Dream country.
The dreamy description of the countryside is a major feature of Beijing-style novels. Beijing writers construct their rural dreams from the viewpoint that art is a dream and emotion is true, that is, in the binary opposition between the so-called "ideal world" and the "real world" based on Zhu Guangqian, they take a quiet attitude towards the rural customs under the patriarchal clan system and strive to explore the simple beauty of human feelings, morality, exotic customs and quiet natural beauty. Shen Congwen's Xiangxi world, Fei Ming's Shan Ye in eastern Hubei, Henan Orchard City in Lv Zhi, the old countryside in Hebei, Wang Zengqi's town in northern Jiangsu, and Xiao Gan's poor areas in Jinghua all show this feature. Two new versions also inherited this style, such as the description of Tanzhe Temple and Jietai Temple. Description of the mother dwarf tiger returning to her hometown; Description of Baoding prefecture; Description of the inn; Description of brothel; The description of the eight characters, the description of the marriage of the female dwarf tiger, the description of the sedan chair and so on. In short, both the description of exuberant vitality and the expression of women's tenderness and purity and immaturity have a prominent influence on the author's fantasy. In the words of Shen Congwen's Selected Works of Old Works, it is the yearning for "a beautiful, healthy and natural life form that is not contradictory to human nature".
Compassion for life.
The novels of Beijing School mostly show sympathy for human beings. In the observation of history and culture, Beijing writers not only sincerely praised the simplicity and simplicity of uncivilized primitive civilization, but also saw the barbarism and misfortune of ethics and patriarchal clan system. At the same time, the strong academic background of Beijing School makes the writer have the tragic consciousness of society and human beings in theory. Shen Congwen and Fei Ming both pointed out the tragic aesthetic characteristics in their works very seriously. In their view, there is an inevitable connection between human divine existence and tragic existence, which determines that the tragedy of Beijing-style novels is often a tragedy of human nature. On the other hand, the pure faith in human nature of Beijing writers makes their tragedies "bright" and "smiling with pity". In this way, their way of expression is not to lose the lightness of the humble personnel in the story, but always to maintain the calmness of a writer, and there is often a sympathetic smile shadow in the faint irony. The boys and girls in Shen Congwen's Little Scene under the Moon died beautifully in the moonlight, and their love was sublimated to a lofty realm. These works show the efforts of Beijing writers to "have a deeper understanding of life or life" in their helpless sighs and sympathy for the destruction of love and beauty. There is also a tendency of social criticism, such as Shen Congwen's Garden and Husband, which shows the tragic life of beauty and ugliness, strong opposition between good and evil, and clear love and hate. This feature is more obvious in Xiao Gan's works. He advocates the struggle between losers and fate. Therefore, there are some heroic factors in his tragedy, which can be seen in the fate of Deng Shandong, Xiao Jiang and Yinziche.
Poetic expression.
The styles of Beijing writers are all lyrical. The style of their novels is related to their narrative attitude, value choice and cultural feelings. The outstanding features of Beijing-style novels are poetic pursuit in narrative and romantic atmosphere in realism. Shen Congwen likes to write novels in the form of "lyric poetry", such as Border Town, which has realistic sadness, peach blossom garden-like romance, quiet water and beautiful and meaningful poetry. Fei Ming is good at writing novels by "writing quatrains" and often transfers the symbolic meaning of poetry to novels. Beijing writers often have the consciousness of creating artistic conception. Their novels rely on scenes or images to form an ethereal three-dimensional artistic space, which gives readers great imagination. Poems, songs, essays and dances are used in many places in the two new editions, among which The Love and Marriage between the Mother Dwarf Tiger and the Old Horse can be regarded as a representative in this respect. This plot depicts Xibaipo's natural scenery and beauty of human nature from many angles, thus setting an "appropriate" and "harmonious" life background for the protagonist "Mother Dwarf Tiger and Old Horse Serialization". Therefore, the simple and quiet nature breaks away from Xibaipo people's concept of free and peaceful life, thus the mother Dwarf Tiger becomes the core of the whole novel. The author also introduces meditation and epiphany in the Zen realm into the novel. With the poetic artistic conception, the works of Beijing School tend to be scattered in structure. The novels of Beijing School often adopt the structure of scattered form and concentrated spirit, which is a typical prose structure. People say that Beijing writers are portrait stylists, mainly in this respect.