gala is quite similar to the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, even the soft and hard advertisements and the fake save appearances have strong Chinese Communist characteristics. At the beginning of the Spring Festival Gala, all the sacred parties kept scrolling on the screen to pay respects to the New Year, and the cadres of student unions, large and small, all appeared on stage to deliver congratulatory messages to celebrate the New Year, together with the congratulatory messages sent by the leaders of various parties, which instantly brought me back to the motherland and made the Spring Festival Gala, which was half an hour late, half an hour late again. Obviously, this is a celebration of power unilaterally expressing its will, a national narrative of the Spring Festival, an overseas version of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. On the way to the gala, I kept my eyes open and looked carefully several times, wondering if there would be a small colorful banner in a place where the camera could not reach, silently spinning and cultivating its inner work. So I couldn’t help but think that it’s been thirty years since the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 1983. Has the CCTV Spring Festival Gala become a narrative template for several generations of mainlanders for the Spring Festival? Has the CCTV Spring Festival Gala become a cultural gene, replicated in everyone’s genes and in every place where there is a Spring Festival? Or even to every place where there are Chinese people?
However, I vaguely remember that this is not how the Chinese New Year looks like, and I even stumbled upon my own long-lost year on the morning of the Spring Festival Gala in Boston.
It was Saturday, the first weekend of the Yellow New Year. On the way to the subway station, I heard the sound of drums and gongs from afar. Two lions, one red and one white, plus a big-headed Chinese doll, were jumping up and down in front of a store with great vigor to pay their respects. The owner of the store rushed out to receive the lions: took out a stool, put a lettuce and an orange on the stool, as well as a large red envelope, the two lions first lettuce and orange “eat”, and then the red envelope in the mouth, happy dance on a while. Then went to the next store, smiling faces followed by many people, one of them is me.
It was then that I remembered that, in fact, I like New Year’s Eve. At that Time, the old Luo Family still lived in the mountains, although in the south, but because of the high altitude and the Earth has not yet warmed, the winter in the mountains and today’s Boston is a match. In addition, the snow closed the mountain, the outside people can not enter, the inside of the people can not get out, but this does not mean that the cold, but is the most lively of the year, adults and children have emerged, only one thing: play. And one of the most fun is the dragon lantern dance. Adults dance big dragon lantern, children dance small dragon lantern, carp lantern and jade clam lantern, etc.; adults out of the lantern generally need thirty-four people, dancing skillful units or villages sometimes as many as sixty to seventy people, if the two dragons meet, will compete, the scene is just a little worse than the movie Wong Fei-hong’s lion king, mainly because there is no Zhao Tianba! But Huang Feihong are alive and well, one is alive and well. Children out of the light is very simple, as little as two people, one dance lights (more than a dance a large carp) a gong and collect red packets, more than four or five people. At that time, even poor people will be prepared to receive the lights, the big dragon lamp is usually several families together to receive the lights, red packets of cigarettes is a must, and then there are sent some peanuts and melon seeds and mountain snacks. Children’s lights generally follow the big dragon lights, such as the big dragon lights dance play, children rush to dance next, directly to the living room dance, so the host family happily grabbed a few peanuts and melon seeds into a large cloth bag specifically for red envelopes, generous point of the host family will sometimes be wrapped in a red envelope of 10 or 20 cents or 50 cents. In this way, these large and small dragon lanterns from the first day of the first month until the fifteenth, a day to change a place, dancing all over the mountains in every corner, followed by countless salivating face hanging snot laughing dolls, one of which is me.
Of course, the fun of New Year’s Eve was not only here. However, the memories of these years have been lost at some point, and the dragon lanterns that I chased all night have turned into the Spring Festival Gala that has nowhere to run. Sometimes I wonder if those generations of young people who grew up with the Spring Festival Gala know that the Spring Festival is not really like this! That the year could be something else entirely? I’m not sure. The only thing that made me feel a little different was that I got to scream and dance and whistle and laugh and drink and cheer at the Spring Festival in Boston, and then sigh, it felt so good to be a villain, and it was worth the $16.99 ticket! However, the next day, JamesWertsch told me that whether I agreed or disagreed with the Spring Festival Gala, I would fall into its narrative template and there would be no escape; no matter how I recalled it later, my memory would become part of the collective memory of the Gala and there would be no escape. Unless, of course, I lose my language and my memory.
In fact, I have not watched the Spring Festival Gala for many years, and I have even refused to go Home for New Year’s Eve for many years. This refusal is not just because I can’t buy train tickets or can’t get on the train when I do, but more out of a fear. I don’t want to be driven by some ancient and powerful mental model, in some ancient and powerful moral kidnapping, involuntarily to prove the existence of some equally ancient and powerful Tianlun, to try to fabricate a scene of the country and family prosperity, to create a false joy and memory. Yes, this rejection, there is another layer of fear, I can’t imagine so many people doing the same actions saying the same things at the same moment without a hint of doubt about the meaning of it. And I deeply doubt it. Almost every time such a collective action broke out, I expressed doubt, I even doubted every fragment of memory in my head and every word that came out of my mouth, and then felt fear, so much so that one year in the Spring Festival, I went for a long run alone every day. On the playground of the abandoned Tongji campus between Fudan University and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, I ran alone every day on the dry grass and mud until I was in tears, and then I remembered the ending of Zhu Wen’s novel: “No one was chasing me, only I was running forward desperately. I was running desperately forward in mid-air with my bloodied heart, in front of a flying bullet, before a bullet caught up with me, as if I knew this was my last run to be ended. This is my last run, this is the cohesion of my Life run! I want to use up all my love, all my hate, all my ideals, all my emptiness in these last few meters, and then fall down with a sound, in a whirlwind into the valley of death, but how I always feel like I’m floating.”
Who stole my happy years and happy memories?
Recent Comments