"Sit with the flowers for a while": Fragrant new rice in the aging time

Author: Liu Jing

As the old saying goes, people should not be disguised. Before approaching Zhou Huacheng, you would never have expected that such a tall and sunny,smiling,smiling and wind-faced "artist" with flying braids would be the founder of "Father's Rice Field", who could at any time roll up his sleeves and pants to plant rice and make the field attendants who were originally blind to the townspeople come alive. You would never have expected that such a rice field would become an inexhaustible source of materials for his creations, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and even a geographical hometown.

"Sit with the Flowers for a While" Author: Zhou Huacheng Version: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House Time: January 2022

As the old saying goes, one side feeds the other. Walking into Zhou Huacheng's writings, all the way to follow the aroma of rice and flowers, "su walking in the past", sniffing the "taste of grass and trees", slow tasting "Three Books of Jiangnan"... You will certainly no longer be amazed at why this man who once spun out of his hometown like the wind would punch the West Lake every day, and then "wave his clothes and not take away a cloud", spin back to changshan in western Zhejiang, spiral back to the hometown of this side who was also confused and disappointed in his youth, and from then on, he put down the heart of a wind and dust servant steadily, planted fields, drank tea, turned over books, and forgot all the insults. "Sit with the flowers for a while" and live every inch of time into your favorite way. For Zhou Huacheng, there is Zen everywhere in the countryside, life can be practiced everywhere, attachment to the hometown - tired of the hometown - far away from the hometown - return to the hometown. From the young hair, to the youth, to the youth, to the flourishing, until the gradual confusion... Today's Zhou Huacheng, holding a book in one hand, picks rice in one hand and holds a book in the other, and for life, he is already "looking at the mountain or the mountain, looking at the water or the water".

Writer Liu Xinglong once stressed that literature must return to the first scene. In this sense, the essay collection "Sit with the Flowers for a While" is undoubtedly a "documentary report" presented by Zhou Huacheng to thousands of readers from his hometown of Changshan, the first scene of his life. It's just that this "report" integrates sincerity, love and affection in objectivity, truth and accuracy, permeated with sweat, hard work and wisdom, and looks at the four series of works of "falling flowers", "mountain colors", "drinking" and "theatrical", all of which revolve around natural grass and trees, clear streams and wild fields, local cuisine, folk customs and culture and art, etc., with poetic and elegant language to capture, to freeze the shining moments of ordinary things, and to diligently explore the beauty of the hometown and the world everywhere and the four times, although there is helplessness and confusion, although there is fatigue and anxiety, But whether it is the silent and ethereal mountains, the red dragonflies flying rice paddies, or every corner of the heart, are covered with and overflowing with abundant, warm, ironed sunshine, all surging and diffusing with ethereal, idyllic, fresh grass and tree fragrance, what "indissoluble little knots"?

Prose writing has always been directed to the heart. A flower and a leaf, a wisp of wind and rain, a bird and a white cloud, a handful of hometown soil and a bunch of hometown water... Or make people think, or make people feel nostalgic, or make people miss, or make people excited..." Zhou Huacheng's terroir, can be vivid on its own, its own beauty swaying, let me have a great respect for The Changshan in western Zhejiang, and more curiosity than respect. In this way, I had an impulse to walk around the changshan land, to look at it, to find the people that the author had written about, and the landscapes, villages, flowers, and food. Writer Xiang Yang said after reading "Sitting with the Flowers for a While".

"Open this book and the whole world will light up." Zhou Huacheng is the best tour guide, he is low-key, modest, not ostentatious, not exaggerated, just like those ripe and full rice. Its text is appropriate, simple, restrained, and not vain: "That kind of camellia tree, above the peaks of the mountain, in the forest, cultivates rounded tea seeds, and the tea seeds contain colorful and pure camellia oil." The drops of oil, flowing into strings, fell into the aging time, nourishing the wrinkled daily life of the people in the mountains. "Is it poetic and quite grounded, reading like eating new rice, lips and teeth leaving a fragrance?" (Liu Jing)

Source: Hainan Daily