One
Trudging out of the dark four-year tunnel, we all wondered what he would do next.
Re-emerge and make a comeback? Returning to the old business, or embracing a new project?
On that autumn afternoon two years ago, the old family members and friends of sanwu had received the news in advance and rushed to Shanghai, surrounded him in front of the camera, and the relief of being reborn and the gentle sunshine covered his face. When this photo appeared in the old friends group, the group was instantly commotion. I stared for a long time, both curious and expectant: What will he do next?
After all, he is a celebrity, a boss who was once a small-minded person in our eyes, and a successful person in the eyes of the world. However, two years later, he did not choose to start a business or a high-paying job, but instead pulled out two books. One is the poetry collection "Love Letters on Earth", published in the first year after he came out, paying tribute to all the worries, thoughts and tenacity of living well in the world in the past four years, a love letter to his wife, a monologue to family, friends and the world; then there is this freshly baked "Ten Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains", "A Naturalist's Healing Journey".
Shen Hao, a famous former media personality, now a writer and poet, reunited with us in the lobby of an art hotel in Beijing 798. The last time I met him, it was seven years ago in Kunming, Zhang Fuyu invited us, after dinner we were hanging out in Cuihu Lake, when there were no kingfishers or red-billed gulls, the daily reticent Shen Hao had a rare conversation, talking about meeting an Indian yoga master in Dali, planning to make his documentary; talking about movie plans; talking about the impact of high-resolution smartphone camera features on pure text descriptions...
Seven years later, this reunion is still the two of us, one person and one chair, around a log coffee table in the lobby, there are no other guests at the moment, and there is only one young man on duty at the main desk. As soon as we sat down, neither of us spoke, and for a moment it was quiet. I was in a bit of a trance, as if time had stood still, still stuck seven years ago, "In front of the window of the coming day, the cold plum is not flowering?" Zhang Fuyu still flipped through the mobile phone WeChat like hyperactivity; Shen Hao kept smiling, leaned back in the chair, held his cheek with his right hand, and listened quietly; the only passionate speaker on the scene was still me, but this time it was no longer about entrepreneurial projects, but literature - in fact, when seven years of time passed by bit by bit from the body, drifting with the wind, none of us were spared, people's encounters were different, I started a business, invested all the way ups and downs, and even serious insomnia for ten years has not healed; Shen Hao crossed in force majeure, which lasted four years. Every spring and autumn, from the high window, I watch the egret fly overhead... Seven years later we had a new intersection, and that was literature.
Before I had time to say hello, I raced against the clock to talk about literature like I was suffering from free talking, and it was hard currency, and we talked about Julio. Cortázar, talking about "Southern Highway" in a narrow time and space to reproduce the changes in people's hearts, talking about Roberto. Bolaño's ambition to surpass One Hundred Years of Solitude with 2666... Sighing about "the ancient events of the article", "the value of classic literature, either leaving a typical character image, or leaving a golden sentence, or both", he suggested that "Fitzgerald is good, you can go his way" "To become a novelist, or is it experience, you have traveled in the investment circle, witnessed many opportunities in the era of urban hustle and wealth bubble"...
We commented on the works of contemporary writers, mentioning Yu Hua's famous work "Eighteen-year-old going out for a long trip", the undulating seaside highway described in the novel, Shen Hao, who was born in Pinghu Lake in Jiaxing, said that when he was a child, he often traveled back and forth here, but now that road is already potholes because of neglect of maintenance... During the lunch meal, I still chatted about literature, and even if I denied the characters, I almost pointed out the country. He continued to tire of it, occasionally talking, estimating that his patience was about to reach its limit. But I couldn't see it all.
At that time, I had not yet gotten his new book, "Ten Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains.". Until the next day's dinner, Zhang Fuyu brought over the sample book that Shen Hao signed for me, and went home to read a third of it, and I was already remorseful, for my own recklessness, for my own thinness and conceit, and for the words I had written before.
What led to this reversal was "Ten Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains".
Two
What kind of book is "A Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains"?
Well, if you've read the British writer Rachel. Joyce's "A Man's Pilgrimage", you can also see the experience of embarking on a long journey alone and the realization of self-redemption; if you have seen the American writer Henry. David. Thoreau's "Walden" can make you love nature more and more through Shen Hao's seeing, hearing and thinking, advocating a simple life; of course, you can even taste the tranquility of the writer Sanmao, and those simple words are full of tears...
Or maybe a bird researcher, a future director who fantasizes about making horror and suspense movies all day, a foodie who loves public welfare, and a former media person who meets to volunteer on the isolated Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, or are there only two of these four people left, a middle-aged Tibetan man and a former media man, volunteering on the isolated Qinghai-Tibet Plateau — think about it.
