I like Bill's book reviews.

Book Review 1 From Feminine Identity to Symbol of Cultural Lost

Wang Anyi once said that the novel I Love Bill has nothing to do with sex and love, but is about the situation in developing countries. As a representative, A San gradually lost and degenerated in the pursuit with two foreign men, Bill and Martin, because there was no spiritual guidance of contemporary culture. This paper analyzes this process in turn: In the first conversation with Sam, Bill said, "In fact, we don't need you to tell us anything. We see that what we need is enough. " Sam replied, "I just want what I need." At first glance, this is a provocative conversation between men and women. Men want what men need, and women want what women want. However, Wang Anyi wanted to regard Bill as the symbol of the United States and Sam as the symbol of the Third World represented by China, so the dialogue between them seemed to show that China and the West viewed the East with a condescending attitude in the "North-South Dialogue". "You don't need to tell us, just see what we need." The East is only the East in the eyes of the West, and the East can only be defined by the West. In particular, Wang Anyi named a young woman like Ah San as a symbol of the Third World in the East, which is quite meaningful. In traditional ideas, women are symbols of weakness, obedience and passivity. Then the East, represented by this, implies that from the beginning, the East was weak in its communication with the West, which was stipulated by the West and seemed to be arbitrarily slaughtered by it. Ah San and Bill appear as such symbols and symbols in the novels. They are really representatives of two cultures and are having friendly exchanges. Pay attention to the background of an era. Under the condition of global cross-cultural communication, due to the rapid and inevitable amplification of media propaganda, both parties have predicted each other's image from other media before communication, and they will use the image predicted in communication to test whether the other party is like this. But this image is often filtered, which is different from the facts. This is reflected in the misunderstanding of "chastity view" between A San and Bill. One of the root causes of Ah San's tragedy is also here. Instead of falling in love with Bill, she fell in love with the symbol of American culture and lost herself in the process of trying to get close to it. Chastity is a woman's most secret and cherished place, and different cultures' attitudes towards it can touch the core of a culture. It is appropriate to use the incomprehension of A San and Bill to symbolize the misunderstanding in the cultural exchange between the East and the West. According to his education in China, Bill knows that women in China should cherish their virginity and regard it as their own life. So he feels sublime and horrible, which is extremely valuable and extremely inhuman. But Sam doesn't see it that way. According to her understanding of Americans, it is because of her own problems that she is unable to fully tease Bill, so she is desperate to get close to western sexual concepts. From this, we can find a problem: there is no contemporary China culture! In other words, contemporary China culture is rootless. Foreigners who want to know the culture of China can only know the traditional culture of China, and contemporary culture is just leftovers for them, just a superficial China of western culture. However, people in China today often can't find themselves. They either stick to tradition or throw themselves into the arms of the west. There is no buffer zone and no new base point to support our spirit. Faced with multiple spiritual worlds, China people don't know which one to enter and which set of values to accept! The west is also made up of many different countries with different cultures. But today is a powerful era for the United States, and globalization means global Americanization. Sam, who has lost its value, can only throw himself into the arms of American culture blankly. Today's China culture is most like the superficial China of American culture. Taking Bill, an American, as the representative of western culture, the author proves that American culture is the dominant culture in western culture today, which can make A San, an oriental woman and a representative of the third world countries in the East, fall in love blindly. But she didn't experience the western spirit and culture, so she could only make a third-hand information. Then "Three Dreams" is such a product. You only want yours, and I only want mine. She only understands western sexual concepts according to her shallow understanding, but only superficial knowledge has seriously hurt herself. Her virginity and inexperience can show the eagerness of the East to embrace the West. But after all, there are differences between East and West. After all, the East is not the West. She can attract the west only because of her exoticism, which makes westerners feel a mystery different from their own. So westerners will say "you are the most special" and "you are so strange", instead of saying that you are the best and you are so beautiful. Irreconcilable differences make it impossible to achieve homogenization after longing for hugs, which is the harm it causes to itself. Therefore, A San and Bill were doomed to have misunderstandings and contradictions from the beginning. "She didn't want Bill to treat her as a girl from China, but she attracted Bill because she was a girl from China. ..... she tried her best to find the point where China and