Chapter 18 What a beautiful piece of soil

What a gorgeous piece of soil! The sandy soil is the orange-red color of cypress wood, clean and refreshing, and every piece of soil is bordered by sea waves—a wide and white lace, surrounded by sixty-four islands, each of which is covered. The glaze of the sun, and then illuminate yourself between the blue sky and the blue sea (the kind of frank blue that has no city), like showing a proud and beautiful card. I've longed for it, for a long time. Its name is Penghu. "Are you going to Penghu?" "No!" - I hate the word "play". "Looking for inspiration?"

"No!"——Ghosts are looking for inspiration. "Then what are you going to do?" What are you doing?I have no way to explain what I want to do. When I touch the old city gate in the imperial garden in Tokyo, I think of Juyongguan. When I listen to Mississippi in the afternoon wind, I think of the waterfall-like Yellow River. Once you have China in your veins, you will never be restless! Therefore, going to Penghu has become a necessity. When the turbid waves are becoming turbid, I want to trample over the pure land left on the water, not to play, but to go to the mountains, to visit the water, to go to the land of China every moment Gao Shang offers my heart incense.

So, I went to Penghu, in the dawn. "Stop, stop," I cried, "what's that flower?" "Little wild chrysanthemum." I jumped out of the car, and the road stretched out in the dry sand on both sides. There were trees, grass, and peanut vines. The greenery could not cover the rough sun-colored earth, but the flowers suppressed all the desolation. ——I have never seen such a beautiful wild chrysanthemum, it is really "in full bloom", with a big canopy, a big canopy, and the thin orange-red petals can only be extracted from that kind of gorgeous sandy soil-Penghu has everything Orange-red, honeydew melon and Jiabao melon flesh are all that color.

The thick color is held in the hand.The car cut the wind and drove forward. I remembered that when my son was young, the road was still unstable, and I took him to play. He had no concept of property rights and always wanted to pick flowers. I strictly warned him, but later he was very dissatisfied and found that I was picking wild flowers.I finally thought of a way to explain it. "You are not allowed to pick what is planted by humans." I said, "You can pick what is planted by God." He asked every flower in the future: "Is this God's or man's?" Penghu is full of flowers planted by God. The pollution problem has not yet spread to this beautiful and clean land. The small wild chrysanthemum should be the county flower.In addition, there is a kind of cactus flower, which is delicate and yellow, and it blooms everywhere-seeing so many wild things at once makes my eyes almost wet.

I should make a set of wildflower postcards. I have found at least seven or eight kinds of flowers myself.Big ones, small ones, ones growing on the ground, crawling in the crevices of rocks, red ones, white ones, pink ones, blue ones... I suddenly feel sad, they are beautiful in the sea breeze of the four seasons. It has been tens of thousands of years, but it is likely to disappear overnight. Civilizations always come too brutally, too quickly to be wiped out... The taxi driver’s surname is Xu, a Cantonese, and he likes to talk. His wife raises pigs at home. He drives a tour guide and raises three children—he is obviously very fascinated by his industry.

"Customers like me because I am a real person. I am familiar with every scene, and I take people to every place." I also fell in love with him almost immediately. I have always liked a villager who is good at "talking about the sky", a wild old man who is familiar with small anecdotes, or a person who is "good at covering", even if he is frightened for a while. He speaks Mandarin with a Cantonese accent, but speaks Taiwanese with a Mandarin accent. He is short and slender, and his whole body is tanned brightly red, which makes his eyes particularly dark and lively.

His diction is very "civilized", he likes to say: "In the near future..." Anyway, the whole of Penghu has countless "near future" in his mouth. He took me to Lintou Park, in front of the tomb of Admiral Ji: "He was the one who fired the first shot at the Marco Polo Bridge, but he doesn't put on airs, he even played with me!" He took the trouble to tell me that "Baisha Township" got its name because its sand is white, not black—he said it so proudly, as if the sand had been bleached by his hands. Bullock carts pass by, people pass by, taxis pass by, almost everyone greets him, he is very proud:

"Everybody here knows me—they've all been in my car!" I really like him now. It was really surprising to see that old banyan tree. A small sapling that was on the shipwreck was picked up by someone, but dozens of roots (in fact, it looks like dozens of trunks) spread out intertwined in the foreign land, and the leaves were green all the way. Going down, it doesn't look like a tree at first glance, but like a forest. The tree is not pretty, especially since each root is hooped with boards, and there are concrete beams supporting it not far away. It looks too crafty, and it is far less complacent than the big banyan in the Prince's Temple in Yanping County, Tainan, but it is awe-inspiring. The most important thing is the vitality, the banyan tree is almost the Han nationality in the tree - it can literally turn the air into soil, and take root and multiply in it.

