Chapter 14 The thirteenth chapter Lilac blue bird does not pass the letter from outside the cloud, and Lilac is empty and sad in the rain.

When I opened the computer and created a new file, I thought, what can I say about Lilac?In fact, not only cloves, many Chinese plants have been written about in poems and songs—that is, plants that have been endowed with special meaning are not easy to say.Not all Chinese people know lilac, but they may all know one or two lines of lilac poems.Far away, there is a famous sentence by Li Shangyin in the Tang Dynasty: "Plantains don't show lilac knots, and each of them is worried about the spring breeze." With just two sentences of fourteen characters, the image of lilac in Chinese has been frozen, and later generations will write lilac, Just like writing about plums, orchids, bamboos and chrysanthemums, you don’t need to investigate or observe things anymore, just follow this meaning all the way down or expand.

So recently, there is the famous poem "Rain Lane" by the modern poet Dai Wangshu: "I hope to meet / a girl who is / like a lilac / full of sorrow. / She has / the color of a lilac, / the fragrance of a lilac, /Sorrowful like a lilac, /Sorrowful in the rain, /Sorrowful and wandering.” A woman is a lovable beauty if she has a certain temperament that has been passed down all the way in the poem-this kind of temperament is lilac.Although, if we pass by a tree or a clump of lilacs in mid-spring, the strong and warm fragrance will come in all directions, but as a Chinese, the cultural association is deep and long-lasting sadness and lingering.Or pass a lilac tree in a certain garden with the thin sadness in the poem, you may think of the lilac poem, but you may not know the lilac; you may know it, but you will not stop, so that you can look at the lilac tree .I even think that if many people have done this, such lilac poems would not be so popular.

Leaving aside the lilac flowers in front of us, let’s talk about lilac’s poems. This kind of symbolic meaning is fixed and spread, and there is still a connection and transformation between Li Shangyin and Dai Wangshu.That is the famous sentimental sentence of Emperor Li Jing of the Southern Tang Dynasty during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: "The blue bird does not pass the message outside the cloud, but the lilac is empty and the rain is full of sorrow. Looking back on the green wave three Chu dusk, catch the flow of the sky." However, lilacs are not really so sad. Once the flowering period arrives, they will not restrain themselves at all. The delicate flowers are gathered into panicles, and they bloom at the same time, which is simply in full bloom.When I patted a Pyracantha in full bloom in the plant circle, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a strong floral fragrance, but I knew that Pyracantha no longer had such a fragrance.Looking up, I saw a lilac tree covered with white flowers!When we say it, it does refer to those branches covered with dense terminal and lateral inflorescences that bend heavily and hang down towards the ground.How did such a prosperous flower tree cause the ancients to worry?When I came to the flowers in that village, so many bees were shuttling among them, and the buzzing sound was endless. I only heard such frequent singing of bees—the sound of fluttering their wings at the same time—beside the hive.Such excitement, such a strong message of life, how can it be connected with a word of sorrow?

However, poets don’t care about this, just keep writing according to a certain meaning. go down. Therefore, when Li Jing wrote "Sorrow in the Rain in the Lilac Empty", he not only continued Li Shangyin's melancholy, but also invited the rain, so that the lilac glowed with dark water, in the drizzle beside the Yangtze River.The emperor also passed on this ability to write sorrows to his son Li Yu. His poems on sorrows are even more famous than Naifu's: "Ask how much sorrow you can have, just like a river of spring breeze flowing eastward." The father and son surnamed Li were born in troubled times, but they were not Cao Cao and his son. They were talented in literature, rich in political strategy and military talent. Go also", had no choice but to "grow up and hate water Changdong."

This brings us to the city of Chengdu. Those poems written by Li Jing and Li Yu are also the era of subjugated poems, and also the era when the "Flower School" was born in the city we live in.It is the era when those poets who have laid a cultural foundation for the history of the city of Chengdu used soft-toned poems such as "Voice of Heartfelt Love", "Genglouzi", "Bodhisattva Man" and "Yangliuzhi" to lay out the era of love and leisure. "The flowers fall and the cuckoo cries, and the green dream is lost in the broken window." "Farewell to resentment, it's the Fang Festival, and there are thousands of cloves in the court."