If it is a novel, this has given the novelist enough room for imagination. But this is not fiction, an extraordinary adventure in non-fiction writing.
This is a work about healing. You can immerse yourself in the details of the book, the poetry as full as barley, the magnificent western blockbuster that can't help but tremble and cry, and the rare wild animals, and experience the pleasure of one small surprise after another and wave after wave of "discovery" - fighting loneliness and depression in nature.
"When I realized that I might face the onslaught of depression in the near future..... I had a hunch: I had to go to an isolated place and spend some time with myself. This is Shen Hao's self-confession in the self-prologue, it is to fight the attack of potential depression, and it is the purpose of departure.
A person falls from the peak, hundreds of millions of dollars are lost overnight, this gap, this kind of "disaster", no one can easily carry it, anxiety or depression is almost predictable. Shen Hao has a high degree of self-consciousness and begins to plan a confrontation before depression strikes.
Shen Hao went to the high-altitude Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to volunteer in the Yangtze River Source Conservation Area, where even drinking water and fresh vegetables are problematic: living in a container at the Band Lake Observation Station at an altitude of nearly 5,000 meters, living frugally enough to have only basic living conditions, no mobile phone signal, sparsely populated, wild animals often haunted, caught off guard by the sea of dark clouds and the vast thunder and lightning, maybe more than ten days to scrub a bath, surrounded by vast grasslands and mountains, rivers and lakes. What does that mean? The parade monks have a Zen mind, even within the high window, "Look, the first egret of the year has returned / Looks like it has learned the loneliness of the eagle". Therefore, the hardships of these conditions on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau reflect the brilliance of his "sun, bright moon, stars, clouds, storms, rainbows", as well as the daily frugal happiness of the volunteers' daily lives, as well as the various lives of those passers-by who come and go and go and come and go.
It is also a written "documentary" about animals. Whenever you read the life that jumps on the paper, the daily rare contact and even look at the names of animals that feel awkward, those "white creatures for ten thousand years, black creatures for a thousand years", it is easy to recall zhao Zhongxiang more than thirty years ago to broadcast the classic line of "Animal World": "Spring is coming, all things are revived, and animals are in the mating season..." "Ten Thousand Waters and Thousand Mountains" "Know more than the names of birds, animals, plants and trees", Shen Hao gives emotion to every animal in his own pen, even if it is as humble as a beetle or an earthworm. Resolutely defend their right to exist and give dignity to the citizens of the planet. Those ravens who "always have a big shadow on the ground when they fly through the sky, like the shadow of a dark cloud"; there are desheng birds with high crown-like headdresses that give a proud aristocratic atmosphere; the patterns that fly when flapping their wings are like the skirts of Spanish dancers; the white-lipped deer swimming in the Tongtian River, the brown bears that intrude into Tibetan homes, the spotted geese that feed in groups, the marmots that kiss their mouths, the steppe wolves that are always vigilant, the Tibetan wild donkeys, the snow leopards, the Tibetan foxes, the small red foxes, the vultures, and of course, the Tibetan antelopes and "snow leopards prefer rock sheep." Steppe wolves prefer ecological chains such as "spotted geese" and so on - as busy people living in the hustle and bustle of the city, if we can stop and flip through a random page, we can hear the sounds of nature, "just like the soil prefers bones, vultures prefer the body that is detached from the soul", and see the vitality of the distant Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
It's still a book about feelings. Everyone has the opportunity to inadvertently encounter "a smile" in the book.
Just after entering Qinghai, Shen Hao was waiting for the assignment of work at golmud Station, when he met a person who came down from the Tuotuo River Yangtze River Source Water Ecological And Environmental Protection Station to pick up his old Yang. Old Yang has long gray hair and a beard. They were actually familiar strangers, and although they had met each other for the first time, they had actually intersected twenty years ago, but neither of them had mentioned it. The next day, they met again, and Lao Yang quietly sent Shen Hao a newspaper clipping photo, which was a long report about Shen Hao that he had edited in Southern Weekend. Lao Yang is Yang Xin, the main rafting team member and photographer of the Yangtze River Scientific Expedition Rafting Expedition, who has been engaged in ecological investigation and environmental protection in the Yangtze River source and Coco Xili for more than 30 years - they will smile at each other. "Doing good deeds without seeking blessings comes from within, and there is virtue and blessing for people."
"Sister, tonight I am in Delhi", "This is the only and last lyric", "Tonight, I don't care about human beings, I only think of you"... Shen Hao took the green-skinned train for a short stay in Delingha, and his mind immediately popped up with verses based on Shanghaizi. He borrowed these verses to pay tribute to Haizi. It reminds me of last year when my friends and I drove from Xining to Chaka Salt Lake, we saw the words "Delingha" on the highway signs, and the same reaction happened in my mind. Similar scenes, in the plateau, in The Bande Mountain, in the Band Lake, on the hillside, in the canyon, in the grass, in the Jokhang Temple and the Eight Corridor Street, etc., the curiosity and surprise that come by hand also make more people with common experiences and feelings smile.
