Chapter 9 Year of the Tiger

I really didn't expect that in a blink of an eye, I had reached the ninth year of Wangwang.A few years ago, when I first entered my octogenarian years, I felt a little bit of "the dead are like a husband" to the passing of time and the elegance of the time sequence.Over the past two or three years, my nerves seem to have been numb to the passage of time. Even in the new year or the old year, I feel that there is a deep gap between the last day of the old year and the first day of the new year, as if the sky is not One color, one place is not a state, and I suddenly realized that I had to start from the beginning and "be a man" again; now I feel that although it is "one yuan and one beginning", the "Vientiane" has not been "renewed", and today is the same as yesterday. They are all exactly the same, except for one year older, I don't feel the slightest change.I can no longer write such words as "eighty narrations", because there is really no "narrative" to "express".

However, today, time series is changing from a big bull to a tiger. Perhaps it is because the tiger has impressed me so deeply. Over the past few years, my indifference to time has changed into a concern for time. , I gained another year of life.I suddenly felt that this year was really a big deal. It told me that I was definitely one year older.Li Bai's poem: "Gao Tang's mirror is sad with white hair." I seldom look in the mirror. The white on the top of my head is what I feel, not what I see with my own eyes. The white seems to have weight and weighs heavily on my head.As for the wrinkles on my face, I don't even feel them, I don't even think about them.

No matter how I feel, I am old, and that is a fact beyond the slightest doubt.I've grown older than I planned, exceeded my expectations.Both my father and mother only lived to be over 40 years old, and my original first account was to live to 50 years old.It is said that people's life span is hereditary, and I will never live much longer than my parents.However, fifty or sixty years passed in a flash.At sixty and Jiazi, I had just been released from the cowshed at that time, so I had no time to think about my age.Confucius' seventy-three and Mencius's eighty-four are also like lightning, fleeting.I have already forgotten the original plan. There is only a budget but no final accounts. This is really inconsistent with legal procedures.But in another blink of an eye, I have become the me I am today, and I am already alone.According to foreign methods, rice birthday should be celebrated next year.

Was the 87 years I lived short or long?From the perspective of human life, it is long enough.As the saying goes: "Life is seventy years old and rare", I have passed the seventy-year-old age of 17, can it be considered long?From another point of view, it is also long enough.I have never had this idea, and I have never seen any Chinese and foreign scholars have it.It was my "spark of genius" that flashed out this "ordinary truth".Now, the history of China, an ancient civilization in the world, can only be said to be 5,000 years old at best, and I have lived for one-fiftieth of 5,000 years. Can you say it is not long enough?Think back to 5,000 years ago, humans may have come down from trees for some time, invented fire long ago, were able to use tools, played a lot of tricks, and called themselves "spirits of all things".However, judging from today, the tricks are limited after all. The so-called "Palace in the Sky" at that time may refer to the moon, which was elusive.But today humans have landed on the moon.The mysterious mist that shrouded the Moon Palace has been revealed to the world today.The vicissitudes of the world are not insignificant, but in the long 5,000 years, I have accounted for nearly a hundred years. Can it be said that it is not long enough?

Human beings have two eyes on the face, not on the back of the head, so they can only look forward, and if they want to look backward, they have to turn around.However, when I recall, I can look backwards.What I saw was an extremely long road hidden in the clouds and mist, starting from a remote small village in Shandong.From there, I traveled to Jinan, Beijing, and Germany and Switzerland.This road has always been behind me, or rather, I have been dragged behind me.After staying abroad for more than ten years, I dragged this road again, or this road dragged me back to my dear motherland again.Then, within a few decades, my feet traveled to many countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the trajectory of my actions became, of course, the road again.This road has not been broken an inch, it sometimes twists and turns, bumps and bumps, and sometimes it goes smoothly and happily, and at this moment, it ends at my feet.However, I know that as soon as I lift my legs, this road will immediately start to extend, until it reaches the place full of wild lilies.When it will get there, I don't know, but it doesn't look like it will be there yet.

In recent years, I have read Chinese and foreign academic history and literary history, and I have a habit that I have never heard of others: I don’t care about the academic attainments of these brilliant scholars and poets, what kind of people, what artistry, this Sex, that sex, I ignore them, I look at their birth and death dates first.As a result, I made a surprising discovery: the vast majority of them lived to a young age, usually 40, 50, or 60 years old.Let’s not talk about the few famous poets who died young, such as Li Changji in China, Shelley and Keats in England.There are really not many people who live past the seventies.When I was young, I knew that the great German poet Goethe lived to be 83 years old, the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore lived to be 80 years old, the British George Bernard Shaw, and the Russian Tolstoy all lived to be over 80 years old.I didn't even have the idea of ​​chasing them or following in their footsteps. I almost thought that it was undoubtedly "Arabian Nights".However, as I said above, once upon a time, when I looked back suddenly, the extremely long, extremely long road made by my feet dragged me to my eyes.I was taken aback: I am older than them today.I felt a tremor deep in my soul.

My current mood is that on the one hand, I feel that I am still young. In the age ranking list of Peking University professors, I am far away from the number one and the second place.Moreover, I also said that on the way to Babaoshan, I will never "stop".However, on the other hand, I really feel that I have lived too long and I am too tired.From time to time, old friends who have been friends for decades will suddenly leave the world. This feeling of "post-dead" is extremely unbearable.And unexpected and unexpected things, as well as unexpected honors, come one after another.Sometimes I receive six or seven visitors and interviewers a day.I seem to have become the attending doctor in the hospital, and the big room where I eat has become a waiting room, and the visiting patients come in by name.I also became a prop for taking photos, the subject of "interrogation" interviews, and took turns taking pictures with me in shifts.I am most afraid of the photographer's shout: "Smile!" Taking pictures with old friends, I smile from the bottom of my heart.But to some strangers, can I laugh?This reminds me of the smirk or wry smile scene in the TV series "Look at This Family", and I feel uneasy.

