Autumn comes quietly to us in the sound of cicadas that have not completely faded away from the scorching summer sun.
In my memory, there are often two completely different scenes in autumn. One is the clear sky and white clouds. Under the blue sky and white clouds, boys and girls are chasing the red maple leaves in late autumn, enjoying the crisp autumn sunshine before winter. Another completely opposite scene is that the autumn rain is lingering all day long, and the thin raindrops are quite chilling on the body. Young literary and artistic people, or those who are sentimental, will read this scene into Dai Wangshu's "Rain Alley", turning themselves into a young man with a resentment like lilacs.
The Year of Gengzi was an eventful year. The epidemic in Wuhan at the beginning of the year affected the nerves of hundreds of millions of people, and many retrogressors paid the price of tears and blood. The epidemic has eased, but the floods are coming again. Once again, the army and the people are united and working together to fight against the disaster.
So someone brought out some book from the Ming Dynasty and said that a major disaster this year was predicted six hundred years ago. I don't really believe in this kind of stuff. However, I firmly believe that humans should respect nature. The destruction of the ecological system and the massive pollution of the environment, humans will eventually have to pay for this lack of awe.
In early autumn, there is no cold rain. Some are just occasional light showers, which are swept away, lacking some of the artistic conception of autumn. Just as Yu Dafu said in "Autumn in the Old Capital", "Under the gray sky, a gust of cool wind suddenly came, and then it began to rain. After a layer of rain, the clouds gradually rolled to the west, and the sky It’s green again, and the sun is showing its face again. Naturally, the depression of the autumn rain is gone.
Make a pot of green tea, put a few chrysanthemums in the pot, sit alone on the balcony, lean on the chair lazily, and look up at the white clouds and blue sky. Just let your thoughts float endlessly.
On the court downstairs during the day, there are only a few little boys on summer vacation playing ball. It gets lively at night, with six or seven venues packed with people. The boys playing ball and the ladies dancing in the square were very lively. The green plants and lawns are still green, completely unaware of the arrival of autumn. It's just that the high-decibel chorus of cicadas was quietly taken away by the conductor; the bayberry tree had long lost its bayberry; some fruits were hanging on the grapefruit tree, but the faint and heart-warming fragrance of the flowers had long since disappeared. The sweet-scented osmanthus tree is still shyly hiding under the big tree, and the sweet-scented osmanthus has not bloomed yet. She is waiting for the arrival of a freezing rain. Only crape myrtles bloomed from summer to autumn stupidly.
The weather in the evening was very good, with rays of sunshine passing over the balcony, but it was a bit hot. After taking a sip of tea, he looked back, picked up the cursive sticker of Zhao Mengfu's "Xianju Fu" and read it. Recently, I have become fascinated by Zhao Mengfu's running calligraphy, but I have never understood the mystery of his writing style.
I wonder what the autumn scenery was like when Taoist Songxue lived? As a royal family member of the Song Dynasty, he lived in exile in the Yuan Dynasty and became a Hanlin scholar. At the same time, he was also a great calligrapher at that time, together with Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan, known as the "Four Masters of Regular Script". I don’t know what kind of lamentation or what kind of life enlightenment I can feel in the season of autumn, when thousands of trees are sparse and the leaves are flying.
I think of when I was young, every autumn, especially the long and continuous drizzle. Either sitting in front of the window, standing under the eaves, or walking in the wind and rain; there is always some sadness in the heart, and the mood is always extremely low, as if life has come to an end. I would often read some of Li Qingzhao's graceful words to relieve the melancholy in my heart. "After dusk when I drink wine in Dongli, there is a faint fragrance filling my sleeves. I can't help but feel ecstasy. The west wind blows behind the curtain, and people are thinner than yellow flowers." I don’t know why I often feel so sentimental like Li Qingzhao.
Suddenly I remembered that autumn is coming in Shaoxing. More than 20 years ago, due to work, I traveled back and forth to Shaoxing every month for five years, and lived in Shaoxing for half a month every month. Shaoxing is a water town. In late autumn, the sycamore leaves on both sides of the street are fluttering on the street. I can't help but feel a little bored. Being a stranger in a foreign land makes me even more depressed.
