Read aloud: Hou Jian
Peiping seems to be a burly old man with an old character. A city is similar to people, each with different qualities, some humble and narrow-minded, curious and suspicious; some with a lot of tolerance and boldness. Beiping is bold, And Beiping is wide. He embraces both the old and the new, but he himself is not wavering.
Modern girls in high heels walk side by side with the old northeastern woman with clogs, but Peiping ignores this. The pale-bearded painter lives opposite the university student apartment, and Peiping ignores this. The new type of car is comparable to foreign cars and donkey cars, and Beiping does not pay attention to this matter.
Behind the towering Beijing Hotel, people on a small road live a life that has not changed for a thousand years, who cares about that? A stone's throw away from The Union Hospital, there are some old-fashioned antique shops, antique dealers smoking hookahs, still using the old law to operate, who cares about that? Dress as you like, eat at any restaurant, enjoy what you like, and appreciate the goodness – who cares about you?
Beiping is also like an old tree with roots deep in the earth, through which it can flourish. Under his shade and on the branches of the parasitize, there are millions of insects. How can these insects know the size of the tree, how roots grow, how deep underground, and what insects parasitize on other branches? How can a Beiping resident describe the boss of Beiping?
A person always feels that he does not understand Beiping. After ten years of living there, you will stumble upon a hunchbacked old man on the path, regretting not meeting him sooner; or a lovely old painter, sitting on a bamboo chair under a locust tree with a big belly and shaking the wind with a banana fan to cool off; or an old man who kicks a shuttlecock and can put the shuttlecock on the top of his head and move little by little, and then fall from the back and fall flat on the sole of his shoe; or a knife hand; or a wife of a children's drama school Or a rickshaw driver becoming a noble man of Manchukuo; or a county prince of a former dynasty. How dare a man say that he knows Peking?
Beiping is a "city of pearls and jade", a city of pearls and jade that no one has ever seen before. It is a city of pearls and jade with purple and gold roofs, as well as palace pavilions and pavilions. It is an ancient city made of pearls and jade; it has a purple "West Mountain", a green belt-like "Jade Spring", a "Central Park" weeping old fir tree, and a "Temple of Heaven" and "Xiannong Temple". There are nine parks and three royal lakes in the city, named "Three Seas" in the middle and north, which are now visited by people. And Beiping has a blue sky and a clean moon, rain, summer and cool autumn, and a high and refreshing winter climate.
Peiping is like a king's dream, it has palaces, royal gardens, 100-foot-wide avenues, art museums, colleges, universities, hospitals, temples, art dealers, and streets lined with old book stalls. Peiping is like a paradise for food experts. It has centuries-old restaurants, its signs are smoked and worn, and its bald-headed churchmen with handkerchiefs on their shoulders are very kind, because they served high-ranking officials in the Manchu government and received traditional special training. Peiping is a place where the rich and the poor live together, and every neighboring shop number allows a poor old man to book and pick up goods, and the things sold on the street are very cheap. You can stay in a teahouse there and not go all afternoon. Beiping is a paradise for buyers, with ancient Chinese handicrafts, books, drawings, antiques, jade, enamel inlays, lanterns and the like. It was a place where goods could be bought everywhere, and the vendors would come up with the goods; in the early morning, there were many vendors on the road outside the door, and the shouting sound formed a very beautiful tone.
Peiping is quiet, it is a city of homes, each house has a courtyard, each courtyard has a goldfish tank and a plane tree or pomegranate tree; the fruits and vegetables there are fresh; peaches are peaches, and persimmons are persimmons. He was an ideal city where everyone had a breath to breathe; rural seclusion rivaled urban comfort. The streets are properly arranged, and when you pluck cabbage in the garden in the morning, you can look up at the majesty of the West Mountain – yet only a stone's throw away from a big department store.
Peiping has colorful old and new colors. He has the colors of dynasties, the colors of ancient history, the colors of the Mongolian steppes. Camel merchants came from Zhangjiakou and Nankou to Beiping and walked into the ancient city gate. He had tall walls, and the top of the gate was as wide as forty or fifty meters. He has city towers and Qi towers, he has temples, ancient gardens, temple towers: every stone, every tree, and every bridge has historical allusions.
But the most fascinating thing about Peiping is the ordinary people who live there, who are not saints and professors; they are rickshaw pullers. The fare from Xicheng to the Summer Palace is about one yuan, and you may think that it is very cheap. It was indeed cheap, and the driver gladly accepted it. You will feel inexplicable when you see the coachmen having fun with each other along the way, laughing at the misfortunes of others.
On the way home at night, you may meet a ragged elderly rickshaw driver. When he tells you about his experience, his tone is witty and elegant. If you think he's too old to get out of the car and walk, he'll have to pull you home. But if you suddenly jump down and pay for the car, the kind of gratitude he shows you is something you've never seen in your life.
Appreciation
Lin Yutang's essay "Speaking of Beiping" gives people the first feeling that countless images are coming to the face, impacting the reader's retina, dazzling and dazzling. Yes, Lin Yutang wrote about all kinds of people from modern girls to rickshaw pullers, various building attractions from Xiehe Hospital to Purple West Mountain, and all kinds of objects with Beiping marks such as foreign cars and donkey carts and enamel inlays. The author seems to want the reader to relive all this, and use all this to expand the imagination and experience the old Beijing with the author.
What is particularly worth appreciating is that what the author provides to the reader in "Speaking of Beiping" is not a large number of scattered and unrelated images, but a vivid old Beijing custom painting composed of these images. This allows us to see through the smoke clouds of history the picture of old Beijing embracing the old and the new, and embracing the Chinese ocean.
Reader Profile ▼
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Reader Profile: Hou Jian, working at the Rong Media Center in Shangdang District, Changzhi City.