The so-called "The Story of the Boat" is actually a story adapted by Lin Chaoyang based on the movie "Life of Pi" that he watched later.
"The Life of Pi" tells the story of an Indian boy named Pi who was shipwrecked on a boat with his family. Unfortunately, he was stranded on a broken hull with a Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, and had to drift in the Pacific Ocean.
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The film, directed by Chinese director Ang Lee, grossed US$600 million at the box office worldwide after its release in 2012.
At the same time, the film also won many awards that year, such as the Oscar for Best Director and Best Visual Effects. It can be said that it was a double success at the box office and awards, allowing director Ang Lee's film career to reach new heights.
It is worth mentioning that when this movie was released in China, it caused a lot of response and a movie-watching craze, which made the movie finally achieve a box office of 570 million yuan in China.
"Life of Pi" is not a commercial blockbuster. At this point in time in 2012, its box office performance of 570 million yuan was undoubtedly a big box office miracle.
After all, this is a movie invested and produced by Americans, shot by Chinese, and tells an Indian story.
From this point, it can be seen that the story "Life of Pi" itself is very in line with Chinese aesthetics and tastes.
In Lin Chaoyang's story, the background has changed from India in the 1970s to China in the 1930s.
The protagonist, Pai, has become Du Sanjiang. His age and personality have not changed much, but he has changed Pai's mixed religious beliefs in the movie, which are not in line with China's national conditions, to Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity.
He also removed the insurance adjuster’s questioning of the protagonist in the movie, and turned the story directly into a dialogue between the protagonist and the writer. In this way, Lin Chaoyang continued the two-layered narrative structure of the original story.
A writer who was looking for inspiration accidentally learned of Du Sanjiang's legendary experience and came to the hospital to interview him. At this time, more than forty years had passed since Du Sanjiang crossed the sea and he was already an old man in his sixties. He was half
Lying in the hospital bed, he told the writer his legendary experience.
Du Sanjiang's father, Du Bangjie, was China's first generation of animal researchers and the first director of the Shanghai Municipal Zoo. Because of such family conditions, Du Sanjiang developed the habit of being close to animals since he was a child.
During the Republic of China, Shanghai gathered businessmen and dignitaries from all over the world. The cultures of multiple countries and ethnic groups were intertwined, which brought Du Sanjiang into contact with monks, Taoists, Christians and other religions. He was born with precocious wisdom and gradually developed a love for faith, people and animals.
A unique view of nature.
One time, his attempt to make friends with a Bengal tiger angered his father, who taught him a bloody lesson on the spot: animals think differently from people, and if you forget this, you will die.
The war of aggression against China broke out, and Japan quickly occupied northern China. After the disastrous defeat in the Songhu Battle, the powerful planned to take advantage of the war to secretly sell the rare animals in the zoo abroad to make a profit.
The father, who was preparing to flee with his family, discovered the conspiracy of the powerful and stopped him regardless of the danger of his life. In the end, the whole family was arrested and taken to a ship preparing to transport animals abroad.
Originally, after going to sea, their family was about to be killed by bad guys. Unexpectedly, a violent storm suddenly broke out on the sea, and the ship was swallowed up in an instant.
The ship sank, but Du Sanjiang survived on the lifeboat. In addition to him, there were also the Bengal tiger, hyena, chimpanzee and injured zebra that he had been in contact with.
The adventurous journey begins here.
In order to survive, the extremely hungry hyena took advantage of the situation and killed the injured zebra. The gorilla was also killed to stop the hyena's violence, but Du Sanjiang could only watch helplessly from the sidelines.
But he also knew that under the watchful eyes of the hyenas, he might be the next to die.
Just when he was about to muster up the courage to declare war on the hyena, the tiger killed the hyena.
Facing the hungry tiger, Du Sanjiang had no choice but to throw the newly made simple raft into the sea and jump on the simple raft himself.
In this way, one boat, one tiger, one raft and one person were connected together by a rope, drifting aimlessly in this endless ocean.
Along the way, Du Sanjiang must always be on guard against hungry tigers that may bite him, but at the same time, the two are fellow creatures on this lonely sea.
They were hostile to each other, attacked each other, accompanied each other, experienced life and death together, and witnessed the magnificent wonders of the sea together.
When they finally woke up, the two drifted to a human-shaped island. The island was full of food, and even tree roots were edible.
The tiger came ashore, and Du Sanjiang wanted to stay here, but at night he discovered that there were human teeth in the fruits on the tree.
It turns out that this is a cannibal island, which attracts living creatures to the island during the day. At night, the fresh water turns into acid, which digests these living creatures and obtains nutrients to supply life on the island.
Du Sanjiang had to set out again in order to survive. This time he filled the boat with food, returned to the sea, and soon discovered land.
When Du Sanjiang finally returned to land, the tiger also came ashore and disappeared into the jungle by the sea.
Through Du Sanjiang's statement, the writer got a legendary story full of challenges and adventures, but he also felt that there were some things in Du Sanjiang's narrative that were difficult to understand.
For example, Du Sanjiang mentioned that orangutans floated onto his boat on bananas after the shipwreck, such as the flying fish they encountered in the sea that were brought to their mouths, such as Du Sanjiang and tigers coexisting for such a long time without being harmed, such as
All the magical things on that human-shaped island...
