Chapter 68 He Fei Ji

On a very good May day, I went to Hong Kong to give a speech. The poet knew about it and asked me to have dinner at the Chinese University where he taught. The terrain of the Chinese University is "the mountain is king".Of course it is very hard to walk, but it is also interesting to climb up and down freely in a car driven by others, not to mention that the car is full of writers who are "rich" in this place. "This Cantonese sometimes has the style of modern poetry," said the poet. When I hear people talking about Cantonese, I can't help being awed immediately, it's too advanced for me.

"There is a saying 'Shuijinghefei'...?" he went on. "Hey, how can the river fly?" After all, I write prose, so I don't understand this strange sentence. "It's not that Hefei doesn't fly, it's like this." Liang Xihua is the old Guang, and immediately put on an authoritative posture, "For example, when you arrive at Chinese University today, it turns out that there will be a grand occasion, but there is no one there. At this time, you can say: "Hey, the water is really clean and the river is flying! '" I immediately memorized this idiom, and I couldn't help but feel a little proud of it. After all, not many people outside of Cantonese understand this idiom.After more than a year, I read Guan Hanqing's Wangjiangting Zaju one day for a thesis.The language of Yuan zaju has always been lively and spicy. I myself sometimes couldn’t help laughing out loud when I wrapped the scroll at midnight. When I read the second fold that day, there was a sentence:

Don't wait for me to be kind and determined, eyebrows south and north, when the water is exhausted and geese fly. I was sighing secretly, but suddenly I was shocked, huh?This sentence is very familiar. It turns out that Lao Guang's sentence is not "the water is clean and the river is flying", but "the water is exhausted and the geese are flying". As soon as I was happy, I simply stopped doing nothing and kept looking for similar terms in other dramas. This search turned out to be very fruitful, and I got four more proofs as follows: I, on the other hand, lost the rain and cloud period for nothing, but left the Cangbo meeting. How much water is worth this time ("Liu Yi's Biography·Wedge")

I don’t know how much water is worth when a piece of Shengge comes out. I live in the north and the south, surrounded by flowers in the brocade camp, cuddling in the red and leaning against the green, today the water is clean and the geese are flying. "Dream of Cloud Window Four Folds") I am afraid that if the melon is not sweet, the water will be clean and the geese will fly ("Yongxi Yuefu (4) Point Crimson Lips") In this way, it can almost be said that the evidence is conclusive. The language of Yuan Zaju is based on Dadu (now Beijing). It is surprising how this language can be communicated with Laoguang seven or eight hundred years later.

I remember my father once asked me: "We celebrate the New Year in the Xuzhou countryside. There are some festive parades. There is a program in it. Our country people call it 'Mooncake Monk Plated with Green'. Everyone says that, but you can't guess what it is." "I know," I laughed, "it's not difficult for me, it's because the 'Yueming Monk Du Liucui' was pronounced out of tune." I don’t know how many languages ​​and how many stories are spread in the south of the Yangtze River and the north of the Yangtze River. Even if the pronunciation is lost, the beauty is still lost in the mistakes.I once heard a Buddhist master say that there are many mistranslations in the Buddhist scriptures, but they have developed their own teachings from the mistranslations, which is really admirable.

It turns out that as long as people are kind and affectionate, there are good things to say: "The water is exhausted and the geese are flying" is true, but "The water is clear and the river is flying" is also elegant. Regardless of the "monk Yueming", when the parade arrives, he will remove the dignified appearance of an eminent monk and turn into an amiable smiling wooden face to extradite a mortal girl. China is too big, but it is enough to be big and have the same tongue. Although the rumors are wrong, there are words in black and white to prove it.Compared with India, where all kinds of tongues talk about each other, it is inevitable to use English to communicate in the end. It is really lucky.Thinking about it this way, I suddenly became elated-although usually when the big topic of China is mentioned, my eyes almost get wet.