In order to pray for the blessing of her mother, who was suddenly ill, she hurried from the Plateau Observatory to Lhasa, knelt in front of the Potala Palace, and made a pilgrimage on Badang Street. As he lay in the rain of the circular passage of Eight Corridor Street and struck the stone ground with his forehead for the last time, and climbed up with a face full of mud, he heard the white dove's inner grunting--a branch of olive, out of the soul, healed, and made a spiritual friend.
It lasted 34 days and 280,000 Chinese characters – this healing journey, although short, condensed into "thousands of mountains and rivers".
Three
I would like to talk about the text.
This is "nature writing" through and through. Britain and the United States, which can be traced back to the 17th and 19th centuries, originated from the English Nature Writing, and they first encountered the contradiction between industrial civilization and nature, putting forward the idea that "the world can only be protected in the wilderness" and "reason and faith are rediscovered in the jungle".
In fact, in "Ten Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains", it is also possible to read Zhuangzi's wisdom: "The mountains and forests and the Gao soil and the soil make me happy" ("Zhibei Tour") "Alone with the spirit of heaven and earth, not proud of all things" ("Tianxia"). However, Shen Hao powdered out big words and concepts, returned more to personal thinking, and entered the individual life experience.
Shen Hao, who was born in the department of peking university Chinese, was a famous campus poet at that time, and was good at writing golden sentences: "The sun hits your face, and the warmth remains in our hearts." "Let the powerless be powerful, let the pessimists move forward, let the ones who go forward continue to walk, let the happy people be happier..." "There is always a force that makes us cry, there is always a force that makes us shake our spirits..." This is the New Year's message of "Southern Weekend" that year, and it is all the rage. I remember when I was studying at Lu Xun College of Literature, our class was going to hold a New Year's Party, and I discussed the recitation program with a Henan classmate in the dormitory, and unanimously agreed to choose this dedication. When I tried to recite it, just a few words later, the dear classmate suddenly covered his face and cried, tears spilling through his fingers. Many years later, these sentences that have been baptized by time can still stir up our emotional waves. The same condensed senses and essences of life, carved into a golden sentence like a craftsman, poured in groups in "Ten Thousand Waters and Thousand Mountains", covering the earth.
"Nothing can move people easily. In addition to the real. This is also a sentence in that year's New Year's message. Over the years, at least as a writer and poet, Shen Hao has adhered to this philosophy. In "A Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains", he writes down every detail of the self—what he did, remembered, thought—and then recalled them, like observing pathological slices. In this process, he demands that he must be honest, neither deliberately avoiding nor deliberately recalling, so that the ego flows out like water and flows into the natural environment in which he lives.
Solzhenitsyn expressed the same view, "A truth weighs more than the whole world." This requires courage, but also requires skill, even if the subjective emotional expression, but also to ensure that the objective like a knife work accurate description - Shen Hao did it."
In the form of a diary, each day is turned into prose, into poetry, even if the oxygen is thin and isolated from the world. How romantic this must be. Many writers have used the form of diaries. What if at the end of an article, attach a poem? Or, a wonderful narrative of each day, and it ends with a poem, and these poems are a certain scene of the day, a certain moment, or a thought of a deceased person, inspired, full of intellect, so real, will it feel novel to end the day's spiritual journey?
"If I hang up, who will come to my funeral" "They took a bag of dry garbage when they went down the mountain" "The black-necked crane, and the real richest man in the world" "I heard the strange cry again, like a spell, like shouting wheat", "I really wanted to run naked on the grassland", "The wind was so small that only the lake could feel it", "When I tapped the stone slab with my forehead and then looked up", "Those love letters used to 'smell'"... The long headline that was unique when he founded 21st Century Business Herald, he used it in "Ten Thousand Waters and Thousand Mountains", is still so sexy. Flipping through these sub-headings, it is as if you see a different kind of westworld unfolding slowly in front of your eyes, wind, rain, thunder, lightning and all living beings, living and full of life on this colorful planet.
Of course, you can also spy on the heart of a middle-aged teenager who matures late. The loss and return of those senses of taste, the sadness and nostalgia for the old and departed relatives, and the remaining warm hearts under the high windows... In "Ten Thousand Waters and a Thousand Mountains", Shen Hao writes in the form of interspersed form, the mood when he loses his freedom and regains his freedom, which makes people feel mixed feelings.
This was his "bootleg", which he generously held out, and he "sat alone on the top of Mount Meru and saw the clouds at a glance"