The heaviest thing in the world might not be the weight of a heart stained with regret from that early morning when I couldn't hold back my anger and yelled at you. Ah, yes. This is a piece written by a mother who regretted yelling at her child. I found it on a blog by a person named J. Olivia, and I thought it was worth sharing. Many can relate to this, especially parents of teenage boys and girls, who usually try to hold back their frustrations. They endure and endure, but when they finally can't take it anymore and yell, they often look back and regret it, wishing they had just held on a little longer. However, it seems that these days, situations where people can't control their anger have increased. That's why there are treatments for the liver. People who used to explode with anger find that their temperament calms down after liver treatment. So, it's good to consume things like arrowroot juice regularly. Nowadays, modern people are always on the go, which makes them constantly tired, and that affects the liver.

So, I've heard a lot of such stories. People who have liver problems tend to be impatient and easily angered, which makes me think of the liver. Modern people don't eat well and also lack sleep. They experience a lot of stress, which inevitably weakens the liver. The book I want to introduce today is by an author I really like. Who is it? It's Wei Hua. Wei Hua is not Korean; he is Chinese. In Korea, Wei Hua is very famous for his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Oh, that author! The newly released book is called Original. It was published in China a year ago, and the first edition was released on December 2nd. I had made a reservation to get this book, but unfortunately, it didn't arrive on the scheduled date and came late, so I haven't been able to read much. However, I really wanted to reserve it as soon as I knew about it.

It's interesting because when we go to an online bookstore, we can buy any book we want, but when we make a reservation, we usually do so with a strong anticipation for that book. I have read two works by the author Wei Hua. First, I read The Clumsy and then Brothers. Just reading one work is often enough to make someone a fan. Now, here is the signed copy, but I'm not sure if it was done in silver or not. In any case, this was available for pre-sale, and it doesn't seem like just any signature. The author Wei Hua from China has a charm in his works like The Clumsy and Brothers, which are set in the 1950s and 60s. So, when we think about it, the atmosphere seems very old, and he must be around 80 years old now, but in fact, the author Wei Hua is...

He was born in 1960, and he seems younger than his age. He first published a short story titled The First Dormitory in 1983, followed by several other short and medium-length stories with strong experimental elements. His second full-length novel, Life, was later adapted into a film. The famous director Zhang Yimou directed it, featuring the actress Gong Li. The film Life won the Jury Prize and Best Actor at the 47th Cannes Film Festival in 1994. At that time, it was known that the biggest award at Cannes was above this one, and there were some reasons why it didn't win the Palme d'Or. Following Life, his third work was The Heat of Illusion, which was also adapted into a film in our country. He then published works like Brothers and The Seventh Day. The characteristics of his works are...

Heroes do not appear at all; instead, commoners become the protagonists, getting involved in various historical events. This portrayal does not paint a positive picture of China. Recently, in June, there have been many instances where sales were banned due to information from China. From the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party, this is unacceptable. However, it seems that people around the world cherish, love, and appreciate the writer Wei Hua. Now, this is the first biographical novel. A biography deals with extraordinary events in a person's life. In our previous introductions, I mentioned that one of the most extraordinary Korean novels is Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, which is also quite a biographical novel. The story of The Era of Chaos is a different work, and its background spans from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China, set during the period of the Xinhai Revolution. It seems I keep referring to it as a movie.

This is a novel, and the title of this story is The Lost City. I'm curious because the title in Korean is written with the characters 원청, which seems to be pronounced similarly to Yuan Cheng in Chinese. So, this book discusses Yuan Cheng. 

Secondly, within this book, there is another story that is told from the perspective of the male protagonist, which is the longest part. Following that, there is an additional story featuring the female protagonist, who appears as the protagonist's wife, showcasing her childhood as if it were a completely different tale. 

The first story leaves a lot of curiosity and mystery until the very end, and the riddles that remain unresolved are fully explained in the second story, which is about Xiao Mei. As you can see from the book, it has 585 pages. On the first page, we meet the protagonist, Lin.

I'm introducing shampoo, and the city where Lin Shampoo lives is called Season, and he is a wealthy man. They say the land is about a thousand mu. In China, one mu is equivalent to about 20,000 square meters. So, 20,000 square meters is quite significant. However, Lin Shampoo wasn't always from this city; he wasn't a successful person from the start. Seventeen years ago, when a cold wave hit, he was walking through the snow with his infant daughter, going from house to house to collect donations. Suddenly, I thought of Sim Bong-sa, because traditional begging is not easy. He must have gone to over a hundred houses, and not every house is willing to give. The first witness, who was the first to see Lin Shampoo, said that when he approached him, Lin said...

