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叶广芩丨《太阳宫》

推荐理由

《太阳宫》的回忆由乡下生活和进城后的生活两部分构成。小说上半部分写儿时的“我”与母亲一起去太阳宫的乡下走亲戚的记忆。“我”在那里结识了儿时的伙伴日头，并度过了难忘的乡居时光。下半部分写日头和父亲进城的情景以及因这次“进城”而最终导致的日头一家连锁的不幸。小说由一个乡村家庭的消失和一个乡村世界的消逝，表达了作家叶广芩对于现代化发展的一种深切的忧思。

关于这部小说，叶广芩说，“地域的记忆是我们真正进入这个城市、融为其中一员的不二法门。太阳宫的消失是历史发展的必然，但是早年间在这座城市里蕴藏的无处不在的大气底蕴，却依然荡漾在我们周围。”作者用一种散文化的笔法勾勒记忆中的“太阳宫”，精细地写出了那个时代的人情人性，让我们看到了“苦难中的爱和温暖，贫穷中的尊重和敬意，失落中的尊严和高尚，让我们看到了这座城市内里的坚韧和达观。”

Reviews

The narrator’s recollections throughout Palace of Sun encompass both life in the countryside and life after moving to the city. The first section of the work is about the narrator’s trips to the village of Palace of Sun with her mother. During this time, they meet Ritou and spend memorable time there. The second section describes how Ritou and his father come to the city for a show in the Yonghe Palace, which triggers the series of unfortunate events his family suffers. The author uses the disappearance of a countryside family and the disappearance of countryside lifestyle to express her deep concern over modernization and development.

Regarding the novella, the author once said, “we are genuinely pulled into the city and integrated into its population by our memories of its places. The Palace of Sun’s disappearance was a historic inevitability, but the ubiquitous atmosphere of the city still ripples in the air around its current population.” Ye Guangqin uses a prose writing style to give an account of the Palace of Sun according to her memory; this account is filled with exquisite portrayals of the feelings and thoughts of the time. This account gives the reader a glimpse of the “love and warmth amid suffering, respect and reverence amid poverty, and honor and integrity amid loss. Thus we are shown the tenacity and optimism of the city.”

作家简介

Author Profile

叶广芩，1948年10月生于北京市，满族叶赫那拉氏。1983年调入《陕西工人报》，任副刊部主任，同年进入中国人民大学新闻专业函授部学习。1990年至1992年，在日本千叶大学法经学部学习。1995年调入西安市文联，在创作研究室任专业作家。现为中国作协全委会委员、第六届主席团顾问，西安培华学院女子学院院长。

叶广芩于1979年开始发表作品。1993年加入中国作家协会。文学创作一级。著有长篇小说《乾清门内》《全家福》《采桑子》《注意熊出没》《青木川》《状元媒》等，中短篇小说集《风也萧萧，雨也萧萧》《山鬼木客》《醉也无聊》，长篇自传《没有日记的罗敷河》，散文集《景福阁的月》，译著《眼镜蛇为什么会跳舞》等。中篇小说《梦也何曾到谢桥》获第二届鲁迅文学奖，《没有日记的罗敷河》获全国第五届少数民族文学“骏马奖”。多部作品被编为电影，如《红灯停绿灯行》《黄连厚朴》《谁说我不在乎》等。

Ye Guangqin was born in Beijing in October,1948. Ethnically Manchu, her family name is Yehenara in the Manchu language, a prominent family name. In 1983, she began to work for the Shaanxi Worker’s Paper and started studying Journalism at the Correspondence School of Renmin University. Between 1990 and 1992, she studied at the Law and Economics Department of Chiba University in Japan. She then joined China Writers Association in 1993, became a professional writer at the Center of Creation and Research of Xi’an Federation of Literary and Art Circles in 1995. Currently, she is a member of the China Writers Association and she also serves as the dean of Xi’an’s Peihua School for Girls.

Ye Guangqin began publishing in 1979. She has published novels, novellas, short story collections, an autobiography, prose essays, and has done translations. Her novella Have Dreams Ever Made It to Xieqiao was awarded the second Lu Xun Literature Prize and Luofu River Has No Diary received the fifth National Ethnic Minority Literature Fine Horse Prize. Many of her works have been adapted into films. 

中文概要

Synopsis

《太阳宫》以第一人称“我”展开小说的叙述，在我幼年时，北京的太阳宫并没有今日的繁华。有时候母亲会领我到太阳宫住两天，因为母亲早年认识的一个闺蜜后来嫁到这里的一个曹姓人家，成了种地养羊的村妇。母亲没有亲姐妹，让我管她叫“二姨”。

二姨有个儿子，在太阳宫村生的，给取了名字叫“曹太阳”，二姨夫嫌这个名字太大、太满、太正式，顺了个小名叫“日头”。全村人都日头、日头地叫，叫得挺顺嘴，知道他大名“曹太阳”的反而没几个了。日头喜欢画画。每次我来，他感兴趣的是我带给他的一大沓子废纸，那些纸都是我平时的积攒，有包茶叶的、包药的、包雪花膏的，还有别人没使完的作业本。这些纸被日头很仔细地压在炕席底下，一张纸画得满满的再抽第二张，绝不浪费。

