Author: Lao She

If I were to write a novel set in Beiping, I wouldn't be afraid, because I could pick up what I know and avoid what I don't know. Let me talk about a set of Peiping, I have no choice. Beiping is so big and there are so many things, but I know very little. Although I was born there, I didn't leave until I was 27. As far as places of interest are concerned, I have never been to Taoranting. How ridiculous! By analogy, I only know "my Peiping", and my Peiping is probably a drop in the ocean.

But I really love Beiping. This love is almost beyond words. I love my mother. How to love? I can't say. When I wanted to do something to please her old man, I smiled alone; I want to cry at the thought of her health, and my heart is not practical. Words are not enough to express my feelings. Only smiling or crying alone can expose my heart. My love for Peiping is close to this. It's easy to praise this ancient city, but it's too small to look at Peiping. My love for Peiping is not a few things, but a period of history that is integrated with my heart. A large area, many scenic spots, from the dragonfly in Shichahai after the rain to the tower shadow of Yuquan Mountain in the dream, are all gathered together. There is a person in every incident, and there is a Peiping in every thought. This is beyond description.

I really want to be a poet, immerse all the beautiful words in my own efforts, and sing the beauty of Peiping like a cuckoo. Ah! I am not a poet! I will never be able to express my love, the kind caused by music and pictures. This not only failed Beiping, but also made me feel sorry for myself, because my initial understanding and impression came from Beiping, which was in my blood, and many parts of my character and temper were given by this ancient city. I can't love Shanghai and Tianjin, because I have a Peiping in my heart. But I can't say it!

London, Paris, Rome and Constantinople were once called the four "historical capitals" of Europe. I know something about London; Paris and Rome have only been there; Constantinople has never been there. As far as London, Paris and Rome are concerned, Paris is more like Beiping-although the word "similar" has to be pulled far away-but if I were to "live in Paris", I would feel as lonely and bitter as if I had no home. In my opinion, Paris is too prosperous. Naturally, there are empty and quiet places, but they are too spacious; Unlike Beiping, which is complicated and marginal, I can touch the old city wall with red dates! Facing the backwater beach with a wall behind it, I can sit on a stone and watch tadpoles in the water or tender dragonflies on reed leaves. I can sit happily for a day, feel completely at ease, think nothing, and be afraid, just like a child sleeping in a cradle. Yes, there are some lively places in Beiping, but they are similar to those in Tai Ji Chuan, with quiet and movement. There are many places in Paris that make people very tired. Coffee and wine are necessary for stimulation. In Beiping, mild scented tea is enough.

It is said that the layout of Paris is much more harmonious than that of London and Rome, but it is similar to that of Peiping. Beiping is natural among people, almost everywhere is neither crowded nor quiet: the smallest hutong houses also have yards and trees; The most empty place is not far from commercial streets and residential areas. This distribution method can be considered-in my experience-the best in the world. The advantage of Peiping lies not in its complete facilities everywhere, but in its free time everywhere, which allows people to breathe freely; There are not many beautiful buildings, but there are idle places around the buildings, which are very beautiful. Every tower and archway can be seen from a distance. Besides, you can also see Beishan and Xishan in the street!

People who are eager to learn and love antiques naturally like Beiping because there are many books and antiques here. I am not easy to learn and have no money to buy antiques. Materially, I like flowers, vegetables and fruits in Beiping. Flowers and plants are very expensive things, but the "grass flowers" here are very cheap, and every family has a yard. You can plant a yard flower with little money, even if it is nothing, but it is very cute. Petunia on the wall and jasmine on the root of the wall save a lot of money and trouble, which is enough to attract butterflies! As for vegetables, cabbage, lentils, green beans, cucumbers, spinach and so on. Most of them are transported directly from outside the city and delivered to your door. After the rain, leek leaves often carry mud spots splashed when it rains. The red, green and green on the food stalls are almost poetic. Many fruits come from Xishan and Beishan. Shaguo in Xishan, seawall, black dates and persimmons in Beishan, there is still frost hanging in the city! Hum, oranges in America are wrapped in paper; It's worth killing when you meet a jade stand with frost in Peiping!

Yes, Beiping is a provincial capital city, with many flowers, vegetables and fruits produced by itself, which makes people closer to nature. From the inside, it doesn't have a factory that smokes all day like London; From the outside, it is closely connected with gardens, vegetable gardens and rural areas. Under the east fence of picking chrysanthemums, you can really see Nanshan leisurely here; Probably changing the word "south" into "west" or "north" is not too big. Poor people like me, or only in Peiping, can enjoy a little happiness.

