Daoji Qunsheng Records

In the early summer of 2010, the elderly "Father Wan" was hospitalized after a fall, unexpectedly suffering from multiple concurrent illnesses and on the verge of death. His son, Wan Kang, was consumed with anxiety: "I want my father to live!" However, faced with a passive and ineffective medical system, how could a son secure a glimmer of hope for his ailing father? As his condition worsened, should he choose to let his father suffer to survive, or help him depart with dignity?
1. Taiwan's Literary "Wild Samurai" Zhang Wankang emerges: Zhu Tianxin said, "I, sincerely willing to stake all my credibility from years of reading and writing, like a gambler, on Zhang Wankang." Who is Zhang Wankang? He can be considered the most unconventional novelist in Taiwan today. A recluse living in plain sight, an internet surfer and a fan of classical opera, he "spent ten years immersed in the unknown folk vernacular world like a vagabond"; at the age of forty-four, he formally published his first work, "Dao Ji Qun Sheng Lu" (Record of Saving All Beings), and immediately won the island's prestigious Literary Golden Award with a million-dollar prize. His novel breaks away from Taiwan's decades-long creative lineage, with its fiercely original language and wild, imaginative humor, comparable to "Don Quixote" and "Gargantua and Pantagruel."
2. A moving life-and-death struggle, a novel that will leave you speechless: "Dao Ji Qun Sheng Lu" (Record of Saving All Beings), in the style of classical Chinese episodic novels, recounts the thrilling journey of a father and son battling illness together and outsmarting the medical system, ultimately igniting a battle between yin and yang. The heavy theme of "Why must a father suffer so much" is transformed by the author into a birthday carnival full of infinite possibilities, overshadowing traditional fantastical and supernatural novels. As Wang Dewei said: "Works like 'Dao Ji Qun Sheng Lu' once again prove that a novelist's imagination will always be ahead of any historical perspective or theory." Life is like a play; the life and death of a ninety-year-old are no longer insignificant, but rather to allow the story to continue and for a good show to be watched. Behind all the incredible tug-of-war between life and death lies profound reflection on human nature.
3. Jointly recommended by Wang Dewei, Zhu Tianwen, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and Lo Yi-chin, Liang Wendao in "Kaichuan Bafenzhong" (Eight Minutes of Opening a Book) praised its "bizarre and fresh dramatized interpretation of death": "I can't believe someone still writes an episodic novel like this today... In this elegy, there is absolutely no trace of the sadness we were once familiar with, or a certain tragedy, or the sense of sublimation beyond tragedy. He completely avoids discussing such serious or transcendent topics about death. The key point is simply this: to live on."
Liang Wendao's "Kaichuan Bafenzhong": Zhang Wankang's "Dao Ji Qun Sheng Lu" (Parts 1 & 2)
http://v.ifeng.com/history/wenhuashidian/201108/8787deb6-5fae-410d-bdae-3b8bad510c66.shtml
http://v.ifeng.com/history/wenhuashidian/201108/0f1f33de-17b8-45b5-8d54-d25a6d1fd2c5.shtml

2014-06-01

广西师范大学出版社

The Republic

352

9787549553143