Looking at pear blossoms on Daijin River

See the pear blossoms on the Daijin River

Go see the pear blossoms.

Go to Daijinchuan to see pear blossoms.

It’s a long way, four hundred kilometers. After lunch, I counted more than 200 kilometers northwest of Chengdu. As the altitude continues to rise, the spring-flowered Chengdu Plain is behind you, and the snow-capped mountains in front of you continue to rise. First, you can see the faint top, and soon, the snow-capped mountains tower in front of you. This is not about seeing pear blossoms, it is about leaving spring behind and re-appreciating the passing winter.

The road that winds up and over the snow-capped mountains has been abandoned for more than ten years. We passed through the mountain through the tunnel. After four or five kilometers, we left the Minjiang River system and entered the Suomo River, an upper tributary of the Dadu River. The road turns to the southeast and goes down the river. In front of you is a canyon scenery three thousand meters above sea level.

There are steep canyon walls on both sides of the river bank. The sunny gorge wall is a grassy slope and a closed oak forest. The shady gorge wall is covered with fir trees, pine trees and birch trees. Sunshine is a master of art. He uses the rock walls, forests, rivers and criss-crossing mountain ridges of the canyon to outline the complex boundaries between light and shadow, turning the mountain walls and the entire canyon into a far-reaching landscape. painting. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid that this picture will be too monotonous, so the wind and clouds will come to help. When the wind shakes those trees, it actually shakes the light, making it turbulent and flowing. One or two clouds come and cover some of the light, and the part that loses the light looks gloomy, while the part that is not covered becomes louder and brighter under the sunlight. Vision can be converted into hearing. It really seems like you can hear sounds in the swaying light and shadow. The shadow part is a woodwind band, low and melancholy, but also full of details. It's spring, and the moss under the forest is moist and turning green. The trees are spreading their roots, sucking water from the thawed land and transporting it upward to every detail. Although the forest is not green, it can still make people feel alive. And those parts illuminated by the sun are simply high-pitched and bright brass bands singing heartily. Some familiar melodies sounded in my ears, such as the evocative singing of the trumpet at the beginning of Tchaikovsky's "Italian Caprice".

Just as I was lost in the music in my mind, suddenly, the canyon opened up. The mountains became gentle and receded into the distance. The river is no longer forced to the roots of the mountain by the cliff, but returns to the center of the valley and flows slowly. These valleys are formed by the accumulation of rivers over time. The people on both sides of the river are also nurtured by the river. The river should be in the center of the earth. There should be a village on the mesa on the river bank, and there should be farmland around the village. Those bright flowers and trees should appear all around those villages and fields. It was a tree with wild peach blossoms blooming on the hillside behind the village and by the stream in front of the village. It was like the stretching and broad singing of a string orchestra.

Stop the car and walk into a village. I want to see those wild peach blossoms. From a distance, wild peach trees stand in front of the village at the foot of the mountain. Looking closer, wild peach blossoms are densely clustered on the branches. The pink petals are illuminated by the sun and have a delicate silk texture. Perhaps this metaphor is too refined and does not match the majestic wilderness before us. I am reminded of the Japanese Nagai Karikaze who used this metaphor when describing the peach blossoms in the courtyard: "The red color of the peach blossoms comes from the dyeing and weaving color of a certain exquisite pattern of plain thin silk in the past." Nagai Karikaze said that when he wrote about the location of the peach blossoms, The courtyard is so small and cramped that it is even "not a courtyard designed for strolling, but a courtyard designed to sit down and look around in the pavilions." But now I am walking upright under the beautiful sky, the wind is blowing, the fields surround the village, and the mountains surround the fields. Enter that village. Out of the village again. Wherever the wind blows, petals of wild peach blossoms are blown away. After walking out of the village, there is another terrace on the hillside behind the village, and there are still wild peach trees in full bloom on the slope. There is another village on the hillside. It was in the afternoon. We climbed a high platform along the winding village road and walked to the village above. The village was very quiet, every door was locked, and I didn’t know where everyone had gone. Only the wild peach blossoms in front of and behind the village were blooming quietly and enthusiastically. This vast, quiet and passionate flower affair maintains such an original style that there is no ready-made rhetoric to invoke. From here, you can look over to the village where the flowers are blooming more enthusiastically and more peacefully.

But these peach blossoms are not the focus of this trip. So, after looking around for a while, I turned back and went down the mountain, heading towards the distant Jinchuan pear blossoms.

This place is called Songgang. A Tibetan place name, pronounced in Chinese, also has its own meaning. There are no pine trees on the hillock, but the flowers and trees are blooming. "Song" is originally a Tibetan word, a quantifier, meaning three. Three what? There was no one and nowhere to ask.

On this morning, I walked up the Minjiang River. The higher I went, the higher the altitude, and the scenery became more and more bleak. I was completely leaving spring. Then, going down the Dadu River Basin, we approach spring step by step and enter spring. It is completely different from the spring on the Chengdu Plain that just left in the morning.

