Author's Postscript

Desire is a topic that I have been studying for many years. The triggering and birth of desire, the prototype of desire, the form of modern desire and its growth pattern, and the texts produced by contemporary desire production, all these topics revolve around desire. Desire is the core object of postmodern philosophical research.

This book attempts to borrow the Buddhist "six senses" (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind) framework, and uses the secret industries that died with agricultural civilization as the subject matter to depict the basic appearance of "Chinese desire" during the agricultural civilization period. Through the brief history of the protagonist's desire, readers can see the secret process of the growth of desire.

What is Chinese desire? This question is the primary question for writers. As long as you read the history of literature, you will find that starting from the Book of Songs and Chuci, appetite, carnal desire, sexual desire, desire for fame and power, these basic life themes, have long been the main body of ancient desires, and are also the internal driving force that dominates modern Chinese people. The carrier of desire is short-lived, but desire is eternal, transcending all time and space that we can observe. Eastern desire is the most powerful cultural heritage of the Chinese people.

In response to the current situation of the large-scale growth and spread of the maze of desire, the Venerable Sakyamuni taught that the "six senses" ignite and illuminate people's desires, but due to the huge gap between desires and reality, pain comes into being and becomes the highest nature of life. The ratio of pain to desire is positive: the more ardent the desire, the more intense the pain.

It is through my glimpse into desire that I superficially grasp the pain of the Chinese people. And what is intriguing is that I also see a nation that is good at using pleasure to cover up pain. They are good at using words and witchcraft to create all kinds of happy illusions, and spend their lives in the massage of words of blessing each other. As a powerful illusion nation, China has provided a complete sample to the world.

Literature is a kind of verbal witchcraft, and it is the most clumsy of all verbal witchcraft. It can convey desires to a limited extent, and even light up desires and make them burn fiercely, but it cannot satisfy desires. In the game between people and desires, literature can usually only be an arsonist, while religion is the fire extinguisher. This ideological division of labor determines the attributes of literature.

But "Six Strange Records" has no intention of becoming an igniter of desire. It is just a set of historical voyeuristic records. It tells readers in a legendary way how desire is born, multiplied, saturated, decayed and disillusioned, and how it creates the joy, pain and death of life. You will see a paradox that occurs at the level of "three views": this book is a myth about desire, with the appearance of a fictional text, but it tries to truly touch the desire of the Chinese people and the world of illusions caused by desire.

There is no doubt that any literary history is a history of the expression of desire. Over the years, "desire" has been an important subject of my research. But conveying Chinese desire in such a "literary" way is still just a difficult language experiment for me, full of unpredictable crises. Writing is an adventure in words, and a grand narrative about desire is an even more dangerous advance.

Since the publication of the novel "Changsheng Yi" and the novella series "Kojiki", my "transformation" into a novelist seems to have become irreversible. This writing itself contains a hidden desire, that is, to become not only a "reasonable person" but also a "storyteller". You will definitely point out with a smile that this is a typical case of the proliferation of desire.

According to the pre-designed, six types of strange arts, six Taoist masters, six senses and six illusions constitute six seemingly independent novels. They should be combined into a precise narrative community on the theme of desire, approaching the nature of Chinese desire from the six channels of human sensory experience. But after writing this series of novels, I sadly discovered that due to the limitations of cognition and techniques, my expression could not reach the core of things at all. I could only circle around it, like a stupid dog circling around a bone illusion.

Not only that, due to the culture itself, this series of novels also exudes a weird and absurd smell, which makes those literary petty bourgeoisie who like to do warm massage feel uncomfortable. For this, I can only apologize with great regret. Completely different from those "popular literature books", literature should not be a verbal massage, but a revelation of the truth of history/reality. Therefore, it must have cruel and absurd characteristics, and it must destroy all ridiculous illusions. Of course, I also tried to inject necessary hope into the core of the text. While deconstructing the dark illusion, I want to carry out the only bright white illusion to the end, but this is not to please the readers, but to let my suffocated soul breathe.

The various chapters of "Six Strange Records" have been published in various literary magazines, such as "Huacheng", "Tianya", "Shanhua", "Jiangnan", "Zuozhuan" and "Baihuazhou", and are now compiled into a book by the publishing house. For this, I would like to thank the editors for their tolerance of this "heterodox taste", and thank all my friends for their love and encouragement, and thank the animation designer and director Wu Fan for drawing six exquisite illustrations to provide exquisite images for the characters and scenes of the novel. Without the support of these friends, the writing and publication of this book would be unimaginable.

Written in New York on January 15, 2020