Looking at some old houses that are being demolished, it is found that the inner layer of the wall is actually a seaside reef. I imagine how happy King Lu Gong was when he destroyed the wall of Confucius and dug up those classics. Happy.It’s a pity that the new houses in Penghu are no longer built like this. Now they have gray cement walls and pink cement tiles. They don’t have any special features, but they are better than the mosaics on the streets of Taipei. That kind of porous reef is called old anvil, and it is still used, but only in the field. The wind in Penghu is strong, and there is a wind that destroys vitality, so the farmers in Penghu have to carefully use the old anvil. The anvil stones form a garden, and vegetables are planted in it, sometimes even covered with old fishing nets. The pale black old anvil stones are twisted and twisted strangely, and the walls look like a stone castle, and the vegetables are the delicate princesses in the bunker.

Between the vegetable bunkers on one side, there are strips of "sand cattle" - sand cattle are yellow cattle, but I like the name sand cattle, which is commonly used by local people. Looking at the Laiyuan of the old anvil all the way, thinking that I belong to a nation that can survive in the wind, sand, the thinnest barren land and the most unfounded sea, I can't help but feel joyful, and my heart is full of joy. Once I learned the old ritual of Confucius riding a chariot, I was eager to pay homage to many things. When I arrived at the Whale Cave, I suddenly discovered how beautiful the basalt rocks stand!Big, hard, black and proud.

