Chapter 13 crow

This bird has always had a bad reputation in China.It is an evil bird, an ominous symbol.In Chinese movies, this thing always appears in a desolate wilderness or a shady cemetery or on a lonely dead tree behind an old house. A sense of fear will suddenly come to your heart. We can't really tell what happened to the crow.But it is such a thing to our senses that it seems so remote from us that hardly any of us can accurately describe its form, its gaze, and the way it flies or walks. .All it gives us is the impression of a mass of pure blackness, a phantom moving cold and sullen on the horizon.

When I was a child, I felt the prey of this bird very early in an atmosphere.Therefore, as soon as you see it standing on the top of the wind prison or flying dumbly through the woods, you spit on the ground and close your eyes. When I was in the sixth grade, I dug out a book by Lu Xun from my father’s bookcase. There was an article in it, and there were actually a lot of words about such a thing: Yi shot all the birds in the world, and now only crows remained , He had no choice but to shoot the crow to make fried noodles for his sweet wife Chang'e.As I read these words with horror, I felt a little sick: Is the meat of crows edible?Chang'e, who ate "crow's fried noodles" every day, was not as "creepy" and disgusting as me, but she seemed very dissatisfied with such a life: "It's crow's fried noodles again, and it's crow's fried noodles again." Sauce noodles!...Which family only eats crow noodles all year round?" Later, when I read that Chang'e abandoned Yi and her family and flew to the moon alone, I supported her very much in my heart: how can people bear to eat crows all the time? What about fried noodles?To be honest, Lord knows, I didn’t have much sympathy for Yi who had become a lonely family at that time: how can a person who makes such a beautiful wife eat noodles with crow sauce all year round, what is there to be sympathetic to?

In a word, the crow has not been very good in my feeling. In October 1993, I went to Japan to give lectures at Todai University and lived there for 18 months. Only then did my impression of crows be revised. Crows don't seem to have a bad image in Japanese culture.I heard that in Japanese legends, there are moving stories such as crows saving princes.In these stories, the crow has become a brave and wise righteous bird.In any case, the Japanese do not dislike crows, and the Chinese do not have the mentality of being suspicious and having ominous premonitions when they see a crow.In the eyes of the Japanese, the crow is a kind of bird, a very normal one, and there is nothing special about it.They treated these black elves with a normal heart just like they treated other birds.

At first, when I saw Tokyo crows flying around, I wondered: How could such a bird be treated so well here?Even before I went to the podium for the first time, when I heard its cry, I was still very unhappy.That day, with a neat suit and a briefcase, I left the apartment in a rather "imposing manner".I said silently in my heart: This first class must be taught well, especially well.I hit my confidence at the top.Just when I walked out of the apartment about 100 meters, a hoarse crow suddenly sounded in the boundless silence of the sky, and I felt a black shadow under the bright sunlight above my head.Before I could look at it, there was another cry, which was right next to my ears. Immediately afterwards, I saw a crow flash past my eyes, and flew stealthily into the woods.I actually imitated how I was when I was a child and spit on the ground.I was unhappy in my heart for a few days until I realized that my lectures were not bad.

There, I really couldn't avoid the crows. As time went by, my former feelings gradually became numb, and my stereotypes about crows became increasingly indifferent. First of all, the crows in Tokyo are not wary or afraid of people, making it impossible for you to distance yourself from them.They are everywhere, adorning almost any picture you see before your eyes.When we are going to buy things at Kichijoji, we must pass through Inokashira Park, and this park is a big base for crows, where there are so many crows everywhere.They swipe the ground unscrupulously in front of your eyes, and even look for food under your feet, lingering.That waddling and stubborn look seems to make you take a closer look at it: what kind of bird am I?

