Text | Fang Xiaoju
Bai Xiaowen is a character with a complex personality in “White Deer Plain”, whether in the original book or in the TV series, he has two sides.
Before becoming a political opportunist, Bai Xiaowen’s life was divided into two parts:
In the first half, he lived under the suppression of patriarchy and feudal rites, and the expectation of the identity of the future patriarch heir made him have to suppress his various desires and strive to live as a serious gentleman in the eyes of others.
In the second half, under the temptation of Tian Xiao’e, he was like a “beast” that broke free from the chain, released his previous repression and desire, and in order to enjoy the pleasure of indulgence, he did not hesitate to destroy all his family business and starve his mother-in-law.
From a serious book to indulgence and depravity, the huge contrast before and after Bai Xiaowen is difficult for many people to understand.
In fact, if you read the original book deeply and really understand Bai Xiaowen’s growth experience, you will feel that his indulgence and degradation are expected.
A deliberate “religious model”
As the eldest son of the Bai family, the birth of Bai Xiaowen brought all the confidence and hope to his father Bai Jiaxuan.
From birth, he was destined to become the future patriarch heir. So
Bai Jiaxuan has always cultivated him as a “religious model”.
On weekdays
，
Bai Jiaxuan watched Bai Xiaowen’s code of conduct very sternly, from daily words and deeds to his strategy, and even the things under the bed, he was bound by the standards of the future patriarch heir.
Bai Jiaxuan’s painstaking teaching and supervision was successful on the surface, and Bai Xiaowen, who became an adult, behaved dignified and was impolite, and was a moral model praised by everyone in Bailu Village.
In the original book, he is described as follows:
After long-term observation and countless comparisons, Bai Jiaxuan determined that it was legal and appropriate for Bai Xiaowen to lead the family affairs and succeed the patriarch in the future. The two children (Xiaowen and Xiaowu) both have a dignified demeanor… It is obviously different from the free and casual appearance of ordinary rural youth. Xiaowen is more astute and skillful than Xiaowu.
With the assistance of Bai Jiaxuan, Bai Xiaowen does things with great justice, dares to suppress evil and promote good, he sees people more sharply than his father, and can always hit the heart of things with one or two sentences.
The young Bai Xiaowen has already established his prestige in the hearts of the clansmen.
As he walked straight through the alley, the women who were breastfeeding their dolls naked in the shade would hurriedly pull off their clothes and hide back in the house.
Those who squat at the base of the wall to talk about women’s good deeds, when they see him coming from afar, will immediately shut their mouths and quickly disperse.
Bai Jiaxuan firmly trapped Bai Xiaowen with patriarchy and feudal rites, and deliberately shaped him into a “religious model” in Bailu Village.
Under the deliberate cultivation of his father, Bai Xiaowen involuntarily became a solemn existence in Bailu Village, and in the eyes of people, he was a serious gentleman and a moral model of impoliteness.
However, only Bai Xiaowen himself knew that the price of his becoming a “religious model” and a righteous gentleman was to try his best to suppress himself.
This extreme repression is the imprisonment of human nature, the restraint of desire. It caused Bai Xiaowen to lose his freedom and lose himself, and also led to his indulgence and depravity when he later faced Tian Xiao’e.
Repressed human desires
Bai Xiaowen, who became a “religious model”, not only paid attention to his daily words and deeds, but also suppressed his various desires.
When he first became married, Bai Xiaowen, who tasted the affairs of men and women for the first time, had a lost face on his face because he coveted the joy of bed.
When Bai Jiaxuan found that his son’s face was wrong, he and his mother Bai Zhao restricted his bed.
Bai Jiaxuan’s mother felt sorry for her grandson, so she opened fire on her granddaughter-in-law:
“The foal (Bai Xiaowen’s milk name) is still tender for sixteen, if you tease him night and night… If you lose his body and pout, you will have to stay widowed for the rest of your life.”
The granddaughter-in-law, who was reprimanded by her grandmother, refused to fall in love with Bai Xiaowen at night, and Bai Xiaowen, who was anxious, saw that her daughter-in-law had been hiding from her, and her heart became dissatisfied.
Originally, Bai Xiaowen did not treat this daughter-in-law very well, she was in urgent need of someone in the family, her father hastily set it for herself, this woman has nothing on her body that Bai Xiaowen can see except for her strong body and the joy of fish and water.
The family found a mother-in-law who made her not have the slightest interest, and also limited her bed pleasure, Bai Xiaowen was angry and wanted to work against her grandmother, and the more her mother-in-law let her hide from her, the more she wanted to be more presumptuous on her.
Seeing that his mother’s admonition did not work with his son, Bai Jiaxuan came forward to teach Bai Xiaowen directly:
“If you can’t even make that bit of ruthlessness on the kang, I’m sure you won’t be able to achieve a big thing in your life.” You have to understand that you are in this yard – the firstborn.”
