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with the popularity of tv series such as "moses on the plain" and "the long season", northeast china is becoming the focus of a large number of viewers. before this, the writing wave set off by northeast writers such as shuang xuetao, ban yu, zheng zhi, and yang zhihan has made this land regarded as a "literary hotbed" in the minds of readers. in recent years, the works of northeast writers have also been adapted many times, including shuang xuetao's "moses on the plain" and "assassination of novelist", ban yu's "xiaoyaoyou", zheng zhi's "swallowed"...

in the past summer movie theaters, zheng zhi's short story "xian syndrome" was adapted into a movie. the movie was directed by gu changwei, starring ge you and wang junkai, and the title was changed to "hedgehog". "hedgehog" is the origin of the story in the original book and the movie - on a traffic-congested street, my uncle wang zhantuan was directing a hedgehog to cross the road, and this scene happened to be seen by "me" named zhou zheng.

from the scene of directing the hedgehog to cross the road, we can see that wang zhantuan is a somewhat special character. wang zhantuan was born in 1947 and joined the army at the age of 19. because of a movement, he became abnormal. he first left the army and then retired from the factory early. he didn't have to go to work and no one cared about him. the description of his living conditions in the novel is, "most of the time, he wandered around the house every day, using the pocket money that my aunt rationed before going to work to buy two bottles of beer, and at most enough to buy a bag of fish skin bean. at noon, he went home to heat up the leftovers and waited for my aunt to get off work for dinner."

wang zhantuan's "abnormality" is very limited. he just does nothing and occasionally behaves strangely, but this is enough to make him an outlier in the eyes of others. he is regarded as a lunatic by zhou zheng's mother and must always keep a distance from zhou zheng. he is a burden in the eyes of zhou zheng's grandmother, dragging down zhou zheng's aunt's family and should be sent to a mental hospital. in the eyes of the aunt, wang zhantuan must not be sent to the hospital. admitting that he is sick is equivalent to admitting that there is a stain on this family. in order to solve wang zhantuan's abnormality, the aunt asked a witch to feed wang zhantuan sleeping pills, until finally she had to send him to a mental hospital.

the story shows how a person who slightly deviates from the normal track of life is criticized and pulled back by people around him in various ways. because he is not regarded as a healthy person, he loses his basic rights and dignity as a human being. in the story, zhou zheng, who seems to be the only one who can get along with wang zhantuan, is also the abnormal one in the eyes of others. because he has stuttered since childhood, zhou zheng was discriminated against by his classmates and was dragged by his parents to try various methods. "in a small clinic in shijingshan, the root of his tongue was burned with electric pliers, he drank a folk remedy made of boiled water with mole cricket skin, read the pinyin table with his mouth full of gravel, and vomited black blood bowl by bowl." the stuttering did not improve, but caused zhou zheng's grades to drop and he was held back many times.

in the original novel, zheng zhi did not deliberately strengthen the relationship between wang zhantuan and zhou zheng, and did not try to create an inspirational feeling of a pair of marginalized people fighting against the outside world by hugging each other for warmth. in this narrative completed from zhou zheng's perspective, he has a deeper and more complex feeling towards wang zhantuan, which includes the alienation shown by other relatives, and the attraction based on the common "abnormality". "i seem to be driven by a familiar force... to find wang zhantuan alone." the hatred for what his parents did may also be the reason why zhou zheng stood with wang zhantuan. this hatred for his parents then continued into zhou zheng's hatred for himself, "i hate this family, my parents, and myself." the various difficult feelings when facing wang zhantuan revealed zhou zheng's contradictory inner world. he wanted to accept himself, but often fell into self-loathing.

in the novel, wang zhantuan uses the word "stuck" to describe his life state, "i'm stuck at a critical juncture, all gray." but compared to wang zhantuan's calmness when dealing with others' manipulation, and sometimes even pretending to be confused, zhou zheng seems to be the one who is really "stuck". he is more angry and sensitive. when the desire to break free becomes stronger, he will be more painful in the "stuck" position. his "stuck" is that he doesn't want to be regarded as a person like wang zhantuan, but he doesn't know what kind of person he should be.

this is also one of the most significant differences between the novel and the movie. in the movie, zhou zheng and wang zhantuan, who often spend time together, become an alliance that supports each other and fights against the outside world. when the boy faces another person who looks like him, his deep inner heart is smoothed out, and he seems less "stuck". he also gets a bright ending like a counterattack in the movie and becomes a sailor who travels around the world. he not only becomes a normal person, but also one of the "top" normal people.

