While browsing the web, I came across an article about a classic TV series, which brought back many memories of classic TV shows. It made me realize how quickly time passes. When I saw "Ji Gong," it reminded me of when I was very young and there was a picture of Ji Gong on the old cabinet at home. At that time, I felt scared. As a child, Ji Gong's eccentric behavior and expressions were no different from watching a horror movie. So, in my childhood memories, Ji Gong was quite scary. As I grew older and started to understand things, watching the TV series of Ji Gong felt completely different. Especially when Ji Gong laughed heartily while burning down his own home, and then started crying, it made my heart ache and my eyes moistened uncontrollably. It helped me understand that madness and sorrow.
Looking back, the reason why I can vividly remember this TV series is probably because of the fear of madness and eccentricity in my childhood, and finally understanding this madness and eccentricity as I grew up, especially the scene where Ji Gong laughed while burning his home and then cried deeply imprinted in my mind.
It is this profound impression that makes it harder for me to forget about people and events that seem ugly, strange, vicious, and cruel on the surface, but behind which lies a sense of sadness, sympathy, and an inability to hate. For example, many of the novels written by Gu Long. The characters in Gu Long's novels show me the reality of people, behind every big villain is a reason worth sympathizing with. Bad people are not born bad, but are forced into being bad by reality, rather than being bad people, it is better to say they are people who have been driven to extremes. And those good people have also done things behind closed doors that are unspeakable.
In today's martial arts novels, Liang Yusheng writes about an ideal world, either heaven or hell; Jin Yong writes about a fantasy world, encounters and dangers that are impossible in reality; only Gu Long writes about the real world, with characters in a virtual setting and the background set in ancient times (the era in Gu Long's novels is mostly indeterminate).
When you read Jin Yong, you want to be a hero, a hero; when you read Gu Long, you just want to be a person, a complete person.