Original title: Embracing a City in the Fragrance of Books (I Am with a City)
There can be many reasons for the attachment to a city, perhaps because of hometown affection, perhaps because of beautiful food, or perhaps because of the special spiritual nourishment that has been given there. For people who love to read, those who have found their favorite bookstores, the library corner where they sit most often, the friends who talk about books and life together... It has become one with a city and has become an intrinsic part of nostalgia.
In recent years, the mainland has deeply promoted reading for the whole people, built a book-fragrant society, and created a good atmosphere of loving reading, reading good books, and being good at reading. Today is the twenty-seventh World Book Day, let us approach the four cities, listen to the writers tell the stories of the books there, and feel the knowledge and embrace of people and books, people and cities.
- Editor
From top to bottom, the pictures are the Chinese bookstore in Beijing Liulichang, the readers under the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an, the readers in the bookstore, the bookstore on the streets of Hangzhou, and the shenzhen library. Luo Xue Village painted
In Beijing——
Life is a book of half-causes
Gao Hongbo
As a person who writes as a profession, reading is an instinct and a must, and having a few readers in life is a happy life.
"Reading friends" is a friend who loves to read and can read. I have a few interesting readers. One of them is good at writing essays, loves to read, and visiting the Liuli Factory in Beijing is his strong point, and he often recommends good books to me. A few decades ago, I bought a set of "Qing Barnyard Notes" in Liulichang, a total of thirteen copies, the version of zhonghua bookstore, which he recommended to me. I benefited a lot from this set of books, and I saw the culture and art, secular sentiments and various legends of the Qing Dynasty. Although this is a set of miscellaneous books, it is very nutritious, and I am very grateful to this reader. Another reader, a well-known writer, talked to me about Zhao Ruzhen's "Antique Guide" at a wind collection event, saying that it was very interesting and had all kinds of little-known collection knowledge. After returning to Beijing, I immediately bought it back with excitement, and since then this book has become my pillow book, and I have gained a lot of experience and joy in reading. When I thanked the reader, he smiled at me and said, "Then let's go eat a meal of old Beijing shabu lamb!" ”
There can be all kinds of friends in life, such as golf friends, who can experience the joy of life with you in sweating; such as "donkey friends", enjoying the boundless scenery together in the journey of life... Readers are more special, allowing you to feel a little warmth in loneliness and enjoy a kind of comfort in loneliness.
As a reader and writer, living in Beijing is a lucky thing. There are many colleges and universities in Beijing, many libraries, many bookstores, and many people who love to read. Beijing has one of the highest number of physical bookstores in the country, with an average of 0.8 bookstores per 10,000 people. Therefore, there are many reading activities in Beijing, rich in content and lively in form. I have participated in similar events many times, and as a writer, I have also talked about the relationship between reading and creation and a person's spiritual growth. In such a rich cultural atmosphere, I often feel that the appearance of an ancient city has been renewed by reading.
In the past two years, online book clubs have arisen in Beijing, which is a collection of readers in the Internet era. Not long ago, one of my readers launched an online book club, and I also experienced a new thing. After a while, the friends of the Internet Time Book Club published a new book with the theme of "Beauty and Light", and I couldn't help but write a small poem for them, with two sentences: "Beauty and light share the fragrance of books, not against the spring color dyeing the world." "This reader of mine not only united a group of writers and poets, but also worked closely with the library to hold a number of essay collection activities, and the theme of the recent ongoing essay call is "the most beautiful Chang'an Avenue". I wrote an essay for this activity, he was very happy, and when they met, they gave me a set of "New Biography of Su Dongpo", which deeply understood my heart.
