Chapter 10 Chapter Nine Bauhinia The Wind Blows the Bauhinia Tree, Color and Spring Garden Twilight.

After six days, I looked at the odometer, and it was nearly 2,000 kilometers. Went to the Jinsha River at the junction of Sichuan and Yunnan.I saw the drought over there.The grass is almost completely withered, and the arrow bamboos are also withered in patches at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters.The deep-rooted trees are still green. Although the green is a bit sluggish, the trees that should bloom are still full of flowers.Saw a red magnolia.Seeing Rhododendron alpine, because of the drought, those fleshy and plump leaves are very thin, and they have lost the crystal waxy luster on the cuticle of the leaves. Even so, clusters of terminal pink flowers are still held out.However, when you look closely, those petals are dry and dry due to lack of water, and their brilliance is dim, making it hard to hold up the camera.I remind myself that viewing flowers is not the main goal of my trip.Beside the country road, five-color plums are still blooming tenaciously in the dust.In the undergrowth, dry rivers, and unplanted fields, the unscrupulous Eupatorium adenophora is everywhere, with dry white flowers blooming everywhere.I heard from the locals that if you cross the river and continue south, no matter how stubborn the flowers are, it will be difficult for them to bloom.

In the more than three years since I prepared to write "King Gesar", I have often walked, visited, and felt along the Jinsha River at the border of Sichuan and Tibet.I published a book last year, but I didn't want to seem to have an unfinished fate. This time, I deliberately went to the downstream area where Sichuan and Yunnan meet for a walk.why?I'm not sure, probably related to future writing plans.In this area with towering peaks and deep valleys, in the late Qing Dynasty and the period of the Republic of China, many tragic and entangled live dramas were staged. Has been affecting today's ethnic groups, cultural and political patterns.I don't know if I'm ready to plunge headlong into it.So I say this because I'm hesitating.

In fact, aside from this heavy topic, over the years, my interest in plants has been concentrated on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Hengduan Mountains. It was only last year when I was ill, physically weak, and my hands were itchy that I came to pay attention to the plants in the city I live in. , what I really yearn for in my heart is the western plateau.But since it has been done, it should have a beginning and an end.After all, living in this city, everything in this city is not as irrelevant to me as I thought. Yesterday, no, it was the day before yesterday. The high mountains and deep valleys that had been dry for a long time became cloudy, and sporadic rain fell.In the sparse rain, flying dust fell, and the throat that had been choked by the smell of dust immediately felt much more comfortable.Walking on the road, it seems to be able to hear the sound of thirsty vegetation sucking greedily.Yesterday evening, I crossed a high mountain on the way back. First it was full of fog, and then it was filled with snow. The visibility was only three to five meters, which increased the difficulty of the road. On the backside of the mountain, I was very happy to climb over one after another and bring rainwater to the thirsty villages and fields there.

Chengdu is really a place with unique natural conditions. In the past one or two months, the cold current from the north frequently moved southward, sweeping across the north and southeast, but the Sichuan Basin hidden behind the Qinling Mountains was alone in spring. There is still a drizzle flying silently on the plain.No, it’s still more than two hundred kilometers away from Chengdu, and I’m still making a sharp turn down the circling highways on the plateau to the basin, when the phone rings, it’s a friend from Qingbaijiang, a suburb of Chengdu, saying that the Cherry Blossom Festival is opening there, please let me go Get together and take a look at the cherry blossoms by the way.

The closer you get to the Sichuan Basin, the more moist the vegetation along the road is. From time to time, there are huge trees of tung tree and neem full of flowers, which come into view.This way, the eyes are really much more comfortable. Just because I had seen enough dryness and desolation during this trip, I went out to see the blooming flowers in the morning. In particular, we must look at the redbud trees that have been photographed before this trip. They may have withered. Bauhinia blooms around me very early.When I lived in another community ten years ago, there were several plants beside the wall downstairs.Every spring, when the warm sun makes people feel sleepy, the long branches without a leaf are covered with a kind of fine red flowers.

