"Back View" - Zhu Ziqing
I have not seen my father for more than two years, and the thing I can't forget most is his back.
That winter, my grandmother died and my father’s errand was handed over. It was a day when misfortune never comes singly. I went from Beijing to Xuzhou and planned to go home with my father for his funeral. When I went to Xuzhou to see my father, I saw the messy things in the courtyard and thought of my grandmother again, and I couldn't help but shed tears. My father said, "It's what happened, so there's no need to be sad. Fortunately, there's always a way out!"
I went home and sold off the pledges, and my father repaid the shortfall; he also borrowed money to pay for the funeral. These days, the family situation is very miserable5, half due to the funeral and half due to the father's unemployment6. After the funeral, my father was going to Nanjing to find a job, and I was going back to Beijing to study, so we went together.
When I arrived in Nanjing, a friend asked me to go sightseeing and stayed for a day. On the second day in the morning, I had to cross the river to Pukou and get on the train in the afternoon to go north. Because my father was busy with work, he had already decided not to see me off, but asked a familiar waiter from the hotel to accompany me. He repeatedly asked the waiter to be very careful. But he finally felt uneasy, fearing that the waiter would be inappropriate9; he hesitated10 for a while. In fact, I was already twenty years old at that time and had already been to Beijing two or three times, so it wasn't that important anymore. He hesitated for a while and finally decided to send me there himself. I repeatedly advised him not to go; he just said: "It doesn't matter, it's not good for them to go!"
We crossed the river and entered the station. I bought the ticket and he was busy taking care of the luggage. There was too much luggage, so I had to tip the porter 11 to get through. He was busy negotiating the price with them again. I was really too smart at that time, and I always felt that what he said was not very nice and I had to interrupt myself. But he finally agreed on the price and sent me to the car. He picked out a chair for me by the car door; I spread the purple fur coat he made for me on the seat. He told me to be careful on the road and to be alert at night so as not to catch cold. I also asked the waiter to take good care of me. I secretly laughed at his pedanticness; they only recognized money, and trusting them was just free money! And for someone as old as me, can’t I still take care of myself? Now that I think about it, I was so smart back then.
I said: "Dad, let's go." He looked outside the car and said, "I'm going to buy some oranges. Just stay here and don't move around." I looked at the moon over there. There are several sellers waiting for customers outside the fence of the platform. When you get to the platform over there, you have to cross the railway, jump down and climb up again. My father is a fat man, so it would be more troublesome to walk there. I was going to go, but he refused, so I had to let him go. I saw him wearing a black cloth cap, a large black cloth mandarin jacket, and a dark blue cotton robe. He staggered to the side of the railway and slowly leaned down. It was not a disaster. But it was not easy for him to cross the railway and climb to the platform over there. He clung to it with both hands and retracted his feet; his fat body leaned slightly to the left, showing an effort. At this time I saw his back, and my tears flowed down quickly. I quickly wiped away my tears. Afraid that he would see it, and also afraid that others would see it. When I looked outside again, he had already hugged the scarlet orange and walked back. When crossing the railway, he first scattered the oranges on the ground, climbed down slowly, then picked up the oranges and walked away. When I got here, I quickly went to help him. He walked with me to the car and put oranges on top of my fur coat. So he puffed away the dirt on his clothes, feeling very relaxed. After a while he said: "I'm leaving. I'll write you a letter over there!" I watched him go out. He walked a few steps, turned around, saw me, and said, "Go in, there's no one inside." When his back blended in with the people coming and going, and he couldn't be found anymore, I came in and sat down, and my tears came again. .
In recent years, my father and I have been traveling here and there, and the situation at home has deteriorated day by day. He went out to make a living as a young man, supported himself by himself, and did many great things. Who knew Laojing was so decadent! He was so sad that he couldn't help himself. When he is depressed in his heart, he will naturally express it outwardly; trivial matters in his family will often make him angry. He gradually treated me differently than before. But after not seeing each other for the past two years, he finally forgot about my faults and only thought about me and his son. After I came to the north, he wrote a letter to me. He said in the letter: "I am in good health, but my arm hurts badly. I have to lift chopsticks and pick up a pen, which is a lot of inconvenience. I will probably die soon." I read Here, in the glistening tears, I saw the fat back again, wearing a green cloth cotton robe and a black cloth mandarin jacket. well! I don’t know when I will see him again!
"Moonlight over the Lotus Pond" - Zhu Ziqing
My heart has been quite uneasy these days. Tonight, I was sitting in the yard enjoying the shade, and suddenly I thought of the lotus pond I walked past every day. It must look different in the light of the full moon. The moon was gradually rising, and the laughter of the children on the road outside the wall could no longer be heard; my wife was patting Runer in the house and humming a lullaby in a daze. I quietly put on my coat, closed the door and went out.
Along the lotus pond, there is a winding small cinder road. This is a secluded road; few people walk it during the day, and it is even more lonely at night. There are many trees growing on all sides of the lotus pond, which are lush and lush. On one side of the road are some willows and some trees whose names I don’t know. On a moonless night, the road is eerie and a bit scary. Tonight is very good, although the moonlight is still faint.
