Chapter 2 Winter in Yingge Mountain

Every year when winter comes, a friend who grew up in the north often complains that there is no snow in Taipei, which is not like winter at all, and then he will talk about his hometown in the north.There is a piece of white snow, which makes people feel clear and bright in winter. If it doesn't snow, many things will be less enjoyable to do, such as drinking Baigan, eating roast lamb, and eating shabu-shabu together.Once I couldn't help but say: "Snow is probably not what you miss the most, what you miss is just a mood!" Because even in Taiwan, there are many places where it snows, and my friend still can't calm down in the snow.One day, when you arrive in a foreign country where there is ice and snow all over the place, I am afraid that you will miss the green winter of this small southern island even more.

It turns out that the most profound feeling of coldness and warmth is not on the skin, but on the mood.When you are lonely, in the spring garden, your heart will still be cold; when you are up, even if you walk on a cold snowy night, you can still be conscious.I often have this kind of experience, and ordinary people must have it. I have seen people who have suffered major setbacks and are still shivering all over in the hot summer. No matter it is spring, summer, autumn and winter, I always like to go to the suburbs, because indoors, I can’t feel the real season induction. I think the saddest thing is that I always hide in the air-conditioned room in summer, but when the winter wind hits The person holding the stove.Such people don't know when the spring flowers are in full bloom, and they can't appreciate the cold sobriety of walking alone in the streets in winter.

Last winter, I often went to the home of relatives on Yingge Mountain in the suburbs of Taipei for vacation. At that time, I felt that even if there was no snow, people sitting in the house listening to the howling wind and rain on the mountain would be too cold, but simply sitting at the desk Read a good book before, the same wind and rain, there is no chill. Yingge is an ordinary town, because it is a ceramic industrial city, and there are various problems such as air pollution, noise, and rough roads. Generally speaking, it cannot be said to be a beautiful city.But on my way from Taipei to Yinggechi, my mood is beautiful, especially in winter.

There are two roads from Taipei to Yingge, one is through Banqiao, Shulin, and Shanjia, and the other is through Banqiao, Tucheng, and Three Gorges.The former is a mountain road along the railway, with twists and turns, which makes people feel unfathomable; especially when the car arrives at Shanjia, it has to pass through many mountain bends, and each mountain bend is a land that suddenly opens up.The latter is a wide road in the middle of two plains, with rice fields on the left and right, and occasional gray farmhouses mixed in, even the coldest wind and rain are green. I say winter is the best, because in winter, the polluted air seems to be washed away in the cold rain.My relatives live in a large independent house on the mountain, next to a factory. Even in winter, the factory makes rumbling machinery 24 hours a day.If there is wind and rain, the sound of the machine will dim. At that time, sitting at the table listening to the wind and rain, the sound of the machine seems to have life.

Refusing to compromise with the wind and rain, and then on the second largest morning, I saw a truckload of floor tiles being transported out of the factory. They were silent, but how many buildings in the whole province were built in that silence?The best thing is the sound of the train.The residence is not far away, every few minutes there is the sound of a train, from a distance Look, the train is really beautiful, every window has a frame of hometown running in the wilderness, every lighted window is alive, it drives to the south with our nostalgic mood at night; It may be warm and sunny in the south at the moment. I always feel that looking at the train far away, the rain is far more shocking than the sun.

Sometimes when relatives’ children are on vacation, we tell stories in the study room, surrounded by the kerosene stove, and I listen to the children’s dreams in their hearts. They are still full of life’s heat in winter and are not afraid of the cold.One day they set off a sky cannon in the courtyard, and a flash of light shot through the heavy rain. The youngest child cheered and said, "I want to shoot the sky cannon to the position of the stars." There were no stars in the sky at that time, but the children There are stars in my heart, I think, children are not afraid of winter, because they always know that spring flowers are not far away, adults are afraid of winter, because they know that the next spring will not be this spring.

In the eyes of children, winter is music played for spring, and it is the morning glow that can still be seen in the wind and rain.To children, the distance between winter and spring is like two flowers on the same branch. To us, the distance between winter and spring is as great as the distance between stars.I can almost empathize with children, but it also makes me melancholy that winter is annoying, yet the smell of roasted sweet potatoes in winter can be as evocative as the scent of roses in spring, if only we can catch the little pleasures. As long as a person has a child's mood and a child's dream, it doesn't matter whether it snows or not in winter, because the snow will always pass. Gibran said: "Oaks and pines and cypresses are neither of the same kind, nor do they need to grow in each other's shade." In Yingge To spend the winter in the mountains, I think that if the winter is pine and cypresses, the spring is like oaks. There is no good or bad, the difference is only the mood.I wrote to my friend: "You don't have to miss the snow in the North Country, you can still feel snow without snow."

— March 23, 1983