The reading of the crow is completely passive, but the result of the reading is at least: despite all kinds of cultural attachments, as a bird in the Nazi sense, the crow is a rare bird that can withstand aesthetics: That black is called black, like ink, like lacquer, like a night without stars and moon, and it is also shiny. When it flies up, it seems to slide like silk under the sun. Some are precious, and the two eyes make you feel that the previous impression is simply unreasonable. The two brown and black grains are like beads and beans, shining brightly, without a trace of gloomyness, let alone a trace of hatred. On the contrary, there is some Innocence, gentleness, and a kind of affinity that only the eyes of an old man with kind eyes and brows have.If there is such a black crow standing on a piece of crystal clear snow, what will it look like?What would happen if such a black crow walked through the rainy cherry blossoms?It is not walking around on the ground, but the way it jumps is also very good.I thought the crow was moving forward on the ground like a duck, but it turned out that it could not walk at all, but moved forward lightly, with a sense of rhythm.When looking for food, if it is disturbed by chance, it will turn its head and look up to the sky, and its expression is still a bit silly.Most notable is its flight.Flocks of pigeons and wild ducks often fly over Inokashira Park.The flight of pigeons is certainly fascinating (I was fascinated by this kind of flight when I was a teenager), but sometimes the flight of pigeons has a little show quality.They fly and circle in the sky, suddenly rise or fall like a whirlwind, and refuse to stop for a long time, which always makes people feel that they are playing with their own flight.But the flight of wild ducks is too monotonous, flying straight and steady in the sky without any change, coupled with the long neck and short body, it seems that it is not so graceful to fly.And its descent is simply clumsy.When they fell on the water, there was absolutely no lightness and elegance, but they fell straight into the water like bricks and bricks.The flight of crows is not only different from that of pigeons, but also different from that of wild ducks.It does not hover in the sky needlessly, and it has no intention of showing off, but as long as it is flying, it will fly well and fly out of its appearance.They seem to prefer the kind of purposeful flight that goes from tree to tree, from a rooftop television receiver to the top of a utility pole, from ground to tree or tree to ground.Between the starting point and the ending point, it flaps its wings freely and freely.If it suddenly changes its mind about landing when it is about to reach the destination, you will find that it does not have a trace of the crampedness and stiffness of a wild duck when it suddenly changes its flight plan, but it is unimaginable to pass through the extremely limited space. The gaps in the branches and the empty leaves are like a thin sheet of paper blown by a light breeze, passing by without leaving a trace of changing the original intention.

The most worth seeing is its pair of wings.The reason why crows fly so well seems to be related to its long wings.Its wings are out of proportion to its body.Sometimes, when it stands on the ground, it will also spread its wings. At this time, you can gain Jing-Guan.The wings are black and elegant, and you will feel that the ancient vernacular novels describe a woman's beauty, and say that the eyebrows are as black as crow's wings and grow into the temples, which is really a very expressive description. The crows in Tokyo stubbornly forced me to change my view on them.I found my observations of crows over the past few decades extremely sloppy and irresponsible.

The crow is actually a mischievous and naughty bird.There are some bicycles under some big trees in Inokashira Park.Most of these cars are abandoned.Uyas often land on the car seat. After tilting their heads to look at the car seat, they start to peck the car seat with their beaks until the car seat is turned out of the sponge cushion inside, and there is nothing inside. After any other content, they went to peck the car seat that had not been pecked, and they never got tired of it.Some cars, just put here temporarily, were also pecked away.When the master comes, as soon as the owner sees this situation, he will scold them: "Bage Yalu!" They will fly away for a while, but after a while, they may fly back to do their unfinished business.People don't seem to remember that there are a group of crows pecking at the seat of the bicycle, and they still keep their bicycles parked here.They also often take some things to the sky.Several times I saw them grab the empty beer cans that people dropped, fly to the branches or the roofs of people's houses, and then fiddle with the cans there, as if to see if there are still a few drops of beer left to drink.A crow picked up a piece of white silk from nowhere, and it flew over the head of the well. The white silk opened, causing everyone on the ground to look up.One day, I came back from a lecture at Dongdae University and was walking on the road. I accidentally looked up and saw a black crow flying under the blue sky with a tomato as bright as a ruby.This time, the crow wanted to put on a show, flying in the sky for a long time, but refused to land for a while.It's a really well-coordinated painting.Later, it finally flew into the woods of the park. At that moment, you felt that a landscape between heaven and earth was destroyed.

In spring, I also found that crows belong to the kind of birds that are very emotional.This season is the season of their love.During this period of time, the crows in the Inokashira area completely lost their usual gentlemanly appearance, flying around the branches, making a lot of noise.They seem to be completely obsessed and crazy, flying and chasing in the woods day and night, neither eating nor drinking.That day, I sat on a bench in Inokashira Park and looked at them, and found that they were all thin, so thin that almost only a pair of wings remained.The eager and hopeless eyes were simply shocking.Sometimes, there will be fierce conflicts between them, causing black feathers in the sky.A crow fell from the branch exhaustedly.It staggered to its feet in a coma, and then flapped its wings and flew to the branches.That exhausted appearance made people feel sympathy for no reason.