Under the writer's constant questioning, Du Sanjiang finally told another version of the story.
In this version of the story, no animals survive, just him, his mother, the ship's cook, and the sailors.
The sailor broke his leg and the wound became infected. The cook suggested that the sailor amputate his leg to save his life. However, in the unstable sea, without anesthesia and anti-inflammatory drugs, it was impossible to complete the amputation, and the sailor died like this.
Then the cook used the sailor's stump to catch the fish. This is the origin of the flying fish on the sea in Du Sanjiang's first story.
The mother realized that the cook was not trying to save the sailor, but that his purpose was actually to kill the sailor and use his body to hoard sea fish for food.
Later, the bestiality in the cook gradually emerged, and he actually ate the remaining flesh of the sailor.
One day, Du Sanjiang accidentally lost the fish and was beaten violently by the cook. In order to protect him, his mother was stabbed to death by the cook and was thrown into the sea and became food for sharks.
The anger and animality in Du Sanjiang's heart were completely ignited. He took the opportunity to kill the cook with the same knife, avenged his mother, and survived.
At this point, Du Sanjiang smiled and asked the writer, which story do you want to believe?
The story ends abruptly here.
After reading the novel, Ye Zhaoyan was still unsatisfied. The latter story was not unfolded in the novel, but was only described in a few thousand words.
In this story, Du Sanjiang seems to have told the truth, but in fact there are still some puzzling aspects.
Because he always felt that the story was unfinished and some doubts in his heart were still unsolved.
After his eyes stared blankly at the lines on the last page of the novel for a while, a creepy feeling suddenly arose in his heart.
If Du Sanjiang compared people to animals and beautified his memory, is the truth of the matter really as told in the second story?
In his mind, he kept deducing the two stories told by Du Sanjiang. The fragmented information was constantly pieced together, and he seemed to be getting closer and closer to the truth of the story.
Suddenly, a sudden realization arose in his heart.
If according to Du Sanjiang's statement, the hyena is the vicious cook, the injured zebra is the injured sailor, and the mother is a chimpanzee, then Du Sanjiang is the Bengal tiger.
The four people were drifting on the boundless sea. In order to satisfy his hunger, the cook first targeted the injured sailor and then killed Du Sanjiang's mother.
Du Sanjiang avenged his mother and killed the cook.
After fighting each other, only Du Sanjiang was left on the boat. Du Sanjiang was the tiger with the mantis stalking the cicada and the oriole behind.
This also explains why, in the first story Du Sanjiang narrated, why he could live with the tiger safely for 277 days, because the tiger was himself, representing the evil thoughts in his heart and the deepest part of human nature.
of darkness.
After landing, the tiger disappeared into the jungle and never appeared again, which illustrates this problem.
Ye Zhaoyan continued to think along this line of thinking. His mother was killed by the cook. When his mother died, with the character of the cook, he would not even let go of the sailor's stumps. How could he throw his mother's body into the sea?
Therefore, Du Sanjiang lied about this matter.
Ye Zhaoyan thought of a possibility, and his heart sank.
In a desperate situation without food, where did those corpses go?
Reason told Ye Zhaoyan that Du Sanjiang, who unleashed his inner beast, would do the same thing as the cook.
Otherwise, he would not have survived to the end and might have starved to death while drifting.
Therefore, it is self-evident where those bodies ended up.
Thinking of this, Ye Zhaoyan felt the blood surge in his chest, which was emotionally difficult to accept.
The more he thought about it, the more terrible it became, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt a deep despair for human nature.
At the same time, he couldn't help but feel a strong sense of nausea in his abdomen, and he started retching all of a sudden. He held his hands on the wall, and the violent physiological reaction made him cough and vomit uncontrollably.
Tears moistened his eyes, and saliva flowed uncontrollably from his open mouth.
After feeling uncomfortable for a while, he finally regained his composure and wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes with his fingers. They were neither moved nor pity, but were caused by the physiological reaction of vomiting.
He took a deep breath and focused his eyes on the magazine again.
Stubbornly, he continued to analyze, so the human-shaped island that Du Sanjiang and Tiger saw and docked should be the incarnation of the mother in his heart.
The ubiquitous tree roots and vines on the island represent human meridians and blood vessels, and there are also densely populated meerkats on the island.
Ye Zhaoyan recalled the description of these meerkats in the novel, saying that they looked like wriggling white flowers from a distance, and the image of maggots parasitic on carrion drifted through his mind.
The fruits on the island are wrapped in teeth, like the remains of digestion by gastric juices.
Ye Zhaoyan understood that this human-shaped island was also Du Sanjiang's fantasy after fictionalizing and beautifying cruel real memories. It was his mother's flesh and blood that nourished his life.
He gradually sorted out the hidden third story in the novel, and also understood why Lin Chaoyang stopped writing after briefly telling the second story.
Because this last story is really too cruel. In this story, humanity has disappeared, and only the naked bestiality roars unbridled on the boundless sea.
The shock in his heart was hard to calm down for a long time. The fear that penetrated into his bones made Ye Zhaoyan shiver all over, and he covered it with his hands.
After a few seconds, he picked up the magazine again and put it further away.
When he returned to the bed, he still couldn't help but look in the direction of the magazine with lingering fear.
In a short period of time, he probably won't read this novel again.
Chapter completed!