1934, Shen Congwen, who returned to Xiangxi because his mother was seriously ill, agreed to write to his wife Zhang Zhaohe every day when she left. All the 34 letters written in the whole process were brought back, and then processed into a collection of essays, Traveling to San Ji.

Essays on Xiangxi and Border Town are works created by Shen Congwen at the same time. If "Border Town" shows us a love story of Tongcheng like a peach garden, then "Notes on Xiangxing" follows the ship marks on the Yuanshui River and depicts a more complete and true Xiangxi for us.

No more ignorance of Cui Cui, and no more infatuation from Tianbaonuo. On his way back to his hometown, Shen Congwen vividly sketched the ordinary personnel in western Hunan on paper, showing a natural picture of flesh and blood and sadness, overflowing with deeper and deeper feelings and righteousness, eternal life style, benevolence and morality, and simple customs.

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Simple folk customs in Xiangxi in Shen Congwen's eyes

Even though he rarely returned to Xiangxi, a paradise-like place, Shen Congwen, who came out of the mountains, never forgot the people and things in his hometown of Xiangxi. From many works, we can find that he is very keen to describe the folk customs of his hometown, which is not only a long-term attachment to the personnel in his hometown, but also allows readers to deeply understand the beauty of human nature from the inside out in Xiangxi.

There is such a description in Border Town: "The ferry is owned by the public, and the transition people don't have to pay. Someone was upset, grabbed a handful of money and threw it on the boat board. The ferryman picked it up one by one and stuffed it into that person's heart. "

Transitional people are still uncomfortable when they don't need donations, and it is difficult to accept help for no reason. Innocent people always remember seemingly unnecessary kindness in their hearts. Even if the ferryman accepts it, he will give it away irresistibly. Compared with the bustling indifference in the city, simple country people know more about people's kindness.

The exquisiteness of Shen Congwen's brushwork is revealed from the grasping, throwing and picking up of a handful of money. The people who make the transition are uneasy and hesitant for fear of being rejected. The ferryman insists on not accepting it but carefully picks it up one by one without any affectation or hesitation. In this corner, they don't care about their status, they spend money like life, they don't deliberately flatter, they are simple and pure. Even if you don't get the money in the end, you will turn it into tea and tobacco to give away, and you will never hide it.

He wrote about love in a small scene under the moon: "The meaning of two people is still written in a smile, using such ambiguous and mysterious symbols, but from this smile, the opposite one is clear and unambiguous. The long river in the distance is like a belt in the moonlight, and the water is white and foggy, which increases the warmth of the two. " The dim moonlight seems to cover the spoony love between men and women over the long river, which can't be dispersed for a long time, but the appropriate smile permeates the hearts of lovers in the mist, which makes people tremble.

In Travel Notes of Hunan, "I walked about three miles, but I heard someone calling my name on the shore and chasing me along the coast. It turned out that he came out of the hot quilt to see me off. " It was winter and the author's friend came to see me off early in the morning. It's very cold. The author only uses the action description of "crawling out of the hot quilt" to re-render the deep affection of friends, which includes both the understanding of friends and the most subtle perception of life. The true feelings of Xiangxi people blend with life in his works, but they jump from the paper and cleanse people's hearts.