Look, at that time, the Yangtze River and the North and the South were covered with clouds, and Chengdu, which was in a peaceful corner, was very leisurely. At that time, they also gave cloves the meaning of love that was fixed and popular in Chinese cultural concepts: "Doukou flowers are smoky and deep, and cloves are soft. Together." What does that mean?Firstly, the poet took a look at the objects and saw that lilacs opened their buds (so-called lilac knots) and petals unfolded. The pistils exposed by this hermaphrodite flower, that is, the combination of stamens and pistils are so similar-"concentric", and since then Departure is associated with love (also concentric).However, the significance of such a local school of aesthetics was not very prominent in the later vast torrent of poetry, because the culture of this place has never been able to smoothly enter or rise to the national mainstream. Of course, Li Bai and Su Dongpo are exceptions, because they transcend geographical limitations both geographically and culturally.Therefore, later generations commented on Huajian Ci and said: "My husband! Although the text is worthless, it is useless to the world, but it can be called work."

Later, many poems and essays that described Chengdu very well were written by Du Fu, who were outsiders. Chengdu is too leisurely, not to mention major events such as repairing the capital Jiang Yan, and even writing poems is not too labor-intensive. It's all done by foreigners. The above is what I thought of by the way when I said Dingxiang. When Chengdu is trying to make itself fit for the position of a leisure city, I have a little opinion on the cultural aspects. Now that I have said my opinion, let me say one more thing by the way. This is about the garden design of this city and the plant layout of roads and lanes.

It is often said that a city has memory.Every memory must have a carrier as a basis.The largest memory carrier of a city is of course a city's buildings.Like most cities in China, it is impossible for Chengdu to rely on old streets and buildings to carry the city’s historical memory and cultural meaning. Then, what else is there in a city that is always with people from generation to generation? More permanent, it is a plant, a tree.For Chengdu, it is the trees that existed when the city was born: hibiscus, willow, crabapple, plum, pagoda tree... When the city was born, they were in this city, which is different from the former imperial city, the former Goulan House, the former grass house and bamboo fence together constitute the basic style of the city, or it is written in poetry to give meaning, or in the courtyard, at a certain street corner, an old tree gives the common shade of several generations With a deep and specific memory, however, in today's urban layout, the territory of these indigenous plants is shrinking day by day, while more and more plants are introduced from other places and from foreign countries.Personally, I have no objection to the introduction of these plants. For example, those vigorous octagonal gold plates under the overpass are very beautiful, and because of their vigorous growth, they are also very trouble-free.The windmill grass standing together with the reeds and calamus in the pond is also very beautiful.The rows of Erythrina chinensis on the street and the Bauhinia chinensis in the garden are not unattractive, but they suddenly come too many and too fiercely, which means that the latecomers will prevail.In my opinion, there is no need for the streets to be filled with figs that can't even take root in this non-tropical city. It should be noted that they occupy the space that originally belonged to hibiscus, the space that belonged to privet and oleander Of course, there is also a part of the space that belongs to the lilac tree.In the past few days, it is the time when lilacs are in full bloom, but there are almost no distribution of lilacs in the city.A beautiful, fragrant native plant has all but disappeared from the streets, retreating into community gardens and parks as a mere adornment.The day before yesterday, I was invited to Shifang to give some ideas for the establishment of an earthquake site park. On the way back, the owner of the Sanxingdui Museum left a meal. In the museum garden, I saw a few clumps of lilac growing freely and openly.But although geographically it still belongs to the Chengdu Plain, after all, administratively it is on the territory of other administrative divisions.

Still today, on May 2nd, I only saw a few beautiful lilacs in the botanical garden in the north of the city. Going out of the city and entering the city, the 108 National Highway that is being expanded is extremely congested, but what is consoling or willing to endure such congestion is that it will be fine after the renovation, and the retaining walls on both sides of the road are painted with the beauty of the avenue after the expansion is completed , I thought, would there be a lot of lilacs on both sides of the road at that time? Really, let this city have more indigenous plants, because these plants not only beautify the environment, but also a special memory for many urban residents, especially when this city does not have many ancient buildings for our emotions to rely on, more with this Plants that accompany the city are also a surefire way to go.Plants can also add some sense of history to a city with a rich history.