This new book from the birth of the Liangzhu civilization 5,000 years ago, to the "dirty, chaotic and endless" canal to bring wealth, from the "heavenly true straight" Bai Ju Yili to overcome public opinion and build the White Causeway, to "self-proclaimed Hangzhou people in the past life" Su Dongpo wrote more than 450 poems for Hangzhou and West Lake, from the night of Hu Xueyan's defeat to the resurrection of the good Jia represented by Zong Qinghou and Feng Gensheng in the 90s. In the process of writing, the author has been trying to capture the "urban character" of Hangzhou, what is its lowest cultural gene, and how it has formed into today's appearance under the cascading experience of history.
Following Wu Xiaobo's narration, I found that the city has never produced a profound philosopher, a poet of suffering, or even a tragic novelist, and more than a thousand years ago, some people used the term "floating birthday" to describe it.
It is not ruined enough, there is no tragic history of slaughtering the city. "Partial security" is its destiny, and it also dramatically constitutes the personality of the city. It is a city without a rejection personality, it is surrounded by beautiful scenery and has always been trapped in it. For the city, and for the people who have lived or are living here, if there is one philosophical question, it is: how to live well?
This new book is Wu Xiaobo's most personal and personal work to date. The presentation of each historical fragment and the description of each character reveal the author's views, attitudes, preferences and emotions everywhere.
In Wu Xiaobo's own words: "I have lived here for forty years, and it has shaped me and given me a chance to narrate... Writing this book, like the bookstore I opened, is still a lovely thing that won't happen. I think of it as a thought, and you just think of it as a person's private memory of the city. ”
Wu Xiaobo's new book
Hangzhou on Earth: My Memories with a City
Text / Wu Xiaobo
City, earth and soul
I have always felt that every city has a lot of souls walking, some of them visible, some of them invisible. If the relationship between souls is imminent, they will glance at each other, they will talk, they will hug, they will cut each other down. They appear at different times, overlapping in the same space, layered on top of each other, some being perceptible, others at a lifetime of ignorance.
Each soul is interesting and has its own secrets, and the vast majority of the secrets are insignificant, and even to other souls, it seems that they have never appeared or existed. But they are all important. Especially for the city, it is a huge container for saving these secrets, the noble and the lowly are the views of the world, and the city has never known only sympathy and does not know rejection.
As an observer of the city, you can only truly enter it if you touch more souls. You find them, talk to them, watch them cry and laugh, and gradually you are already part of them, and then you become part of the city. It's an involuntary process.
I came to the city when I was 13 years old, in 1981. My father was a graduate student at Zhejiang University, and in order for my hukou to fall to Hangzhou, he had to give up his doctoral studies and become a teacher, which became a small regret in his life. The place where I live is called Qiushi Village, which is the dormitory area of Zhejiang University teachers, and a small road to the city is lined with tall plane trees, and it will pass through a place called Pine Field, which sounds strange. Later, someone told me that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, this was the execution ground for qiu convicts. One rainy night, my mother was sick and hospitalized, I rode my bike to deliver food to her, and I didn't know what was going on, and suddenly rushed into a large waterhole by the side of the road. I think it must have been a little joke on me by a certain soul there.
After four years of university in Shanghai, I returned to the city again and never left. The unit assigned me a small house, and on Jinzhu Road, this road name is related to two souls. In 1130, when the Yuan soldiers entered Lin'an, there were military and civilian resistance in the city, led by two junior lieutenants named Jin Sheng and Zhu Wei, in order to commemorate them, the people of Hangzhou built a righteous shrine, which has long disappeared, leaving a road name. To the north of Jinzhu Road, followed by an equally narrow street called Macheng Road, was the place where Qian Raised Military Horses during the WuYue Kingdom, and was a lively flower market during the Southern Song Dynasty. There is a very famous soul who has lived here for more than twenty years, and her name is Li Qingzhao. From Macheng Road to The West Lake, about ten miles, but the female poet has not written a poem related to the West Lake. Every time I passed there, my mind would flash to how Li Qingzhao spent those long days and nights.
Summer 2021, midday on Macheng Road. Li Qingzhao lived here for more than twenty years and did not write a poem for The West Lake. (Photographed by Wu Xiaobo)
Later, my family moved to the canal, and the study faced south facing the river. In the dead of night, while I was writing and reading, I could hear the low rumble of the night ship carrying sand and gravel, which was very annoying at first, but after a long time, it did not disturb me, it seemed to become the pulse of time. There is a covered bridge under the community, brick floor wooden columns, four eaves flying, it is called Bazi Bridge, is one of the southernmost symbols of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. When Kangxi and Qianlong went down to Jiangnan, dragon boats must pass through this place. Each time they came, they used three thousand porters and guards, and the famous and nameless souls were still alive on the painted silk scrolls in the museum.
In the past few years, because of my work, I often go to the quiet villa in the middle of the mountain in Geling. Its owner was Zhang Jingjiang, the first chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Government during the Period of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing, who hosted the first state-level exposition in modern China, the West Lake Expo. In this villa, there were Cai Yuanpei, Kong Xiangxi, Shi Liangcai and Lin Fengmian. When the weather was clear, I stood on the grass in front of the villa and looked into the distance, and the gossamer-like white causeway lay not far away, from the broken bridge to the lonely mountain, there was the legend of the White Lady, the villa where Chiang Ching-kuo lived, the water terrace of Lin Kui, Yu Fan's study, Wu Changshuo's studio, Qiu Jin's tomb and Su Xiaoxiao's pavilion. To the south of the water is Wang Zhuang, where Mao Zedong lived for many years, where he stayed nearly thirty times.
Some of these names are prominent and arrogant, some have been sloppy all their lives, and now they are all settled in a certain corner of history. Any city exists not so much in space as in time, and time is meaningless, and can present different narrative values only because of the haunting of souls.