From paper to the road – "But there are books" director's notes

From paper to road, it's a "fascinating" subject. As Paul Soru says in The Runaway Islands of Oceania, travelers don't know where they're going. Reading is a specific act that leads us to a corner and a case. The words that have left their mark on our hearts enter the mind through the human eye, where they detonate spiritual, emotional and intellectual bombs. The afterglow left by the tremor in our minds often makes us reminisce, and it gradually fades into the chaotic memory. However, some people direct the energy of this explosion from their minds to their feet, mobilizing their bodies as Homo sapiens to respond to the words, or the spiritual world behind them. What exactly did this attempt to cross this shore and the other with both feet bring?

This is the core of the story of the three characters in the sixth episode of the second season of "But There Are Books", "From Paper to the Road": the naturalist Zhang Chenliang walks along the coast to ask the questions of the "Sea Fault Map"; the writer Yang Xiao retraces the westward migration of the southwest united university students from Changsha to Kunming in 1938, on the way, the life choices of the Generation of Scholars of the Shenhui Generation under the flames of war; and the artist Ta Ke tries to follow the historical traces left in the poems and inscriptions to find the ancient meaning hidden in the land of China.

Three characters, moving towards three different historical and geographical dimensions. The path traveled by the naturalist Zhang Chenliang is mainly on the southeast coast, and he meets the strange monsters in the Qing Dynasty painter Nie Huang's "Sea Mistake Map" next to the reef and on the fish market, and then completes his popular science work "Notes on the Sea Wrong Map". Except for the "Sea Mistake Map", Nie Huang left very little information to future generations, but this did not prevent Zhang Chenliang from approaching Nie Huang. They all have a passion for the natural history, Zhang Chenliang said that he can feel Nie Huang's heart traces from the "Sea Mistake Map", and understand the regrets left by Nie Huang, he is the one who can respond to Nie Huang in history. It may also be this kind of divine friendship that outsiders do not understand, so that Zhang Chenliang is willing to spend many years to complete the road that Nie Huang did not have the opportunity to complete. And it was this path that shaped Zhang Chenliang, allowing him to look at China's vast nature from a naturalistic perspective that was not subject to the West.

Yang Xiao, who wrote "Re-Walking: Searching for the Southwest United Congress on Roads, Rivers and Post Roads," followed the path that Chinese intellectuals were confused about in 1938. Yang Xiao walked with the diary fragments left by several students of the Southwest United University (Yang Shide, Lin Zhenshu, Cai Xiaomin, etc.) in the rear area of China at that time, using his feet, the senses of his body and the thoughts flowing on the road as clues to connect the past and the present. "Divine intercourse" is the vocabulary he summed up on the road. His own vivid memories of the journey were intertwined with the memories of the young students who fled 70 years ago, and such a god gave him an indescribable emotional power to get close to the hearts of that generation of scholars who solved their inner difficulties by walking, and inspired him to write freely. In the darkness, Yang Xiao's own worries and wanderings in middle age were also solved.

Taco's previous photographic works "Shishan River Examination" and "Monument Record - Huang Yi Project" were completed by wandering alone in the Central Plains. The Book of Poetry is difficult to examine in terms of geographical information, leaving only the memories and feelings of the ancients associated with nature, while the Han and Wei inscriptions leave behind unforgettable historical testimonies. Taco drives his little jeep from industrialized town to town in north China, following the clues he has drawn from the fictional and real historical texts, from abandoned temples to forgotten monuments, and his images slowly emerge after this dusty archaeological journey. Seemingly alone, Ta Ke is not too lonely, and the Qing Dynasty epigrapher Huang Yi was his divine friend on the way. Huang Yi visited the Han Wei stone stele when he was an official in Jining, and recorded it in the form of calligraphy and paintings and notes, and it was Huang Yi's text that gave Taco some direct clues. Spanning 300 years, the two connected through texts and were like-minded. When Ta Ke walked the path that Huang Yi had walked, and the shadows of the two people stayed on the same stone tablet, history seemed to appear to Ta Ke in another way.