These friends who love to read have a common feature, that is, they have a juvenile mentality. They are still like middle school students who have just opened the door to reading, with strong interest, wide reading, buying books, collecting books, recommending books, and being enthusiastic. A poet once said: Everyone is a poet at the age of eighteen, but if you are still writing poetry at the age of eighty, you are a real poet. This quote also applies to many of my readers. Everyone is a retired old comrade, most of them are sixty or seventy years old, and some are nearly eighty years old, but they still uphold the youthful mentality and maintain a state of life of striving for progress. Reading is a walking aid for spiritual growth, a propeller for mature thinking, and it is a spiritual pleasure to have a group of friends who love reading in life. When you gather with these friends, in addition to tea tasting and reminiscing about the past, you can also talk about the good books you have recently read, talk about the life enlightenment and knowledge structure updating brought by these books. In a city like Beijing, which has a strong cultural atmosphere, it is especially easy to find like-minded readers, which is one of the reasons why I love Beijing.
I am proud to have one excellent reader after another in my life, and I hope that you who love to read can harvest several readers and appreciate the life of books together.
In Xi'an --
There is a new wind in reading in the ancient city
Xiao Yunru
In the dialects around Xi'an, the words "book" and "tree" are pronounced as "fu". In my opinion, reading is like planting a tree, the purpose is to grow wood, and this is the blessing of life and the blessing of society. Use books and reading to grow yourself into a big tree and accumulate blessings for yourself for society.
When I arrived in Xi'an more than sixty years ago, I lived less than three hundred meters away from Xi'an's famous Bell Tower Bookstore. Every day after dinner, the family walked to the bookstore, went in and flipped through the books, leaned against the shelves or sat on the floor to read a few pages, and then walked home, once a day. I also bought my first bookshelf at the Ping An Market next to the bookstore and carried it back with joy.
After a long time, the Bell Tower Bookstore once again invited my old book friend to go there to explain my reading method to middle school students, which was really a little exciting. My reading method can be called "5J reading method", which is the collective name of the five homophones of "ie, set, series, product, and excitement". That is, reading, squeezing time to read anytime and anywhere; collective reading, concentrating time and energy on reading; reading in a categorical manner; accumulating reading, reading should be accumulated layered to form a system; intense reading, while reading while talking with the author and even debate, stimulating their own ideological sparks. The children listened carefully and quickly wrote down in the small book. The current Bell Tower Bookstore is very different from that year, the four-story building has a new book quick glance, a classified book gallery, a small lecture hall, and several reading rooms, which is really different from when we relied on the bookshelf and sat on the ground to read.
The Bell Tower Bookstore, with its unique solemnity of the old state-owned stores, dominates the center of Xi'an City; private bookstores have sprung up in the streets and alleys of Xi'an City. I have visited those bookstores many times, given lectures, recorded programs, and participated in dialogues.
After the publication of my collection of essays, "Yun Ru Wenhui", several bookstores invited me to hold a launch ceremony, and finally landed in a cultural complex called Blue Ocean Wind Bookstore. There, there is an oil painting exhibition upstairs, a arts and crafts experience hall downstairs, and a fashion concert in the evening. At the launch ceremony, the media participated, and the "cloud" hits reached millions. This makes me sigh that today's bookstores are becoming more focused on the sense of participation and experience of readers from the distribution of paper books, and have been upgraded to a cultural complex with diverse functions, which has been integrated into the cultural life of citizens inwards and become a cultural window and landmark of a city externally.
In the city of Xi'an, I have read books all my life, run bookstores all my life, and naturally made many people who read, write and love books. The common frequency of "reading" makes us see each other at first sight. A friend named Wang Kuolao, who was a farmer in Shangluo in the Qinling Mountains, came out of Xi'an with the vision of knowledge changing his destiny and sold vegetables to the school canteen in order to get close to knowledge and books. At first, he fell in love with the collection of paintings and calligraphy, but later found that books gave him more nutrition in life, so he invested his savings of twenty years into the book collection. Today, he has become famous for his collection of original manuscripts, book editions, and letters by Xi'an writers such as Lu Yao and Chen Zhongzhong, and he is still a "vegetable seller".
