Yangguan Xue
In ancient China, a man of letters had no insight. The prominence of civil servants lies in their officialdom and not in their writing. Their side as literati is also insignificant in the officialdom. But the thing is very strange. When Eguan Bodai has long been reduced to mud, the poetry and prose occasionally drawn with a bamboo pen can carve mountains and rivers, carve out people's hearts, and never wash away.
I once had the chance to look up at Baidi City on a river boat at dusk, to climb the Yellow Crane Tower in the thick autumn frost, and to touch Hanshan Temple on a winter night
. There were a lot of people around me, and the hearts of almost most people were echoing with those few poems that need not be quoted. People come here to see the scenery, and even more, they come to see the poems. They can recite these poems as children. Children's imagination is sincere
and realistic. Therefore, these cities, these buildings, and these temples were built in my mind. When they get older, when they just realize that they have enough strength, they have burdened themselves with a heavy debt, and they are eagerly looking forward to stepping into the poetic realm.
Visit. For childhood, for history, for many unspeakable reasons. Sometimes, this kind of thirst is simply like searching for a lost hometown
or visiting separated relatives.
The magic power of literati can turn a remote corner of the world into a hometown in everyone's heart. What magic is hidden in their faded green shirts
?
Today, I went to Xunyang Pass for Wang Wei’s "Weicheng Song". Before setting off, I asked the old man in the county town where I was staying.
The answer was: "The road is long and there is nothing interesting to see. However, some literati worked hard to find it." The old man looked up
Sky, he said again: "It's snowing all the time, don't suffer like this." I bowed to him, turned around and got into the snow.
As soon as we walk out of the small county town, we are in the desert. There is nothing but a vast expanse of white snow, not even a wrinkle.
There is nothing there. When traveling elsewhere, always find a goal for yourself at each stage, stare at a tree and rush over, and then stare at a rock
and rush over. Here, even if it hurts to open my eyes, I can't see a target, not even a dead leaf or a black spot. So, I had no choice but to raise my head and look at the sky. I have never seen such a complete sky. It has not been swallowed up at all. The edges are all straight and straight, tightly covering the earth. With such a land, genius is called heaven. With such a sky, the earth is called the earth. Walking alone in such a world, the dwarf also turned into a giant. Walking alone in such a world, a giant becomes a dwarf.
The sky has cleared up, the wind has stopped, and the sun is very good. Unexpectedly, the snow in the desert melted so quickly. In just a moment, there were already spots on the ground
The sandy bottom had no traces of wetness. A few wisps of smoke gradually drifted out of the sky, not moving, but getting deeper. After a moment of confusion, I realized that those were the ridges where the snow had just melted.
The unevenness on the ground has become a horrifying arrangement, and there can only be one understanding: they are all graves from long ago.
This place is far away from the county seat, so it is unlikely to become a burial place for city residents. These graves were eroded by wind and snow, collapsed due to age, and were withered and depressed. It was obvious that no one had ever cleaned them. Why are there so many of them and why are they arranged so densely? There is only one possible understanding: this is an ancient battlefield.
I walked forward blankly among the endless graveyards, and Eliot's "The Waste Land" appeared in my mind. This is the wasteland of Chinese history: horse hooves like rain, shouts like thunder, and blood like pouring. The white hair of a loving mother in the Central Plains, the distant gaze of a spring lady in the south of the Yangtze River, and the childish crying at night in Hunan.
Farewell under the willow shade of my hometown, the general's eyes widened with anger, hunting the military flag in the wind. With a burst of smoke and dust,
and another burst of smoke and dust, they all drifted away. I believe that the deceased faced the enemy formation in Shuobei when they were about to die; I believe that they really wanted to turn around at the last moment and cast a glance at the familiar land. So, they twisted and fell down, turning into piles of sand.
