"Yuxi (Group Photo)". Wen Yilin/Photographed in Lingling Yuxi
Yuxi, Yuxi
Text/Dan Yang
After more than 1,200 years of time, wrapped in the blazing Sun of July, I whispered in my heart: "Yuxi, I am coming, I am here again." ”
His eyes touched the stream in front of him, and his heart slipped through a wisp of disappointment. The creek is not wide, the weeds on both sides are overgrown, and due to the continuous rain, the water quality is turbid and the water flow is turbulent.
Imagine that the stream should be crystal clear: swimming fish are moving freely, cobblestones are lazily lying at the bottom of the stream, and occasionally sleek bluestones emerge from the water, which is the station of birds and dragonflies. In the sound of babbling water, Jiamu stands tall, the bamboo swaying, and the white clouds are leisurely... If the sun is just right, the stream is like a mirror, and it will reflect all this into a painting.
This is not the first time I have come to Yuxi to visit the Liuzi Temple, but there is still an inexplicable and green throbbing in my heart. The gap between the stream in front of me and the stream in my heart is really a bit large, but this does not reduce its sense of sacredness in my heart, but it stimulates my enthusiasm for visiting the ancient world all the way. The water is clear to me, and the water is muddy to my feet. The beauty of Yuxi is both in front of the eyes and in the heart.
Walking in Yongzhou is like entering a treasure land. This is too much of a story and history of the side of the landscape.
Yongzhou was called Lingling in ancient times, and was named after Emperor Shun," "Southern Patrol Hunting, Collapsed in the Wilderness of Cangwu, Buried in Jiangnan Jiuxuan, is for Lingling". Lingling is one of the 34 important place names in the country that have appeared in the Xia Dynasty of the mainland, and has a history of more than 2100 years of county establishment. Because the Xiang River and Xiaoshui meet in Pingzhou, Yongzhou, yongzhou is also known as "Xiaoxiang".
"With the help of the country and mountains, there is no poetry in Xiaoxiang", the beautiful natural scenery and profound cultural heritage have made the celebrities who have come to Yongzhou since ancient times to "punch the clock" endlessly: Huai Su, Yuan Jie, Yan Zhenqing, Kou Zhun, Mi Fu, Su Shi SuRu brothers, Zhang Jun, Zhang Yu father and son, Lu You... But on the ancient knowledge of Yongzhou's landscape, it is not Liu Zongyuan. Zhang Shizhao said: "The world is childless, and the mysteries of mountains and rivers are unheard of through the ages." ”
Like a willow, it walks like a willow, and swims long. I did not have the pen of willow "gargling all things, cages and all kinds of shapes", could not write the shadow of "green trees and green vines, swaying and jagged", could not describe the wonder of "if the cow and horse drink in the stream, if the bear climbed on the mountain", and even came to the side of the cobalt hook pool, due to the change of the riverbed, I did not feel the shape of the "iron" (cobalt is the meaning of "iron"). But the heart, but in the step by step of the march was filled, a thousand years of time and space, a leap.
"Since Yu is a servant, living is a state, and he is constantly worried." This is the first sentence in Liu Zongyuan's "Eight Records of Yongzhou", "Journey to the Feast of the Western Mountains". Meaning: Ever since I became a despised sinner and came to Live in Yongzhou, I have always felt fear and uneasiness. Because of the "sin of foolishness", Liu Zongyuan simply named the scenes he saw in Yongzhou after "foolishness". The creek is called Yuxi, the spring is called Yuquan, the hill is called Yuqiu, and the ditch is called Yugou. A "foolish" word, a few more bittersweet. Whether I hope to be wise and foolish, or Whether I will spend the rest of my life here, I don't know. To be sure, it was the landscape of Yongzhou that dissolved and soothed his uneasiness. Yongzhou and Liu Zongyuan, mutual achievements.
The rushing Yuxi River, allowing the wind and frost to blow on the face. The stream is wordless, meandering eastward, merging into the water. Holding the water of Yuxi, I seemed to open the switch of the time tunnel and touched the wordless sorrow and joy of Willow.
