The trees in the north are so tall. White poplars appeared in rows, each one thirty meters high. When the wind blows the leaves, they make a rustling sound, like walking along a fast river. The leaves are green on the front and white on the inside. When they sway, they change in thousands of arrangements and combinations in an instant, decomposing and reconstructing the sunlight that shines down, and they sparkle like sparkling waves. I came to Beijing in the autumn and walked south from my dormitory to the Yuan Dynasty City Wall Ruins Park. I walked along the old moat and listened to the sound of thousands of leaves waving.
Yuan The highest point of the moat ruins of Dadu City Wall is now more than ten meters and the width is more than 30 meters. Without the red lines with "protect cultural relics" and "no entry" signs, it would be difficult for the naked eye to distinguish these ordinary earth slopes from those described by Marco Polo. Related to the majestic walls of a bustling city. In 1368, Dadu of the Yuan Dynasty was conquered, and the northern city wall was shortened to the south by about five miles and a new wall was built. Thus, the northern boundary of Beijing was redefined. The remaining earth walls were not demolished, but naturally decayed and grew grass and trees as time went on.
Old men walked along them, runners in turbans jogged, and a child staggered toward his nanny on the lawn under the corner. When the child finally threw himself into the arms that had been waiting for him for a long time and received a lot of loud praises, the boundaries separating the inside and outside of the city disappeared, the boundaries between dynasties and dynasties disappeared, and the boundaries between here and there disappeared. Also disappeared.
Only the plants are stretching and curling, and the birds are jumping among them. They turn their bodies dexterously to eat the red fruits produced by the crabapples, making a rustling sound with every beat of their thin little claws. All things grow according to their own rhythm, as if they don't care about everything, as if someone whispered to an invincible giant: Go to sleep, the giant sat down, and the earth wall fell asleep.
The autumn colors in Beijing have also entered the most beautiful time.
I'm starting to get used to seeing these trees. And they gave me new surprises. Originally, the leaves on the trees and shrubs were all green, but now they began to show different colors, like a group of people after work, taking off their uniforms and putting on their own casual clothes. And every piece of underwear is a display of independent will:
Some turn yellow, some turn red, some turn brown or ocher, and some have gradients and halos of several colors on a leaf at the same time. dye. Originally the entire garden had the same color tone, but now it shows a completely different picture.
In this process from monochrome to color, did the leaves come from nothing and began to become novel and gorgeous as they adapted to the changes in the outside world, or did they come from nothing and remove the pretense, finally exposing their differences in nature?
This is probably like a group of young people who have the same starting point. They are green and cute when they first meet, but then when they reach middle age, their respective situations are completely different. Life is not about meeting each other, but it is like participating in business. But even if we see each other every day and plant next to each other, sometimes it takes a leaf's lifetime to realize that because of the similar color, we think they are the same species, which is a misunderstanding.
Perhaps it is only when spring and summer come to an end that you can see individuality in commonality, see resonance in individuality, meet each other in farewell, and sprout original intentions from maturity. Maybe life has to reach the recycling stage, when a person has just touched his true nature under the iceberg, can he distinguish one thing from another, and can he fall in love for the first time in the last love.
Ke Dong’s footsteps came like this. It was windy all night. When I woke up in the morning, a golden rain fell on the ginkgo tree downstairs of the dormitory. No matter how red, orange, red or green, the grand carnival of colors is coming to an end.
I will still go for a walk in the Yuan Dadu City Wall Ruins Park after class, wrapping myself up in the thickest coat I brought from the South. A clock I couldn't see was ticking the minutes. The ears of the creatures that heard it perked up.
I saw that the originally leisurely animals became anxious and no longer took their time when eating. They are instinctively preparing for winter. And the tall white poplars also sighed and shook off all their leaves. Walking on the park trail, the ground feels like it has been flooded by a flood of fallen leaves.
As the poplar tree began to become smooth, the eye-like patterns on the tree became clear.
Some have the shape of long and narrow upward phoenix eyes, some are like the eyes of an old man with crow's feet, some are proud eyes that are slightly turned upward, and some are slightly open eyes with kind eyes. When twilight falls, will thousands of eyes in the rows of poplar trees blink together in a way that I cannot detect? Or when night finally covers everything, they will lower their gazes, staring at every passerby as if in trance.
The words carved by tourists on the poplar trees are also revealed. Perhaps it was originally just a small line of characters engraved at the height of a person. As the tall tree grew and developed, the name became larger, the strokes became wider, the position became higher, and it became untouchable. When I recognized the names below, I had to look up.