When I was in school, I studied Lu Xun’s article "From Baicao Garden to Sanwei Bookstore". I often walked slowly from Baicao Garden on the west end of the street to Sanwei Bookstore on the east end of the street alone, reciting it secretly in my heart. He wrote: "There is a large garden behind my house, which is called Baicao Garden according to legend. Now it has been sold to the descendants of Zhu Wengong together with the house..." At that time, most young people were obsessed with literature. The dream of being a writer is the biggest dream. Sometimes I would go back and forth several times, as if I could breathe the aura of Mr. Lu Xun and become a writer.
Occasionally, if I have a few friends with me, I will go to the Xianheng Hotel on my way back from Sanwei Bookstore, take a photo with Kong Yiji at the door, and then enter the store and joke to the clerk at the counter like Kong Yiji, "Warm two bowls." For wine, I want a plate of fennel beans. "But I can't spare nine cents." The clerk at the counter knew that we were from out of town and that we were famous for punching Kong Yiji, so he smiled at each other, and his colleagues also smiled heartily. The suppressed emotions were deeply released.
When the autumn rain falls non-stop, you will have another hobby. Holding an umbrella is certainly not the oil-paper umbrella in Dai Wangshu's "Rain Lane". Walking alone and quietly along the narrow rain alley, he was just like the sad young man with lilac knots in Dai Wangshu's novel. From time to time, the aroma of rice wine floats from the alley, and from time to time, the soft and long laughter of male and female family members leaks out from the window. As I walked, I felt a little sad, "cold, desolate, and melancholy." Thinking about it now, the loss of the collision between ideals and reality in youth is the script, but this autumn rain is the scene of the plot.
When I woke up from the memories, the tea had been cold for a long time. The sunset outside the balcony has gradually set, and the colorful clouds set off the blue sky, which is very beautiful.
Thinking about the resentment I felt when I was young, I laughed to myself, which seemed a bit ridiculous. As the years go by and I get older, I have a different interpretation of autumn, and there is no longer the sorrow and hesitation of my youth.
In mid-autumn a few years ago, I took a trip to northern Xinjiang, from Tianchi to Kanas. In the vast Gobi Desert, cars raced on the endless winding road, ups and downs, like a small boat cutting through the waves in the sea, pushing forward with strength. At this time, I no longer had the decadence of my youth, and my whole body was full of passion and emotion. When the car drove to the Kanas Scenic Area, on the slopes of the Grand Canyon and among the rolling mountains, the snow-capped mountains came into view. Everywhere there are dazzling birch leaves blown yellow by the autumn wind, which are golden. Rather than an impact on everyone's eyes, it can be said to be a cleansing of our hearts. There is no longer the sadness of autumn when we were young, winter is coming, and everything is rustling. I immediately read the beauty of autumn and the tragedy of fallen leaves. The eternal departure of autumn leaves is the love for life and the admiration for the tree itself. In the coming year, she will hang on the treetops again under the call of the spring breeze, smiling proudly in the blue sky.
Autumn is a season that pays tribute to life. She uses her numerous fruits to show the brilliance of life to the world. She uses fallen leaves to guard the foundation of life, replenishing energy for the coming year's vitality.
We should really praise autumn.
August 16, 2020
About the author: Yan Zhongfu settled in Nanchang, Jiangxi. In the 1980s, he entered into amateur literary creation with a group of literary enthusiasts in the company, but later stopped writing due to work reasons. This year, under the influence of many writers and literary friends who have been active in the literary circles of this province, I started writing again. In his early years, some essays and novels were published in magazines and newspapers. Some of his works have been reprinted by "Youth Digest", included in "Extrascientific Readings for Middle School Students", "Selected Chinese and Foreign Prose" edited by the People's Daily, included in "Campus Literature", and some works were included in the 2006 Shanxi Provincial High School Entrance Examination Chinese test paper.