A Different Kind of Perfection: Another Legend of Love and Freedom

* For more infor­ma­tion about Imper­fect Mobi­liza­tion, please refer to “Imper­fect Mobi­liza­tion: A Vic­to­ri­ous Escape from Self-Awak­en­ing”

A few years after the sci-fi block­buster “The Imper­fect Mobi­liza­tion,” cre­at­ed by the Fan broth­ers, gar­nered numer­ous pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al awards, we’ve received a some­what unex­pect­ed sequel, “Barn­a­by: A Per­fect Pet.” Ini­tial­ly, I was a bit appre­hen­sive, as “The Imper­fect Mobi­liza­tion” seemed to per­fect­ly cap­ture the themes of “per­fec­tion” and “accep­tance.” Would forc­ing a sequel be a poor imi­ta­tion? Read­ing it, I was final­ly reas­sured. It turns out this is an equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing par­al­lel saga, more a com­pan­ion piece to the orig­i­nal than a sequel.

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The orig­i­nal work itself is a mas­sive sto­ry, far exceed­ing the scope of a typ­i­cal pic­ture book, but the Fan broth­ers had much mate­r­i­al they did­n’t have time to present in that book. The orig­i­nal Eng­lish title, “Barnabus Project,” lit­er­al­ly trans­lates as “Barnabus Project,” tells the sto­ry from the per­spec­tive of imper­fect pets labeled “failed projects,” depict­ing their dreams and strug­gle for free­dom. The sto­ry’s tri­umphant escape of self-awak­en­ing is thrilling, but that cli­max can eas­i­ly lead read­ers to believe the cre­ators favored “imper­fec­tion.” In real­i­ty, the Fan broth­ers weren’t so absolute.

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Two details in the orig­i­nal paint­ing are par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy. One is when Barn­abas is about to escape the Per­fect Pet Shop, he invol­un­tar­i­ly stops and earnest­ly admires Barn­a­by, the “suc­cess­ful project.” To Barn­abas, Barn­a­by, with his larg­er eyes and “fur as fluffy as cot­ton can­dy,” is tru­ly per­fect. Of course, this does­n’t deter Barn­abas from his deter­mi­na­tion to escape free­dom. Anoth­er is near the end, when Barn­abas and his fel­low escapees “dis­cov­er a place where there is abun­dant sun­light…” To the left-cen­ter of the paint­ing, a lit­tle girl walks a pet. Isn’t the pet she’s hold­ing a Barn­a­by? Barn­abas, hid­ing behind a blade of grass under a tree, must be feel­ing a mix­ture of emo­tions. This scene sug­gests that the three Fan broth­ers did­n’t com­plete­ly dis­miss the val­ue of the “per­fect pet.” The two elder­ly peo­ple sit­ting on a park bench on the right side of the paint­ing, feed­ing a squir­rel, are mod­eled after the Fan broth­ers’ par­ents. Do you think this paint­ing is sig­nif­i­cant?

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The com­pan­ion book, “Barn­a­by the Per­fect Pet,” was essen­tial­ly cre­at­ed using this paint­ing as its start­ing point. The Fan broth­ers recre­ate the scene at a sim­i­lar point in their new book, using a near­ly iden­ti­cal image. It still incor­po­rates all the ele­ments of the orig­i­nal paint­ing, but the nar­ra­tive shifts to the per­spec­tive of the lit­tle girl and Barn­a­by: “On a sun­ny, warm day, they can once again go for a walk in the park togeth­er.” The text and images still seam­less­ly inte­grate! I say “almost the same image” because, upon clos­er inspec­tion, you can actu­al­ly see some sub­tle dif­fer­ences. For exam­ple, you can rough­ly tell that the new scene is slight­ly lat­er in time (as evi­denced by the posi­tion of the fly­ing bird), and the pos­tures of the two elder­ly peo­ple on the bench have also sub­tly changed. It’s more like two con­sec­u­tive scenes from a movie, but to uncov­er more inter­est­ing vari­a­tions, it’s up to the read­er to com­pare the two images using the “spot the dif­fer­ences” tech­nique.

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More broad­ly, the Fan broth­ers may be hop­ing read­ers will “find the dif­fer­ence” between the two books. In the new work, read­ers will see that the life of a “per­fect pet” is not always easy, and for Barn­a­by and his com­pan­ions, life is not always a smooth jour­ney. When a new gen­er­a­tion of “per­fect pets” is intro­duced, such as the new prod­uct Rain­bow Barn­a­by, Barn­a­by seems less per­fect. He and his com­pan­ions may be alien­at­ed, for­got­ten, elim­i­nat­ed, and even thrown into the trash can on the side of the road… What went wrong? What is true per­fec­tion?

In an inter­view, the three Fan broth­ers clear­ly expressed their orig­i­nal inten­tions for the film. Ter­ry said that “Barn­a­by the Per­fect Pet” was based on a reflec­tion on the phe­nom­e­non of “child stars”: what hap­pens when such stars begin to fade or are replaced by new stars?

