Short Story **********

The tempering of water and soil: the life growth poem in "Landlubber" In the wind that has been carrying the loess all year round in Changxi Town, northern Guizhou, the entanglement between the "landlubbers" and the water constituted a song of life growth that spanned the ages. "Landlubber" uses a pyrotechnic style of writing to embed individual growth into the historical folds of the 1960s and 1970s. Through the seemingly ordinary behavior of swimming, it reveals the spiritual core of ordinary people tempering their minds and achieving self-achievement in difficult situations. The lines are full of the thickness of the soil and the agility of the water. The most exquisite narrative wisdom of the novel lies in using "water" as a clue to weave the trajectory of the characters' growth, making every body of water a mark of life's transformation. The arid background of Changxi Town's "selling sheep's head for dog meat" imprinted a sense of shame on the status of "landlubbers", and also gave birth to the initial resistance of the senior year of high school - the small waterside blocked by stones and mud in the ditch was by no means a simple place to play in the water, but the first rebellion of this group of rural children against the label of destiny. Hidden in the muddy yellow water color and the clumsy flopping of the "dog paddle" is a stubbornness that is not willing to be laughed at, and a tenacity to create possibilities in the face of scarcity. When Xiaoshuitang couldn't hold back their desire to grow, the weir pond a few kilometers away took over their desire to explore. The breath-holding of "killing the head off" and the pride of "stepping on fake water" are the advancement of skills and the expansion of courage. The competition between the rapids of the Wujiang River and the Dotan River makes the courage to live with the water become more solid in the collision and test. The shape of water is changing, and the way senior students get along with water is changing, but the spirit of "willingness to flutter" has never changed. Water has finally changed from the "King of Hell" to the "melting pot" that shapes life. The creation of the characters becomes more three-dimensional and vivid with the details. The core role of senior high school student can be called the epitome of the spirit of ordinary people in the era. The change of his name hides his nature - from the complicated strokes of "Si Yi" to the horizontal and vertical "Si Yi", the seemingly random change is actually the first annotation of the life attitude of "simple, direct, active choice". Faced with the dean's glass slide "examination", he quickly formulated a response strategy of "watching + rubbing mud", showing the unique cleverness of rural children; even though he was slapped with a bamboo stick and grinned, he still slipped to Shuidang the next day with dried mud in his arms. His stubbornness hid the toughness of not compromising authority and pain. Two "water incidents" in his adult life complete the character's arc: Although the bet across the Wu River ended in being "washed downstream", it allowed him to understand that "life is more valuable than face"; his persistence in refusing the engagement after rescuing Chunxiu revealed his original intention beyond utilitarianism. The growth of senior high school students has never been a counterattack of skills from a "land duck" to a "water dragon", but a process of forging stubbornness, cleverness, bravery and kindness into the background of life in the process of dealing with water, people and fate. The profoundness of the novel lies in the seamless integration of individual growth and the background of the times, giving the "landlubber"'s transformation a universal spiritual symbolic significance. The relaxation of household registration in the 1960s allowed the names of "fourth graders in high school" to survive; the decentralization of educated youth in the 1970s brought swimming skills with "a lot of water"; the resumption of the college entrance examination provided an opportunity for seniors in high school to get out of the mountains. These historical nodes are not a rigid background, but a driving force that profoundly affects the fate of the characters. Drought and deprivation in Changxi Town are the common survival background of that generation, but the novel does not indulge in narratives of suffering. Instead, it extracts a positive philosophy of life from the flopping of "landlubbers" - "As long as you are willing to flop, no matter how dry the land is, you can dig out clean water, and no matter how stupid a 'landlubber' is, you can also practice the 'water diversion technique.'" This belief that grows from the soil and water is not only the life principle of senior high school students, but also an eternal answer to how ordinary people deal with difficulties: the so-called growth is never about waiting for conditions to mature, but to create conditions with tenacity and practice one's own "water-dividing skills" in the wind and waves of life. At the end, the senior high school student looked back in front of the swimming pool in the provincial capital, giving a warm echo to the memory of the "landlubber". The splashes of mud in the small water, the laughter beside the weir and the thrills in the Wujiang River will eventually become the brightest light in life. "Landlubber" writes about a period of time in a humorous way, and also writes about a kind of life force - it tells us that what determines the height of life is never the "drought" and "flood" at the starting point, but the courage and tenacity to always maintain the "flutter". This is the charm of this novel that transcends individual narratives and reaches people's hearts.

This novel is very good and worth following. It sounds great. It is a microcosm of social reality.