Chapter 9 meditation in the shade

I sat in the shade with my friends.The golden sun of June shone.Before our eyes, between the green rocks and houses with gray tile roofs, flows the mighty Yangtze River heading east.We are condescending.This place used to be called Xishan, but since it has a little artificial decoration, a sports field, some flowers and trees, rockery and pavement, it has become a park.And there is a teahouse on the edge of the rock where the cool breeze comes. We sat in the tea room.It was shaded by a huge evergreen tree with all its branches.This kind of arbor with oval leaves is called Jue tree in our hometown, and it often grows on rocky ridges, providing coolness for passers-by when they rest.How I missed it when I was stranded in the desert-like north, and I deeply regretted not knowing its botanical name, until I read the words describing our hometown in a geography book. In the last sentence, the banyan shade hangs everywhere, so I guess it must be a variant of the banyan tree that grows in the tropics.

Now I sit in its shade. And there are friends who I often miss after four or five years. What shall I call my friend?I once said in a poem that he often had gentle silences.Some people call him a noble man.Gao Jie is a cold adjective, but he, as far as I am concerned, is the first friend who affects my life.He made me more tolerant and sympathetic from my impatience, aloofness and distrust of human beings.As far as he was concerned, he was a poet without much poetry.When he and I spent many lonely days together in a guild hall in an ancient northern city, we were very close; when we parted, each suffered suffering on one side, he struggled with lung disease while I struggled with loneliness and the coldness of the world , and finally began to struggle with the unreasonable society, I still miss him often.He was a friend whom no distance of time or life could separate.

This time I went back to my home in the country for a thirteen-day holiday, and then went to the county town to brave the heat and wait for the boat.Waited for another three days for the boat.Just when I was very bored, he came to the county seat from his closed countryside with no postal communication in a sailboat. But we only have a short time.Tonight I shall sleep in a boat, and tomorrow morning I shall leave my native land.The end of my journey was in a small county in the remote Shandong Peninsula.I shall go into that strange land quite alone, with ardor and courage, like an outcast.

We talked a lot, followed by a moment of silence.In this moment of silence, many memories and feelings floated in my heart. Northern winter.It has flown through the snow.A strange melancholy longing.Whenever I get a little familiar with living in an environment, I have a new desire to move.It tortured me irresistibly.I wrote to my fellow countrymen, saying that I wanted to move to the guild hall where they lived.A reply came: "Wait a few days before moving in, we are living in poverty now." Almost all of the halls were young people who came to study in the north, and they were often embarrassed because the money from home was sent too late. .But I moved anyway, because I was impatiently tired of the university dormitory with its roaring fire, and its splendid library, and its books that smelled like death.

After moving to the guild hall, there was no fire in my room, and it was as cold as an ice cellar.Every day on the table is a large pot of tofu, a bowl of pickles and a pot of rice.Yet I feel a new kind of joy. Because we live a harmonious life.And my friend who often had a gentle silence then more often had a gentle smile.On snowy days, I often go out alone to enjoy the loneliness, and when I come back, I sit and write poems. Those were some very childish songs, but I only understood them by myself thanks to the comments and hints from that friend after reading them.So he was again the first friend who influenced my writing.He has turned my writing from pompous, vulgar, and ridiculously sentimental into something kinder and more hopeful.He himself does not write very often.But once he took out a manuscript from a drawer to show me. It was filled with the language of the poem written down in the form of short poems, which made me unable to forget like some transparent dewdrops.I can still recite some of them now: The lonely autumn cat circles around my feet and blows to and fro The worms that crawl on my book make it dream of jumping off rocks The late northern spring finally comes , or it is already early summer, because the two seasons are indistinguishable in that ancient city.The locust tree in every courtyard has opened its umbrella.His window is already covered with green ivy leaves.I used to sit in his room and chat, or stare at the gecko with its gray legs twitching on the window screen.

As for him, he looked at last year's old beehive under the eaves and missed his old days.We all felt that the best way to escape our loneliness was to work.So we printed a small publication ourselves to urge us to write. This small publication ran for three issues and was discontinued because I was tormented by a dispute in life.A kind of enthusiasm that burns itself, and I can no longer quietly lift the pen to write something. That hot and rainy summer, I took up the cross of love for the first time. I have often used my friend's house as a refuge for my troubles, because there I can find peace, friendship, and deep conversation.Sometimes we walked slowly together in those twisty and dusty alleys, or on the long street with lantana blossoms.

One night we went into a desolate garden we used to frequent.Across the dark lake, we stopped and looked at the woods on the other side.I suddenly remembered my hometown.And he also talked about his willingness to go back to the country to live in the future, often sitting in the shade of the pond by the side of the house to fish, and hoped that the traffic in the countryside would be more convenient at that time, the postman walked by the pond, and often sent letters from far away. kiss in his hand. Soon he left that ancient city and returned to his chaotic and culturally backward hometown to seek employment.Instead of finding a suitable job, a tuberculosis was found.He vomited blood.This sad news brought me surprise, apprehension, and I thought of his emaciated body, difficult family situation, and the tormenting social environment in his hometown.

All on his own, he struggled with that dreadful disease for four or five years and stayed strong.During this period, he also exchanged labor intermittently for a very simple life. In a letter, he wrote: "I would rather sell onions and sell garlic than those people." Who are those people?Without waiting to speculate, I thought that it was people everywhere who were climbing to the top of society with their eyes closed.Later he sent me some new little poems. When I read one of them: I would like to be a water picker pecking the dewdrops after the rain on the autumn field, I had a lot of emotions.I am reminded of the words of an ancient cynic: "There is nothing to eat and nothing to speak of."

Now we meet.He is thinner and I have a dusty look.Let us be silent a little longer to remember the days that are gone, those lonely old days. I am no longer a very young person, but I have a very young feeling in my arms: I still don't care where my destination will be, and I still don't attach to my hometown.There may not be any new land waiting for me in the distance, but I am willing to brave the wind and waves and sail alone on the boundless sea with longing. What is driving me?What makes me feel very depressed in a slightly stable life? To the hometown that I will leave tomorrow, where my home, my friends and my childhood are, am I really as indifferent as a passer-by? I question myself.I can't help but think of a sad scene: the dry land; the rice scorched like a fire; the farmers and women working in the fields silently bending over and sweating.

This land, known in geography books as the Fertile Hill Country, has long been ruled by hunger, poverty, violence and death.To rule silently, to tend silently to perdition. Perhaps this is the reason why I am willing to wander outside. Yes, under the shade of the trees, when I was looking at the mighty Yangtze River heading east, I fantasized that it was running longingly and angrily to the land of freedom, and I also fantasized that it was whimpering. On the afternoon of June 11, 1937, Laiyang