The first time I saw Zani was on a snowy night. It was snowing outside the window, and her character portrait was on my computer screen: a woman in a neat business suit, with her hair tied up high, standing expressionlessly in the city night, with light and shadow floating around her. I was shocked, and felt that this woman named Zani looked very much like a strange woman I had seen on the streets of Harbin – equally silent, equally calm, with the snow of the northern winter hidden in her eyes.
Chi Zijian said: “Women who live in the snowy wind in the north have fire in their hearts.” Zani is such an existence. She is a resonator in “Mingchao”, a character who walks through rules and systems. Not everyone will like her – she has no charming demeanor, nor a warm glow. Her attribute is fire, but her fire is hidden very deeply, like the ground fire that has not yet been extinguished in the frozen soil under the snow, burning quietly, not exposed, not noisy.
Most of Zanni’s skill names contain words like “watch”, “silent”, and “judgment”. I read these words slowly, as if I was reading the mood of a middle-aged female accountant in a small northern town when she was alone doing accounting every day. Her “silent negotiation” is her way of refusing to be controlled by emotions, and her “sleepless watch” is the bottom line that she does not allow herself to slack off. Her world is the world of computer screens and audit reports, and the world where even the aroma of coffee cannot cover up the pressure and fatigue.
The women in Chi Zijian’s works are often not passionate and flamboyant, but they always appear to be the most resilient in winter. They live alone, bear alone, have their own understanding of the world, and have an unspoken love. Zanni is this kind of “winter girl”: she does not cry or laugh, she lives in the morning when the air conditioning blows in the city, and lives in the overtime night when the neon lights cannot shine.
In the game, her most representative line is: “The most urgent thing? Get off work.” The first time I heard this sentence, I was a little sad. What kind of irony in exhaustion is that? When many characters were shouting “start the war” and “attack”, she shouted “get off work”. It’s so similar to our reality: countless female white-collar workers are not looking forward to promotion or success every day, but to leave the building that is too cold and decorated with lights on time. They don’t want to conquer the world, they just want to keep their sleep and a hot meal.
Chi Zijian often writes about the snow in the north. Women walking in the snow are often the loneliest and the most powerful. Zani’s “burning flame form” is a kind of release after being forced to the limit, and it is a high-temperature counterattack after her long-term inner repression. Her anger comes suddenly, but she is rational; she never takes the initiative, but fights back the hardest when necessary. Isn’t this contrast a true portrayal of those women who live silently on the margins of society? They are tepid, not fighting or competing, but once they are pushed to the bottom, they can fight back with silence and shatter all prejudices with patience.
Zani’s “beacon of the future” is a guardian skill. I understand it as her final belief in the future, the team, and her persistence. Even in the mud, she is still looking for a way to tomorrow; even if it is cold all around, she still warms others in her own way. In reality, aren’t those women who silently carry the work, help others out, and do not fight for credit in the unit like this? They are the most stable link in the office and the most unshakable beam in the family. They may be inconspicuous, but without them, everything will collapse.
Chi Zijian once said: “Writing about a woman is not just about what she did, but also about what she endured.” In Zanni, we see not only the choices she made, but also how much expression she gave up for survival. Her silence is not incompetence, but restraint; her expressionless face is not indifference, but protection.
Zanni is the kind of person who you will not remember after seeing her once, but when you walk home alone on a cold night in your life and recall the days when you were wronged but had nowhere to vent, you will think of her. She represents the female group of an era: they have education, ability, and temper, but can only be a “rational and gentle” person in compliance and regulations. Their emotions are formatted, their dreams are compressed, and their lives are programmed. But even so, they still try to maintain their own heat and don’t want to be completely cooled down.
Zanni is not a hero, nor a chosen one. She is just a microcosm of thousands of ordinary urban women. She gets up early to catch the subway, works on data during the day, and goes home alone after get off work at night; she looks as cold as snow, but there is an unextinguished fire in her heart. She is the woman who walks silently in the “Snow Country” written by Chi Zijian, and the one who waits for spring in the cold.
In this increasingly noisy world, may we all have the opportunity to become our own fire, and may every woman who walks silently like Zanni be able to welcome her own touch of spring at the end of the wind and snow.