the West merged to reconcile her contradictory situation. " The question is, what can make China and the West merge? She can't find it, and so can many people. Under the situation that the west is developed and the east is weak, if the eastern and western cultures want to merge, only the east can change itself to cater to the west. This is not only a political and economic reason, but also a deep cultural reason. It is also mentioned in the article that "China people attach importance to Taoism, while westerners put people first." Western culture seems to treat people more as people, so it has become a universal value and spread all over the world. With the help of the powerful East of the United States, it has become a global spread of commercial culture. The farther Sam goes west, the harder it is to attract Bill. Her superficial understanding of western sexual concepts led to her serious misunderstanding of Bill. She thought that if she was so open to Bill sexually, Bill would definitely fall in love with her and take her home. Just like the westernization of the East, she wants to keep up with the pace of the West and let the West take its own development. However, the western concept of sex does not need such a heavy burden. Sex and love are always separate. Bill can't love Sam, and his future is destined to be left to Sam's empty thought of "I love Bill". There is no real communication of language and spirit between them, let alone love. Yes, only one party is trying to cater to the other, a temporary play between men and women. "Indeed, there is really nothing between her and Bill." Sam only understands Bill according to the established image of foreigners. Rather than saying that she loves Bill, she just wants to find a foreign man as a boyfriend unconsciously. The East is so obsessed with the West that "any foreigner walking on the road is Bill, not Bill." A San's cultural loss and spiritual hesitation are also reflected in her painting creation. I have a superficial understanding of the image and abstract creation of modern western art, but I am unfamiliar with my own works. Because it is not your own, it will be strange; Because it is blindly copying others, there is no self. American critics also said, "These paintings look almost the same as those in the West, if the inscription is covered." Are there no other Chinese paintings except Chinese paintings and southwest dyes? What did San create? There is nothing of China's own. The question is, what is modern China culture? From philosophy and culture to music and painting, we have almost completely accepted the western model, completely cut off contact with tradition, and have no own paradigm. What will happen if the culture is lost? Without their own cultural identity and position. To have a self, we must first have an other, an other who can realize that he is different from himself. But when the ego is mixed with the other, it is difficult to distinguish who is the ego and who is the other. In particular, this other is still advanced, overlooking his own, telling you that if you want to develop, you must take the same road as him. This is the present situation of China culture. The beauty of traditional culture is beautiful, but there are many big problems in social organization and ideology. We need to wash and criticize it with advanced western ideas, but when we can open up a new pattern and realm becomes an expectation. Formally, the superficial patchwork of Chinese and western cultures is definitely not feasible, just like the propaganda style. However, at this stage, the confluence of China and the West can only bring China closer to western culture unconditionally. We need to go to the deepest part of western culture, its core, and then examine ourselves to know our own problems. But now most people can only accept the so-called western culture from the United States, which is a modern secular business culture and has lost the deep closeness to its tradition. In this way, after unwilling to be China, superficiality and blindness make you unable to become the United States, let alone Europe and the West! Without their cultural identity, they don't know who they are. This also explains why Sam met American boy Bill and French boy Martin after separation, and they separated again. Why Martin? Martin was born in a small town on the border with Germany in the east of France, which is a very symbolic hint. Germany has always been the heart of Europe, representing Martin's profound European culture, that is, the orthodox blood of western culture. Therefore, even if Martin doesn't have much insight into modern western art, he can "distinguish the authenticity of art like a moral person can distinguish right from wrong" because "the history of European art from Michelangelo is their other blood." Compared with the profound tradition passed down in the bones, a modern art is not worth mentioning! It is difficult for Sam, who tries hard to westernize but only gets superficial modern westernization, to deeply understand Martin. The author uses a subtle metaphor here. "It seems that Bill grew up from embryos cultured in test tubes, but Martin is the fruit of life that lasted from one thousand generations to ten thousand generations. Because Martin is such a natural creature, Ah San feels even more alienated. " The western culture learned from the United States has no historical accumulation, is extremely industrialized and commercialized, and always stays on the surface of western culture, so A San feels very alienated. Their final breakup is inevitable. Martin told Sam to stop painting, as