Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Where is the early cherry blossom?

"I'll be back on the Cottage People's Day". Like many people in this city, I went back to my hometown before the festival to celebrate the New Year, and returned to the city after the festival.I went back to the city on "People's Day", and I really went to the thatched cottage. In Chengdu, it is said that thatched cottage is Du Fu's thatched cottage, and no one would think that there is another thatched cottage in this city.Over the years, on Ren Day, the thatched cottage seems to have activities around Du Fu, the poet saint. Before going out on this day, I searched on Baidu, and many lines of "The Caotang Renri returns" popped up.When I opened it, it was all local media's reports on the activities of worshiping the saint of poetry in thatched cottage.This year's event is that someone dressed in ancient costumes played Gao Shi and Du Fu, and they faced each other on stage.

When Gao Shi served as governor of Shuzhou, he gave a lot of help to Du Fu, a poet friend living in Chengdu.He is not based in Chengdu, but in Chongzhou, a city under the jurisdiction of Chengdu. Today, he takes the Chengwenqiong Expressway to the west, but it only takes about 20 minutes by car. At that time, it might take two days to reach Chengdu by riding a horse and sedan chair.On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year in 761 AD, Gao Cishi wrote a poem "Ren Ri Sends Du Supplements", in which there is a sentence: "Ren Ri writes poems and sends them to the thatched cottage, pity the old man and miss his hometown." Many years later, Du Fu left Chengdu and wandered In Huxiang, Gao Shi had already died of illness. He found this poem by Gao Shi from the pile of old papers. He couldn't help but have mixed feelings, and wrote the poem "Pursuing Remuneration for the Old Gao Shuzhou People to See Posts". Who should he send it to?There is nowhere to send it, just a mourning sent to myself:

Since people from Mengshu Prefecture have been writing every day, unexpectedly Qing poems have been scattered for a long time. This morning, my eyes suddenly opened, and I burst into tears and chanted quietly, just like yesterday. Today, such a deep friendship is hard to find.To make people wear the clothes of the ancients, after the geographical barrier and then the yin and yang barrier, the two poets chanted against each other is indeed a bold idea, and it is an idea that requires a lot of performers.So when I arrived at the gate of the thatched cottage, I still didn't dare to watch the poetry performance at the "Poem Sage Culture Festival".In fact, I didn't go there for this purpose, I just went to see the magnolia flowers around the thatched cottage.

On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month before returning to my hometown, I saw magnolia flowers blooming in front of the thatched cottage, and there were more branches holding fluffy buds ready to bloom.When I came back after a week, I saw that most of the fleshy petals that were open had withered, and the ones that were about to bloom had not yet opened.People are far away, and the weather information of Chengdu is transmitted from the mobile phone every day. It is all overcast, the temperature is cooling, and it is sporadic and light rain.Just like that, from New Year's Eve all the way down until the seventh day of the lunar new year.The magnolias that bloomed first were frostbitten, and the magnolias that had not bloomed all kept silent, hiding in the protection of the buds and not daring to poke their heads.

Magnolia was disappointing, but unexpectedly saw a tree of white flowers. Li Hua?pear blossom?In short, it will not be plum blossoms.The plum blossom period has come to an end, and it has long since withered.In this way, without any expectation, the cherry blossoms appeared in front of my eyes.There is no expectation, because in the culture of Chengdu—at least in the poems and essays handed down to this day, there is no description of the phenology of cherry blossoms—at least I have not read such poems and articles. On the eighth day of the lunar new year, when I went to Tazishan Park, I also wanted to see a few magnolia trees that I had seen before.Among the bamboo fences, peonies are blooming their first buds, and a few magnolia trees stand among them, just like what we saw in the thatched cottage, the ones that opened before the festival have been frostbitten and withered, and the ones that are about to open are still sleeping in the fluffy buds due to the low temperature among.When walking down the hill in the garden, near the foot of the hill, I suddenly saw a white cloud like a thick cloud.It turned out to be a big tree more than ten meters high, surrounded by several smaller trees, none of which had a single leaf, and all of them had white flowers of the same shape.White is originally silent, but the number of trees and flowers wins, giving people a particularly lively impression.Especially on the largest one, the flowers on each branch bloomed in clusters, and each cluster must have thirty or fifty small white flowers, forming huge flower balls.Can't help but stop, stay among those flower trees, dizzy in the strong fragrance of flowers.

I once traveled to Japan during the cherry blossom season in May.The first stop was to see the Ueno cherry blossoms that Lu Xun wrote, "It really looks like a crimson light cloud".I saw a lot of cherry blossoms, and experienced the scene of Japanese people going out to enjoy cherry blossoms.Of course, I also saw that many people with allergies were suffering from the pollen in the air, and they wore big masks to avoid it.After that, I went all the way north, and after a week, I ran to the front of the cherry blossom letter.After visiting a private museum, when drinking tea in the open air and looking into the distance, the owner regretted several times that if he came two or three days later, the beautiful cherry blossoms all over the slope would have bloomed.In retrospect, those cherry blossoms in my memory are all different shades of pink, and each flower is formed into a flower ball, with dozens of double-petaled flowers gathered on it: beautiful, delicate, but a bit unnatural -Typical Japanese taste.I also got a collection of waka as a gift from a Japanese friend, in which there are many poems about cherry blossoms, not only singing about its blooming, but also lamenting the withering of heroes.The petals are shaken off by the spring breeze one by one, and a winding path is gently covered by the petals, which really has a kind of quiet charm.