Well, don't say any more; I'm going to cry. I really miss Beiping!

Local complex

Author: Ling Ke

You people from my old country, tell me what happened there! When you passed my window, was it Plum or Han Mei? -Wang Wei

In everyone's heart, there is a land of dreams. Think of it when you are proud, think of it when you are frustrated. Every year, every festival, I will be moved by that scene and think of it anytime and anywhere. The vast sea and sky are dusty, and after the lights of the bar are exhausted, the beautiful scenery, autumn wind and late rain in Luoyang can't help but make people miss it. Far away, people are sad: "There are dozens of frosts in Bingzhou, and I miss Xianyang day and night, crossing the mulberry dry water for no reason, but I hope that Bingzhou is my hometown." I can finally go home, but I feel uneasy: "The books outside the ridge are broken, and winter goes and spring comes." Now, near my village and meeting people, I dare not ask a question. The word "stranger" sounds bleak. Meeting an old friend in another country is a fast life. The daughter of a timid boatman can't help beaming when she occasionally hears a little local accent on the river. She forgot to be shy and accosted a strange man across the boat: "where is your home?" "Near here, next to the fishing pond? . Let's catch our boat together and see if we belong to the same town ... "The vast space and leisurely time will not dilute this feeling: this is the local complex.

Xiu Yuan's life journey is bumpy, starting from childhood. The world that people first see-almost the whole world-is the hometown where I was born and raised. He began to feel hungry, cold and warm. He was sad, crying and laughing. He began to feel love from his mother's arms, his father's eyes and the teasing of his relatives. But I know the other side of love and hate, but only after a little contact with personnel. One mountain, one water, one insect, one bird, one grass and one tree, one week, one cold and one summer, one vulgar moment, one wisp of one sip, all melt into the flesh and blood of childhood and are inseparable. And it may be rooted in this land for generations, with a family history of joys and sorrows. While listening to grandma's story, I planted it in a small heart. Neighborhood folks meet each other in the streets and lanes, by the well on the bridge and at the corner of the ridge fence, laughing and knowing each other with their eyes closed, breathing the same air, imbued with the same wind and habits, and are inextricably linked with each other. A person has to go through a lot of groping before he can set the tone, tone and orientation for his life. His future is full of unknowns, but the brand of his childhood, like a cocoon, tightly wraps himself and sticks to his body like a tattoo.

"A nest of gold and silver is better than a nest of grass at home." However, people are restless animals. How many people, with youthful vigor, gritted their teeth and raised their hands, bid farewell to their reluctant hometown, and Wan Li abandoned the country to find ideals, pursue honor and start a career, which was full of romance. Only a vague poem can break into the world. Most of them are completely realistic: many young boys and girls are sent out by their parents in tears to stage various tragedies in order to maintain the minimum survival requirements. As soon as people leave their homeland, they become orchids without roots, duckweeds chasing waves, flying autumn sheds and dandelions scattered by the wind, but the dreams of their homeland will always follow them. "The thread in a loving mother's hand makes clothes for her wayward son", which is long enough to circle the earth three times and take off with the satellite.

As a result of idleness, most children are always in the rivers and lakes, and gold, beauty, false reputation and interests have become empty. Some of them were bored and came back with nothing. Some spring flowers and autumn moons wander around the scene. "You must be very sad when you get home." Some people are exhausted, jump out of vanity fair and stay away from right and wrong. "You should just be lonely, and I will close the door of my old garden." Some are indifferent, accidentally touching the dust net, unwilling to bend down to pick up five buckets of rice, go to the west, plant chrysanthemums and enjoy themselves. -but to reach this state, there must be at least a few acres of barren land and three huts to retreat, otherwise others will have to live in another country. Only a very small number, a very small number of individuals, with a one-in-a-billion chance to successfully take risks and return home with clothes-"If you don't return home with wealth, you will return home with clothes, who knows!" The creator of this famous saying is Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu, but he failed, failed. He rebelled with 8,000 children in Jiangdong, and no one was spared. He felt ashamed to see his elders in Jiangdong, and decided to commit suicide in Wujiang. Xiang Yu deserves to be a hero in the world. In terms of strength comparison, he was much stronger than his opponent Liu Bangqiang, but he lost a game of chess in political strategy: he thought he was invincible, killed too many enemies, and took advantage of victory to burn Xianyang; Although everything about Liu Bang was related to the wealth of debauchery, Qiu did not commit any crime after entering the customs. Finally, the world turned to the heart, laid the foundation for the Han Dynasty and became an emperor. Back home, I gave a big banquet, entertained my old friends and brothers, and sang and danced crazily for more than ten days. "The wind blows and clouds fly, the weaver girl returns to the hometown of the sea, and Andrew keeps all directions!" This is Liu Bang's masterpiece at that time, which is recorded in the history of poetry and has been passed down to this day.