at the end of the film, zhou zheng, a navy soldier who returned from the sea, had a conversation with his mother. zhou zheng said to his mother, "i am wang zhantuan." his mother asked zhou zheng, "can you forgive us?" zhou zheng said, "i don't forgive." as an adult, zhou zheng accepted himself and finally had the courage to declare his attitude. facing zhou zheng, who had been hurt, his mother's words of begging for forgiveness were even more intriguing. the regret or submission in her words seemed to be based on the fact that zhou zheng had become a normal person. if zhou zheng in front of her was still the stuttering, repeating a grade, and doing nothing like wang zhantuan in her eyes, would she still say such words? this story, which seems to end perfectly with zhou zheng's success, does not promise a "bright future" of tolerance and respect for all people with defects like zhou zheng and wang zhantuan. it points out the path that this group must take: to become what the vast majority of normal people in this normal society require you to be - people like them, or even better than them.

in the original novel, zheng zhi expressed a different view through a seemingly inconspicuous character. when wang zhantuan's daughter wang haiou fell in love with li guangyuan, a colleague in the pharmacy, this man who was eight years older than wang haiou, divorced, childless, and mixed in dance halls was not welcomed in the eyes of everyone, so much so that the eldest aunt once wanted to fight with li guangyuan. however, such a "playboy" gradually revealed his good side in his married life, and the eldest aunt's attitude changed, "guangyuan, i see, you are not a bad person." the change in li guangyuan's image in the eyes of others punctured the various prejudices of these "abnormal people", which cannot determine what kind of people they are and how they should be treated. it is precisely the existence of li guangyuan that makes wang zhantuan's tragedy more prominent. as a person who has been bound by prejudice, wang zhantuan never got rid of the infamy of a madman, a burden, and a stain on him until his death. he died in a mental hospital. "when the nurse served him porridge in the morning, he turned his head and his head was already on the window sill, as if he was dozing off."

marginal people such as wang zhantuan, li guangyuan, and zhou zheng are not uncommon in the works of zheng zhi and other northeastern writers. in his first novel, "swallowed alive," zheng zhi created the young man qin li, a boy whose parents died, who was withdrawn but intelligent, and suffered discrimination and violence while growing up, and was treated unfairly even in friendship. qin li eventually became a deaf-mute like quasimodo. huang shu, the only companion who could empathize with qin li, had a similar family background and upbringing to him, but chose to commit suicide after an accidental injury when she was nearly an adult. the purest soul always seems to experience the cruelest torture in the hands of the creator. before falling from the rooftop, the deaf-mute who avenged huang shu roared, "that roar, or wail, should have been sharp enough to pierce the night sky, but it was as powerless as a dying life, without an echo, and was swallowed alive by the night in an instant."

zheng zhi's "eat raw" ends with the grief and indignation of two young people who are hopeless about their fate. in fact, the echo that disappears into the night at the end of the story conveys the loss of a generation. after experiencing the wave of layoffs caused by the economic reform in the 1990s, countless people in northeast china who once had "iron rice bowls" became marginalized people without jobs and worried about their livelihoods. in the short story "monte carlo cannibalism", zheng zhi wrote about a father who was laid off and wandered around the market all day looking for odd jobs. "he wore a bandit hat, which he pulled off to cover most of his face, leaving only his eyes." in the short story "forests in the forest", airport bird-scaring worker lv xinkai and his blind wife lian jie can almost be regarded as the incarnation of qin li and huang shu. in "the immortal syndrome", zhou zheng's parents opened a noodle restaurant after they were both laid off. this detail was adapted from zheng zhi's father's personal experience.

after winning the first prize in the anonymous literary competition with "xian syndrome", zheng zhi, who appeared in the literary world as a dark horse, once mentioned this group in his speech. in a beer house called "poor ghost paradise" in shenyang, many northeastern people will sit inside for a whole day and drink until they are unconscious. "of course, they are the most frustrated, painful and desperate people who have lost their livelihoods and families for some reason, or are even disliked by their relatives and children, or simply have been lonely for half their lives." perhaps, for zheng zhi and northeastern writers, the meaning of literature is not only to record these vanished people and events in a fictional way. it calls for our keen perception and empathy for the world around us, and also warns us that everyone may become a marginalized person in this society at some point.