The Versatile Master Artist

As a writer, this novel might be expected to be something like a crystal ball in the palm—

As if it were a stage drama.

The obvious difference between stage dramas and movies, even TV dramas, is that perhaps the actors are more important.

All the scenery and decorations are like the shallow undertones on an oil painting canvas.

Actors.

Immersed in drama, emitting a ”radiant and smooth” beauty from head to toe.

They hold up the entire stage.

Compared to them, those external backdrops seem not as important.

A chair is both inside and outside doors; a crystal crown represents a palace.

Of course.

I’m just talking nonsense here.

Nowadays, stage dramas are becoming increasingly exquisite. Many high-production stage plays have complete systems that can raise and suspend stages, even entire audiences can revolve and translate according to different scenes.

Just not long ago.

During Spring Festival, I went to a provincial capital in central China to see a high-production stage play. Multimedia screens, crystal decorations, music— the visual design of the entire play compelled me to summarize as— ”exquisitely beautiful”.

Thus.

I say this not implying every character in the novel can behave like first-class Shakespearean actors, full of image expression.

But rather the opposite.

I mean, if the background and detail portrayals in the novel have untruthful roughness, please understand.

This is the universe within the core.

This is the drama within the crystal ball.

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, even in the cramped universe, he could think of himself as the king of an infinite world.

Apricots and pears don’t have such presence.

If this novel can move through the Four Seasons in the crystal ball, when held in the palm to watch, it brings you a respite, then I’m content.

So, what is a crystal ball?

”Crystal ball”, a term that appears repeatedly in the text.

Gu Weijing, recalling his childhood, realizes his grandfather, the elder family head, used all his effort to provide him with an excellent educational environment, keeping him away from true suffering and distress.

His insight is like a person inside the crystal ball looking outside.

Miss Ilina, remembering her grand-aunt’s grand journey, also noted that when Kara jumped on the Paris train, her wealth, the checks she carried, surrounding servants and guards, still kept much of the human world’s smoke and fire outside.

Her insight, too, resembles sitting inside the crystal ball looking out.

When the ”tin soldier” inside the crystal ball looks out the window.

Those outside the water scenery ball are also looking at them.

Gu Lin— she’s Gu Weijing’s cousin, much like Harry Potter’s cousin Dudley, presumably a rather negative character in the text.

I repeatedly mock her in my writing.

Even continue to scold her.

Scold her vanity, scold her inferiority, scold her naivety.

But actually, sometimes, it feels like scolding myself.

Vanity.

Inferiority.

Naivety.

Like many stage plays, Gu Lin’s plot in the text has undergone dramatic intense elaboration.

Yet it always seems beyond those dramatic decisions.

In a scene not so intense.

Gu Lin and Gu Weijing.

Among siblings...Gu Weijing is who I want to become, Gu Lin is like a shadow of the past.

Of course.

Excluding the gambling section.

My impression of gambling was as a child in kindergarten, being called by Dad to move a small bench and watch the TV documentary about the dangers of gambling.

Many of the scenes there were like childhood nightmares to me.

But I think, much like Gu Lin, as a child I was also quite vain.

My grades were pretty good back then.

In middle school, I attended a pretty decent and famous school; tuition was very low, but there were many self-funded summer activities, development camps—it was going to Queenstown in New Zealand, to Egypt, Melbourne, the UK or the United States, spending half a month in winter or summer vacations.

At that time, family conditions weren’t bad.

Thinking now, really not bad.

In this world there are many without my conditions, my father and mother, including grandparents, are all good and loving people.

Despite my grandparents being very thrifty all their lives, extremely frugal, wearing worn vests every day to fetch water downstairs, planting their own vegetables, never throwing away medicine instructions, collecting them and using the back to take notes.

I even used handmade scrapbooks my grandmother made with waste paper as a child.

They were quite respected.

Because they could be considered the older generation of intellectuals, their social treatment wasn’t bad, the country really treats them well; thriftiness and hard work more reflects that generation’s attitude toward life.

Mom is a PhD in physics, but back then the unit wasn’t well off, during my schooling was getting only about two to three thousand a month.

If I claim the family was very poor, it seems unfair to many.

From childhood to adulthood, there was truly no lack of material conditions.

If just because of not being able to go abroad during winter and summer vacations I cry poverty, that is far too arrogant, even gives one goosebumps.

But surely I wouldn’t count as anything like wealthy.

During my childhood, in the 00s, I still lived in tube-shaped housing, much like university dormitories, a family of about ten square meters, a shared toilet on each floor, two or three families sharing a kitchen, with rats scurrying around at night.