Chapter 8 The seventh chapter Li Wendao Guoxi Qianshuxue, how about wanting to get you drunk.

According to my personal taste, among the spring flowers belonging to the Rosaceae, I think the pear blossom is the most beautiful. Although it is not easy to see pear blossoms in Chengdu, in Chengdu Phenology, it was finally decided to write about pear blossoms.Although the pear tree is one of the plants successfully domesticated by humans, it has not been domesticated into a pure garden plant that only provides ornamental flowers but does not bear fruit.That is to say, in this world, although pears bloom with white flowers like clouds every year, they will also bear abundant sweet fruits.In our cities today, the appearance of any kind of plant that bears sweet fruits must be a great challenge to the moral standards of citizens.Therefore, gardeners only plant those trees that only bloom but not bear fruit and stand by them.As for those fruit trees that tempt us to stretch out our hands all the time, and feel moral crisis at the same time, they can only grow in the countryside outside the city.Of course, this is just my wild speculation, so I think this because I believe that there is no written or unwritten rule in Chinese gardens that trees with sweet fruits cannot enter the city.

The reality is that although pear trees have better flowers than snow, when they are in full bloom, they float in the air like clouds and mist, which can decorate our lives even more. Gardeners are not likely to give it a city entry permit, and let it shake branches full of fruits to make it fragile. Humanity undergoes a brutal test. I didn't come up with such thoughts just to write this little article.A few years ago, I went to Colorado State University in the United States to discuss some issues in the translation of novels with the English translator of my novel.The location of the university is a quiet town called Pod.As soon as you get out of the car, you can smell the smell of fermented fruit wine all over the city.It was later discovered that there were many apple trees planted along the streets.In autumn, the grass on the Rocky Mountains is golden.When a gust of wind came, the apples on the tree were shaken and fell under the tree, lying in the grass and slowly rotting, filling the wind in this small town with the sweet and sour aroma of fruit wine.Every day, after discussing the translation of the novel, I walked to enjoy the exotic scenery in this aroma.One day, I finally couldn't help asking the owner why no one picked these apples, but got a rhetorical question: What do the birds eat?Ask again, planted specifically for birds?Answer, not necessarily, you can see flowers in spring.Sometimes, Chinese people like to laugh at foreigners for being stupid, and this case may also serve as one of the proofs.Last October, I stayed in a small town called Zofingen in Switzerland for a few days. I watched the sojourner go to the supermarket to buy apples, and on the hill behind the house, there were apples falling under the apple trees, so I didn’t ask. what.In Rome recently, it is common to see yellow lemons and oranges hanging on street trees, and I think they are also very beautiful. Compared with flowering trees, fruit-bearing trees also have a special beauty of their own.But that's not the point of this article.I'm just a little sorry, why can't the fruiting trees stand in the middle of our city and spread a fruity fragrance that lasts longer than the fragrance of flowers?

I am a slow-tempered person, and I have never been able to succeed where I can get material benefits.But when it comes to buying a house to live in, he thinks he has encountered good luck.Not only the downstairs and the surrounding buildings share a large atrium, and there are many flowers, plants and trees in the atrium.More and the owners also have a not too big and not too small owner's park.And in the northwest corner of this park, there are actually a few pear trees along with wax plums, red plums, crabapples, cherry blossoms, and magnolias.The reason why pear trees can grow here is probably because this place is not too public.In spring, you can sit on the grass under the trees and look up at the pear blossoms that are flourishing like clouds against the sky.Looking through the photos, on March 16 last year, I took a few photos of pear blossoms in the owner's park.Then on March 18, a few pear blossoms were photographed in the botanical garden in the north of the city.I remember that I was looking for a kind of grass flower February blue, but found a few old pear trees in the botanical garden.Sitting in the shade that day, looking at the flowering pear tree lost in thought.It is to forget the emotional paths that are strongly implied in the ancient poems "The rain beats the pear blossoms and the door is closed", "The lonely empty courtyard is late, and the pear blossoms are full of the ground without opening the door", and discover the beauty of pear blossoms by yourself.

