□ Zi Zhang
The first time I went to Beech Creek was in the middle of summer four and a half years ago. The young friend drove from Hangzhou's Zhuantang to The Village of Beech Creek, surrounded by the mountains of Pan'an, in just over two hours. A clear stream surrounds most of the village, and on the southern slope of the hill there is a nearly 900-year-old yew tree, which was planted by the forty-eighth generation of Confucius' grandson Kong Duan, who migrated here from Qufu, Shandong Province, in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty. Across the stream from this tree is the Southern Song Dynasty Confucius Family Temple, which is known as one of the three Confucius Family Temples in China. Almost all the villagers in Beech Creek Village, except for the women who married from other villages, are surnamed Kong.
At first, I did not come to Beech Creek to see the Confucius Family Temple, but was invited by a young friend to "escape the summer" and know his university teacher, Mr. Lu Zhen. This friend told me that his teacher studied medicine, originally taught at Taizhou Medical College, and then resigned to "become a monk", first going to Tiantai to work for the restoration of Longxi Academy, and then to Beech Creek, also to restore the Xingtan Academy here. When we went, Mr. Lu Zhen had only recently left.
At that time, Xingtan Academy was actually just a small courtyard next door to the Confucius Family Temple and several two-story wooden houses, and the first-floor houses were full of high bookshelves and dense layers of books. According to Mr. Lu, these books were bequeathed by a scholar friend in Shanghai and are now the basic collection of the academy as the "academy". I saw that young people in the village would go to the academy at night to chat with Mr. Lu, and during the day, some children would come to learn to write brushs or practice "handle style" with Mr. Lu.
I had a few real vegetarian meals here and spent the night in the upstairs plank room. Mr. Lu Zhen took us for a walk around the village, stopping in a well-preserved compound to admire the old and beautiful stone houses. To my surprise, although the village is well protected, many houses are empty. Those who are inhabited are also mostly elderly, these elderly people are not idle, some are weaving handicrafts, some are making earthy incense, some are doing food processing together... In the afternoon, there was a heavy rain, and Mr. Lu Zhen and I sat under the porch to chat about the day, watching the rain fall from the sky into this small courtyard, and the leaves of the pomegranate tree in the southeast corner looked greener after being washed by the rain.
Coming back from Beech Creek, I have always wanted to introduce this ancient village of the Southern Song Dynasty hidden deep in the mountains to more people. I told the two Taizhou students about Mr. Lu's restoration of Xingtan College, hoping that they would interview Mr. Lu. They went and went, but in the end they didn't write the article I was looking forward to, and I feel sorry for it.
Two years later, I went to Beech Creek again with my colleagues from the Comment Committee of the Provincial Writers' Association, and only then did I learn that Xingtan Academy had moved from the small courtyard next to the Confucius Family Temple to another courtyard. After dinner, I walked with Mr. Lu to the new site of the academy, but perhaps because of the evening, I did not recognize which courtyard in the village of Beech Creek.
Only now, when the collection of interviews with the characters of Beech Creek organized and compiled by Mr. Lu Zhen came out, "A Man's Village", I breathed a long sigh of relief. I feel that the cultural image of the ancient village of the Southern Song Dynasty has suddenly become three-dimensional, clear, sound and color.
If what I saw twice in Beech Creek was only the appearance, environment, layout, and stone houses of Beech Creek, then what I read from the 28 character stories in "One Man's Village" has already touched the spirit of Beech Creek. Man is the spirit of all things, whether it is a city or a village, no one, just an empty shell, with generations of living people, it is like having a soul.
With people, culture is no longer abstract and empty. "One Man's Village" tells the story of the daily life of the old and young, men and women in the ancient village of Beech Creek, showing the daily presentation and continuation of the ancient tradition year after year. Reading the story of "Be a Fragrant Mother-in-Law", you can perceive the origin of the villagers' spiritual beliefs in the ancient and closed environment, and from the story of only this mother-in-law who has worked hard to stick to the incense, I seem to understand another meaning of "one person's" village. Aren't the 28 villagers recorded in the book unique in their own craft or unique life experiences? Some stories can quite reflect the vicissitudes of historical changes, like the embarrassment of the villagers when they raised funds to build a bridge in the 1970s written in "Yanchuan Bridge", like the story of Kong Jinbao's adoption of abandoned children in "Ordinary Life", a sentence "It was difficult to save people at that time, do not talk about human nature", it reveals a certain absurdity of history.
I understand and appreciate Mr. Lu Zhen's wish to "retain and remember this precious nostalgia that belongs to Beech Creek Village", and I also believe that Kong Mingtao, the talented painting teenager in the book, will definitely pick up his brush again and present all the attractive things in Beech Creek on the canvas. On the night of February 7, 2022, Zi Zhang was in Zhaohui Building, Hangzhou.
About authors: Zi Zhang, real name Zhang Xin, professor and scholar, has authored a variety of academic treatises, personal poems and essay collections.
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