| The city of Xi'an Author: Jia Pingwa Recitation: Wang Hui

Author: Jia Pingwa Recitation: Wang Hui

I have lived in the city of Xi'an for 20 years, and I dare not say that this city is mine, or that I have given this city anything, but 20 years ago I was still in the countryside of southern Shaanxi, and I did have a dream, dreaming of a small but very old tree, and there was a hole in the tree. In real life, my hometown is full of mountains of forest, but I did not find such a tree, and when I first became a city person, I found it on the street, really, and it was no different from the tree in the dream. The tree is still growing, and I always look at it once a year, and the dead branches become stiff, and the newborn branches are soft and willow-like. I often stared at the cracked back of the cicada shell that was still lying on the trunk of the tree, and I stared for a long time, not knowing that this cicada was metamorphosised with more than a few shells, life was so transformed, it was really lifeless, but when did the flying cicada start, and where should it end? So in the late sunset, I stopped at the south city downstairs, listening to the bricks that had been corroded by the years that were incomplete, a group of crickets were singing a piece of music, and in a trance I felt which brick was mine, or I was one of the crickets, and the night was looking at the long sky of thousands of miles, greeting each new bright moon and singing.

I am glad that this city is in the west of China, on the vast Guanzhong Plain, in fact, there is only such a city on the Guanzhong Plain in western China, and I can't help but sing a folk song about this place:

Eight hundred miles of Qinchuan loess flying, thirty million people roared Qin Cavity,

Adjust a bowl of sticky noodles with joy and no spicy muttering.

Such a folk song may lack a modern atmosphere, but backwardness does not equal ignorance, and the momentum it exudes is not pretentious and vain, but cold humor. It is a self-examination of the old state of existence. When I sing it, what I can't sing is often the thought of the tragedy of my father's thirst for the sun and dying on the way to the sea. It is precisely in this way that a few years ago, people from several cities in the south recruited me to go with superior and abnormal living conditions, I refused, I did not go, I loved Shaanxi, I loved the city of Xi'an. I am not born here, but I must die here, and when my body is burned in the crematorium a hundred years later, my soul crawls out of the high chimney with the black smoke, and I will become a cloud wandering over the city.