They say they asked if it was the main contractor, and the response was, This is Sijin. It seems that in 2006, Lin Shampoo formed a mutual relationship. On the first page, it shows that Lin Shampoo has become wealthy, currently possessing about a thousand acres of land. Now, let's go back to the childhood of Lin, where we see a glimpse of that childhood in Ninja Po. Lin Shampoo was also born into a wealthy family; his father owned a lot of land and was the only craftsman in the village. His mother was skilled with her hands, and she raised him well. In the past, there was a father with five sons who had nowhere to go, and they were allowed to stay, becoming stewards of the house. They were able to eat and live well because of that.

One of the sons became a steward and helped a lot, especially since their father was absent. With the help of this steward, even at a young age, he managed to run the store. However, his mother fell ill and passed away. It seems that from the time his mother was alive, he was already looking for a bride, perhaps sensing that she would not be around for long. In those times, it was common to marry before the age of 19, just as it was in our country, especially during the late Qing Dynasty. So, he went to look for a bride. When he went there, having a meal meant that the bride was to his liking, but he never had a meal there. Since they were well-off, he brought silk with him, but to avoid feeling rude when declining, he left the silk behind as a way to indicate his refusal. This was his mother's intuition. After his mother passed away, he also began to...

Matchmakers came because they were doing well, and one day, I went to a place with a matchmaker. The woman there was really nice and very beautiful. I was thinking about having a meal there, but the matchmaker grabbed my arm and sent a signal that indicated I shouldn't proceed. Later, I found out that the matchmaker had asked the prospective bride several questions, but she never answered. It seemed like she might be hard of hearing. So, I thought maybe it wasn't meant to be, and I moved on. 

One day, a man and a woman came to me saying that their wheel had broken and asked if they could stay for just one night. The man was called Oppa, and at first, I thought he was a part of a couple asking for a place to stay. But it turned out that he was just a brother, and the woman's name was Atang.

My younger sister is a woman named Shower Mae, and she is very beautiful. The writer emphasizes that the two siblings do not resemble each other at all. So, what could that mean? When I asked where they came from, they said they were from a city in the south called Woncheong. They also mentioned that their parents had passed away, and now they had to go to the north to meet their uncle and find jobs. So, I let them stay for a night since I am kind-hearted. However, the next day, she collapsed. This Shower Mae, but her brother was worried about whether he needed to go on a promised date. He included that once he finds his uncle and gets things sorted out, he will come back to look for his younger sister, so he asked if she could stay at home until then since he didn't have anywhere else to go. So, he left his sister behind, while she was still unwell.

Suddenly, I woke up in the afternoon, did some housework, and even prepared food. I thought of the term Ureonggaksi, wondering what it meant. The writer described it as if someone had suddenly collapsed and then suddenly regained their health. So, in the evenings, it seems like I would wait for my brother by the window, looking outside. Anyway, we weren't in a romantic relationship; I just wanted to treat him well until he returned. My mother had passed away, and since there was no woman in the house, I did housework and cooked every day. So when Rin, who worked outside all day, came home, he must have felt a sense of comfort, given that everything was taken care of. But the problem is, one day, I started to feel suspicious.

This is an electric novel, and there are many strange occurrences. One winter, a hailstone as large as a basin fell. This means it was a hailstone the size of a washbasin. It fell and pierced the roof of Xiaomi's house. Just imagine how startled Xiaomi must have been; if it had hit him, he would have died. So, startled, Xiaomi ran and jumped into the blanket with Lin Shampoo, shivering. But he was shaking so much that there’s no need to imagine anything too stable; he was just trembling. Someone told him to calm down, but he was still disoriented by the sound of the hail. The next day, the village was devastated. Even the housekeeper, who had first come to the village with his father and son, was now...

My father died from hail. The way the situation was described was incredibly vivid. Some world-renowned authors might summarize it in just a line or two, but they manage to create a whole page out of it. It’s not a straightforward narrative; there are stages to it. The roof was severely damaged, so they had to repair the room where the major incident occurred before moving on to another room. Regardless, since that day, they had been very close. The intensity of that day was so profound that they couldn't forget it. After that day, they spent truly passionate nights together, and he decided that he wanted to marry the girl. He took her to his parents' grave. Although they had already passed away, he...

I go to the grave to ask for permission to marry. After that, I catch a pig and two sheep to hold a wedding ceremony. In some Chinese wedding cultures, they drink a lot of alcohol. The protagonist has a reason for saying that it's their first time drinking. I hope you check in the book how the first night was ruined because of alcohol. I haven't heard from my brother even once. So, this Xiaomei is worried and thinks she should go to a nearby temple or shrine to ask for help in taking care of her brother. She plans to be away for just one day. After a day, she returns to find the house completely cleaned and a month's worth of food prepared. She said she would be gone for just one day, but even after waiting a day and then two days, he still hasn't come back. However, in the marriage, there’s a charm that has been passed down since the parents' generation. Their parents are really...