Eric said that the book also focus­es on the crit­i­cism of mate­ri­al­is­tic con­sumerism and dis­pos­able con­sump­tion behav­ior. In the com­mer­cial soci­ety, “per­fec­tion” is con­stant­ly chang­ing, and prod­ucts will always be replaced by the “lat­est” and “best” things.

Devin said that they hope to let Barn­a­by embark on a hero’s jour­ney. Fac­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment, numer­ous obsta­cles and var­i­ous tests, Barn­a­by will even­tu­al­ly return to his home and become a bet­ter per­son because of the adven­tures he once had!

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“Barn­a­by the Per­fect Pet” attempts a par­al­lel nar­ra­tive with “The Imper­fect Mobi­liza­tion.” The two sto­ries take place in rough­ly the same time and space, but due to their dif­fer­ent pro­tag­o­nists and per­spec­tives, they present com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences at dif­fer­ent lev­els of life, mak­ing us feel as if we are in dif­fer­ent worlds. But on clos­er inspec­tion, these two worlds are inex­tri­ca­bly linked, or per­haps even deeply inter­con­nect­ed. This reminds me of the black and white yin and yang fish in the Taoist Tai Chi dia­gram, which, though clear­ly divid­ed into two halves, form an inter­con­nect­ed uni­ty with­in this bina­ry oppo­si­tion. The Fan broth­ers’ father, Mr. Fan Guang­di (the elder­ly man in the bowler hat in the pic­ture), was a life­long philoso­pher and a renowned Amer­i­can schol­ar of Wittgen­stein’s phi­los­o­phy. He also metic­u­lous­ly stud­ied and trans­lat­ed Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching.” The three broth­ers were like­ly influ­enced by Mr. Fan to some extent.

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In my opin­ion, “Barn­a­by the Per­fect Pet” con­tin­ues the pre­vi­ous film’s explo­ration of themes of “per­fec­tion” and “accep­tance,” but it also focus­es on recon­struct­ing and decon­struct­ing the con­cept of “per­fec­tion.” In the sto­ry, Barn­a­by is both per­fect and imper­fect. Com­pared to “failed project” Barn­a­by, Barn­a­by can be con­sid­ered per­fect at a cer­tain stage and accord­ing to cer­tain stan­dards; but com­pared to the new prod­uct, Rain­bow Barn­a­by, he becomes imper­fect. After months of strug­gling in the wild, when all his out­ward per­fec­tion fades, Barn­a­by regains per­fec­tion in the lov­ing eyes of a lit­tle girl who des­per­ate­ly search­es for him. As the Tao Te Ching states, “When all under heav­en know that beau­ty is beau­ty, then evil has already begun; when all under heav­en know that good­ness is good­ness, then imper­fec­tion has already begun.” So-called “per­fec­tion” is com­plete­ly depen­dent on so-called “imper­fec­tion,” and vice ver­sa. These are rel­a­tive con­cepts, mutu­al­ly rein­forc­ing and mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. Only when peo­ple let go of their obses­sion with per­fec­tion or imper­fec­tion can they achieve true per­fec­tion deep with­in their hearts. That is not so-called per­fec­tion, but true love and free­dom.

Near the end of the new nov­el, the lit­tle girl reunites with her long-lost Barn­a­by, who has now ful­ly adapt­ed and learned to ful­ly enjoy the free­dom of the wild. Barn­a­by could have made any oth­er choice at this point, but why did he choose to return to the lit­tle girl? Enjoy free­dom, or become some­one else’s pet—why choose the lat­ter? This ques­tion may be a ques­tion many read­ers ask. In an inter­view, the Fan broth­ers explained that “return­ing home” is cru­cial to this sto­ry. Although the lit­tle girl is tem­porar­i­ly dis­tract­ed by the appear­ance of Rain­bow Barn­a­by, the pain of sep­a­ra­tion makes her real­ize how much she loves him.

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The love between the lit­tle girl and Barn­a­by is the core of this sto­ry. Love is joy­ful, but it also expe­ri­ences ups and downs and pain, but those pains help peo­ple grow. When they reunit­ed, they both grew a lot. Barn­a­by also under­stood what is tru­ly impor­tant, became less self-cen­tered, and looked at and helped oth­er per­fect or imper­fect pets with empa­thy. In fact, their rela­tion­ship has long tran­scend­ed the con­cept of “pets” and become lov­ing part­ners. There­fore, going home is nec­es­sary. It is not a shack­le, but the free­dom gained because of love.

“Barn­a­by, the Per­fect Pet”, a leg­end about love and free­dom, is an exten­sion and sup­ple­ment to “The Imper­fect Mobi­liza­tion”, and it can be said to be a per­fect end­ing.

Writ­ten in Bei­jing on May 6, 2024

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