I was the only one on the road, walking with my hands behind my back. This world seemed to belong to me; I also seemed to have transcended my ordinary self and entered another world. I love being lively and calm; I love being in groups and being alone. Like tonight, a person can think about anything and think about nothing alone under this vast moonlight, and he feels like a free person.
Whatever you must do or say during the day can be ignored now. This is the beauty of being alone. Let me just enjoy the boundless lotus fragrance and moonlight.
On the surface of the winding and winding lotus pond, one can look out for fields of leaves. The leaves are high out of the water, like the skirts of a graceful dancer. Among the layers of leaves, white flowers are dotted here and there, some are blooming gracefully and some are holding their petals shyly; just like individual bright pearls, like stars in the blue sky, or like just emerging from the bath. beauty. The breeze passed by, bringing wisps of fragrance, like the faint singing from a tall building in the distance. At that time, the leaves and flowers also trembled slightly, like lightning, which immediately spread across the lotus pond. The leaves were densely packed side by side, and there seemed to be a ripple of solid blue. Under the leaves is a pulsating stream of water, which is covered up so that some colors cannot be seen; but the leaves are even more beautiful.
The moonlight is like flowing water, quietly flowing on this leaf and flower. Thin green mist floats in the lotus pond. The leaves and flowers seem to have been washed in milk; they are also like a dream wrapped in a veil. Although it was a full moon, there was a thin layer of clouds in the sky, so it couldn't shine brightly; but I thought this was just the right thing - a sound sleep is essential, but a nap also has its own flavor. The moonlight shines through the trees, and the dense bushes high up cast jagged and mottled black shadows, as steep as ghosts; the sparse shadows of the curved willows seem to be painted on lotus leaves. The moonlight in the pond is not uniform; but the light and shadow have a harmonious melody, like the famous music played on the Fan Wuling.
On all sides of the lotus pond, far and near, there are trees high and low, among which willows are the most numerous. These trees surrounded a lotus pond; only a few gaps were left on the side of the path, as if they were specially left for the moonlight. The color of the trees is gloomy, and at first glance they look like a cloud of smoke; but the beauty of the willows can also be distinguished in the smoke. Faintly looming above the treetops are distant mountains, just a general outline. There are one or two street lights leaking through the cracks in the trees, looking listless like sleepy eyes. The liveliest sounds at this time were the cicadas chirruping on the trees and the frogs croaking in the water; but the excitement was theirs and I enjoyed nothing.
Suddenly I remembered the lotus picking thing. Picking lotus is an old custom in the south of the Yangtze River. It seems to have existed very early, and it was most popular during the Six Dynasties. We can roughly know it from poetry. Those who picked lotuses were young women. They went in boats and sang erotic songs. Needless to say, there are many people picking lotus, and there are also people watching lotus picking. It was a lively season and also a romantic season. Emperor Yuan of the Liang Dynasty said it well in "Poem of Picking Lotus":
Therefore, the fairy girl ⑾ is willing to go boating; , the ship was about to move but sailed away. Her waist is slender and her clothes are tied tightly, and her steps are delayed. At the beginning of summer and after spring, when the leaves are tender and the flowers are blooming, she smiles for fear that her clothes will be stained, and she pulls back her clothes for fear of capsizing the boat.
It can be seen that there was a lot of fun at that time. This is really interesting stuff, but unfortunately we are no longer lucky enough to enjoy it.
Then I remembered the sentence in "Xizhou Song":
When I pick lotus in Nantang in autumn, the lotus flowers are more than the heads of people; I lower my head to pick up the lotus seeds, which are as clear as water.
If there are lotus pickers tonight, the lotus flowers here will be considered "outstanding"; just some shadows of running water will not do. This makes me miss Jiangnan after all. ——Thinking like this, I suddenly raised my head and found that I was already in front of my own door. I pushed the door gently and went in. There was no sound. My wife had been asleep for a long time.
July 1927, Tsinghua University Garden, Beijing.
Extended information
"Back View"
"Back View" is a retrospective essay written by the modern writer Zhu Ziqing in 1925. This prose describes the situation when the author left Nanjing to go to Peking University. His father took him to Pukou Railway Station, took care of him on the train, and bought oranges for him.
What impressed me most deeply in the author’s mind was his father’s back as he climbed up and down the platform while buying oranges for him. The author uses simple words to express the father's love for his children in a profound, delicate and sincere way, and shows the father's care and love from ordinary events.
"Moonlight over the Lotus Pond"
"Moonlight over the Lotus Pond" is an essay written by the Chinese writer Zhu Ziqing when he was teaching at Tsinghua University. It is widely known for being included in middle school Chinese textbooks and is a modern essay. A famous piece of lyrical prose.
The article describes the beautiful scene of the moonlight over the lotus pond, implicitly and euphemistically expressing the author's dissatisfaction with reality, longing for freedom, and wanting to transcend reality but not being able to, leaving an old legacy for future generations. The footsteps of China's upright intellectuals wandering forward amidst suffering. It expresses the author's political thought of longing for the future, and also expresses the author's love for the moonlight in the lotus pond.
Reference material: Baidu Encyclopedia - Zhu Ziqing's prose