Text: Pinellia ternata
The first volume of the new Jiangsu Education Textbook for eighth-grade Chinese includes a prose "Yangguan Snow" by Yu Qiuyu. I have read it several times, but I still can’t figure it out. I even want to give up. How can I teach students an article that teachers can’t even read?
I have known Yu Qiuyu for a long time, but I have never liked his writing. Except for his poem "You Don't Understand Me, I Don't Blame You", I just like the name of the poem.
I have long known about Yu Qiuyu's "Cultural Journey", but I have never had the desire to read it. I hope that all my travels are joy after hard work. I have read several of his articles inadvertently, and it seems that every trip he makes is a bitter journey. Hard journey? Where does suffering come from? Why is it so bitter? I couldn’t figure it out, so I thought Yu Qiuyu was asking for trouble!
Later, as I saw more and more cultural phenomena and traveled to more and more historical monuments, I gradually understood that Yu Qiuyu’s "bitterness" came from his admiration for the soul of culture and his respect for history. The lament of fate.
Those mountains and rivers, those monuments, and even that small mound represent the prosperity of the past and have irreplaceable value. However, in the rolling dust of history, they have been ignored, submerged, and forgotten.
They are remembered by only one person. This person is - Yu Qiuyu!
In order to seek, to visit, and to discover the truth hidden under the sand of history, he embarked on a journey.
Yangguan is one of his arduous journeys!
Yangguan is located near Gutan, southwest of Dunhuang City, Gansu Province. The pass was built in the Western Han Dynasty, so it was named because it was located to the south of Yumen Pass. Together with Yumen Pass, it was the gateway to the Western Regions at that time. After the Song Dynasty, due to the gradual decline of land transportation and the west, the pass was abandoned. Antique Beach is named after a large number of cultural relics from the Han Dynasty, such as copper arrowheads, ancient coins, stone mills, and pottery cups, which were exposed on the ground. "Research on the Xiguan Site" states that Gutan was Yangguan after the Han Dynasty. However, according to the Qing Dynasty's "New Annals of Gansu" and "Dunhuang County Annals", it is believed that Hongshan Pass is Yangguan. Yangguan was the choke point for China’s ancient overland external communications and a must-pass pass on the southern Silk Road.
Yu Qiuyu visited Yangguan just because of Wang Wei's "Weicheng Song", which is also known as "Send Yuan Er Envoy to Anxi". And I know Yangguan only because of this poem by Wang Wei, but I have never verified where "Yangguan" is? I have never thought about its historical value. Including Yumen Pass in "The Spring Breeze Will Not Pass Yumen Pass", it has never been studied.
What I lack is exactly what Yu Qiuyu has, which is determination and persistence. Of course, he also has the sensitivity and profound thinking of a cultural person.
Visiting Yangguan is indeed a hard journey.
1. Suffering in the journey
In the first paragraph, the author inquires about Yangguan, and the few words of the old man reveal the suffering of this journey. "The road is long and there is nothing to see." "It's snowing all the time. Don't suffer like this." The old man's well-intentioned dissuasion did not stop the author from "turning around and diving into the snow."
For the holy land in your heart, you are not afraid of wind and snow, and you are not afraid of hard work, and you are determined to do it. This is the unique feeling of literati. Maybe ordinary people can't understand it, but so what if they don't understand it? I am who I am, a different kind of fireworks.
Suddenly I remembered that I went to Beijing during the summer vacation in 2013. My friends and I were playing in the Olympic Park. I was standing at the entrance of the Water Cube, about to buy a ticket, when an aunt from Beijing said to me: "Girl, there's nothing good to see inside, why are you spending so much money? There are several big pools inside, big pools, you don't have Have you seen it before?" After hearing what the aunt said, I struggled for a while and finally turned around and left.
Once I missed it, I regretted it for a long time.
Walking out of the county town, there is a vast desert, stretching as far as the eye can see. It hurts to open my eyes, but I can't see a target. A man is trekking in the desert to find the unknown Yang Pass. Moreover, with the words of the old man in front of him as a foreshadowing, he still moves forward persistently. Isn't this journey a little more tragic? On the way, I saw the bumps and valleys on the mountain. They were all graves from long ago, which had collapsed due to age and became thin and depressed. The author is walking blankly among the endless graveyards, facing the hunting wind.
I saw a deserted mound on the mountain peak in the distance. I hurried over, turned a few corners, and then went straight up a sandy slope. I saw the four words "Yangguan Ancient Site" and finally reached my heart. of paradise.
All the hard work and all the fatigue are drifting into the distance with the mighty northwest wind.
2. Suffering in the heart
During the journey, when the author stood beside the collapsed mound, he was not disappointed or depressed, but allowed his thoughts to fly freely.
The scene where Wang Wei bids farewell to his friends is touching and elegant; the green willow color outside the window of Weicheng City is beautiful and fresh. In Yangguan in the Tang Dynasty, there were abundant water and grass, and people lived together. There were farmlands irrigated by mountains and rivers, city walls, houses, museums, and shops, as well as soldiers guarding the border, merchants, camel teams, and horses coming from the west to the east. Bustling. There is a grand scene of the desert here, and it is a battlefield where men make great achievements.
The prosperity of the past has come to an end, and now, only desolation remains. As a scholar with a sense of social responsibility and a sense of historical mission, Yu Qiuyu's inner pain is beyond words.
Yangguan collapsed, collapsed in the spiritual realm of the Chinese nation, was buried, neglected, no one paid attention to, no one mentioned it.
In the eyes of literati, it is not just Yangguan who is buried; it is not just Yangguan who is left out. Today, when material life is becoming increasingly abundant, and spiritual growth is obviously lagging behind, not to mention the style of the Tang people, including the humanistic spirit of that era, has not been passed down and is slowly dissipating in the fireworks of the world.
The Tang Dynasty is gone and people’s spirit has deteriorated, which makes the author feel extremely sad. During this process, his profound thoughts and profound thoughts were all fixed beside that desolate mound. Gradually, it dispersed and turned into melancholy clouds in the sky and the howling wind in the air.
The sadness in my heart is spreading...
Snow is just a scene.
Because of the snow, this trip is more difficult and full of vicissitudes.
Yu Qiuyu’s trip to Yangguan was desolate and tragic!
Yu Qiuyu and his "Cultural Journey" have been criticized and even abused because of their different concepts and because of the suppression by some people with ulterior motives. But it cannot be denied that Yu Qiuyu's writing is clean and beautiful, and what flows between the lines is the character and sentiment that a Chinese literati should have.
Suddenly, I want to read "Cultural Journey"!