All of this is what I've heard. It is said that he—the one you all know—during his years as a sent-down youth in northern Shaanxi, once knew Wang Weiguo. They shared the same ambition, the same love of literature, and once talked through the night in a cave dwelling. That was perhaps one day in the 1970s, maybe 1972 or 1973. Wang Weiguo at that time was perhaps already becoming someone else, beginning to possess another name.

About a decade later, Wang Weiguo's other name became a household word. He had written his masterpiece, a book whose popularity has endured for forty years without fading. That household name was "Lu Yao," though his road of life reached only to the age of forty-three. His work—which readers a century from now may not know—is one that nearly everyone today knows: Ordinary World. In my view, it tells of human suffering in poverty and deprivation, and of the struggle and striving to escape that suffering.

I was never a reader of Lu Yao, but I admit that the life he portrayed and the human struggle within that life are real, and because they are real, they are fundamentally sincere—even if not entirely sincere on the textual level. In fact, one could say that the affectations and vanities on the textual level are themselves part of a larger truth. Those affectations and vanities belong both to Ordinary World and its characters, and to Lu Yao himself. Indeed, the characters in the novel are Lu Yao—they reflect, from every angle, what kind of life Lu Yao wanted.

And the other man who talked through the night in that cave dwelling—it is said that over the following thirty or forty years he maintained his love of literature. You may know his name too.

What did they talk about in the cave dwelling? Two young men of about twenty. One perhaps spoke of how he had stirred up storms in Yanchuan County, while the other may have recounted his harrowing escape from Beijing. They surely also spoke of their respective ambitions. As the night deepened and the candle in the cave dwelling guttered out, they could no longer clink cups or clasp hands, but perhaps they heard the fierce collision of two young hearts.

In the decade that followed, each could hear news of the other through newspapers and radio. One rose to fame across the Northwest; the other governed a region in the Southeast. One walked the path the other had idealized; the other pursued the literature the first one loved. Half a century has passed. One of them—his road in life was long; the other carved the name "Lu Yao" on a tombstone at Wenhuishan in Yan'an.

For decades, generations of Chinese have read Lu Yao's work. In the fates and struggles of Shaoan and Shaoping they see themselves; in their pride, their affectations, and their vanities they also see themselves. From this they draw inspiration and consolation.

But beyond that Ordinary World, Lu Yao completed another work: the person called "Lu Yao" himself. He was the poorest, most wretched child on the Loess Plateau. He was a man of fierce capability—"someone who could succeed at anything he tried." With incomparable resolve, he left himself behind to pursue another destiny. During the Cultural Revolution he stirred up storms. He married a Beijing zhiqing and leveraged marriage to escape the impoverished Loess Plateau. In the 1980s he rose to national fame through his writing and seized the crown of the Mao Dun Literature Prize.

He was flamboyant and vain—he spent every cent of his and his wife's income on premium cigarettes. He was unyielding and calculating—he wanted to trample everyone beneath his feet. He was simultaneously sincere and affected—he wrote against the prevailing literary currents of his time, yet his writing could not entirely escape the era's systemic falseness. He placed himself on one of those grinding stones I've seen in the Hall of Dizang, ground himself into flesh and blood, and pursued the spiritual achievement that would salve all his wounds and pride. "He was Kuafu, collapsing on the road from thirst."

I think Lu Yao the person is more interesting than his works. If he proves immortal in the end, I don't believe it will be because of the works he published in book form—on the scale of history, those will perish quickly. If he proves immortal in the end, it will surely be because of the life he lived, because of the ordinary world he named with the name Lu Yao.

(To be continued)

Revised