Another change in the mountain terrain, entering another canyon.

The granite mountain walls are steeper, and among the rock gaps are tall cypress trees. These cypress trees have been listed as national second-level protected plants, named Minjiang cypress. I wrote about them in a book called Shadows on the River. These dark green trees are still sleeping. New leaves have not yet bloomed on the treetops. The accompanying tree couldn't hold it any longer. The aspen trees have become new green, and the wild peach blossoms have bloomed more brilliantly. Here, a larger river joins the Suomo River. Standing in front of a cliff, you can hear the faint echo of the rivers interacting with each other.

This place with steep cliffs and many cypress trees is called Rejue.

The canyon opened up again, with more villages appearing in the valley, more trees in full bloom and trees blooming with new green. Green trees grow leaves first and then bloom, while flowering trees grow leaves first and then flowers.

Then, about twenty kilometers away, in a town called Kelin, the open valley suddenly closed again. The high granite mountains make this town half in the sun and half in the shadow of the mountains. Another river from the north joins. From then on, this river with abundant water was called Dadu River.

We walked along the Dadu River through the thick mountain shadows.

The canyon is deeper, and the spring is deeper. There are more green trees and flower trees among the cliffs. Moreover, in front of a small village that occasionally appeared, what was blooming was no longer wild peach blossoms, but white plum blossoms and pear blossoms.

I am familiar with this canyon. Forty years ago, I used to drive a tractor back and forth every day. Now, the road has been widened and paved with asphalt, but the mountains are still those mountains, the river is still the same river, and the road still winds along the river and close to the foot of the mountain. What's more, the year before last was also the same time of year, and I had already visited here again. Therefore, I can warn my companions that we are about to break out of this majestic canyon. Sure enough, the mountains ahead gradually became lower, and the sky became wider and wider at the mouth of the gorge, and more and more bright clouds could be seen hovering in front.

Then, the car rushed out from the curve under a cliff. The river suddenly widened and slowed down. It was rolling and rolling just now. As soon as it rushed out of the gorge, it dropped the waves with flying beads and jade, and turned into a river. A piece of quiet green silk. Dadu River is the name on the map. Among local people, this section of the river is called Jinchuan. On closer inspection, the name of the river is related to the abundance of gold along the river in the past. But today, the gold rush era is long gone. On the contrary, this river has given birth to the "Aba Jiangnan" in the broad valley of the northwest Sichuan plateau. The name of the county was also changed to Jinchuan. Hundreds of years ago, during the era of chieftain rule, the Tibetan name here was Qujin, which means big river. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, he changed his land and returned to Liu, integrated troops among the people, and called it Guo Jingtun. During the Republic of China, a county was established called Jinghua. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was renamed Jinchuan County. The evolution of the place names of this county can also provide a glimpse into the rise of chaos, the progress of the times, and the changes in culture.

It is already sunset. The suspended white clouds are edged with gold. Dotted villages are nestled among the pear blossoms all over the mountains and plains, with smoke scattered everywhere. Dusk fell on the earth, and the colors of the pear blossoms gradually faded, finally disappearing into the night and turning into vague gleams.

After dinner, I went for a walk with my host from the county. I saw the lights of the city reflected on the river, and the gentle evening breeze brought the faint fragrance of pear blossoms surrounding the city.

I heard the sonorous voice of the wise man in the village echoing in the pavilion. He was talking about a distant war. Those familiar names of people and places floated to my ears intermittently. I still sat there, looking at the misty flowers against the scorching sun. Later, they came out of the pavilion. I heard someone asking him who he was. It's not about his profession, but about his national identity. This is actually asking him whether he is a descendant of the conquered or a descendant of the conqueror. They went to see the pear blossoms, and I met a few acquaintances and talked to them, so I didn't hear his reply. I don’t know his specific situation, but most of the people living in the Daejinchuan Valley are descendants of both the conquerors and the conquered. After the tragic war that year, almost all the local men were killed or injured. In order to maintain long-term peace and stability, the Qing government decided that the surviving soldiers would stay and colonize the area. The foreign soldiers would marry local women, and they would work together to breed offspring, so that This piece of land that had gone through all kinds of tribulations has regained its vitality.

I checked a lot of information about Jinchuan to see when the pear trees in the mountains and valleys appeared. Sure enough, I found some clues in different books. A notebook written by someone at the time talked about the local products before the war, saying that there was a pear tree called chali in the area. It was also found in later historical data that soldiers from Shandong who stayed in the settlement brought pear tree seeds from their hometown. After grafting with local pear trees, the new pear trees produced drumstick-shaped, sweet, juicy and almost pear trees. Fruit without residue, because this new pear tree grows under the snow-capped mountains, it is called Snow Pear, also known as Jinchuan Snow Pear. Since then, there has been one more kind of tree in the world, a pear tree. I don’t know when these new pear trees filled the Daejinchuan River Valley, changing the landscape of the valley. The integration of multiple ethnic groups has also changed the cultural landscape here. The new people have planted thousands of pears and trees, and their lives are no longer the same as those in the mulberry fields. The latter sentence is quoted from Chao Buzhi's "Refugees". I made up the previous sentence. In this way, we can roughly summarize the changes in the Dajinchuan area after the tragic war during the Qianlong period.

