Fortress Besieged is Qian Zhongshu's only novel. It was written in 1944, completed in 1946 and published by Chen Guang Publishing Company in 1947. This is the author's "haggle over every penny" in the predicament, and the novel is "based on his familiar times, familiar places and familiar social classes." But the characters and plots that make up the story are fictional. Although some characters have some real shadows, everything is fake; Some plots are slightly true, but the characters are all made up. (Jiang Yang's "Memorizing Qian Zhongshu and Besieged City") For example, Fang Hung-chien borrowed from two relatives: one was ambitious but ignorant, always complaining; An arrogant and conceited person. But neither of them has the experience of Fang Hung-chien, and the author's own experience, such as studying abroad and being a university professor, coincides with his works. The author may have got some inspiration from them, but he is sitting in the wrong position.

The novel was very popular after it came out, and it was published in three editions in less than two years. After liberation, due to political and other reasons, the book failed to be reprinted in Chinese mainland and Taiwan Province for a long time. The book gradually faded out of people's sight. Once out of print for 30 years, only piracy appeared in Hong Kong. /kloc-in the 1960s, Xia Zhiqing, a sinologist living in the United States, spoke highly of the book in The History of Modern Novels in China, which once again attracted people's attention. 1980 was revised by the author and reprinted by People's Literature Publishing House, which aroused strong repercussions. Since then, the author has slightly revised it several times. Qian Zhongshu's wife, Jiang Yang, once wrote Remember Qian Zhongshu and Besieged City. She has a very interesting account of the writing of Fortress Besieged and the relationship between some characters and prototypes in the novel. Please refer to.

Fortress Besieged depicts the hesitation and emptiness of some intellectuals in China under the anti-Japanese war environment with comic irony through the emotional and marriage entanglements between the protagonist Fang Hung-chien and several intellectual women and Fang Hung-chien's experience from Shanghai to the mainland. Fortress Besieged is more than just a love novel. Its contents are various, and its themes and symbols are multi-level. The symbol of Fortress Besieged comes from the foreign idiom quoted in the dialogue of the characters in the book: "Marriage is like a golden painted birdcage, the birds outside the cage want to live in it, and the birds inside the cage want to fly out; So leave, leave, and there will be no games. " He also said it was like "a besieged castle". People outside the city want to rush in, while people in the city want to escape. "

But it is obviously not Qian Zhongshu's original intention to talk about the dilemma of Fortress Besieged only by marriage. The dilemma of Fortress Besieged runs through all levels of life. Later, Fang Hung-chien mentioned this matter again and commented, "I feel this way about everything in life recently." This is a pen for punctuating questions. Qian Zhongshu arranged many variations in the whole book, which made the symbolic meaning of Fortress Besieged transcend the marriage level and formed a multi-voice song. The whole plot of the novel is the siege and escape of young men and women in the intellectual circle in love disputes, which deeply shows the situation that some intellectuals are trapped in the spirit of "besieged city". This is the profound point of the theme of Fortress Besieged.

Fortress Besieged begins with the metaphor of "besieged city", which vividly shows the dilemma of "besieged city" of human beings: constant pursuit and subsequent dissatisfaction and boredom with the success pursued, the contradiction and transformation between them, the interweaving of hope and disappointment, joy and pain, persistence and vacillation-all these constitute everything in life. The dilemma of Fortress Besieged tells us that the result of life pursuit is likely to be illusory and seemingly pessimistic, but it is a serious pursuit in the bones, and the enthusiasm is buried deep in peace, just like Qian Zhongshu's scholar life. He exposed the illusion of pursuing the ultimate ideal and goal, which may make the pursuit process no longer just a means, but make its own meaning recognized and recognized, and let us understand that the pursuit and hope are endless and will not fall into nothingness.