I still prefer to see the flowering trees in full bloom. The few cherry blossoms in Tazishan Park, all white, are in full bloom under the sky of February, not May, when memories of cherry blossoms are established in Japan.What made me confirm the cherry blossoms was a sign that said exactly: Cherry Blossoms, and it said "Japanese Cherry Blossoms".I searched on the Internet, but the Japanese cherry blossoms are a huge and complicated family.The flower shape, color, flowering period, and aroma are all different. I haven't seen many real ones, so I'm afraid I can't figure it out.But I get a general impression that all single petals are probably closer to the wild original species, and they open early.Conversely, the more complicated the double petals are, the more artificially induced they are, and they generally open late.The few plants in front of me, no matter how densely the flowers are gathered, look at the flowers one by one, they are still simple single petals, just like the native species of this family of the genus Prunus in the Rosaceae, they spread out five single petals regularly. There are twenty or thirty slender stamens in the middle with golden yellow anthers, almost longer than the petals, surrounded by jade green short and sturdy pistils.When it comes to the flowering period of cherry blossoms in the data, it is said that it is from March to May, that is to say, the early cherry blossoms bloom in March, and the late cherry blossoms can bloom all the way into May, but in Chengdu, these white cherry blossoms bloom in February .

It's a pity that this garden landscape is not well managed. Such a beautiful cherry tree has not formed a prominent landscape. Moreover, there are wires running across the tree, and there are trash cans under the tree. It is impossible to take a panoramic view. up. Even so, the passing tourists are also sighing: what a beautiful flower. Also discussing what kind of flower it is.pear blossom.Li Hua.almond blossom.Then I remembered two poems: "The rain in March is soft, and the cherry blossoms are suspicious of apricot blossoms." It seems that I am not the only one who did not expect to meet cherry blossoms.Still an old woman who seemed to come from the countryside said: "Cherries."

Botany describes cherries like this: "The bark is purple-brown, smooth and shiny, with horizontal stripes." The horizontal stripes are beautiful.Slender, slightly raised, purple-brown bark is light purple, like slender eyebrows.The plant book also said: Cherry flowers are very ornamental, and there are several Asian cherry varieties that are specially used for viewing.These ornamental cherries are varieties of cherries.The most important feature is that the stamens of the flower are replaced by another cluster of petals, forming a double cluster of flowers (that is, double petals?) Because of the lack of stamens, these varieties are impossible to bear fruit.

I have the impression that cherry blossoms belong to Japan. I only know by reading plant books. In fact, China is one of the main origins of cherry blossoms.The real hometown of cherry blossoms is the Himalayas.Japan's "Sakura Dakan" says that cherry blossoms first spread from the Himalayas to North India and Yunnan.Today, Japanese cherry blossoms are all evolved from bitter cherries native to Tengchong and Longling areas. Under artificial cultivation, the flowers change from single petals to double petals, and produce various colors from light pink to deep pink.Bitter cherry?In my novel "The Distant Hot Spring", I once described the wild cherry flowers that still grow on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but the flowers bloomed in June when the plateau's late spring came.The bright red and juicy fruit of the tall and straight wild cherry with many slender eyebrows and eyes on the bark is indeed bitter.When I was young, I climbed many cherry trees, expecting to find a wild cherry with sweet fruit, but the result was of course in vain.Those bitter cherries are only good food for birds and bears.

It is also said that the Chinese cultivated cherry blossoms in palace gardens as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties.I don't know if this is really the case, or if foreigners have the same psychological admiration as we do.But the word "cherry blossom" is indeed found in the poems of Li Shangyin in Tang Dynasty: Where the mourning zither is in charge, the cherry blossoms hang down the willow bank in Yongxiang. If it is true that the cherry blossoms are native to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China, then Chengdu is next to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the wild cherries I wrote about in my novel grow everywhere in the valleys of the Qionglai Mountains, which are only more than a hundred kilometers away.So, at least in Li Shangyin's time, there must have been cherry blossoms blooming in this city. It is said that there are cherry blossoms in Japan. It was after the twelfth century, that is, the Heian period in Japan.It is also said that the original intention of the Japanese at that time was to introduce plum blossoms, and the cherry blossoms were unintentionally carried along with those plum blossoms.I haven't seen the exact information, so it's just a "nonsense" talk, and it doesn't mean to underestimate the culture of another country. Still go back to the thatched cottage and look at the posters at the entrance of the thatched cottage. The theme of the "People's Day" event is to remember Du Fu and appreciate plum blossoms.In fact, in terms of seasons, wintersweet has long since bloomed, and red plums have come to an end. The clusters of flowers still on the branches have lost their brilliance when they were in full bloom, but the white cherry blossoms are in full bloom.Maybe, many years later, "I will return on the day of the thatched cottage", people will come here to enjoy the flowers, and what they enjoy is the Chinese cherry blossoms.After getting to know the white early cherry blossoms, when I walked around the city, I saw white cherry blossoms blooming everywhere, even on the first ring road, next to a gas station, I saw a very prosperous one , Moreover, I saw several trees in the park of the community, but they were newly planted for a few years, and the trees were not taller than wintersweet, and they were mistaken for plum blossoms from a distance.Knowing cherry blossoms this year, presumably next spring, you will be able to nourish the mood of watching cherry blossoms in advance. 2010.2.23