That kind of red is hard to describe.Check it online, Wikipedia has an intuitive color spectrum, which gives this red a nice name: light pearl red.By the way, in the sun, these dense flowers do indeed shine like pearls.But the impression at that time was that there were a few trees with strange flowers beside the wall.So many tiny flowers are densely packed, almost completely covering a long branch.But never took a closer look.I think this is the attitude of most people towards the blooming and fading of the flowers around them.I also asked about the name of this flower, "There are so many flowers that it wraps all the branches, just like bees wrap a hive." The question was not serious, and most of the people who answered were absent-minded, "Maybe...probably... Probably..." Can't remember if anyone actually told the correct name.In this way, the flower blooms in the yard every year.

Later, the magazine I worked for earned some money and started a garden in the suburbs.Although it is public property, I still want to make it as beautiful as possible.Of course, it is to plant more flowers and trees on the more than ten acres of open space outside the building.It was at this time that I learned the name of this plant, which is called Bauhinia.The florist hired at that time gave the flower its common name: Mantiaohong, although it is vulgar, it is also appropriate.It has been three or four years since I left that magazine, and it has been three or four years since I stopped going to that garden. The flowers there must be very prosperous.Not only Bauhinia, but also Bignidae, Hibiscus, Michelia, Cherry, Peach, Osmanthus, Plum...they also open at the same time, right?

It is two or three years to really watch it up close.Not only can I see the beautiful flower colors, but also the densely packed small flowers, and I can see clearly that the small flowers also have exquisite structures.The five petals are divided into two parts, three petals are opened on the upper part, and two are on the lower part, forming a pouch shape and protruding forward, like the protruding lower jaw of some herbivores. The stamens and ovary are wrapped in this closed Between the two petals.The book says that Bauhinia is an arbor, but around us, as a landscape plant, it appears as a shrub.It is also said in the book that this is because the redbud is strong and easy to prune, so it is constantly shaped and grows at will into the shape desired by the person who cultivates it.

Bauhinia has a really long flowering period. At the end of February, the budding buds attached to the branches by ants were photographed, and all of them were in full bloom in mid-March.I saw the whole plant today, all the heart-shaped green leaves on the branches are fully open, and they are about to form a green crown, but the red flowers are still watching lively, and they can stay on the branches for at least a week. Nowadays, many ornamental plants in the city are not native species of China, but I still try to rely on the native species of China when I write this group of phenology notes.Bauhinia is a native species of China.Since it is a native species, I can't help but look for the articles and poems written by the ancients.

There are indeed many poems and essays about Bauhinia, but in those words, the image of the flower itself is not clear, and it is still the way to see things and express feelings.The flower tree is just a medium for prosperity. During the Anshi Rebellion, Du Fu and his family were separated in the "two capitals" (Chang'an and Luoyang). The first two couplets of the four are: The wind blows the redbud tree, the color and the spring garden are at dusk. The flowers fall and leave the old branches, and the wind returns to nowhere. We don't know what the Bauhinia looks like and how it looks. What we can feel when reading these words is the poet's deep chant of the sorrow of not being able to return to his hometown and reunite with his relatives.

Chinese classics are developed with things, and the successful ones become the habitual way of the latecomers. "I'm gone in the past, Yangliu Yiyi", and I wrote it down all the way later, mostly Liu Se hurts the farewell.And Bauhinia's mood of prosperity also has a certain direction, that is, leaving people and missing their hometown.There is also Wei Yingwu's "Seeing the Bauhinia" as evidence: "The miscellaneous flowers have accumulated, and the fragrance is alone in late spring. It is still like a tree in the old garden, and suddenly recalls the people in the old garden." And when I saw the flower tree, I saw the tree and the flowers. I just wanted to admire the magic of creation and the concrete beauty of the flower, but it did not arouse the similar emotions mentioned in ancient poems.This is cultural change.The important thing about cultural change is not whether to celebrate the festival or not, or to wear what clothes or not to wear what clothes. What is important is the change in the way people think and feel things, and the change in the way emotions are produced and expressed.Why do some people write five-character and seven-character according to the law or not? We don’t like to read it. The reason is not the form, but the lyrical and expressive way that is inherited in one continuous line, which is thousands of miles away from our state of mind today. 2010.3.28