I wonder if this starry pile of sand has been exchanged for half a line of ink written by historians? The historians turned over the scrolls one by one, and as a result, this land was buried layer by layer. Among the piles of twenty-five histories, the pages written in this wasteland are relatively glorious, because after all, this is a remote area of ??the kingdoms of past dynasties, and has long been responsible for the mission of protecting the territory of China. Therefore,
these piles of sand can still stand relatively comfortably, and the pages can still clatter. Just like the dry and cold land, the historical proposition that appears in the northwest frontier is relatively simple. It's different in the mainland of the Central Plains. The mountains and rivers are covered with flowers and grass. The maze of time will make even the clearest minds dizzy. The sound of morning bells and evening drums is always so mysterious and surly. There, there are no such huge piles of sand.
Everything is dull in the beautiful scenery. Countless resentful souls who died for unknown reasons can only feel sad, angry and frustrated
Diving deep underground. Unlike here, I can reveal a piece of dried history and let me touch it with the pace of the 20th century.
There are tree shadows in the distance. I hurried over and saw that there was water flowing under the trees and the sandy ground had slopes. Climbing a slope, I raised my head and saw a deserted mound on a mountain not far away. I was convinced intuitively that this was Yangguan.
There are more and more trees, and houses are beginning to appear. This is right. Important passes and places where soldiers and horses are stationed cannot be without these.
After turning a few corners, he went straight up a sandy slope, climbed to the bottom of the mound, and looked around. There was a monument nearby with the four characters "Yangguan Ancient Site" engraved on it.
This is a commanding height overlooking the surrounding fields. The northwest wind was powerful and rushed towards me. I staggered a few steps before stopping. My feet were
steady, but I could clearly hear the sound of my teeth chattering, and my nose must have immediately turned red from the cold. He breathed hot breath into his palms,
covered his ears and bounced vigorously for a few times before he calmed down and opened his eyes. The snow here hasn't melted, and of course it won't. There are no traces of the so-called ancient site.
Only the beacon tower nearby is still there. This is the mound just seen below. Most of the mound has collapsed.
You can see layers of sand and layers of reeds. The reeds are floating out and shaking in the cold wind after thousands of years. Right now, the mountains in the northwest are covered with snow, stretching into the sky in layers. Anyone standing here will feel that they are standing on a rock by the sea. Those mountains are all covered with ice and frozen waves.
Wang Wei is really kind-hearted to the extreme. Regarding such a Yangguan, his writing still did not show any harshness and horror, but only wrote in a lingering and elegant way: "I advise you to drink another glass of wine. There will be no old friends when you leave Yangguan in the west." He glanced at the green willows outside the window of the Weicheng guest house, looked at the luggage that his friend had packed, and raised the wine bottle with a smile. Let's have another drink. Outside of Yangguan, you can't find an old friend with whom you can drink and talk like this. My friend must drink this glass of wine without hesitation.
This is the style of the Tang people. Most of them will not shed tears, lament, or insist on dissuading. Their vision is very far, and their life path is very broad. Farewells are frequent and steps are open-minded. This style became even more heroic in Li Bai, Gao Shi, and Cen Shen.
Among the ancient statues from all over the north and south, the statues of the Tang Dynasty can be recognized at a glance. Their bodies are so strong, their eyes are so calm, and their expressions are so confident. Looking at Mona Lisa's smile in Europe, you can immediately feel that this kind of tranquil confidence only belongs to those artists who have truly awakened from the nightmare of the Middle Ages and are quite sure of their future. The smiles in the Tang Dynasty portraits are just more calm and serene. In Europe, these artists have been making an earth-shaking noise for a long time, stubbornly trying to lose smile
to the soul of history. Anyone can calculate how many years after the Tang Dynasty their events took place. However, the Tang Dynasty did not extend its artist's self-confidence for a long time. The wind and snow in Yangguan are getting more and more miserable.
Wang Wei's poetry and painting are both outstanding. The boundary between poetry and painting that Lessing and other Western philosophers have repeatedly discussed can be entered and exited at will by him.
However, the palace in Chang'an only opened a small side door for artists, allowing them to enter as humble servants and create a little entertainment