The Whale Cave is actually just a circle of dome gates when the tide is low. According to legend, a whale once entered the cave when the tide was high. When the tide ebbed, it died there. It was getting dark, and the gray-brown sea thrush suddenly sang, flew away, sang again, and then flew again. I don't know what it was eager to say. Standing on the big rock that was knocked down by the sea, the sea and the sky are dark blue, it is going to rain, it has not rained in Penghu for a long time, a little rain is the best. "It's getting dark," said the driver, "it looks like it's going to rain over there." "there! Wearing a sky that is about to rain, but there are here and there. In the same alley, the tide rises and falls endlessly, but there is one side and one side. The smoke and water are vast, the wind and rain are imminent, the sky is hazy, and the waves are on the rocky capes far and near, opening up its heart that has not changed color for millions of years. "It really looks like it's going to rain over there." I replied gruffly. God, if I can pray for anything, I will not be a whale or a hole, but just a sad and heavy cloud, and I will give up my whole body for the rain on both sides of the bank. When eating seafood in the restaurant, the mood is actually devout. The floor of the restaurant is terrazzo mixed with pearl-colored shells, the courtyard is covered with coral reefs, and the wall posts and stair railings are also inlaid with shells. "My whole family has been picking them for three years!" he said. In fact, the layout of the house is not good, not to mention the design, and the so-called "art lamp" also makes the shell pillars very strange, but it is still moving. The joyful confidence in knowing that Penghu will be loved by people is touched by the self-esteem that they regard shells almost as totems. "This blank is not because the shell fell off." He was afraid that I would find a trace of imperfection, "It's because the customer wanted to take it back as a souvenir, so I gave it. If it were me, I would plant chrysanthemums on the coral, I would build a shell-shaped restaurant, and when guests came, I would blow the conch shells full of tide sounds, and I would wax the spiny manta shells or Fish oil, lit every evening, I will use the sword-shaped ribs of whales as table legs, I will give each guest a cushion filled with the scent of seaweed, I will use fishing nets as tablecloths, I will... ——Anyway, it’s just wild thinking—— Lobsters, sea urchins, tower-shaped snails, and salmon all came up. It's funny to say, I didn't eat it for food, I ate it for anger. I always listen to the older generation talk about the mythical Chef Tan, Aunt’s Banquet, Donglaishun from Beiping or Shanghai’s... Even a small soup dumpling, they say it like a dragon’s liver and a phoenix’s gall. Their conclusion is: " Where have you eaten good food?" It seems that they have lived all the good days and eaten up all the good things. But where did they eat lobster and sea urchin?Where do they know fresh small rolls and nine holes, good seafood almost does not need a chef.Like an article with excellent material, skills become superfluous. How stupid people are sometimes, we are always thinking about our first love, and forget about our spouse who has lived with us for almost thirty years. The beauty of Taiwan, Penghu, Jinma, and Horse is probably something that most of us have not learned to embrace. I am willing to eat crabs in Taihu Lake one day, I am willing to drink Moutai in Guizhou one day, and I am even willing to go to Xinjiang to drink oil tea, not for eating, but to feel that the land of the motherland belongs to me, but I must first learn Eating a lobster piously is not for anything else, just because it is a crop harvested in the sea - my courtyard. In ancient times, an emperor gave love and respect to a plant that covered him in the mountains. Rain pine, how can I not love the land on which I have lived for twenty-eight years, how can I not love everything related to it. Jumping on a boat to see the sea is the next day. The boat was originally a fishing boat, but now it has become a sightseeing boat. Just as good seafood doesn’t need a cook, a good sea view doesn’t need a tour guide or literati’s inscriptions. The sea is the sea, the simplest and deepest sea. Sitting on the bow of the boat, the wind was high and the waves were rough. The waves and the sun fell on the deck brightly, and the owner was very serious. Every time we arrived at a small island, he drove us down for sightseeing. The island is very good, but the sea is even better. The sea is so good that it makes people nostalgic. I didn’t come to see the land. I came to see the sea. It’s a clean sea. Maybe I should go to the household registration department and add a line next to “Jiangsu” in the column of birthplace on the ID card—— "It could be 'sea,' too." At what time, I don't know, but I know that I must have belonged to the sea. When I landed on the first small island called Tongpan, I went to the small slope to look at the tombs and houses. The boat carried out his mission seriously—telling me that I was going wrong. He said that I should go to see the brightly colored temple. There isn’t a single village in Penghu that doesn’t have a temple. I’ve seen quite a few on the first day. Generally speaking, the temples in Chaohu are better than those in Taiwan because they have less commercial atmosphere, but in fact I prefer to see the houses on small islands. For those bleak, humble, and earth-colored huts, when the tide is high, whether there are waves knocking on their window cases; when the wind blows, how anxiously are the women watching?We read the Icelandic fisherman, we read "The Knight Riding the Sea" by Johann Xin, but what I want to read more is the story of the Chinese fishermen crawling among the rocks and begging for the sea. In fact, an earth-colored private house is more temple than all other temples. It was born and raised in this place, resting on the sound of the waves and embracing the sea breeze, a hut that is kissed bright by the sun and mottled by the erosion of time. A hut where corals were picked, fishes and shrimps were caught, and finally the whole family was seized by time one by one, a hut where joy and desolation, richness and poverty, a thousand things happened but nothing seemed to happen The leisurely and far-reaching hut—what temple can be like your temple? Bypassing the wild flowers ambush on the slope and the hut, I arrived at the cemetery, and was pleasantly surprised to see a stele at the junction of the hut and grave. The stele is used to protect the house or the cemetery. On this desolate island, life and death seem to have suddenly become so connected.) What kind of nation is the Han nationality! No matter where they go, they will always remember Mount Tai, Mount Tai, and the ancient emperor Feng Chan What kind of mountain is there on which Confucius was shocked! There is a small island called Fenggui, the name is like a poem, and there are holes in Fenggui on the island, in fact, what looks like Fenggui is more than just a hole!The whole island is on the sea, isn't it also a wind cabinet, let the wind and clouds come from all directions, we only make a wind cabinet to catch the wind. After sailing through the small islands, I finally returned to Magong—the big island. In the afternoon, I took a half-hour flight and returned to the bigger island—Taiwan.I suddenly realized that there are no new continents or old continents in the world. All land is islands, big or small, hanging in the mist. All islands have to accept waves, but the waves of thousands of years are just waves. Still an island. As beautiful as a heart protruding in the surging blood, I will remember Penghu—what a gorgeous piece of soil!