Around the beginning of this year's Spring Festival, a young friend came to my home and wanted to make me a cloud collection, and asked me to authorize it. He brought with him the original of my short article "Scattered Spirits" published in the People's Daily in 1961 and many other manuscript materials. Looking at these precious newspapers and periodicals before a koshi is tantamount to rereading one's own life. Friends told me that now young people like to collect electronic materials, electronic collections are richer, collections are more convenient, and they are becoming popular. This was a new breakthrough for my reading and book collection experience.
The other day, the spring was in full swing, and Xi'an City was filled with blue skies and white clouds. I led my little granddaughter up the city wall to fly a kite. I asked her, "The teacher asked you to describe a very good book. She replied, "A book as thick and heavy as a brick!" I laughed. Standing on the ancient city wall, looking at the heavy wall tiles, I can't help but think: How many books are there in xi'an?
In Shenzhen——
The city is full of books
Hou Jun
Just after the Spring Festival in 1993, I bid farewell to my hometown of Tianjin and went south to Shenzhen. Many friends dissuaded me, and even more friends said bluntly: Shenzhen does not even have a decent bookstore, why are you going there?
Yes, a reader leaves a book like a fish leaving water. Mr. Zhu Qihua, an old senior, said to me when I resigned: "Go with some more books, when there are really no books to read, you can save the hunger and thirst." ”
Following the instructions of my elders, I streamlined my bags, but carefully selected hundreds of books, filled them with thirty cardboard boxes, and boarded the train heading south. After all the hardships, my book and I finally arrived in Shenzhen.
These thirty book boxes have moved around the city with me. Once, in order to carry them up to the fifth floor, I was so tired that I couldn't stand up straight. But I think these efforts are worth it, because with these books, I feel that I have a home in a foreign land--where the books are, the home is where it is.
Remember that at that time in Shenzhen, the largest bookstore was the Xinhua Bookstore on Jiefang Road, with an area of only 230 square meters, the store was often crowded, and "books are difficult to find" once caused heated discussions in the large and small media in Shenzhen. At that time, who would have thought that more than 20 years later, Shenzhen would develop into a "global reading model city for all" recognized by UNESCO?
This is a magnificent transformation of pupa into a butterfly, and it is a practice of a new city striving to forge a spiritual home while its economy is taking off. I not only witnessed this live drama with my own eyes, but also personally participated in some of the processes as a scholar, leaving behind cultural memories that belonged to me and the city.
In 1996, the fourth year of my south to Shenzhen, Shenzhen Book City was completed and opened, and the Seventh National Book Market opened at the same time. In 2000, Shenzhen held the first reading month, I participated in the preparatory activities as a member of the reading month organizing committee, and wrote the passionate "November, Shenzhen meets with reading"; in 2005, I wrote the "Shenzhen Reading Month Declaration", I wrote the "Shenzhen Reading Month Declaration", I wrote in the text: "Let our citizens be beautiful because of reading, let our city be full of poetry because of the fragrance of books, let us be in this city full of books, Poetically inhabited! ”
The fragrance of books is slowly condensed, the society of books is accumulated over time, and the city of books is created by generations of people who "cling to the green mountains and do not relax" and work together from top to bottom. As far as Shenzhen is concerned, this process is still in progress, and it is a continuous project that will never be "completed".
Now, no one will say that Shenzhen is "lacking in books". Today's Shenzhen, has a large and small thousands of libraries, all over the city's large book city, small book bars lead the trend of reading, Shenzhen's per capita book purchases have been in the forefront of major cities for many years, per capita reading volume is also among the best... Today's Shenzhen people can proudly say that here, the love of reading is respected; and how can a city that loves reading not be respected by the world?
When I was a newcomer to the "foreigner", I also had the idea of returning home. What discouraged me was a scene I happened to witness in an interview: in the Shenzhen library on Hongli Road, crowded and crowded, even the aisles were full of young people who were buried in reading.