Bai Xiaowen, who was reprimanded by his father, was shy and riotous, and even the affairs of the bed were subject to control, and his heart was depressed and resentful. After that, when facing his mother-in-law, who was physically strong and three years older than himself, he could no longer raise any interest.
People’s normal desires cannot be suppressed, and once they are suppressed, pathological psychology will appear.
Grandma and his father’s restrictions on Bai Xiaowen’s bedtime pleasure made his subconscious have a dirty and obscene understanding of sex, a pathological psychology that made him not interested in the affairs of men and women, and on the other hand, made him always want to chase the pleasure of the flesh.
The suppression of human desires made Bai Xiaowen, who lived under the confinement of patriarchy and feudal rites, feel that he had a “beast” of desire in his heart, and wanted to break free from the chains and escape at any time.
He no longer wants to be a religious model in people’s eyes, he wants to be a real man, a normal man who is not bound by moral norms.
In a feudal society that advocated “suppressing people’s desires to become a gentleman”, the mental and physical depression brought to Bai Xiaowen by patriarchy and feudal rites contributed to his madness and indulgence in the face of Tian Xiao’e later.
The designed chess pieces
Bai Xiaowen and Tian Xiao’e, born in a family of patriarchs, are moral models in the eyes of people and future patriarch heirs. One is a notorious rotten woman who was suspended by her husband’s family for stealing people, and then eloped with people, and was notorious in the White Deer Plain.
Two men and women who were originally not at the same level and did not have any intersection, because of the power struggle of the Bailu family, under the careful design of Lu Zilin, staged a peach-colored drama that shook the White Deer Plain.
In order to suppress Bai Jiaxuan, Lu Zilin directed a “flower case”: borrowed the hand of Tian Xiao’e, ripped off Bai Xiaowen’s pants, and let Bai Jiaxuan, who valued his face and reputation more than his life, lose his old face on the White Deer Plain.
Lu Zilin knew that as long as he could pull Bai Xiaowen off the altar of religious models, it would be more powerful than bandits smashing Bai Jiaxuan’s waist.
Bai Jiaxuan can withstand the bandits’ blows, but he definitely can’t withstand the blows brought by his son women outside.
So, Lu Zilin took advantage of Bai Xiaowen’s opportunity to punish Tian Xiao’e in the ancestral hall and provoked Tian Xiao’e’s hatred:
“You have to think of ripping off his grand prince’s pants, in that case, you will pee on the face of the patriarch.”
Under the demagogy of Lu Zilin, Tian Xiao’e put down her self-esteem, took advantage of Bai Xiaowen’s opportunity to watch a play in Hejiafang, entangled him under the stage, and successfully pulled him into the water:
A powerful stream of heat rose from Bai Xiaowen’s chest… He was painfully intertwined with intense desire and inescapable fear… At that moment, Bai Xiaowen heard the ribs in his chest, like the iron bars in an iron cage breaking.
He heard the hearty roar of the imprisoned wolf as it rushed out of the iron cage, and when he wrapped his hands around Tian Xiao’e’s waist, he almost fainted.
The human desire that Bai Xiaowen had suppressed in his heart for a long time was lured by Tian Xiao’e and instantly released like a flood that broke the embankment, and the “beast” of desire that was imprisoned in his heart was also awakened at the same time.
The indulgence of the body and the burning of desire made Bai Xiaowen like a chess piece, under the fiddling of Lu Zilin, embarked on the absurd road of ruining the family business, indulging in depravity, and madly releasing human desires.
Do not hesitate to destroy the indulgence of the family business
Bai Xiaowen, who was successfully pulled into the water by Tian Xiao’e, left the rough and tasteless mother-in-law and her own identity and status behind in the pleasure of indulging her body and releasing human desire.
Bai Xiaowen, who has read a lot of poetry, knows very well what kind of blow it will bring to herself and the whole family if she plunges into the love network set up by Tian Xiao’e, but
The pathological psychology caused by the grandma and father suppressing his human desires with admonitions and reprimands has now uncontrollably prevailed.
This kind of pathological psychology will be completely aroused once it encounters an opportunity, so Bai Xiaowen is like an evil spirit.
After the scandal of Bai Xiaowen’s frequent entry and exit to Tian Xiao’e’s cave came out, Bai Jiaxuan came to Tian Xiao’e’s cave on a snowy night, confirming the authenticity of the news.
When he heard Bai Xiaowen’s happy nickname coming from Tian Xiao’e’s cave, Bai Jiaxuan instantly felt that he had reached the end of his life, and he fell to the ground with a bang.
After waking up from the coma, Bai Jiaxuan not only severely punished Bai Xiaowen, but also decisively took measures to divide the family and took this loser who had shamed his ancestors out of the house.
Bai Xiaowen, who was severely punished by his father, began a wandering life of breaking jars and breaking jars.
He no longer made promises, he had a strong sense of rebellion in his heart, and with dissatisfaction and hostility towards patriarchy and feudal rites, he began to indulge himself wildly.