Being frugal, I always saved money to buy a gold bar one at a time and kept them hidden between wooden boards. Then, when I got married, I showed my spouse the house deed and documents, saying that I had a lot of land. However, when I checked a couple of days later, I felt something was off because seven out of the seventeen gold bars were missing. I only had about ten left, and out of the three small gold bars, one was gone. At first, I looked for the house deed, and thankfully, everything was still there. I thought maybe I was just being paranoid, but indeed, the gold bars were clearly missing. So, as I mentioned earlier, the story splits into two parts. The first part is the origin, and the second part features another story where Xiaomi becomes the main character. This will be explained in that story. Anyway, for now...

The woman betrayed me and left, which made me very sad. So, I went to my parents' grave and wept. Then, Lin Shampoo came. After that, I honestly haven't read the story, but I did see a brief summary written by others. It says that one day, she suddenly reappears, pregnant. Why? Because I didn't mention it earlier. In the first part of the story, I said that the father brought his daughter, asking if this was the place called Yuanqing. Eventually, she came back with a child in her womb, gave birth, and then disappeared again. So, after that, she only trusted the name of the city, Yuanqing, and went looking for it. When she asked at the place she thought was Yuanqing, it turned out that it wasn't Yuanqing at all.

It was a place called Season, where an enormous snowstorm occurred, causing all the houses to be destroyed. In the village, there was a carpenter who started to build wealth by repairing the damaged homes. He seems to have saved money to buy land again. However, he sought out the mysterious city of Woncheong. The ninja came to live in Season but continued to face natural disasters, calamities, adventures, wars, and bandits. He experienced many hardships to protect his family, especially his beloved daughter. He must have loved that woman a lot at the time. This will probably be confirmed in the second story. So, right, after getting married, he lived for a while, then disappeared, and after becoming pregnant, she gave birth and disappeared again. If we consider the time spent with another man, we can calculate that it was about 10 months, right?

Calculating, he was searching for his daughter because he probably wanted to find the woman he loved as well. In a way, for him, she was his first love. Although he felt betrayed because she left, he must have also been curious about her. Anyway, she appeared again, and he let his daughter go. Since she is his daughter, while raising her, he probably thought of Xiaomi more often. This thick story holds an immense amount of narrative, and I think you will understand it better by reading this book. I read a bit of the beginning, not a lot, but just from what I’ve read, I feel reassured that the book will be enjoyable all the way through. Recently, when we read just the first 20 or 30 seconds of a book, we often find...

As a writer, I feel a growing sense of anticipation. I'm not sure if it's coming from the fact that I've read The Heat of Heo Sam-gang and found it very enjoyable. Perhaps because of this expectation regarding the work, many readers have expressed that they laughed and cried while reading, and that they couldn't stop the flow of their emotions. This makes me very excited. If you’re someone who wants to read a substantial, lengthy piece after a long time, I believe that works like this have great collectible value. Generally, I don't introduce Chinese works very often, but from what I've been discussing, my feeling is that it has a very Chinese essence. When looking at the overall context of Korean literature, it reflects the lives of ordinary Chinese people.

I think there is a lot to consider, and what’s even more surprising is that the author Wei Hua prepared and wrote this work over 23 years. This isn’t just a piece he wrote casually; he started working on it in earnest in 1998, and it has taken 23 years to be released to the world. It seems that a tremendous amount of preparation and contemplation went into this work. In a way, while there are indeed cases of prolific authors becoming globally recognized, I don’t think Wei Hua has produced an enormous number of works. He has only written about five or six books, yet he has a significant global following, including many fans in Korea. Therefore, I believe many people have been waiting for this long-awaited work, which has come out after eight years. Looking at the original Chinese edition, aside from the character for literature, it resembles what we have.

Since there is no English, let’s talk about the conversation we had earlier about the comic regarding hail. That was just the beginning. As I mentioned earlier, the electric novel deals with strange events, including wars, famine, and banditry. You can look forward to it. From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, it covers the early 1900s. The world changed dramatically during that time. As the world became chaotic, banditry flourished, making life difficult for the common people. In American works, a hero usually appears to resolve everything, but in this case, ordinary people continue to endure. There will be unexpected deaths and new encounters. Through this work, which does not feature a hero, we will explore life in early 1900s China, a place we have not yet ventured into.

Instead, I hope we can live within the pages of a book. I will conclude here today. Thank you for joining us for today's broadcast. Please click like, leave a comment, and share the broadcast link with your friends to support Yeojaratte. Also, please subscribe to Yeojaratte TV on YouTube. Thank you for listening today.

320화 문화쌀롱 - [책이야기] 중국 작가 위화의 신작이자 첫 전기(傳奇) 소설 '원청'

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