I write articles in the village. Naturally, Fuchun Village is the place where I study and write.
In the study room on the second floor of Building A, there are still three words "Wen Weizhai" hanging on it. Ye Liqing, a famous military calligrapher from Tonglu, wrote it in oracle bone and seal script. I like that ancient atmosphere. The postscript of "Thinking with the Belly" is "Always ask for action". I have already explained that these two words are taken from Zhu Xi's famous sentence "Ask the canal how clear it is? For there is a source of living water." If you want to learn, you should always do something new. , the more you write the more interesting the article, the principle is just like the half-acre square pond in front of Zhu Xi, there must be running water at the source.
The source of writing is reading. Regarding reading, I often say, read classics, read the earth, and read life. This is not a deliberate substitution of concepts, my writing is indeed the result of reading.
In the past few years, one of the focuses of my reading of historical notes is the diary of Yuan Chang in the late Qing Dynasty, because he is a fellow countryman.
Yuan Chang (1846-1900), courtesy name Shuangqiu, was born in Tonglu, Zhejiang Province. He was an important minister in the late Qing Dynasty and rose to the rank of Minister of Taichang Temple. He was once fully responsible for the foreign affairs of the Prime Minister's Yamen. During the Gengzi Incident, Lord He Zhijian was killed by Cixi. He was immediately rehabilitated and given the posthumous title of Zhongjie. Together with Xu Yongyi, Xu Jingcheng, Lianyuan and Lishan, they were collectively known as the "Five Gengzi Ministers". At the southern foot of Gushan Mountain in West Lake, Hangzhou, the Sanzhong Temple was built by imperial edict to worship Yuan Chang, Xu Jingcheng and Xu Yongyi. Yuan Chang is also one of the famous representatives of Tongguang style poets in the late Qing Dynasty.
In March 1867, after Yuan Chang won the imperial examination, he began to keep a diary until he was killed. He kept writing for more than thirty years. Yuan Chang's main purpose of keeping a diary is not to record events, but to hone himself in seeking knowledge, self-restraint, careful thinking, and improvement and correction. Yuan Chang's diary involves traditional classics and history, especially focusing on Yi studies, Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, health preservation, medical prescriptions, etc. There are 65 volumes and more than 2 million words in existence. It is an important document in the literature and history of the late Qing Dynasty.
Yuan Chang said in the preface of the diary: When people are separated, they have diaries, and they are scattered but not scattered; when they return with diaries, they are scattered, and people are scattered without being separated. The Dharma is scattered, and the Dharma brings nature; the Dharma is benevolence and righteousness, and benevolence and righteousness combine to form virtue. This means that when the skills are dispersed, the wisdom will not be dispersed, and when the form is dispersed, the spirit will not be dispersed. Yuan Chang reflected on his work as an official and sighed every day. He regretted what he had lost yesterday and realized what was wrong in the evening.
So, at the beginning of the summer season in Guimao, I began to write an interpretation of Yuan Chang's diary called "Yesterday Feifei". This is also the eighth book in the series of new notes on past dynasties that I have been writing for decades. "Yesterday Is Not Fei" focuses on the interpretation of Yuan Chang's diary about life, reading, self-cultivation, introspection, making friends and many other chapters that give people warning and inspiration. It is a fragment of light, painstaking selection, and links between ancient and modern times. These texts vary in length, but I want to strive to achieve a combination of literary talent, thought, and interest. This is not only an in-depth interpretation of one scholar to another scholar, but also a sincere tribute from one fellow countryman to another fellow countryman.
In summer in Fuchunzhuang, birds often start chirping at three or four in the morning. When I get up after five o'clock, it is already bright. Go to the kitchen, put corn cobs and eggs into the rice cooker, calculate the time, and go out for a walk. The route I walked, no matter left or right, was a greenway alternating between mountains and villages. They are called "Zhejiang Province No. 1 Greenway". The earth that wakes up in summer is often full of vitality, and this vitality is often reflected in very small places. After growing overnight, the flowers of the wild chrysanthemums on the roadside seem to be larger, and the green leafy vegetables in the vegetable patch on the roadside appear larger. More lush than yesterday. The villagers who got up early were busy tending to the vegetable patch, which was their vegetable basket. They often worked for a while, then picked some vegetables, and then climbed onto the battery cart with the vegetables in their hands and disappeared in a hurry. The tall corn stalks in the mountains and fields are what I pay attention to. I like to eat fresh corn very much. I buy dozens of them at a time and cook them to eat, which is convenient and natural. Tonglu's "six-grain cake" (corn cake) is also my favorite, golden and fragrant. Almost throughout the summer, fresh corn on the cob is sold in roadside vegetable markets. There are many varieties, all grown in farmers' own vegetable fields. They are tender, fresh and sweet, and you will never tire of eating them. By the time I walked back to the village for more than an hour, the corn on the cob was already ripe. I put a large plate of corn on the cob on the camphor tree pillar and ate it while listening to the sounds of birds.
Under normal circumstances, I will write on the second floor of Building C for two hours in the morning and afternoon. At first, I was also writing in the office on Building A, but Ruirui would run around, and when she saw me turning on the computer, she would run over soon and say that she also wanted to write on the computer. There was still a document of hers on my computer desktop with the title "The sky can't be found." This is what she said when she was one and a half years old and lying on the fifth floor window of the Left Bank Garden. She wrote one after another on this document: "The sky can't be found. The lamp burned a hole in the sky (this This sentence is written by Jiang Erman. It’s dark. I’ll take a bath and go to bed. Happy New Year. When I typed on the keyboard, I typed five strokes, and when I typed g and d, she typed them one by one. She exclaimed, it was the word "天", and she basically knew 26 letters.
My writing is a bit like a snail, moving slowly and accumulating little by little. Six months later, the chicken claw maples and red broken leaves in Fuchun Village were almost gone, and "Yesterday is Not Fei" has also been written with 160,000 words. . During the six months of writing, I communicated with this sage from my hometown almost every day, sharing his happiness, sadness, and pain with him. Zeng Guofan said: Most of the failures in life stem from two words, one is lazy and the other is arrogant. From Yuan Chang's daily diary, I saw how he persevered and lived day after day. In fact, I also saw how he lived his life. His whole life is to work hard to overcome laziness and not let himself be proud.
"Natural Pavilion" has a couplet imitating Xin Qiji's poem: "Two or three drops of rain in front of Zhaiji Mountain, and seven or eight stars in the sky outside the academy." In fact, "in front of the mountain" and "outside the sky" have already been moved to Building C by me. The writer of the hospital hung it in the living room on the second and third floors.
Fuchun Village has several thatched cottages and thousands of books. What's going on in the village? Songhua makes wine and spring water makes tea. I have guests, harp blowing Sheng. (Lu Chunxiang)
