Author: Cheng Guiting (Associate Professor of Shantou University School of Literature)
Many contemporary children's literature writers have inherited the literary tradition of the "May 4th" period, which was child-oriented and oriented towards constructing love and dreams. Liu Haiqi is such a writer with style consciousness. His children's novel "Ping Pong Loud" (published by Guizhou People's Publishing House in March 2023, and was selected as the recommended bibliography of "China Good Books" in April 2023 issued by the China Book Critics Society) is based on his own childhood experience. Starting from the children themselves, the author upholds the standpoint of equality, understanding and respect, dialogues with children in the novel, and writes a childhood full of friendship and dreams with concise, lively, funny and beautiful artistic language. The feeling conveyed to readers by "The Loud Ping Pong" is just like what Lu Xun said when he commented on "Brave John": "Although the deeds are simple, they are full of innocence, so even if you have celebrated your 90th birthday, as long as you still have some 'childlike heart', you can happily read the end of the volume." The protagonist Zhang Xiangfang is a boy in the fourth grade. Because the school newly built a cement table tennis table, he suddenly became interested in playing table tennis. But in that era of scarcity of materials, owning a small table tennis ball was an unbearable financial burden for a primary school student. Zhang Xiangfang tried his best to live frugally, get up early and work hard, study hard and practice hard, all in order to practice a small and innocent dream-playing table tennis.
A small table tennis ball carries a small dream, which is in line with the psychological setting of a fourth-grade child's natural growth. Entering the national team and competing for the world championship, such long-term plans and grand ideals usually come from the unrealistic expectations and education of innocent children by utilitarian adults. Liu Haiqi obviously disapproves of too many adults pointing fingers during children's growth. In the novel, Zhang Fangfang fell in love with playing table tennis, studied table tennis skills, practiced table tennis with Fan Xing who was once recruited into the provincial professional table tennis team, and met a group of big friends who played table tennis in the machinery factory club. The dream of ping-pong promotes the growth of Zhang Xiangfang, and also promotes the development of the plot of the novel. Joining the school team to train and play table tennis is Liu Haiqi's real childhood experience. He salvaged his childhood memories as creative resources, and with the help of child-oriented narration, he demonstrated the unique "truth" of children.
Unlike the "little heroes" usually constructed in society-oriented children's literature, Zhang Xiangfang is a very ordinary boy from beginning to end. Even though he loves and devotes himself to playing table tennis so much, Liu Haixi didn't impose his unique talent on him. One of the most interesting plots in the novel is that in the eager anticipation of the head teacher and the whole class, Zhang Xiangfang, who is getting better at the game, competes with the school table tennis champion Peng Kaixuan, but he loses due to nervousness and mistakes. Although Zhang Xiangfang's setback will disappoint readers' full expectations, rational readers have to admit that such an arrangement is more in line with artistic reality. Zhang Xiangfang's unremitting efforts have improved his game a lot, but not enough to beat Peng Kaixuan, who is older and has been training longer than him. Truth is the cornerstone of literary creation. Gorky once said: "Children are very fine connoisseurs, and they cannot be fooled by empty words." Perhaps it is precisely because Liu Haixi insists on putting children first and adhering to the creative concept of being close to the real art, so Zhang Xiangfang has not been portrayed as a ping-pong wizard. After all, geniuses are rare, and ordinary is the truth of most people.
Different from the personalized "love everything" actively advocated by the "May Fourth" children's literature, what Liu Haiqi vigorously advocated in "Ping Pong Loud" is friendship regardless of gains or losses.Fan Xing was once an excellent player of the provincial professional table tennis team valued by the coach. Because he forgot to bring his racket and lost an important match, he taught Zhang Xiangfang to play without asking for anything in return. Finally, he gave Zhang Xiangfang the extremely precious "Old Shunfeng" racket. This racket originally belonged to a golf friend that Director Zhao made during the game. Unfortunately, this golfer got into a car accident and could no longer play, so he gave it to Coach Zhao for free and asked him to donate it to promising players. If these are just the selfless friendship between individuals, then in order to let the players adapt to the newly invented loop ball in Japan as soon as possible, Hao Dali, who was originally good at fast break, changed to practice loop ball. This is the great love of sacrificing the individual and achieving the collective. The novel emphasizes collective love, which is not only the sublimation of "little love" to "big love", but also the author's earnest expectation for children readers. Therefore, the novel is full of strong family and country feelings.
The author attaches great importance to narrative style and language arts. The narrative rhythm of "The Loud Ping Pong" is relatively slow. It uses more than 100,000 words to show the short time when Zhang Xiangfang was promoted from the fourth grade to the fifth grade. He spares no effort in detail description and character description. As Rousseau said, teach children not to save time, but to spend it. The slow narrative rhythm is more in line with the slow growth of children. Liu Haiqi once said: "A very important thing in mastering the narrative style is the use of non-narrative language." Since playing table tennis is an important part of the novel's structure, the novel is interspersed with a large section of non-narrative language describing table tennis skills. The use of a large number of lively, lively, and witty non-narrative language not only slows down the narrative rhythm of the novel, but also shortens the distance between readers and the text. The author's exploration and optimization of narrative rhythm and language art make the work "Ping Pong Loud" have a leisurely narrative feature and a simple and fresh language style.
"Guangming Daily" (version 14, July 19, 2023)
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