But Qian Zhongshu doesn't want to simply interpret this metaphor. He also wants to use another word to eliminate the symbol of "besieged city" from time to time. Qian Zhongshu's wife, Jiang Yang, once said that if Fang Hung-chien and his ideal lover, Tang Xiaofu, were married, and then they accumulated their love into resentment, or even broke up, it would truly conform to the literal meaning of Fortress Besieged. Qian Zhongshu also said something similar when he criticized Wang Guowei for misreading A Dream of Red Mansions in Tan Yi Lu. Fang Hung-chien wanted to enter the besieged Tang Xiaofu, but he couldn't. Su once thought that she had entered Fang Hung-chien's besieged city, but in fact she was outside. When she married Cao Yuanlang and lived a real bourgeois life that Qian Zhongshu thought was absolutely necessary to escape, she let nature take its course. She once seemed to have entered a cultural siege, but only when she became a rich official did she really find her own place to live. You forced her with a gun. Fang Hung-chien didn't want to live in Sun Roujia, so he went in a daze. After marriage, he also has the impulse to rush out, but he is a passive person, afraid to act and will not act. On the surface, Fang Hung-chien's experience of going to San Lv University fits the metaphor of "besieged city" best, but in fact, Fang Hung-chien can't feel at home in San Lv University because he still has some basic ethics of intellectuals, or the most basic ethics of being a man.

The immediate background of Fortress Besieged is 1937 and a few years later, it is the period when China was invaded by Japanese imperialism. However, to understand Fortress Besieged, we must go back to modern times, especially since the Opium War. Under the artillery fire and warships of imperialist powers, China was forced to contact with the world, and the ancient civilization of the Chinese nation and western civilization began unprecedented confrontation, collision, conflict and even convergence and integration. This cultural phenomenon is embodied in a large number of international students-Qian Zhongshu is one of them, so it is of typical significance to dissect it.

As a great scholar who is well versed in Chinese and Western cultures, it is almost inevitable for Qian Zhongshu to understand the spiritual dilemma of Fortress Besieged from a cultural perspective, thus producing a profound sense of loneliness and absurdity. At the end of the book, after experiencing the failure of education, love, career and family (marriage), Fang Hung-chien lamented that he was afraid of making enemies with people in small counties, but he hated being indifferent to people in big cities and felt that he made enemies with people. Even a tiny bug is complacent and wants someone to put it under a microscope. The loneliness in the crowd and the desolation in the excitement make him, like many people living on this island, feel like an island without a bank. The exclamation of life in existentialism philosophy is obviously introduced here. This cultural dilemma and spiritual dilemma happened in the fierce conflict between the declining boss China and modern capitalist civilization, so we saw such a thought-provoking picture: passing by a foreign bakery, the kitchen window was brightly lit and shone on all kinds of cakes. An old man in rags stood outside the window, staring at the things in the window, with a basket on his arm and a rough clay doll and a sticky wax paper in his hand.

There is also the famous ancestral clock at the end of the book, the precious clock given by Fang Hung-chien's father to his son and daughter-in-law as a wedding gift, and the "very accurate" clock that is only 7 minutes slow. Now it has been five hours slow: this outdated timer inadvertently contains irony and sadness about life, which is deeper than all words and all smiles.

Some western critics say that Fortress Besieged describes the spiritual crisis of China intellectuals under the influence of western culture, while others in China say that it shows the failure of modern western civilization in China, thus proving that capitalist civilization can't save China's theme. All this has some truth, but Qian Zhongshu doesn't seem to take an either-or position. He focuses more on mocking the absurdity, pity and shame of pseudo-intellectuals, and more on writing the embarrassment, embarrassment and dilemma in the cultural conflict between China and the West. In a broader cultural sense, "Fortress Besieged" mainly talks about the dilemma of "besieged city". Its artistic generalization and ideological implication transcend the narrow division of personal experience, national boundaries and times, which embodies the author's in-depth thinking on the whole modern civilization and life, and also condenses the author's historical reflection on the basic conditions of the whole human existence and the basic roots of human beings.

Fortress Besieged shows a subtle observation of the world and a superb art of psychological description in its writing. The author portrays Su as a talented woman who is subtle and melodramatic, while this small jasper woman is very submissive, with talent hidden behind her. However, the analysis of Fang Hung-chien's complex personality and mentality, which is clever and timid, knowing but useless, is extremely tortuous and incisive. The description of Fortress Besieged runs through the artistic conception of satirical comedy from beginning to end. The basic plot of the novel revolves around Fang Hung-chien, and many characters and scenes in the novel are presented from a square perspective. Fang's attitude of observing people and the world and the satirical style of the author behind him are intertwined, which makes the satirical technique of Fortress Besieged unique. The narrative of Fortress Besieged is not completely closely related to the characters' personalities and plot clues. The author often digress, talk about the past and discuss the present, and quote classics, which makes the metaphors and epigrams of the novel emerge one after another, greatly increasing the knowledge capacity of the novel language, but sometimes showing off knowledge too much.