if to tell her that you know nothing about the west. A person who has a superficial understanding of contemporary American culture can't really understand the true spirit of western culture. She knows neither America nor real Europe. "Martin is as vague as Bill. It seems to be just two concepts, but there is no image. " A San's two westernization were extremely unsuccessful. A China person can never change his original identity, and it is difficult for him to get rid of this established fact and learn the true spirit of western culture. Just as China's westernization is just a westernized China, it can't be the West, and the West is not interested in what it has. Knowing this means the disappearance of hope and the beginning of self-destruction, because it is difficult to find your own way. After the road ahead is broken, Sam can only fall down at will. In the process of her depravity, it can be seen that A San doesn't really understand foreigners and western culture: she mistook her compatriots for foreigners, couldn't stand the nagging of foreign old people, surprised Americans in her sexual boldness, and finally entered the labor camp without knowing anything. Her decline has also brought about the contradiction between self-recognition of the dignity of the original image and dissatisfaction with the overall environment. If China's culture loses itself and can only be integrated with other more backward third world countries, what is the way out? Finally, Sam thought of Bill, which was the nostalgia for the original American dream and the disillusionment of unwilling hope. The virgin egg at the end is quite meaningful. Virgin eggs are precious and should be hidden from others. Sam should not throw himself into the arms of others unconditionally, but should hide in the dark and have his own ideas. The virgin egg is a symbol of rebirth, and Asan's crying is a reflection on regretting the past and striving for rebirth. China culture should also be reborn in lust. The protagonist in Wang Anyi's novels tends to be symbolic, which inevitably leads to the suspicion that the theme comes first. However, in the works, we can see that the author tries to avoid problems and make the characters vivid. One of the obvious shortcomings of this novel is that the author does not show a pattern consistent with the issues she discussed in the novel. It is not enough to discuss the contemporary cultural situation and outlet of the third world countries represented by China in the context of globalization with the length of a novella. Therefore, we can only think about the way out of the problem in a broad discussion with the help of symbols.

Book Review II "One Infatuation, One Life"

The first time I came into contact with this book, I bought it in the small bookstore opposite the school when I was at school in Beijing. At that time, I was not nervous about studying, and I often read miscellaneous books. This book, not everyone can understand, although it is very thin, without complicated language and gorgeous decoration, it is still not a book that everyone can understand. I didn't understand it when I was a freshman. I finished reading this book in two days, and then I threw it aside. It was not until one day three years later, after living abroad for two years, that I saw the book review on the Internet again and realized that I was the third in the book. The protagonist A San is a typical college student image after the reform and opening up. She is knowledgeable, literate, eager for new things, worshiping western culture and new ideas, eager to know foreign countries, eager to get close to foreigners and walk into them. She began her journey of "falling in love" with foreign countries with her love affair with American Bill. The beginning and end of the relationship with Bill is an inevitable experience of a short-lived love between China and the West. After that, she was very sad. After Bill returned to America and broke up with her, she began to give up on herself, went to high-end hotels to chat with foreigners, spent the night, and then said goodbye. At first, she wanted to find a love of her own, a beautiful and romantic foreign love. But only Ah San longs for a stable love, and none of the men she contacts intends to marry her. These foreigners only seek excitement and free sexual services from oriental women. And Sam, from beginning to end, with a mentality of wanting a beautiful foreign love, with a mentality of wanting to go to the western world and understand western culture, waited for hope. As a result, nothing was found. In the era described by the author, until today, most people in China and women in China have always lived with the mentality of third world countries, and the lifestyle and value orientation of first world countries have always been in an inestimable position in our hearts. Western men are tall, stalwart, handsome and natural and unrestrained, which makes many women in China crazy. Just like the heroine in the novel, they have paid the price for it all their lives, but these are just out of infatuation. Infatuation is meaningless infatuation. Cultural differences and ethnic differences often inhibit the normal development of feelings and the correct orientation of values and outlook on life. Women like A San are actually appearing more and more in our field of vision. Let's put aside those women who associate with foreigners for nationality and money. Just like A San, there are countless girls who worship western culture and simply long for beautiful love. Third world mentality, third world women, we must re-examine this era.