The local government has a strong intention to transform agriculture into tourism. Such pear blossoms in the mountains and valleys are indeed a good tourism resource. Du Fu's poem: "Always give food to the poor in high autumn, and the eyes will be full of comfort next year." Although it is written about peach trees, it is also very appropriate to move it to pear blossoms. When something is put to use, it is useful first. After this function is realized, its aesthetic appreciation function may be more valuable. Our group was invited to see and write about pear blossoms. But how to write about these wild and vibrant pear blossoms that bloom in the wilderness is indeed a problem. In the past few days, I have been hearing people recite Cen Shen's poem in my ears: "Suddenly a spring breeze comes overnight, and thousands of pear trees bloom", but I am not satisfied in my heart. Although what he wrote was as grand as the scenery in front of him, the poem was actually about snow, and about the snow on Luntai in the Tang Dynasty, and he only used pear blossoms as a metaphor. When I really look for verses about pear blossoms in ancient poetry, they are all about small mountains and small water gardens. After all, they seem too delicate and not suitable for the Jinchuan pear blossoms in front of us:

The pear blossoms are covered with snow on their branches, The orioles sing like willows. (Wen Tingyun)

Thousands of pear trees are covered with snow, and thousands of willow leaves are covered with smoke. (Li Bai)

The pear blossom is like a quiet girl, lonely in the late spring. (Yuan Haowen)

When I feel nostalgic again, I feel spring sorrow, which is incompatible with the vigorous blooming scene in front of me:

Pear blossoms are close to cold food, but they are only worried about the rest of the year. . (Yang Wanli)

The pear blossom has longing for its leaves, and a tree at the head of the river kills you in anger. (Bai Juyi)

Walking in the high mountains and deep valleys where pear blossoms bloom, I only feel the infection of vitality. Even some real or idle sorrows have disappeared at this time.

Pear trees are all pear trees, but they have different postures; pear flowers are all pear flowers, but they bloom in different styles. What's more, trees are planted by people, and the people are all different. The people of Jinchuan have been formed into a special ethnic group by history. Trees grow in a different environment. The majestic snow-capped mountains and rivers here have nurtured this kind of pear tree that is close to its original state. Chinese literary writing, especially prose writing, often adopts the familiar methods in traditional culture of conveying feelings to objects and expressing feelings about time and spring. When the scenes are similar, although they are appropriate, there is nothing new.

China is rich in geographical and cultural diversity. The same plant will naturally have different moods and meanings in different situations. Therefore, regardless of the subjective and objective environment, just using those speaking methods in traditional aesthetics that are mainly rooted in the Central Plains situation is tantamount to canceling the meaning of writing. Japanese writer Nagai Kafeng noticed this problem when he wrote about plum blossoms. He said: "As soon as I saw the plum blossoms, my mind was immersed in testing my knowledge about Japanese classical literature. No matter how beautiful the plum blossoms are, no matter how fragrant the fragrance is, our individual impulses suddenly disappear under the deep-rooted authority of the past. Withering. Chinese poetry, songs and haiku have completely absorbed the fragrance of flowers. "American cultural critic Susan Sontag also said that the foundation of artistic innovation is to cultivate new sensibility. In other words, we need to have new understanding and understanding of different objects. On this point, Nagai Kafeng also said something with a similar meaning: "We must first calm down and contemplate this brand-new flower with an innocent and new touch."

Indeed, if If you lack due vigilance against this kind of writing method, you will slip into those routines with no new ideas. When I look at pear blossoms, it becomes "I look at" pear blossoms, and what really matters is that I look at "pear blossoms". The former is just a gesture; the latter can truly present the object of writing. Today, travel prose is facing a crisis, that is, it only sees the gesture but not the presentation of the object. In this way, writing or not writing is actually the same. A French critic once pointed out that a text without new ideas only results in an "empty rotation of meaning." What does idling mean? It means that the car engine is started but not moving forward. For literature, when words are spread out but nothing new is discovered, that is the meaning of meaninglessness.

Therefore, when I look at the pear blossoms in Jinchuan, I not only consider combining the local mountains and rivers with the unique humanities, but also pay attention to learning the subtle and accurate observations of botany. When writing about things, you must first let the things appear, and then you can have a credible basis for writing about other things.

Another thing that comes to mind is that traveling and sightseeing are a process, a process of gradually arriving, approaching and deepening. This is both sublimation in introspection and gradual geographical proximity. Therefore, I am also willing to write down the process of how to get there. This is a complete tour. Before seeing, there is going, approaching, and before discovering, there is seeking. I am willing to discover a land in this way and see the numerous and ordinary pear blossoms on the Dajin River.