Regain the Pleasure Lost in the Other Shore

Summary: Understandable feeling touches every little bit of experience. And it's an inspiration beyond reality. Xiaobo Wang likes walking, staying and watching, so he has some free time to think, meditate and even let his spirit go out of his body. Therefore, people have called him "Fool Bo" since he was very young.

Reviewer: Yueqin Zhai

15 years has passed since April 11th, 1997, the date making people think about Xiaobo Wang. The order from his heart sped up him to the other shore. Though people are used to look for his special "art talent" and label them with "interesting, free and poetic" when reading his work, no one can say for sure that he or she totally entered Wang's mental world. The beauty of art lies in this blurred sense of propinquity. Arriving and trying hard to arrive is the forever pleasure that reading pursues.

We read a story as if it meant that we know the reality. But the fact is what we can read is fabricated by the world. The world that Wang fabricated has a special penetrating power that full of his thought or feeling. So, what makes these spread to his text? While attempting to find the answer, we will read some biographies, memoirs and diaries, trying to find something from his words. We will also refer to the perception and comment from other people's rational and objective words. Xiaobo Wang, My Brother, written by Wang's brother who lives in the US, provides another way to Wang. It's between his own subjective memory and other people's objective comment. It restores a pure Xiaobo Wang with a real and perceivable insight.

It's pure because Xiaoping Wang mentioned in the preface that "feeling or emotion is exactly an echo of the impression present or in the memory". Understandable feeling touches every little bit of experience. And it's an inspiration beyond reality. Xiaobo Wang likes walking, staying and watching. So he has some free time to think, meditate and even let his spirit go out of his body. Therefore, people have called him "Fool Bo" since he was very young. "I often watched him, noticing that he would stare at one place when he was in a daze. He would not react even you shouted his name. He would only be awakened when you pushed him. After awakened, he couldn't elaborate what was in his mind if you asked or said something else. In conclusion, he never enclosed what was in his mind to others." Wang never broke away from this clue and captured transient moments. Just as he said, "this is a busy and noisy world full of conflicts and bounce. We will be bored if we stay at some place too long and eager for something pure, beautiful and imaginary, hoping- even just one moment- to enter an interesting side of world." So Xiaobo enjoyed the special peace in the garden in the sun. The two brothers sit in the balcony and watched the sunset. Some brothers and sisters play in the field in Xijiao with butterflies and clear water. Yinhe Li and Xiaobo Wang combined their supramundane romantic spirits. The scenes became especially pure and unforgettable in memories.

Apart from that, in the flow of time, we can see trace of personality of Xiaobo Wang. He "seems calm in appearance but in fact emotional in his heart. A vernal drive of love is full of his heart but he pretends to be indifferent with that." The extremely rational age makes an anti-entropic complex, which has a connection with his romantic writing style in a hopeless world. These scenes and these multidimensional characteristics restored a polybasic figure in Xiaoping's works. Another significance of this book is that it finds out the source of Xiaobo's art talent shown in his works. Indeed, his elder brother sees the details that other people often ignore. The details began developing since he was born. What should be mentioned is that the author never imposes his observation on his brother. It's not difficult to find that the author is always the main body. His view is more about his feelings. "Xiaobo and I fool around every day and we have a lot of chance to guess and sense each other. And due to inheritance, we have something mental in common so that we can easily communicate with each other. So when I feel something, I usually glance at Xiaobo to see if he feels the same, if he has his special unresponsive look. It is so hard for two people to communicate deeply. I feel comfortable every time Xiaobo and I come to a mental agreement because I am not alone; I have at least one spiritual fellow.

Now, when we focus so much on "Xiaobo, My Brother", we should also look at the "I". Xiaoping Wang, a philosopher, expresses a precise and subtle life philosophy in his works. With respect to beauty, he says:" the sense of beauty is like the changing smog. It doesn't appear all of a sudden but is gently strengthened; it doesn't disappear, either but is a lagging process of passivation." Is this kind of philosophizing and perception not a delivery of the approach and intimate between brothers?

However, remarkably, the thing that Xiaoping correspond to Xiaobo best is his humorous and free writing style. After reading this book, we can not only search for Xiaobo's thinking pleasure, but also delight from Xiaoping's words.

About the Author

Xiaoping Wang, born in Jinan, Shandong in 1949, worked in Western Beijing Coal Mine for 10 years during Going and Working in the Countryside period. He was admitted to the Graduate School of Philosophy in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and graduated in 1981. He got his PhD in Tulane University in US. He now lives in US.