Interview with Zhang Xi, writer of "The Relationship of the Flower Season": It doesn't matter if you are ordinary, as long as you continue to move forward, your ideal self will not disappear!

When you mention Zhang Xi, what you think of may be the sentence "What I'm afraid of is not that these stories will be forgotten by you, but that you will forget, but I still remember" in her first essay "Expose Your Name", or the tempering after a night of dialogue in "You Slow My Time".

This time, Zhang Xi returns with her new work "The Relationship of the Flower Season", in which Zhang Xi creates three perspectives through the three characters of Xu An, Lu Zhen and Lu Pinhan.

(Screening in the same scene: Zhang Xi's special article|The moment you want to enter marriage, it is often incredibly ordinary)

Photo courtesy of Zhang Xi

Xu An: Psychological safety is inward-looking, and we can be our own adults

Xu An, the character who first appeared in the book, grew up in an unsafe environment, she did not have a room that could be locked, and she always lacked a sense of security.

When he grew up, Xu An finally had his own space, but the drawer always hid an unused doorknob.

"The doorknob is actually the embodiment of psychological security. Zhang Xi said that for Xu An, the doorknob, as an item by his side at any time, is like a sense of security, which can be given by himself, and it is also a symbol that he can become an adult.

From Xu An, we see that the original psychological security actually comes from the inside, but it is difficult to draw the inner boundary, and when the inner grows up, the external side must also grow corresponding hands to catch a person's growth.

Lu Pinhan: After repeated falls, just fine-tuning the posture is already considered growth

Another character in "The Relationship of the Flower Season" is also bound by the environment, she strives to resist the challenges of fate, but there is always a pull from her family and the economy.

Pinhan's boyfriend said, "I love you very much and didn't give up, I don't mean dreams, I mean life. Even though he has suffered repeated setbacks and encountered difficulties, he still feels defeated and powerless, but Pinhan always gets up again and thinks about how to deal with the next challenge.

Zhang Xi added that people are often prone to fall in the same place, just like when walking, there is always a part of the ankles and soles of the feet that are easy to trip over themselves due to their own habits, but if they can have the ability to be self-aware and discover their own inertia, their posture can change, so people can find that they have already bypassed many circles and grown silently in the frustration of infinite reincarnation.

Therefore, no matter how frustrated the front is, if you continue to move forward, your ideal life and yourself will not disappear.

(Guess you want to see: Zhang Xi's article|There is no right answer in life, but every choice makes you yourself)

Photo: Zhang Xi

Lu Zhen: Even if I return to the appearance of a traditional woman, I am still my new self

Lu Zhen, the last character in the book, falls into the stereotype's shackles on women.

She feels constrained by a framework called traditional ideas, but paradoxically admires the greatness of traditional family women, and asks the question, "If I still return to those stereotypical female images after I am exposed to the old and new ideas, then I will still be a woman of the new era?"

In the interview, Zhang Xi shared her insights on "stereotypes" and "traditional values".

"The growth of women is very much like kneading a rice ball, kneading a mixed color rice ball, fusing and changing bit by bit. Zhang Xi mentioned that the growth of women is a slow process, and the process of integration is mixed with what the family gives and what they get in the new environment, and we must have the influence from the family that we cannot give up, but we can still be the new self.

Even if the new generation of women, after seeing many choices, after growing up, they return to the appearance of their mothers and make similar choices to the previous generation of women, they are still considered new women, because it is already a new way of thinking.

No matter what the final decision is, those who can make their own choices from their hearts are women in the new era.

Photo courtesy of Zhang Xi

The three characters weave a multiverse spanning more than a dozen years, and each part of the story is like a dialectic.

Even if there is no clear answer in the book, we can see from the choices made by the three characters that all life has weight and all the roads traveled are not in vain.

As mentioned in the book, I believe that these years have not been fruitless. I believe that everything that blooms has meaning, and what withers doesn't matter. And those whispers from the characters also make our daily wear and tear reap the warmth of comfort.