Original text of "Me and the Temple of Earth" by Shi Tiesheng:

I have mentioned an abandoned ancient garden in several novels, which is actually the Temple of Earth. Many years ago, before tourism was developed, the garden was as desolate as a wilderness and was rarely remembered.

The Temple of Earth is very close to my home. In other words, my home is very close to the Temple of Earth. All in all, I can only think that this is fate. The Temple of Earth was located there more than four hundred years before I was born, and since my grandmother brought my father to Beijing when she was young, she has lived not far from it, moving several times over the past fifty years. Home.

But when I move around, I am always around it, and the closer I move to it, the closer I get. I often feel that there is a sense of fate in this: as if this ancient garden was just waiting for me, and it has been waiting there for more than four hundred years after all the vicissitudes of life.

It waited for me to be born, and then waited for me to live to the most arrogant age when my legs were suddenly disabled. Over the past four hundred years, it has eroded the ostentatious colored glaze on the eaves of the ancient palace, faded the flamboyant vermilion on the door walls, collapsed sections of high walls and scattered jade inlays and carved railings, and the old cypress trees around the altar have become increasingly gray. It is quiet, and the weeds and vines everywhere are lush and open.

It must be time for me to come. One afternoon fifteen years ago, I rolled my wheelchair into the garden. It had everything prepared for a lost person. At that time, the sun was getting bigger and redder, following its eternal path. In the quiet light that fills the garden, it is easier for a person to see time and see his own figure.

Since I accidentally entered this garden that afternoon, I have never left it for a long time. I immediately understood its intent. As I said in a novel: "In a densely populated city, there is such a peaceful place, like God's painstaking arrangement."

The first few days after the two legs were disabled In 2007, I couldn't find a job, I couldn't find my way out, and suddenly I could find almost nothing. I rolled my wheelchair and always went to it, just because it was another world where I could escape from one world. I wrote in that novel: "I have nowhere to go, so I spend my time in this garden all day long."

"It's like going to and from work. When others go to work, I roll my wheelchair here. The garden was unattended, and some people took shortcuts through it during get off work hours. The garden was lively for a while, and then fell silent."

"The garden wall slanted in the golden air. When the shade comes, I drive my wheelchair in, put down the back of the chair, sit or lie down, read a book or think about something, hold up a branch and flap it left and right to drive away those little insects that, like me, don’t understand why they came to this world. "

"The bee stood steadily in the air like a small mist; the ant shook its head and stroked its tentacles, suddenly thought about something, turned around and hurried away; the ladybug crawled impatiently. After getting tired and praying, he spread his wings and took off in a flash; there was a cicada shed on the tree trunk, as lonely as an empty room; dew rolled and gathered on the grass blades, bending the grass blades and crashing to the ground. Golden light."

"The garden is filled with the sounds of growing vegetation, rustling and rustling for a moment." These are true records. The garden is not deserted. decay.

Except for a few halls, I can't go in. Except for the altar, I can't go up but can only look at it from all angles. I've been under every tree in the altar of earth, and almost every meter of grass. They all have my wheel marks on them. No matter what season, what weather, what time, I have stayed in this garden.

Sometimes I stay for a while and then go home, sometimes I stay until the moonlight shines all over the ground. I can’t remember which corner of it it was in. For hours I thought intently about death, and in the same patient way I thought about why I was born.

After thinking about it for several years, I finally figured it out: when a person is born, it is no longer a question that can be debated, but just a fact handed over to him by God; When this fact is given to us, its result has been guaranteed by the way, so death is something that does not need to be rushed. Death is a festival that will inevitably come.

After thinking about it this way, I felt much more at ease, and everything in front of me was no longer so scary. For example, when you get up early and stay up late to prepare for an exam, you suddenly remember that there is a long vacation waiting for you ahead. Would you feel a little more relaxed? And are you happy and grateful for this arrangement?

What remains is the question of how to live. This is not something that can be completely thought out in one moment, nor can it be solved at once. I am afraid that I will have to think about it as long as I live. It's like a devil or a lover that stays with you for life. Therefore, after fifteen years, I still always go to that ancient garden, under its old trees or by the grass or by its decaying walls, to sit in silence, to think, to push away the noise in my ears and sort out the chaos. Thoughts, to peek into your own soul.

In the past fifteen years, the shape of this ancient garden has been arbitrarily carved by people who cannot understand it. Fortunately, there are some things that no one can change.

For example, the setting sun in the stone door of the altar, the moment the silent brilliance spreads out, every bump on the ground is reflected brilliantly; for example, at the most lonely time in the garden, a group of swifts come out and sing loudly, making the heaven and earth desolate;

For example, the footprints of children on the snow in winter always make people wonder who they are, where they have done what they have done, and where they have gone; for example, those dark ancient cypresses, they appear when you are depressed. Standing there calmly, they still stand there calmly when you are happy, they stand there day and night from the time you were not born until the time when you are no longer in this world; for example, a heavy rain falls in the garden. , arousing bursts of burning and pure smell of grass and earth, reminding people of countless summer events;

For example, the autumn wind suddenly comes, there is an early frost, the fallen leaves may sing and dance, or they may calmly Lying down, the garden is filled with the slightly bitter smell of ironing. The taste is the most indescribable. You can't write about the taste, you can only smell it. You have to smell it in person to understand it. Smells are even difficult to remember. Only when you smell it again can you remember its full emotion and meaning. So I often go to the garden.

Evaluation of "The Temple of Earth and Me":

I think that even if he only had one novel of his in 1991, "I and the Temple of Earth", it would be considered a good year. ——Writer Han Shaogong

What Shi Tiesheng wrote was not a slippery prose about escaping from the world, not a fast-food prose about rapid growth and destruction, not a self-respecting fake "scholar-bureaucrat" prose, not a coquettish little woman's prose. Frustration, trauma, grief, anger, and despair have certainly left traces in his works, but his works are always peaceful, quiet, and generous, possessing both literary and humanitarian power. ——Guangzhou Daily?

"The Temple of Earth and I" is like a dialogue and exploration with the entire human spirit. Every word reveals the theme of "life is accidental, but cannot be underestimated". Those works of the same period also revealed the theme of "life is accidental". It is a process of suffering.” Shi Tiesheng once mocked himself for being "planted on the bed." This sentence was full of suffering and self-deprecation. "The torment he suffered from decades of illness was far beyond our imagination and endurance. This kind of suffering has long been integrated into his thoughts and soul.

”——Writer Cao Wenxuan