The mango tree unloads its fruits in April, and the branches and leaves suddenly become lonely. Mr. Bamba, the director, stood under a tree to escape the scorching sun during the African dry season. On behalf of the company, Long Translation sent him an invitation: to visit China with his wife.
I heard him make a short, loud sound, and then his eyes and mouth opened wide at the same time, and he looked at us with this expression for a long time. Translator Long and I looked at each other and smiled, and he smiled too, and then he laughed a few times, looking into the distance and laughing with his mouth wide open. This black man from Ivory Coast, like many of his compatriots, exaggerates to express his surprise or disappointment.
And I seem to be used to being repressed. For example, I already knew about the company's plan a month ago, and I also knew that I would recommend the route for this plan. Sometimes I draw lines with a pencil on a map of China in the conference room. Mr. Bamba is talking to the Chinese chief engineer at the other end of the conference room. Sometimes he comes over and greets me loudly while looking at the map of China. Give him a thumbs up. I responded politely, remained calm, and continued to draw a line related to him. The company requires this line to run through five cities in China. My pencil wanders among many cities. My choice of cities is strict and I strive for a perfect trip. I imagine that they represent a region, a style, or a flashback from ancient times.
This pickiness and meticulousness also stem from my good impression of Mr. Bamba. This bridge expert studied in Europe in his youth and lived in Venice, Italy for a long time. Bragging about reading "The Travels of Marco Polo". He has a special liking for Eastern culture, loves silk, loves Chinese food, and is extremely skilled in using chopsticks.
These elements remind me of a Chinese city.
It is called the Venice of the East. It has water comparable to Venice, bridges that extend in all directions across the city, oar boats that travel on the river, and silk , there is a story.
Yes, it is Suzhou. Only Suzhou.
My pencil points to this ancient city in the south of the Yangtze River with a history of 2,500 years on the map. A city that has been sung by literati and poets of all ages, but I have never set foot in it. I made a bold mark and decided not to erase it. As a host, I accompanied two foreigners on their journey to the city they longed for. No one knew that I was secretly happy.
Mr. Bamba happened to walk through the door of the conference room, his tall and plump body wrapped in a floral shirt. He whistled and snapped his fingers like a cheerful bear.
It was 2010. I handed "Night Mooring at Maple Bridge" to the French translator Xia Jing, and also handed her the Humble Administrator's Garden and Canglang Pavilion. At the same time, people flocked to her. Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, Shantang Street, Pingjiang Road. This young girl who had just graduated from the French Department was arranged by the company to work with me to receive Mr. and Mrs. Bamba. I gave her everything I knew about old Suzhou in poems and paintings. I told her that we should talk about Suzhou and Venice together. She blinked her bright doll-like eyes and translated Suzhou on paper as if she were completing an assignment assigned by the teacher.
In the summer of that year, the Bambas came to China wearing African robes, which were their solemn attires. Mrs. Bamba wears her hair in intricate, thin braids. She says there are hundreds of them. It took her two maids four days to weave the wig onto her curly and soft real hair. It is strong and lifelike, and will not fall apart even if she washes her hair.
The four of us set foot in Suzhou.
Of course we went to Hanshan Temple, Zhang Ji’s Hanshan Temple. We listened to Xia Jing reading this ancient poem in French. I knew that even in French, Mr. Bamba could not understand the feelings of the down-and-out scholar a thousand years ago. In fact, I don’t understand either. Language switching and cultural differences have reduced the amount of information Mr. Bamba receives, and the passage of time has also prevented me from walking into the sorrow of the ancients.
We went to take a paddle boat on the Pingjiang River, and Mrs. Bamba shouted, Oh, gondola. I knew she was thinking of the little canoes on the Venetian lagoon. The difference is that in Venice they are all gondoliers wearing tights, while on the Pingjiang River, most of the people rowing leisurely are thin and gentle Jiangnan boat girls.
