The Story of an Old Man [Seventy-Seven]
Li Dongchuan‖ My Years in the Countryside (8)
[Through the moon full of flowers] photo by Li Dongchuan
Love is the most precious quality of human nature, and it belongs not only to all human beings, but also to the entire natural world.
- The author's words
Can you imagine hearing someone say they like you, and you will have a deep hatred from the bottom of your heart and a bitter bond for decades?
If I told you that this girl who likes you is still a girl who doesn't look ugly, will you believe it?
What!
A bunch of nonsense, nonsense, and abnormal nerves.
I'm not at all surprised when you hear these fiery words that I'm going to utter as well.
But unfortunately this is true, and it really happened to me and my classmates (I won't nominate the surname here) in that incredibly inhuman era.
At that time, after the classmate and I found out about this, we cursed the female classmate together countless times, and did things that make me blush now when I think about it: passing by her or secretly spitting on her behind her back.
It wasn't until after that incident that I slowly understood that it is human nature to love men and women.
The era when we grew up as teenagers was the era when the love between men and women was regarded as "the idea of the small Z bourgeoisie", and "sex" was a forbidden area where strict restrictions were imposed.
It seems to me that I suddenly understand what the seven of us who went to the countryside are all boys.
Do you still remember the girl I mentioned on the first day of going to the countryside while cutting down forests and resting with a pair of embroidered insoles? It was the girl my age.
She has a slender figure that is different from that of rural people, and her large, dark talking eyes are as clear and transparent as two pools of water.
This is this girl, not long after I went to the countryside, when I was digging and planting vegetables in the private land in front of our house, and when she walked under our private land, she suddenly called out my name: "Dongchuan".
When I stopped what I was doing and looked up at her, I saw the blush on her face, and a pair of insoles flew out of her hands and landed at my feet.
I looked around like a thief, but luckily there was no one around, so I quickly bent down and picked up the insoles on the ground and stuffed them into my trouser pocket.
Back in the house, because Lin Tianlai and Song Xinsheng hadn't come back yet, I was alone, I took out the insoles from my trouser pockets, but I saw lotus flowers and two mandarin ducks playing on the insoles.
I was seventeen years old at the time, and I already knew a little about the relationship between men and women in the world, and I couldn't help but think that when I was thirteen years old, when the news of that female classmate about liking me reached my ears, I couldn't help but feel ridiculous.
In my life's experience, as a former literary and artistic youth, I have liked writing, photography, and singing. I have watched movies, Sichuan opera, Huangmei opera, and I like Suzhou Pingtan very much. There are also poems and songs......
When I look back on all this today, I deeply feel that of all the things in the spiritual realm, only songs have the greatest impact on people.
I acknowledge that literature plays a significant role in shaping people's spiritual worlds, and that film, theater, music, dance, and photography have an impact on people.
But no other art has a deeper impact on people than songs.
When we hum a song, that song will take us back to that era, such as "Let's Swing the Sculls", "We Walk on the Road", "The Sea Sails by the Helmsman", "The Song of Duqiu", "On the Island of the Sun", "Loess High Slope", ...... Every song will bring you into that era.
In those years when "falling in love" was regarded as a bourgeois petty sentiment and "sex" was a place of confinement, first of all, the songs evoked our awakening of the desire for beautiful love and beautiful girls: what "Star Rope", "Looking in the Mirror", "Deep Ocean", "Beautiful Girl Has Seen Thousands of Things"......
Those sad songs can arouse our empathy in our youth even more: here I heard the sea singing/Here I smelled the fragrance of rhododendrons/Here in the beautiful South Sea/I met a Malayan girl/She and I used to lean side by side against the coconut tree/She talked to me about my hometown/She opened her big, dark eyes/She gave her life for me/The sea you buried her body and shadow/The sea you must not wash away my hatred and hatred/You see the sea making waves/It was her soul crying to me......
In particular, the phrase "that is her soul crying to me" has brought tears to my eyes countless times.
And this one: One morning / Mimi Mi / The girl went to herd sheep / A stone tripped on her foot / The girl fell in the middle of the water / Her beautiful face floated on the water / I couldn't swim and couldn't think / I just watched the dear girl / The girl sank in the middle of the water.
At that time, I was full of gratuitous hatred for this man who watched him sink in the middle of the water, and thought to himself why he didn't save her when he saw his dear girl sinking in the middle of the water!
It was these love songs that were popular among the educated youth at that time that awakened the love buried deep in people's hearts, and made us realize for the first time what those songs that praise this and that have nothing to do with us, and it has nothing to do with our real inner world.
As a result, I realized that "love" is something that constitutes a purely spiritual world to which human nature belongs, and began to return my attention to my own heart, to the nature of loving and being loved in human nature, and to examine, describe and interpret this world with humanistic feelings.
In the face of the insoles given by the country girl, I completely lost the anger and disgust I heard when I was thirteen years old, and I carefully treasured this affection in the bottom of my heart.
I remember that at that time, whenever she saw me, she would quickly lower her head and hurriedly walk past me, and I would quickly tilt my head to the side, and there was an indescribable feeling in my heart.
I've mentioned the plot of "throwing insoles" in several articles, and it can be seen that it left a deep impression on me, and I will never forget it.
Many years later, when I heard the song "Xiao Fang", the lyrics immediately pulled me into that situation, especially the sentence: Thank you for the love you gave me, and I will never forget it in this life. Thank you for the love you gave me to get through that era......
Some emotions have nothing to do with love, but they are more unforgettable than love, that is a kind of "can only be understood, not spoken" beauty, she will always rise in your heart, and will touch you gently and firmly, in my opinion, that is engraved in your heart can never erase the traces of love.
"Thank you for the love you gave me and let me get through that era", now that more than 50 years have passed, only this lyric can best evoke my nostalgia for those years in the countryside.
Photo by Li Dongchuan
We have experienced a desert of humanity where many of us have not only lost our humanity, but have also helped to erase the humanity of others.
- The author's words
Li Dongchuan
Originally from Laiwu, Shandong Province, he was born in Chongqing in 1952 and grew up in southern Sichuan. In the 1970s, he was engaged in photography, and in the 1980s, he was engaged in photography theory research, and his papers were collected into the third and sixth national photography "Essay Collection", and more than 100,000 words of papers and review articles were published in national and professional journals at all levels. In 1999, he published "Li Dongchuan's Five Words Ancient Style Poetry Collection". Later, he devoted himself to prose creation, and has created more than 700 prose works, and the essay collection "Old Times" has been officially published by Unity Publishing House in 2021.
【Lotus Drawing】 Yu Shou Wan painting
June 27, 2024