Walk all the way, walk non-stop. From North China to the southeast coast, and then to the southwest mountains, the floating light and shadow experience the journey that the three of them silently insist on, the reader will have a flowing feeling, as if the book also has its vitality, can climb and walk, and can be born according to the place. And the three of them walked in pain as if they had entered the peach blossom forest of words, resonating between ancient and modern times, spanning time. How do they talk to others about the joy of walking like this?

Reading itself is a fairly private act, but walking is not, in a specific space, with others or encounters, or passing by, the formation of friendship and stories between people, but also become the dark line of this walking creation. Some of the interludes in the filming made the journey unforgettable and precious.

The first time was at the Temple of Literature in Yuping, Guizhou. It was late at night, and the day's filming was nearing its end, and the film crew rushed to the Temple of Literature, which the students of Southwest United University had borrowed during their escape, before dusk fell. 70 years later, the historical traces left in Yuping County are fading under the plan of the transformation of the old city. Yang Xiao watched the excavator digging near the old street of Xidamen, and he was a little touched by the scene. Looking at the changes that are taking place in the southwest region in the process of modernization, Yang Xiao feels that his efforts are to rebuild a city of memory with words. Next to him, two little girls were curious about our shooting while playing badminton in front of the steps of the Temple of Literature. The sound of stir-fry and rice in the residential area accompanied the night, and I think the children are about to finish their pre-dinner frolicking. As it got dark, we shut down and left, waving goodbye to the girls. When we started to store our equipment in the nearby parking lot, we suddenly found a photography backpack and a tripod bag that we had not carried when we left the Temple of Literature. When I returned to the Temple of Literature, it was already dark, but two little girls stood quietly in front of the door of the Temple of Literature. They found the backpacks we had left behind and kept them for us. Watching them standing in front of the Door of the Temple of Literature in the dark of night, there is an indescribable mixed feeling, they are my heroes. These two enthusiastic and brave little girls, named Wang Yi and Lu Zhaoruijie, were 8 years old and 12 years old at the time.

The second time was in Qingxi Town, Guizhou, where we went to visit Brother Jiang, a friend Yang Xiao knew in the area. Brother Jiang's father was a teacher, and some of his father's teachers when he was a child were college students who migrated from North and East China in 1938. After arriving in Qingxi, some of these students did not continue to move west, but chose to stay and become local teachers, raising ethnic minority children like Brother Jiang's father. Today, Brother Jiang's home is transformed from an abandoned village. Brother Jiang looked at Yang Xiao very kindly, because Yang Xiao was like the intellectual youth who came to Qingxi as described by his father. This time Yang Xiao and Brother Jiang met for the second time, Brother Jiang made a family banquet for us and drank wine with us. Unexpectedly, after three rounds of drinking, Jiang Ge spoke amazingly, and pointed out a pair of Mandarin ducks in the team without our knowledge, and what is more interesting is that when we were about to resign with him, he pulled the pair of Mandarin Ducks to sit at the dinner table and asked them to cherish each other. This experience became a good story on the way to the southwest.

On the road, we are all looking at others. Sometimes it is better to see that we may not be ourselves, but the others in the encounter. If we don't know where we go, we will encounter the stroke of God from others, leaving an immortal mark on our memory.

From the paper to the road, whether it is Yang Xiao, Ta Ke, Zhang Chenliang or us behind the camera, if there is an end to this journey, it is the moment when the work meets the audience or the reader. Walking is the way the three of them intervene in historical time and space through the text, and the final expression hopes to invite the reader to personally enter the time and space they know and feel. The same is true for the second season of "But There Are Books," which we hope will extend to the audience's feet and begin more of a wonderful journey inspired by words. Many times people do not know where to go, but they can find it when they look for it, and they can open it by knocking on the door. Those new selves, those new thoughts, will surely come slowly along the road.