When we already have the ability to be online 24/7 (or HD, if you want), why should we do offline activities, especially at this time, why travel?
I'm not talking about the imaginary trip of the British writer Alain de Botton sitting comfortably at home and watching flight schedules, but the kind of booking tickets to set off.
The first time I interviewed this writer was shortly after the publication of his "The Art of Travel", and I followed his narrative, and I wrote the article into the same title according to the rules, and the only little play may be that the comment may be that he talked more like the philosophy of travel, because he said that we also brought ourselves, but this guy is not always the ideal travel companion, and also used his experience of flying to the Caribbean in the gloomy winter of Europe to find the sun, as an example. I seemed to make sense, after all, I had no experience, and my first trip, which had nothing to do with work and had to be initiated and taken care of myself, would take years to happen.
It's not that you don't like to travel, or you don't have enough impulses, even if you travel, you come back after completing the task. Thus, hearing the writer again mention the Famous Quote of the French philosopher Pascal, all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone, and a little "I understand" too.
The red moon rising in the Zhaosu Grassland on the evening of October 31, 2020, if it were not for the Reference of the West Tianshan Mountain, it is estimated that it is difficult to believe that the moon is really so big and so round.
Fortunately, there are other contents that have come into view, so that I will not stop and become a frog at the bottom of the well. For example, "A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of Nash" mentioned that half a century ago, the head of a think tank in the United States asked the interior design of the new building to maximize the scale of encounters and allow professionals to meet more here, which he believed would help promote discussion and stimulate ideas.
To this end, they also need to equip their offices with blackboards and chalk, which cannot be erased without the permission of the office owner.
Later, fast forward to the Internet age, "The Village Effect" mentioned that some foreign companies took the lead in promoting home work, but it was not long before companies changed their minds and asked everyone to come back and return to the office.
Some scholars analyzed more than 30,000 papers published by about 200,000 researchers at a university in the United States in a five-year period, and found that the influence of papers is related to the physical distance of the paper collaborators: the closer the paper collaborators are to each other, the higher the number of times the papers they collaborate are cited, and as the paper collaborators are farther and farther away from each other, the number of times the papers are cited is also decreasing.
It's easy to understand why the book also has a subtitle: Why in the online age, we have to reconnect face-to-face.
Maybe we can say that the survey time was not chosen a little early, in the first half of the first 10 years of the 21st century, full-time online capabilities did not become almost ubiquitous until the second 10 years, but in this year, 2021, the second summer that humans had to spend with a new virus, this happened:
When you meet a female rider on the road, you communicate with the horse like a friend.
That afternoon, 5,000 kilometers away from my home, in Zhaosu County, Ili, my friend's inn in the suburban Tianma Garden, the public space on the second floor that was as big as a large classroom, on one side was a floor-to-ceiling glass window, from near to far, you can see the yard, a slip of three ponds, wetlands (there are many wild ducks, every summer they will see them flying to settle down, give birth to babies, take the baby to learn to fly and forage), then the wheat field, and then the grassland, with a gentle slope, unfolding like a picture scroll with the wind, until the sky ...... But that was the scenery we faced every day during the summer vacation, and even my distant guest was a little accustomed to it, and then, the fifth grade child at my friend's house, Xiao Yang, was ready to learn the next song.
Dvořák's "Self-New World" theme - Wait a minute, here must be quickly added, this is the first half of the first volume of "Thompson's Shallow Piano Tutorial", probably the simplest version of the universe, played with one hand.
The piano was placed by the window, and I sat next to Xiao Yang' classmate.
I loved it a long time ago, and I've heard some versions, including symphonies, but I haven't heard the versions for children. At this time, with a little curiosity of "I don't know if the children can understand and what reactions they will have", I waited.
He began, with a look of challenge to the new course, but nothing special: it was also this summer vacation that we not only wrote homework together (at his parents' request), but also practiced together (at his own request).
I seem to have told him before that this is the author's work written when he was living in the United States and nostalgic for his distant hometown, you can play it slower and softer, that is, just chat about it, similar to other tracks before, and there is no special posture in class.
I don't remember the first few times I played, I suddenly remembered something, said, "This song seems to have lyrics", and then, regardless of whether Xiao Yang heard or not, what reaction, I began to search on the mobile phone, found, is like this:
"Remembering the hometown, remembering the hometown, the hometown is so lovely, the sky is very clear, the wind is very cold, and the nostalgia is coming..."
Well, his version was enough for me to sing here—yes, I didn't expect to sing along.
It still feels incredible that I'm not a person who can't sing publicly (I suspect everyone has a "don't do" list, and so do I).
Everything just happened like this, still so natural, Xiao Yang was playing, at first slowly, in learning, in familiarity, over and over again, I sang along, but also slowly, also learning, the bright glass window from near to far can see the yard, a slip of three ponds around, wetlands and wheat fields, and then outside is the grassland like a picture scroll slowly unfolding, until the sky.
The communication between the animals on the steppe, from the dog's curiosity and temptation to the passing Ili horse (which the dog always did), to the final decision of the two sides to touch their noses, as if to complete some kind of ritual, is a plot that I did not expect at all.
It seems that no one cares, everything continues to share the peaceful afternoon of the vast grassland, Xiao Yang and I are the same, both of them are focused on looking at the score, but each has its own concentration.
In this way, he participated in the creation and became part of the memories that moved him.
If it had been an online exchange at the time, would there have been this moment?
If not, travel, need more reasons?
Thank you to the friends who contributed to this trip and look forward to seeing you in the New Year!
Author: Wang Ershan
Editors: Andy, Qian Yutong
Editor-in-Charge: Shu Ming
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.