He changed from secretly meeting Tian Xiao’e at night to swaggering in and out of her cave in broad daylight.
When he walked straight into Tian Xiao’e’s cave in the first daylight, looking at Tian Xiao’e, who was shocked, Bai Xiaowen looked indulgent and indifferent:
“In the past, I was afraid of people seeing it, but now I am not afraid, who loves to see who watches.”
In Tian Xiao’e’s tattered cave, Bai Xiaowen’s imprisoned human desires were released heartily, and he found a pleasure of revenge, a joy to completely get rid of patriarchy and feudal oppression.
After Bai Xiaowen was separated by his father, Bailuyuan suffered a great famine that had not been encountered in a century, and the people in the original were starved to the ground.
After getting together with Tian Xiao’e, Bai Xiaowen contracted a problem of smoking, and the family’s food was left under his squandering, so in order to fill his belly, he had to bite the bullet and borrow food from his father.
Bai Jiaxuan looked at his defeated appearance and angrily refused.
Unable to borrow grain, Bai Xiaowen had to sell land, and the original book described Bai Xiaowen’s process of selling land as follows:
The three and a half acres of water land and five acres of dry land that Xiaowen got were resold to Lu Zilin three times… The silver dollars sold for eight and a half acres of land are at best worth the income of two acres of heaven and earth in a normal year. When it was time to finally sell the two acres of herringbone land, Xiaowen was so panicked that even the Chinese people didn’t have time to invite them, so he walked directly into the security center of Lu Zilin in Bailu Town, and said straight to the point: “Uncle Zilin, give you the two acres of herringbone land, you will shirk it again, you give a few (silver dollars) according to your conscience, I won’t say two words.”
The silver dollars that Bai Xiaowen sold the land in exchange for turned into wisps of blue smoke through Tian Xiao’e’s hands.
After the family ran out of food, Bai Xiaowen’s two young sons were led by Grandma to eat in his house, and his tofu dregs mother-in-law refused Grandpa Bai Jiaxuan’s offer to let him eat in his yard because she couldn’t get by on face.
When she was so hungry that she couldn’t walk, this strong woman found Tian Xiao’e’s cave even after walking and climbing, and after she grabbed a handful in Tian Xiao’e’s crotch, she was pulled by Bai Xiaowen by her hair and pumped two mouths, and then dragged home like a dead pig.
Soon after being dragged home, the stout woman fell to the ground and never got up again, starving to death.
After the mother-in-law starved to death, the money from the sale of land was also squandered, and Bai Xiaowen sold the three porters that his father had allocated to him to Lu Zilin.
For Tian Xiao’e, Bai Xiaowen lost all his family business and took the life of his mother-in-law.
Bai Xiaowen’s crazy defeat of the family business, on the surface, seems to be the reason for Tian Xiao’e’s temptation, in fact,
Tian Xiao’e just helped him open a crack in the floodgates of desire, and what really opened the floodgates of desire for him was the suppression and imprisonment of patriarchy and feudal rites.
Because the long-term suppression of human desires will produce a terrible power, Bai Xiaowen, who enjoys the pleasure of indulgence, attributes the shame brought to himself by the torture and reputation of the ancestral hall to patriarchal and feudal suppression, and that shame has also become an excuse and motivation for him and Tian Xiao’e’s indulgence.
Therefore, he will not hesitate to lose the family business, but also indulge himself.
How to deal with the desires in your heart
After Bai Xiaowen developed, as a battalion commander, by returning to his hometown to worship his ancestors, he completely swept away the inglorious memories of him and Tian Xiao’e that remained in the broken kiln in Bailu Village.
The glory brought by returning to his hometown to worship his ancestors made him more and more ashamed of Hetian Xiao’e’s stealing feelings back then, and the pleasure brought by the concentrated release due to human desire later became a lingering shadow in his heart.
Tian Xiao’e’s temptation, although it provided him with an opportunity to rebel against patriarchy and feudal rites, made him crazy indulge and release long-suppressed human desires.
But this temptation also cost him the price of losing all his family business and almost being nailed to the pillar of shame.
Regarding desire, George Bernard Shaw said: “There are two tragedies in life, one is that your desires are not satisfied, and the other is that your desires are satisfied”.
Man’s primitive desires are like a flood beast, and once released, they cannot be controlled.
In the face of desire, Bai Xiaowen staged two tragedies: when his desire was not satisfied, he suppressed pain and hated patriarchy and feudal rites to the bone; When his desires are satisfied, his mental and physical repressions are released intensively, and because he indulges himself, he loses everything and ruins his reputation.
Everyone has a “beast” of desire living in their hearts, should it be released? How do I release it? It depends on your intelligence and ability.
Release just right, it will free you, and if you release too much like Bai Xiaowen, it will devour you.
Whether to be the master of desire or the slave of desire, desire cannot be the master, you yourself have the final say!