日头带我去到窑坑去摸鱼。他游水得时候很胆大，也会逗我开心。我跟日头约好，他带我去太阳宫，我带他去雍和宫。我发现太阳宫并非想象那样光芒万丈，并没有什么红墙黄瓦的宫，不过是座颓废的小院罢了。院子门口有个看不出模样的影壁，露着土坯的内胆，残留的墙皮上画着一棵歪歪扭扭、没精打采的树，是不是父亲所说的太阳落脚的扶桑也未可知。院门口两棵老榆，房后一株病柳，三间歪斜的平房，一只半埋的破钟，无一不显露出破败残缺。

后来，二姨夫带着日头来我家，专门来看雍和宫的打鬼。日头染上了急性猩红热，眼睛发直，浑身打颤，二姨夫说日头的魂让白鬼勾走了。大半年过去后，二姨夫去世了，正月日头那场猩红热没有传染给我，却传染给了他的父亲。后来，二姨重新嫁人了，嫁给夏二。再后来，二姨死了，死得很突然，说是不留神滑进窑坑淹死了。听母亲说，从坑里捞出二姨，她全身穿的都是新衣服。日头真的没爹也没妈了。

1952年抗美援朝，日头当了志愿军。我觉得日头的参军带有些许逃离的成分在其中，这使得“抗美援朝，保家卫国”这个口号在日头这里多少打了些折扣，变得不太纯粹。时间过去一年、两年、三年……我没有收到他的音信。回国的人一批、两批、三批……我没有看见他的踪影。直到1958年底，志愿军全部回国，我也没有得到日头的任何消息。后来听说，日头到朝鲜的当年就当了俘虏，后来去了台湾。

几十年过去了，北京已是沧海桑田。几个月不上街，识不出本真面目的情景常有。我每天要坐三站公交车到早市买菜，市场的旁边是地铁十号线“太阳宫站”。我提着一兜菜，站在汽车站和林立的高楼中，思念不知是否尚在人世的日头。

Palace of Sun is told from a first-person perspective. During the narrator’s childhood, the area around the Palace of Sun, a village actually, was not as economically flourishing as today. Sometimes, the narrator’s mother takes her to stay at the village for a few days to see a childhood friend of hers who moved there after marrying into a Cao family. The friend has become a country woman; she tills the land and rears sheep. The narrator’s mother has no sister of her own, so she asks the narrator to call her friend “auntie.”

Auntie gave birth to a son in the village and she named him Cao Taiyang (Taiyang is the Chinese word for the sun). Her husband complains that the name is too grandiose, important, and official, so he always calls the child by a nickname, Ritou (a colloquial word for the sun). The nickname sticks, and the whole village refers to him by it; very few people actually know his real name. Ritou likes drawing and is always interested in the scrap paper the narrator gives to him every time they visit. The narrator saves up all kinds of paper for him such as tealeaf wrappings, the packaging of medicines and ointments, and unfinished notebooks. Ritou carefully keeps all of these pieces of paper on his bed beneath the sheet. He never takes another piece out until he has completely covered the one he has been working on. He never wastes.

Ritou sometimes takes the narrator fishing at a pit. He is a brave swimmer and makes her feel happy. They make a deal that he takes her to the Palace of Sun and she will take him to the Yonghe Temple. The narrator is disappointed to find that the Palace of Sun is not as glorious as she imagined; it is not a palace with red walls and yellow tiles but rather a derelict compound. The screen wall is broken with its mud-bricks exposed; no one can tell what it originally looked like. What remains of its walls is covered with a washed-out painting of a crooked tree. The narrator wonders if this is the mulberry tree her father told her, which the sun inhabits according to legends. In the entranceway, there are two elm trees, and behind the building are one sick willow tree, three dilapidated one-story houses and a half-buried bell. All of it is old and in disrepair.

Later, auntie’s husband brings Ritou to the narrator’s house specifically to see a demon exorcism at the Yonghe Temple. That day, Ritou becomes ill with an acute case of scarlet fever. He stares off blankly and his whole body shakes due to the illness. His father says that his soul is stolen by the white ghost. Half a year later, his father dies. While the narrator was not infected by the scarlet fever, Ritou’s father caught the illness and died from it. The auntie remarries later to a man named Xia. She dies shortly after they marry. Her death is sudden: it is said that she carelessly falls into the pit and drowned. The narrator’s mother says that when they took her body out of the pit she was entirely dressed in new clothes. Ritou has neither father nor mother now.

In 1952, the country begins providing aid for Korea in its war against the U.S. and Ritou joins the voluntary army. The narrator suggests that his choice to join is influenced by a desire to escape and run away. From his lips, the slogan “Resist the U.S. and Support Korea; Defend Family and Country” seems impure and insincere. For three years, the narrator receives no news of him. Soldiers gradually return in groups, but the narrator still doesn’t see him among any of the groups. At the end of 1958, all volunteer troops have returned, but there is still no sign of Ritou. The narrator later learns he was taken prisoner the first year in Korea and afterward was sent to Taiwan.

Several decades pass and Beijing changes significantly. The surroundings often seem unrecognizable. Every day, the narrator takes the bus three stops to the morning market to buy vegetables. Beside the market is a subway station for the subway system’s tenth line called palace of sun. With a bag of vegetables in hand, the narrator stands between the station and the tall buildings and wonder about Ritou’s fate.