The white of pear blossom is a real pure white.The reason is that it has thicker petals than other roses.If the white petals are too thin, they will be reflected by the color of the calyx, and other colors will seep into the white.The calyx of the apricot flower is brownish red, and the petals are white and reddish.The calyx of plum blossoms is green, and in the white light, it is as green as jade.The pear blossom is held up by a long green stalk, and the green of the sepals, which are narrow compared to the corolla, cannot penetrate the thick petals.As a result, the corolla composed of five petals in front of the eyes is just a piece of pure and clean white.There is another special thing about this white color, that is, it does not reflect sunlight like other white flowers.Instead, it attracts sunlight, turning that whiteness into a mass of solidified light.Ten or twenty flowers are held up by long green flower stalks and clustered on the branches.And in this silky white, there is also a very beautiful red embellishment.When the flowers are about to open, the buds loosen, and there is a faint red line around the buds that are about to bloom.The flowers are in full bloom, exuding a faint fragrance, and attracting bees and butterflies. On the stamens clustered in the center of the white corolla, the filaments are covered with little red anthers.No wonder the ancients felt a little melancholy when writing about pear blossoms.Facing something that is too beautiful, it is easy for people to sigh for the magic of creation.The ancient Greek god Zeus said: "Only the ephemeral and perishable things are made so beautiful by me!"

As if to increase people's emotions, Li Shu himself created a strong contrast between old and delicate.Compared with other spring blooming varieties of the Rosaceae, the branches of the pear tree are the most twisted and old.The most conspicuous thing is the thick bark of the pear tree, which is dark and deeply cracked. The trunk is like this, and so are the branches, showing the delicate and fragile beauty of the flowers on the branches.A German botanist said that flowers are the oldest messengers of human emotions, allowing us to see the secrets of our emotions while watching them.The pear tree is like this, holding out the purest and most beautiful flowers from the oldest branches, making people deeply appreciate the secret of life-making people feel joyful and sad at the same time.

Last year, I didn't take the time to go to the suburbs to see pear blossoms.Near Chengdu, in spring, every year, several places call for the Pear Blossom Festival to attract people from the city to go for a spring outing.This spring, I will always pay attention to the news of pear blossoms in the suburbs.Bai Juyi wrote a poem "Wen Lihua gave Liu Shiming", in which there is such a sentence: I heard that Guoxi Qianshuxue wanted to make you drunk. However, this year, many festivals focusing on flowers around Chengdu have been postponed one by one, and there is no news of "Guoxi Qianshuxue".The pear blossoms have not bloomed for a long time, and it is still raining day after day in the late spring cold. Because of a damn movie, there are constant phone calls from Beijing and Hangzhou urging to go.On March 17, I went to Xinjin, the "Guoxi" (actually south) of Chengdu.That place is one of the five Tianjin in Wang Bo's poem "Wind and Smoke Looking at the Five Tianjin".In the past, there was a wide bridge on the ancient ferry of Minjiang River.Cross the bridge and get off the highway. There is a pear flower ditch there. Every year, pear blossoms bloom all over the stream and the hills on both sides of the stream.It is one of the places where people in Chengdu go to see pear blossoms.Tomorrow I will go to the film preparation team, the trip cannot be postponed, and when I return to Chengdu, the pear blossom season must have passed.Had to try my luck today.Go out of the city, take the expressway, get off the expressway, and enter Lihuagou.The clouds in the gloomy sky gradually cracked, and brighter and brighter sunlight leaked out, but after entering the ravine, Lihua was still asleep.From a distance, I saw a few trees with white flowers, plucking through thorns and thorns, but when I came closer, there were a few plum flowers.And Xitian opened his eyes, and Yishushu Lihua also made people excited.Tired, I sat on the soft ground and enjoyed the increasingly intense smell of green grass and loess in the warm sunshine.I also saw many yellow dandelions and bittern around me, as well as bees singing.Then, go to a farmyard for tea and dinner.Still not reconciled, he asked the owner for news about Pear Blossom.The master pointed to the hill behind the house.When I went up the hill, I first saw a peach blossom in full bloom.When I got closer, it was a plastic fake flower.The surrounding old-looking pear tree buds are still tightly wrapped by green calyx.I stood in front of the fake flowers and laughed dumbfounded.Looking up again, this time, I saw a few trees with white flowers on the top of the most sunny slope.Not Li Hua.Plum blossoms are denser, finer and more misty.Going up, it turned out to be a few pear blossoms that bloomed early.The pure white petals are fully opened, and in the center of the flower, the stamen with red anthers surrounds the green pistil.A faint scent of flowers radiates amidst the buzzing of bees.

On this day, I saw the first few pear blossoms that bloomed this year.The time was March 17, which happened to be between the two days of March 16 and 18 when I saw pear blossoms in the city twice last year.It's just that at this time last year, the pear blossoms were already in full bloom, but this year, in the small park where the pear blossoms were photographed last year, there is no news of those few pear blossoms. March 19, 2011 in Beijing