For almost the whole spring, they burned with their lives in such a desperate way, until summer came and when the trees were green, they gradually calmed down in the thick bud. Naturally, crows also have an annoying side.For me personally, its tireless call makes me often unable to maintain a quiet writing.There is a telegraph pole not far from the living room, and there is a crow that can consistently call from morning to night.I wanted to find a bamboo pole to drive them away, but I was afraid that my Japanese neighbors would say that the Chinese treated the crows badly, so I hesitated and gave up.Several times my train of thought was interrupted, I couldn’t pick it up, my mind went blank, I was bored to listen carefully to the crow’s crows, and I found that the crow’s cries were definitely not the same: Some said "Wow", some said "Ah", and the one on the top of that telegraph pole actually said "Woo, woo".A Japanese friend came, and I asked her, "Can you understand Crow Language?" She laughed: "I don't understand it. Can you understand it?" I also laughed: "I don't understand it either, they It’s Japanese.” The Japanese friend laughed.

The crow in Tokyo Inokashira took me a lot of writing, which is also true. From the point of view of the Japanese, due to their blind indulgence to the crows, the infinite expansion of the crows also brought them some troubles.The mere fact that the crows pecked through the garbage bags or rummaged through the garbage cans made them very troubled.These crows flew out from the woods to look for food early in the morning, instead of flying to the countryside, they just circled above the city, and when they saw no one in an alley, they would come down and peck open the garbage bags waiting to be collected. As a result, garbage was everywhere.In this regard, Japanese TV stations often organize special but somewhat comic discussions: how to deal with crows?The Japanese are good at using their brains, and there are many ways to deal with them.There have been performances on TV, which were quite effective at first, but crows are very ghostly. They often see through a method after trying it a few times, and make fun of that method, which makes people feel very ridiculous. There seem to be two groups of crows in Japan, urban and rural. There are urban crows in the city and rural crows in the countryside.The crows in the city pecked at the garbage bags, while the crows in the country ate the fruits of the farmers.There was a complete episode on TV showing the crows stealing the fruit, the farmer tried to stop it, and the crows made a comeback: the crows, like a huge airborne force, suddenly descended from the sky to a vineyard, and dropped the grapes one by one. Pecked off one by one.An elderly farmer knocked on the basin to set them up, but as soon as the farmer left, they started again.The farmer had no choice but to stick to the vineyard.But this is not a long-term solution, so the farmer always wears a brown dress in order to input a signal to the crow: the farmer wears a brown dress, and the one in the brown dress is the farmer.The farmer pretended to be asleep, and when the crow came, he got up suddenly, which gave another signal to the crow: I was just lying down, not falling asleep.After trying this a few times, the farmer saw that it worked, so he came up with a trick to get rid of the cicada's shell. He took off his clothes and wrapped a scarecrow, let it lie in the vineyard, and went home by himself.But those crows have a high IQ, so high that they can see through people's tricks.They kept flying in the air and screaming, and then they kept going down, pouring shit on the face of the "farmer", and just about to fall, they took off suddenly. After doing this repeatedly, Then I decided in my heart: the real person didn't have such patience, so he fell down with a crash, making the grape trellis sway.When they were full, they didn't fly away immediately. They rested on the grape trellis until the sun set, and then flew away.The next day, the old farmer looked at the vineyard with few grapes left, with a sad expression on his face, and he was about to cry.Later, he grabbed a shotgun, but he didn't shoot at the crows in the end. When I was about to leave Japan, my family and I went to Inokashira Park again.At that time, it was the time when the cherry blossoms first bloomed.I saw crows flying around among the cherry blossom viewing crowd, making the spring lively. After returning to Beijing and settling down, I started writing again, but I couldn’t write in the first few days. I asked my wife, “Why can’t I write?” The wife said: "There are no crows calling on the telegraph poles outside." I suddenly remembered the familiar crows at Inokashira, so I went outside and looked up at the sky.The sky in Beijing is empty, not a single crow. At dusk, I finally saw the crows.They fly very high, as if they don't want to shorten the distance with people.I know that this flock of crows probably flew a lot of distance to look for food in the deserted fields in the outskirts, and they are now returning home in the city.And their homes will never be among ordinary people, but only in the woods where some people in Diaoyutai and Zhongnanhai cannot hurt or disturb them. One day when I was watching Yuanqu, I suddenly saw the word "palace crow", and thought persuasively: Could these crows be palace crows?