When the world's new cities are becoming more and more of a pile of cement, how can I talk about Xi'an? Yes, you don't have to boast about the history of the 13 dynastic capitals, nor do you feel that the geographical feng shui surrounded by eight rivers is not here, admitting that the center of China's politics, economy and culture is no longer here, and for the prominent Han and Tang Dynasties, it can only be called the "waste capital". But the lovely thing is that to this day, the style is not falling, the style is still there, and the most attractive ancient capital in the world is only Xi'an. Its walls are impressively intact, standing alone on the suspension bridge board on the moat, looking up at the tower, the corner tower, the female wall battlements, and even the most cowardly people will roar with pride. The streets and alleys are square and symmetrical, and the orderly arrangement of brick carved gates in the courtyard has been dark as iron under the flower stone door piers, so that you can immediately fall into the realm where the tall horse of the ancient xili drove the wooden cart. If you have the opportunity to collect the names of thousands of streets and alleys in the city: Gongyuan Gate, Shuyuan Gate, Zhuzhen City, Liuli City, Jiaochang Gate, Duanlu Gate, Tanshi Street, Mai Amaran Street, Che Lane, Oil Lane... You suddenly feel that history is not far away, so that you fly past an unhygienic fly in front of you, and you can't help but suspect that this fly has the appearance of han shi or the mark of Tang shi. Modern art is staged day and night in large and luxurious theaters, theaters, and dance halls, but under the moss-covered roots of the city, there are always people watching China's oldest Qin cavity that belongs to this place, or shadow puppets. This is not a regular entertainer, they are entertainment after work, some people act, some people watch, acting and watching are cathartic is a kind of pride, life is surging is a kind of historical remembrance, so you also understand the tableware in the street restaurant, the bowl is so thick porcelain, the big one is called the sea bowl. During the Chinese New Year's Festival, where have you seen the streets and alleys of cities perform social dramas, step on stilts, carry apricot yellow flags and set fire to them, and beat pure drum music? The most is the soil of the slag of the earth, if written out according to the sound pen, it is a very elegant word in the text, holding the child does not say hug, say "carry", the mouth is tasteless, not tasteless, say "widow", even if the scolding people roll away do not say roll, say "avoid". If you walk into a family in an alley, you are an artist or a public, a small clerk, an individual vendor, their living room must be hung with elaborately framed calligraphy and paintings, and the table cabinet must be decorated with several pieces of old pottery porcelain. The understanding of calligraphy and painting, the preservation of the understanding of cultural relics and antiques, became the basic requirements of their lives. Men advocate black and white tones, while women like to wear red and green clothes, simple and generous, sad and happy. They use less words and more actions; they like silence and are good at thinking; they worship wisdom and despise oiliness; and they are overall majestic, without triviality and sweetness. Xi'an's scientific and technological talents have gathered, producing many world-famous mathematicians and physicists, but a large number of researchers of the "I Ching" have emerged in the folk family, observing the heavens, making predictions, and making remote controls. You don't dare to despise the old man who sits in the corner of the tavern and drinks alone, or the old woman with the head of the crane in the alley, they may be strange people with extraordinary skills. At the early morning market, you will see tofu holding it. Three and two stood there talking about the news in the country. In the public toilet squat pit, you will also hear the most timely content about one of the UN meetings. Caring about state affairs and looking at the whole world may seem superfluous to them, but they have this kind of disposition given by the ancient capital. "Unfounded" has never been a term they ridicule. Some people even solemnly proposed that a large sculpture of a qiren be built in the city, which would reflect the statue of Zhang Qian, the founder of the Silk Road, which was erected majestically, and become a kind of city sign. The whole city of Xi'an, full of the ancient meaning of Chinese history, expresses a kind of oriental mystery, which is an old cultural relic, and it is a new symbol.

So, I moved several times, but I was always happy to live near the city walls. Now I live in a location called sweet water well, which has been covered, but there are still ancient wells in several courtyards. For thousands of years, the city's drinking water has been supplied by sweet water in this area, and the older generation of neighbors can still tell what the last well looked like, and they took out the box to let me see the sweaty and smooth bone plate water sign, and the rhythm of the donkey riding the bucket tapping the bluestone street was faintly heard in the ear. On Sundays, go to the noisy bird market, the worm market and the dog market, or catch the dew market that opens at dawn and the sunrise dissipates, go to the city and river to see the Hanzi who practices the art of guiding Tuna, go to the old bookstore stall to buy a few ancient books bound on the line, go to the monastery to visit the old monks of Zen and the dao chief of the ancient heights, go to the earth pit of the construction site of the building to pick up a pile of broken porcelain fragments called garbage cultural relics, distinguish between the characters and paintings belonging to the Han sea breeze or the degree of the Tang mountain bones, everything is in dialogue with history, adjusting my time and space existence, Fulfill my state of life. Therefore, in my room, I received guests from all over China and even overseas friends, and I often gave them a rubbing of Hanwa Dangde, a self-carved brick of a brick platform, or accompanied them to listen to the silent shao sound of a guqin that has no strings. I said, you walk around the city, the bell tower has no bell, what you can hear in the morning is the heavenly sound, the drum tower has no drum, what you can hear at dusk is the sound of the ground, and if you are engaged in politics, you go to the eastern part of the city to see the Qin Terracotta Warriors, you are engaged in art, you go to the western part of the city to see the stone sculpture in front of huo's sick tomb. I did not know how to fatigue, I must lead the guest friends to climb the earthen city wall, point out the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Qujiang Pond in the south of the city, and say, See the Big Wild Goose Pagoda? That's a seal stone; if you see nagqu Jiangchi, it's a box of ink clay. Remember, history has certainly turned a new page, and modern Xi'an is certainly not just a city that retains the past, it has the most modern things that other cities have. However, it is different from other cities in that the wordless God placed the great seal of Chinese culture in Xi'an, and Xi'an will always be the place where the soul of Chinese culture is located.

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