I felt deeply moved when I finished listening to Searching for Wushuang. It was an afternoon. I worked and listened at the same time. I don't own the book and I didn't want to read an e-book, so I don't remember many exact sentences. Sometimes I like to write this way: let time wash the riverbed of memory, and later pick up what remains on the bottom.
听完《寻找无双》，我很受感动，那是一个下午。我一边工作，一边听。我手头没有这本书，也不想看电子版，至今所能想起的，不会有多少具体的句子和段落。有时候我喜欢这样来写读后感，任由时间冲刷记忆的河床，我再去河底捡那些留下来的。
The book is full of Lao Wang's humor and nonsense. He describes sex without shame and mocks stuffy people with steady aim. He does it well. For example, he calls his father “one-eyed but unusually large, which makes up for the lack of number.” What the hell does that make up for? I fell off my chair laughing. The book is fun. As pure amusement it's fine. Especially listened to. Lao Wang thinks novels are meant to be read aloud, words are for hearing, not just for scanning with your eyes.
这本书到处可见老王的幽默和无厘头，依旧毫无忌讳地描述性爱，一如既往地讽刺古板，而且这些被老王处理得相当到位。到位到什么程度呢，举个例子，他这样形容老爹“老爹只有一只眼睛，但是出奇的大，弥补了数量上的不足。”这是他妈的什么弥补嘛，于是当时我从办公桌前，笑倒下去了。这本书很好玩，单纯用来消遣也很不错，特别是听，老王本就认为，小说是用来读的，文字也是用来读的，不是看的。
I think a book has a heart. It pumps blood through every word. When I read, I want to find that heart. About a third of the way in I remembered Lao Wang's preface: this is a story about an encounter with wisdom. I listened with that in mind. I couldn't decode all his mappings, but I felt two things that seemed close to the heart.
我个人觉得，一本书也有心脏，它为全书的每个字输送血液，看书时我总想知道它的心脏在哪。当我听到三分之一，我才想起了老王在序言里说，这是一个关于智慧的遭遇的故事。我带着这点听完全书，可惜仍没搞懂他的各种映射。但是至少有两点，我觉得我摸到了，我相信那是靠近它心脏的位置。
Searching for Wushuang carries at least three meanings for the name Wushuang. First, Wushuang is a person: the cousin, the fiancée the protagonist searches for.
《寻找无双》，无双至少有三层含义。第一层，无双是一个人，是男主人要寻找的表妹，是他的未婚妻。
Second, Wushuang stands for truth. Everyone in Chang'an hides where Wushuang went — the plot is about concealment, but really it's about hiding some truths. The protagonist's search is the search for truth itself. When I learned Lao Wang wrote about soldiers surrounding a city and that the book was written in 1993, things clicked. I had known bits of what happened from outside sources; inside official circles it's as if it never happened, just like Wushuang never existed. Understanding the historical context made me moved. I didn't expect Lao Wang to have such courage. He is a true knight, charging straight into a forbidden field. I remember him saying literature was his foothold; from that foothold he could attack the circle, attack the sunny world. He did exactly that.
第二层，无双隐喻真相。长安城里所有人都隐瞒了无双的去处，这是故事，实际上是隐瞒了某些真相，而男主人要寻找的，正是真相本身。当我知道老王在书中描述了一个官兵围成的情节，当我知道无双与官兵围城有关，当我知道老王是在 1993 年写的这本书，我就知道他在说什么了。以前，我在 qiangwai 了解过发生的一些事，当然，qiangnei 没有再提过这件事，仿佛它未曾发生过一样，如同无双未曾存在。在历史背景下理解老王的意图，这令我大受感动，我真没想到老王居然有这般勇气，他是真骑士，单刀直入到禁区里。我记得老王曾说，他赖在文学上，可以寻找到一个立脚点，有了这个立脚点，他就可以攻击这个圈子，攻击整个阳的世界。他是真的这般做，攻击整个“阳”的世界。
Third, Wushuang stands for wisdom. Wisdom is fuzzy; Lao Wang doesn't give a neat definition in his essays, if I recall. To me wisdom is reason guided by goodness. I don't know if Lao Wang means the same, but I suspect reason sits at the core of his thought. For him, humor is the surface. Freedom is not the core. Reason is the source — the foundation he builds on. From that base he builds freedom and wit. He assembles reason, freedom, and humor into a unique style of being. I call that a stance of existence: not merely an attitude or a pose, but a whole way of standing on the ground with edges and a core.
第三层，无双隐喻智慧。智慧是个很模糊的概念，包括在老王的散文里，也不见得有关的解释，如果我没记错的话。关于智慧，我所知道的，是以善为导向的理性，这是我理解的智慧的本质。我不知道与老王理解的智慧是否相似，但我想相信他那边的智慧概念里，必定有理性。据我对老王的理解，有趣是他思想的表面，自由仍不是最核心之处，理性才是他全部思想的最核心所在，那是他全部思想的起点，也是他的根基。从底子来说，老王并不是一个有趣的人，而是一个严肃的人，他极其严肃且认真地寻求人类精神世界的根基。在理性之上，他搭建自由，搭建有趣。他把理性、自由、有趣搭建在一起，构成了一种独一无二的存在风格。这种存在风格，我喜欢用另一个词来描述，叫存在姿态。姿态，不是态度，不是姿势，而是一种带着某种棱角和内核站在大地上的整体面貌。
What moved me again was that stance. Maybe I've not seen enough people — among those I know, those in history, or the ones I only read about — few have such a clear stance. Most people exist like animals; they lack the mark of a conscious self, so there's no stance. Reading Searching for Wushuang and seeing the author and his body of work as a whole, I felt that stance.
《寻找无双》这本书，再次令我感动的，正是他的姿态。可能我阅历不够，我看过的人，包括身边的、未曾谋面的、历史的、虚构的，我很少看见有存在姿态的人。当然，存在姿态，带有很抽象的意味了，大多数人仍是以动物体的形式存在，而缺乏意识体的显著特征，也就没有所谓的姿态可言。第三层的理解，并不是就《寻找无双》这部作品本身而言，而是跳出到更远的地方，把《寻找无双》、作者以及他的其他作品当成一个整体看待，这就扯远了。
People rank writers in tiers. I don't care for that. I only care what a writer is trying to express. I can't say if I fully grasp Lao Wang, but from what I do understand, I admire him. He's a fine presence. I don't know what tier Searching for Wushuang belongs to, but I will recommend it. Tell others: this is a good gift left by a knight. If you look carefully you will find beautiful and powerful things that come from the depths of the human spirit. Their value is timeless.
人们常常用几流来评判一个作家，我向来没有这个爱好和视角，我只关注那些作家，千辛万苦绞尽脑汁到底在表达什么。我不知道有没有理解到老王的表达，凭着我所能理解到的，我就很欣赏他，他是一个很好的存在。我也不知道《寻找无双》属于几流作品，但是我会推荐给其他人，告诉他们，这是一个骑士曾留下的很不错的礼物。如果仔细看的话，会找到很美丽的东西，而这美丽且充满力量的东西，来自人类精神世界深处，其价值与意义永恒。