The scene is still vivid, and the scene in the eyes has been renewed. Today, the old library has been converted into a children's library. I am really glad that the children in Shenzhen now have a "city of books".
In Hangzhou ——
Read this green mountain read this city
Huang Yongmei
Going out to collect wind or travel, but any history and legend involving a certain place will make me think of going to find relevant books to read. "According to Jing Suoji" is for a deeper understanding, but also to confirm what has been seen and heard. For me, "walking thousands of miles" is more like "reading ten thousand books".
A popular saying a few years ago: "The world is so big, I want to see it." Everyone has their own "poetry and distance" in their hearts, but if you just look at it, your brain is empty, I am afraid that you will gain very little. I remember one late night, three or five friends stood at the foot of the lonely mountain, looking at the West Lake. The moon is on top, watching us. One of them read: "Old acquaintances are happy, swimming in the night." The spring breeze comes to the sea, and the bright moon is at the head of the river..." Thanks to Bai Juyi's song "The Fifteenth Day and Night of the First Month", such a scenery is not only left in the eyes, but also remembered in the heart.
As a new Hangzhou native, I often experience the city of Hangzhou through words. Scenery often forms a meaningful relationship with the old people and old events. For example, standing on the bank of the Qiantang River, watching the tide rushing, you will think of Qian Wei, wave the Square, make a contribution to the tide, turn to the cherry blossom tree on the shore, when the petals swing to the shoulders, suddenly will be heart, no wonder such a brave person can also write such a gentle sentence as "Strange flowers bloom, can slowly return"; from the Qingbo Gate Through "Willow Wave Smelling Warbler" to the Qingzhao Pavilion, stained with Li Qingzhao's bits and pieces of thought, wondering why she often carries sorrow with water, but is unwilling to face the nearby West Lake to reveal half a word... Landscape pavilions, old walls in streets and alleys, the wind blows grass and moves to bring the heartbeat and sigh of the deceased, and as soon as the person stops and groans, he pushes the foreground objects onto the paper. Even standing in front of the bus stop sign, reading the past one by one, sometimes there will be the illusion of reading a book purpose: Three Days Zhu, Induction Bridge, Gudang, Stay, Idle Forest... One day, I was waiting at a bus stop, and I saw the four words "Immediately turn back" written on the stop sign, thinking that it was a warning sign, and it turned out to be the name of this station.
There is a lot of rain in Jiangnan, and the people of Hangzhou probably have a tacit understanding of the tradition of "reading in the rain and clear". Surrounded by azure sky, distant mountains and shadows, people swimming in books, in hangzhou's library and large and small bookstores, book bars, you can see such a poetic picture everywhere. These pictures are not so much landscapes as they are everyday, embedded in the homes of people with fireworks. I especially like to visit some bookstores full of personality, some are brightly lit for 24 hours, some are mainly "only push two books a week", and some shops have cute cats to entertain guests... The small space reveals the owner's personality and hobbies everywhere, and visiting these bookstores is like meeting and talking with book lovers. The most familiar to Hangzhou people is Xiaofeng Bookstore, which has a history of more than 20 years, with more than 20 chain stores opened in commercial districts, communities, scenic spots, museums, campuses and even hospitals. I once saw a picture of a little girl with a hanging bottle sitting by the window in a xiaofeng bookstore in a hospital, listening to stories about her mother's reading. A person's emotions may be able to get some placement in the book, and have a sense of life between the virtual reality written by others.
Over the years, I have enjoyed climbing Gem Mountain with my friends. On the mountainside not far from the Baochu Pagoda at the top of the mountain, there is a book bar facing the West Lake. For more than 20 years, it has welcomed many writers and artists, and held many reading parties, readings and movie viewing parties. Most of the time, I would choose a sunny afternoon alone, in a window position on the second floor, reading a book and looking at the scenery. The mountain wind blew, and the poster on the lintel tapped on the wooden door. Books are gifts to the heart, and I have taken them over and over again...