Disasters have displaced a large number of people, especially wars, which not only lead to sparseness in rural areas and separation of flesh and blood, but also inevitably lead to moral collapse and distortion of human nature. Liu bang lost in the battle with Xiang Yu and fled hastily. In order to escape lightly, he pushed his underage children off the car three times. Xiang Yu took Liu Bang's father hostage and threatened to cook him, but Liu Bang said, My buddy, my dad is your dad. If you cook him, don't forget to share with me. In order to fight for the world, you can be so crazy! Of course, war can be divided into justice and injustice. "Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world"; "Why stay at home when the Huns are still alive"; "the quartet is a matter of peace of mind"; "Why don't men take Wu Gou and accept 50 states in Guanshan" is an eternal beauty talk. However, the ultimate goal of a just war is to stop the war with war and build peace, instead of maintaining the war with war and replacing violence with violence. What is more worrying than disasters and wars is exile: it is difficult to return home and the country is difficult to run. Qu Yuan, Jia Yi, James Zhang, Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Su Dongpo, and even Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao are really without generations. -Perhaps special mention should be made to Lin Zexu, the great patriotic saint who opened the first chapter of China's modern history. In order to ban opium, he was convicted and dismissed from office and sent to Yili. At the sad moment when he went to Xudengcheng, he took a poem to bid farewell to his family: "You are greedy for life and death, don't avoid every cloud has a silver lining. Exile is the mercy of the monarch, and it is just right to raise the humble. " Rereading this poem a hundred years later is still heartbreaking, with boiling pulse, sour eyes and low lingering.

Immigration is a tradition of the Chinese nation. Our ancestors have a deep-rooted concept that all relationships in life have a tendency to return to their roots: birds love old forests, fish miss old forests, flax depends on the north wind, foxes die first, trees soar and leaves return to their roots. There is a superstition that comforts people. It is thought that in a hundred years, there will be a homesick platform in the underworld, where the ghosts of the deceased will go on stage to see their relatives in the world on a moonlit night. But this lingering affection cannot change the cold reality. For more than a hundred years, many people still have to leave their homes or even cross the ocean to make a living in a foreign country. There were no fewer than ten million Chinese workers who went abroad in the Qing Dynasty, and their footprints were all over the world. Their blood and sweat permeated the gold mines, railways and plantations in the emerging capitalist countries. After the American Civil War, slaves were liberated, and our yellow-skinned compatriots became the follow-up troops of slave labor precisely because of their diligence, hard work and low price. Of course, they never thought about what human rights are. In order to change the fate of the motherland, the revolutionary movement led by Sun Yat-sen originated in Honolulu, the first generation of China's production party.

Many people used to work and study in France. After the reform and opening up, the tide of going abroad is surging, and it is in the ascendant. There is also a seemingly unpredictable but actually understandable contradiction: Hong Kong, abandoned by the Qing Dynasty in the Opium War, has finally returned to the embrace of the motherland after 150 years of vicissitudes. What a great event! However, many Hong Kong people who were born in Sri Lanka, ate in Sri Lanka and managed in Sri Lanka are regarded as "a cloud on their heads", preferring to abandon their possessions and make immigration plans one after another. The trend of generations of China people traveling to the sea has its own distinct background, color and connotation, which cannot be generalized, but it is the reflection of the ups and downs of the times and the splash of waves in the mighty progress of history. The cohesion of national centripetal force does not depend on geographical distance. Our first generation of overseas Chinese, living abroad and having children, have been longing for China from generation to generation, and will never forget the feelings of Sangzi. They all gave generously when the motherland needed it. Hong Kong Island, from ordinary residents to kings of all walks of life, gentlemen and celebrities from Hanyuan, have expressed their solidarity with the mainland, which is a touching example. "Beauty is not beautiful, hometown water, relatives are not close, hometown people", the farther away from home, the deeper the experience.

Scientific progress has brought the ends of the earth closer to each other, and the fusion and exchange of eastern and western cultures has made the soul connect, and the earth will become smaller and smaller. But the love for the country will not disappear. Staying at home, never seeing a ship or train, or getting lost and wandering abroad should have become a thing of the past. We should have the lofty sentiments of flying high, the freedom to swim in the water, a warm and stable home and a proud motherland, and stand in the forest of modern world civilization.

December 23, 1991