Mr. Bamba stood on the bow of the boat. His huge body was a bit discordant with the narrow river. When he encounters a bridge, he ducks down. He pays great attention to those small bridges. This is probably his professional concern.
It’s not far from Pingjiang Road to Humble Administrator’s Garden, so I recommend walking. On the way, Mrs. Bamba bought some clothes and scarves at several silk stores. Her braids hanging all over her shoulders also aroused the curiosity of the shop assistants. Sometimes Mr. Bamba would quietly take one off his wife's head with a wicked smile, hand it to the clerk, and leave with a laugh amidst the surprise of the other party.
When we entered the Humble Administrator’s Garden, I found that the bridge expert was slightly silent throughout the visit, which seemed inconsistent with his open and unrestrained character. According to my expectation, it is only natural that he should exclaim from time to time. After coming out of the garden, he drank water at a cold drink shop. While swallowing big gulps, he said to Xia Jing and me, Mariam, Ade, I'm sorry, I don't like this garden. Mariam and Ade are the French names of Xia Jing and me. He and his wife called us this way along the way.
Mr. Bamba was surprisingly frank. He said that the landscape in the Humble Administrator’s Garden was fake, just like his wife’s braid. It was beautiful, but it was fake. He had always ridiculed and sometimes scorned his wife's wig.
Xia Jing was stunned for a while and said nothing. This girl, who was new to society, didn't know how to reply to Mr. Bamba. The escort mission she envisioned should be filled with praise and happiness for everyone. Many times we are not used to not praising, we all crave praise and ignore the falsehood in it. Even I am stunned by such objections. I think this is the wisdom of our ancients, a perfect combination of Eastern aesthetics and architecture. He probably doesn’t understand Eastern philosophy and aesthetics, and he doesn’t understand our interest in creating the unity of nature and man in the landscape so close to us. He doesn't understand this cultural background, the reserved and refined Eastern people.
Mr. Bamba didn’t care about our feelings. He said, why are the mountains fake and confined in a small space? Do plants grow twisted according to human will?
Xia Jing and I exchanged expressions, and we fell silent. I want Xia Jing to ask him, does extreme artificial beauty go against nature in his eyes? I suddenly felt that this question was huge and beyond my ability to answer. It's better to give up.
Actually, Suzhou is also unfamiliar to me. A city with a history of 2,500 years, I know its past stories more from books. It is not far from where I live, but I have never had the opportunity to step into it before. I have been to faraway Venice, that water city known as Western Suzhou, and I lingered in that city like Suzhou. When I stepped into Suzhou, I felt that this real Suzhou was not like Venice. Did I miss something? Or is the city missing something?
After the hurried journey, I went to work in Africa again. Later, Mr. Bamba was transferred from our company and went to another African country.
…
Time flies and many years pass.
One day, I received a WeChat message from Xia Jing, she said she was in Poland. She said that the city center of Warsaw is like a countryside, dotted with lakes and forests. Green is not an isolated island in this city, nor is it confined. Instead, it is integrated with the protective forest outside the city. It is open and broad. She said Warsaw was the most beautiful city she had ever seen.
This girl who loves gardening has traveled to many places in Europe over the years. Every time she went to a foreign city, she would write a few sentences to me and let me share her experiences and feelings. I wrote back to tease her and said, Ade, where do you think Mariam is now? She sent a question mark, and I replied to her that I am in Suzhou, to be more precise, in New Suzhou, on the east bank of Taihu Lake. Suzhou people call it the High-tech Zone.
It just so happened that I was really in Suzhou.
I was watching pear blossoms in Shushan Village at the foot of Dayang Mountain in Suzhou High-tech Zone. I just learned about the village of Shushan. A friend said that if you come to Suzhou, come to Shushan. When spring comes, pear blossoms will subvert your colorful memory of spring like snow.
