When I arrived at the Stone Old Man Scenic Area on the south side of the sea cliff at the foot of The NoonDay Mountain in Qingdao City, and saw a stone pillar several meters high at a distance of 100 meters from the shore, shaped like an old man sitting in the blue waves, known as "Old Man Shi", I remembered the novel "The Old Man and the Sea" by the American writer Hemingway.
"He was an old man fishing alone in a small boat in the Gulf Stream, and he had been gone for eighty-four days and had not caught a single fish." This is the beginning of The Old Man and the Sea that I've seen.
I stood on a beach nearly 100 meters from the Rocky Old Man Reef, which consisted of uneven reefs covered with moss and weathered shells attached to the reef like the scales of a fish. The weather is overcast, in the distance, the sea and sky meet, misty, the huge sea waves are as flat as mirrors, permeated with silver light. I stood on the edge of the sea and felt that life was so small. If I jumped into the sea, it was one of the drops in the ocean, and I thought so when I looked at the sea in shock.
Looking at the sea out of the sky, I found that the sea water under my feet was slowly growing upwards, and I encountered the high tide again. So I jumped from one reef to another and watched as waves of seawater pushed toward the shore, and the previously exposed reef was engulfed by the sea and could not be seen. I struggled to search in the sea, and I saw the shadow of the reef that was submerged in the sea, like a shark in the sea lying there.
A hundred meters away from the stone old man stone pillar, a hundred meters from the shore, about 17 meters high, the tide rose, the old man of the stone a little shorter, there is no high tide, he is determined on the shore, looking at the eyes to penetrate. When the sea water soaked him little by little, the old man of the stone was like an old man sitting in the middle of the blue sea. I know the legend about Old Man Shi: According to legend, Old Man Shi was originally a hard-working and kind fisherman who lived at the foot of Laoshan Mountain, and lived with his wise and beautiful daughter. Unexpectedly, one day, her daughter was snatched into the Dragon Palace by the Dragon Prince, and the poor old father-in-law called out to the sea day and night, looking forward to seeing through it, regardless of the sea water without knees, looking forward to the two sideburns being completely white, hunched over, still stubbornly waiting at the seashore. Later, while the old man was sitting in the water and concentrating on his cheeks, the Dragon King cast a spell to make the old man's body gradually stiffen into stone. "If the Dragon King can send his daughter to the old man's side every time at high tide, then the old man sitting in the blue waves will not waste the waiting." When I looked at old man Shi, I thought so.
The tide drove me backwards step by step, and finally drove me to the shore. Not long after coming ashore, I found that the waves were not as gentle as before, and the sea, as if there was a force pushing it, shaking it, causing the waves to roar like thousands of horses, and it struggled to pounce on the coastline, stirring up thousands of waves, and it tirelessly pounced on it again and again, and then retreated. It sweeps everything, washes everything away, embraces everything.
I sat dementedly on the shore for more than two hours, watching the spectacular waves crashing on the shore, until I saw the sun set into a sunset and did not reach the mountain, while the old man of the stone sat in the blue waves, only the upper body remained above the sea, the afterglow of the sunset shone on him, and saw a beam of light above his head.
Whether this old stone man legends him as a fisherman, or I think of him as the old man who went to sea for eighty-four days without catching a fish in Hemingway's novel, I have been in awe of him and the sea for several hours with him and the sea. He stood there so firmly, no matter the change of spring and summer, the fusion of autumn and winter, no matter the bitter wind and rain, the big waves.
Old Man Shi stood here as a myth, standing as the master of the writer's pen: "A person is not born to be defeated, you can eliminate him, but you can't defeat him." This wise quote was uttered by the old fisherman in Hemingway's book The Old Man and the Sea. Because he still went out to sea to fish after eighty-four setbacks, the old man used his powerful spiritual strength to compose a myth of undefeated.
When the afterglow of the setting sun disappeared into the sky, I still reluctantly bid farewell to old man Shi, bid farewell to the sea, and embarked on the return journey, and there was still the sound of waves behind me...