This is a common surname among hundreds of surnames. Or a common male name and a female name together. Sometimes it's a childish handwriting. I'm afraid there's no malicious intent, one creation of nature leaving a mark on another. The tree didn't care, it just stretched upward with the scar.
Will the person who wrote the lettering still come to this park often? Will he still find his name among thousands of trees? Does he still remember the season and mood when he was carving? I can't help but think. The lifespan of an individual is so short. What is longer than this is human writing, what is longer may be the remnants of buildings, such as this section of the ruins of a city wall, and what is longer is nature. When all the references we are familiar with no longer exist, and the scales used to measure physical distance and space-time dimensions lose their meaning, will this piece of poplar still exist?
will still be around. With name and name together.
"Have you ever loved a tree?" My Yunnan writer friend asked me when I was in Beijing. I thought about it and said, no. In Shanghai, I don’t rely on the changes in the shape of trees to identify the passage of time. I rely on seasonal advertisements in shopping malls to identify the passage of time. Moreover, in Shanghai, you will fall in love with a street, a building, or a person. The population density of the city is too high. If you throw a person into the vast desert, you will not find him. The same is true in Shanghai. If you throw a person into a busy city, you will lose him. When one person disappears, others move their bodies, and the void is filled in an instant. It seems that no one is irreplaceable - let alone trees.
"What a pity," said my friend. "There is a Bodhi tree in my hometown, which is irreplaceable to me." He said that once he encountered a sad incident, he drove back to his hometown, hugged the tree and cried loudly. Cry for hours. His friends who were traveling with him tried to persuade him to stop crying at first, but then they simply ignored him and just lay under the tree and waited until he slowly stopped crying. When he left, he picked a leaf and kept it in a niche at home. "I am in Beijing now, and I miss this tree so much."
"What does that tree mean to you?"
"A part of me, like the roots in my heart, will always be with it."
I thought about the rain-rich hills of Yunnan, and the tree in the forest with lush plants, the tree chosen by this writer from among thousands of trees. In other words, it was this tree that deliberately captured this one person from among thousands of people.
I also began to miss a tree in Shanghai, a small magnolia tree that accompanied me in my childhood and was planted in our new village. I used mud to smear the wounds where it was rubbed by passing cars. There is also a tree, an albizia tree planted in the green belt downstairs of my grandparents’ house. They are not like the trees in the north, which always grow to the height of two or three stories. So throughout the summer vacation at my grandparents’ house, every morning and evening, I could easily overlook the blue feathery leaves and pink flower spikes on the canopy of the albizia tree. Those fluffy and wet flowers always make me feel itchy. When I think about it, I feel like a sailor feeling wet when he sees a familiar rock in the waves. Feeling disappointed. I won’t run to this tree in the community and cry while hugging it. I don’t think I can break off its branches, because in a city that is changing too fast, these trees no longer exist.
Among the countless trees in Beijing, which one will belong to me?
In the last month before I was scheduled to leave Beijing, that night fell, and so did the flying snow. Even people in the capital say they haven’t seen such heavy and good snow in the past ten years. This changed the Yuan Dynasty City Wall Ruins Park that I was already familiar with. The park is so cold after the snow. The green world, the colorful world, finally turned into a pure white world. It's like a life has passed over again.
The longitude and latitude that originally distinguished green belts, flower beds and trails disappeared into the snow. The familiar scenery seemed strange to me again. I walked under the poplar trees, the sound of my footsteps prolonged by the crunch of the fallen snow. Each step has a trembling ending, like an unfinished emotion. And I have to say goodbye to you for a while.
I covered all the parts of myself that I could cover. Now only one pair of eyes is exposed. I didn’t go to see the Forbidden City or the Summer Palace after the snow, but I still came here. Earthen walls, magpies, mallards in the river, newly formed ice and snowdrifts, pavilions and steps of old acquaintances. Can you still recognize me, a foreigner? See you later. The trees with all their leaves are like lines of calligraphy, implicitly and powerfully collecting the new buds of the coming year.
I know that there is no need to kill the dead here. I know that birds, fish and insects exist in the depths of this park. I know that there is nothing empty under the snow. I know that those slopes are not just slopes. Everyone grows and rises according to their own rhythm, just like our group of friends from far and wide spending this autumn and winter together in Beijing. Then we will grow something new in our respective positions and seasons according to our respective understandings.
I didn't carve my name on any of the trees in the park. But I know that among the countless galaxies in the vast universe, there is such a small place in a certain corner on the earth that is like a light blue dot. We are together. We were together. And life will unfold all its branches to the sky with its name and name.
Author: Shen Yilun
Text: Shen Yilun Picture: Shen Yilun Editor: Qian Yutong Editor: Shu Ming
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