Objects that breathe with life and memory
A new book reshapes nonfiction writing by allowing Jiangnan's artifacts to narrate history themselves, Yang Yang reports.
In Qiyin, there are items like the examination basket from the imperial exams, the waterwheel for farming, and the harmony table used to bless a happy marriage. These objects become vessels of fateful narratives for individuals and families. They are no longer cold exhibits, but witnesses to life's joys and sorrows, breathing again, he says.
The book, starting in Qiyin town, goes well beyond just recording artifacts. It systematically captures and preserves a rapidly vanishing way of Chinese life and its emotional fabric.
"In traditional Chinese discourse,'Jiangnan' is far more than a geographical term — it is a cultural symbol imbued with profound meaning, evoking a tapestry of aesthetic and lifestyle ideals such as gentleness, refinement, civilization, and enrichment," says Xu Ke, who is from Jiangsu province.
"As someone who has been away from home for a long time, reading Mr Xu Feng's books is, in fact, a return to my hometown," he says.
A Chronicle of Jiangnan Artifacts breaks through the boundaries of literary genres. Rooted in 10 years of field research and hundreds of historical records and ancient texts, it adopts literary reasoning to give life and voice back to the craftsmen, farmers, and housewives who were once silent in the cold historical materials.
While it is a nonfiction work in the strictest sense, it possesses a narrative and details akin to a novel, offering a warm and insightful paradigm for narrating the life history of the Chinese people.
The Eastern philosophy of life,"the way in everyday use", embodied in the book will also become a window, allowing the world to see a more intimate, concrete, and humanistic China. It tells not only the stories of Jiangnan but also universal stories about creation, use, memory, and inheritance.
Zhang Li, editor of the book, says Xu Feng brings artifacts back to the human world, enlivening them like aquatic plants entering water, fish diving in the deep, or birds returning to the forest, bursting with vitality. In the fantasy comedy film Night at the Museum, the exhibits in the museum come to life at night. Similarly, A Chronicle of Jiangnan Artifacts constructs a wondrous space, a "museum" belonging to Jiangnan culture and Chinese culture, she says.