There are also bundles of letters and newspapers every day.People who wrote letters were almost all over the country, including men, women and children.The content of the letter was varied and unimaginable, and I became an omnipotent and omniscient saint, a god-man.An old friend of mine said in his article: "Ji Xianlin will reply to every letter." A long-time assistant, as well as my students, asked them to reply on their behalf, so that they barely passed.I once told my assistant that from now on I would never accept interviews, promise to be an "editor-in-chief" or "consultant", and never write again.However, before the words landed, it came again.Come, think again and again, I can't refuse any one, so I have to eat my own words and compromise.

This is the source of my ambivalence.I very much miss the life of the "untouchables" during the ten-year catastrophe. At that time, except for being criticized sometimes, it was really carefree.Walking on the road, I don't say hello to anyone, no one says hello to me, no one blames me, and I don't blame anyone.I often think of Zhuangzi's words now: "Big pieces work me to live, and slow me to death." This is the real saying of seeing the Tao. I sometimes really think about death now.Please don't get me wrong, I will never commit suicide, so don't be on strict guard against me.Everyone is afraid of death, but I am not very afraid of death.In 1967, my house was ransacked by the "Lafayette". The hats on my head were so large that it made people tremble with fear.I couldn't think about it for a while, and I made a plan to commit suicide, and my pockets were full of sleeping potions and pills.I am a "reactionary bourgeois authority", and I can only use bourgeois methods of suicide, and must not use feudal methods of suicide, such as diving, hanging, jumping off a building, and the like.I chose the place where I committed suicide, and that place was among the reeds in the Old Summer Palace, so it would not be easy to be found.I probably won't be discovered until after autumn when the reeds are cut, by which time my body will probably have been rotted to the point of disrepute.Thinking of this, can my heart not shake?But before I died, I was very calm. I gave the little money I had to my aunt and Dehua, which meant that they could live on.Then when I was about to escape by jumping over the wall, the valiant Red Guards kicked in the door and escorted me to the big dining hall to criticize the struggle.Criticism is not a good thing, but it saved my life.The reason for criticizing in advance is to beat my prestige, because I have a "bad" attitude towards the group of minions under "Lafayette".In short, I have been on the verge of death, and the distance from death is not far away.I know what it's like to die, I don't think there's anything special about it.Therefore, since then, I think that death is not terrible, and I can live to this day, and the extra decades of living are all for nothing.An extra day to live is a day in vain.I have another lesson: the attitude towards wicked or bad people must be "bad".A nice attitude can kill, a bad attitude can save lives.

I am an ordinary person.If there is any advantage, it is that I am more diligent.I have never dared to be lazy in my life.To this day, I still have to work seven or eight hours a day.As it happens that I do not read or write on a day, I tend to toss and turn at night, berating myself for wasting the day.There is a famous poem by Cao Cao: "The old man is standing still, his ambition is a thousand miles away. The martyr's old age is full of ambition." I appreciate this poem very much.My problem is that I get carried away and forget my age.What I have done is "an old man with a strong ambition for thousands of miles".I seem to be like what the British call a teenager.I don't seem to know how many years I have to live, how many reading plans I have in my mind, and how many writing plans I have to make.On the one hand, it is a good thing for an elderly person to forget his age.On the other hand, it can only be said to be a bad thing.This is almost like being in a daze, and when you are in a daze, you dare to do everything.Two years ago, I jumped from a 1.8-meter-high window sill, which was a good example. My friends all sweated for me, and I couldn't help feeling terrified.

In this way, my current mood is often in conflict. On the one hand, I feel that I have lived too long and I am too tired, and on the other hand, I have forgotten my age; Not afraid of death, death is still quite far away from oneself.However, as a result of the contradiction, the latter often prevails. Among the "ancient poets" in China, Su Dongpo is one of my favorites.I remember that when I was composing poetry riddles in my teens, I used "The Complete Works of Su Dongpo".Although I don't understand everything, I read it in a daze.In the past one or two years, I have especially loved Su Dongpo's Ci, and I can recite many of them.I love one of them, "Huanxisha".The topic is "Visit Qingquan Temple in Qishui, the temple is adjacent to Lanxi River, and the stream flows westward".The original text is: The orchid buds at the foot of the mountain are short and dipped in the stream, the sandy road between the pines is clean and mud-free, and the cuckoo crows in the twilight rain. Who knows that there is no less in life?The flowing water in front of the door can still reach the west, and Hugh will sing the yellow chicken with white hair. Dongpo asked: "Who says there is no less in life?" I replied: "I know that there is no less in life." Now I have the feeling of "as little as possible".This is my personal statement.However, my "no matter how little" seems to be conditional in my heart: eat to live, but live is not to eat, but to work.It is better not to live than to live only to eat.As the new year approaches, I sincerely wish our country is stable and united, and the country is prosperous and the people are safe.I wish that the whole world will no longer be in such a mess as it is now, with smoldering flames everywhere and continents shaken.Bless yourself, a happy Year of the Tiger. January 27, 1998 Lunar New Year's Eve