The pear blossoms here are not one courtyard with two courtyards, or even one slope with two slopes, but thousands of acres of endless acres. The snow in the south of the Yangtze River is light. The snow sticks to the green of Dayang Mountain, just like an infatuated Jiangnan woman sticks to her lover, inseparable and inseparable. Flowers are the expression of love of plants. This metaphor has an extra layer of meaning when applied to pear blossoms. Because of its whiteness, it has a pure sublimation compared to peach blossoms and apricot blossoms. But comparing flowers to love is cliche after all. Why not talk about the ecology of Shushan? This topic is very popular and Xia Jing must be interested in it. Friends said that there are two down-to-earth themes in Shushan: health preservation and happiness. As soon as I heard these four simple and straightforward words, I couldn't help but admire them. They are the simplest, simplest, and most humane. The natural environment of Shushan is very suitable for the growth of fruit trees. Returning farmland to fruit trees is the most simple respect for nature. Of course, this respect has been sufficiently rewarded by nature. Shushan's Cuiguan pear, Yangmei, and top-quality Biluochun are the three most famous treasures. The mountain is still the same mountain, it has not increased one centimeter, and the land is still the same land, and it has not expanded a bit, but the sky and the earth have become wider. People and the environment have just changed the way they get along. Just like lovers, it is inevitable that there is me in you and you in me, singing and dancing. Overlooking Shushan Village, Dayang Mountain has flowers blooming and falling, and the fruits are fragrant. There are also green and wild flowers that cleanse the heart. The mountainous Dayang Mountain is not a small bonsai in Suzhou. It meanders twenty miles all the way west to the east bank of Taihu Lake, forming a vast landscape belt together with the 36,000 hectares of Taihu Lake.
This seems to be similar to the Warsaw described by Xia Jing. We had a lively chat on WeChat. Across the ocean and thousands of miles apart, we talked about the places we had traveled or not traveled.
Xia Jing’s letter also reminded me of Mr. Bamba.
I was on the east coast of Taihu Lake, walking on the 25-kilometer lakeside avenue, and I kept thinking about the memories Mr. Bamba left in Suzhou that year.
I stood high on the embankment, facing the wind blowing across the lake, watching the shadows of sails in the distance, and watching the nearby boats shuttle among the reeds. In the glimmering light of the lake, some water birds fly lightly. I even think of gondolas, those Venetian pointy boats that ply the Adriatic and the lagoon.
I suddenly thought, if Mr. Bamba came to Suzhou at this time, to the shore of Taihu Lake, would he think Suzhou is similar to Venice, and would Taihu Lake be similar to the Adriatic Sea? After this question popped into my mind, I quickly laughed at myself. There was no need to worry about the similarity or dissimilarity that I had always cared about. Suzhou has enough confidence to say that Suzhou is Suzhou and Suzhou is just Suzhou.
If Xia Jing comes too, maybe I can ask her to translate sentences from the Book of Songs and read them to Mr. Bamba. "The jianjia is green and the white dew is like frost. The so-called beauty is on the side of the water." How beautiful it is, without ***-style sadness. This beautiful woman should be from this city. The construction of Suzhou High-tech Zone has made Suzhou City no longer only proud of its garden art, but also surrounded by real mountains and rivers of Renshan.
I don’t know where Mr. Bamba is now. He is a man who travels around the world building bridges. If I had his WeChat number, if I could communicate with him in depth in French, I could write him a long letter right now. I will tell him that Suzhou has the other half of the landscape, which is a real landscape. There are mountains and waters, real mountains and real waters.
Or I can discuss urban construction with him in more depth. The city has become naturalized again, and purely ecological countryside, countryside, mountains, and forests have entered the city as urban elements. The city and nature have a new way of getting along.
The ancient city is still there, it must be there. Suzhou will proudly declare to the world: What the ancient city was like five hundred years ago is what the ancient city is today.
Suzhou is a big roc spreading its wings. The ancient city and the new district are its two wings. When the feathers on both wings are plump and balanced, the roc can fly higher and farther.
Mr. Bamba, Suzhou, the other half of the landscape invites you.