In the sparkling waves, what keeps flashing, is not the deep maternal love?
From the "Three Migrations of MengMu" to the "Mother-in-law's Thorn Character", from the love of "Close Seams" to the encouragement and tolerance of Edison's mother for his various fantastic ideas, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, leaving many stories about the virtuous mother's godson, the loving mother and the son. My mother was our first teacher and lifelong mentor. Freud said, "A person who is infinitely pampered by his mother maintains the feeling of a conqueror all his life, that is, he maintains confidence in success, and often succeeds in reality." "This is actually a kind of psychological support.
Liu Zongyuan also has a great mother who loves him deeply. Liu Mu Lu clan, born from the famous scholar clan Fanyang Lu surname, has a high cultural attainment and is knowledgeable. She had two daughters and a son, and Liu Zongyuan was the youngest. When he was four years old, his father Liu Zhen went to the south to take up a post, and his mother Lu Shi led him to live in the Jingxi Manor, teaching the young man to recite the fourteen poems of Gufu and other poems. The "Yongzhen Reform" failed (805 AD), when Liu Zongyuan demoted the official Yongzhou, his father had already died, his two sisters had just died of illness, and his mother, in her twilight years of sixties, forcibly endured the pain of losing her daughter, and followed her only son to this southern wasteland without the slightest complaint. She also comforted her son, saying, "The wise do not mourn the past, and I have not tasted any relatives."
Initially degraded the history of Shaozhou, on the way to the post, he degraded Sima yongzhou. "Yongzhou Sima Yuan's external position with the same member", this is Liu Zongyuan's position in Yongzhou, Sima s official position is Liu Pinshang. "Outside the staff" is a person outside the establishment, that is, an "idle member", who only receives lulu and does not care about things. When he first arrived in Yongzhou, he had no place to live, so he had to borrow the West Wing of Longxing Temple.
The elderly mother worked long distances, physically and mentally exhausted, coupled with the water and soil, poor living conditions, soon fell ill, and died less than half a year later.
Originally a proud son of heaven, once he was convicted, he came from the bustling capital chang'an to the deserted Yongzhou, and the old mother who depended on each other died because of the involvement, and Liu Zongyuan's inner grief and indignation can be imagined. It's not tragic enough. Because he was the body of a sinner, he "was not allowed to return to the funeral to fulfill his will", and it was his cousin who buried his deceased mother back to his hometown on his behalf.
I can't imagine Yanagiko's pain at that time. Although "the country is unfortunate that the poet is fortunate and endowed with vicissitudes and sentences", Yongzhou's landscape should thank Liu Zongyuan for this experience, but such a day has seriously damaged his health after all. Within a few years, he was "trembling on his knees and paralyzed when he sat."
In the waves of Yuxi, there are also flowers of friendship that have been passed down through the ages.
The American thinker Emerson said: "Friendship is the spice of life and the painkiller of life." Liu Zongyuan has a "life and death friend" who can be used as a painkiller, that is, "Shihao" Liu Yuxi. The two were the same as The Koden Jinshi, had the same friendship in the same year, the same aspiration to serve the country, the same calendar "Yongzhen Innovation", after the failure of the innovation, the same was degraded, the same in poetry is very deep, is the famous "Gemini Star" in the Chinese and Tang Dynasty literary circles.
The first time the two met was in 793 AD, Jinshi and later in the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Chang'an Daci'en Temple.
In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, the imperial examination was popular, and in order to show courtesy, the students who had entered the army could "inscription the name of the Wild Goose Pagoda", that is, go to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to write their own name or testimonial. This was a great honor, and it was also a popular thing at the time. This year, Liu Zongyuan was 21 years old, Liu Yuxi was 22 years old, and the elite Junyan, seeking the same qi and feeling sorry for each other, became a confidant.
According to historical records, the Tang Dynasty held a total of 268 examinations, and the total number of admitted jinshi was 7448, with an average of less than 28 people each time, and the rarity and difficulty of jinshi can be imagined. "Thirty old Ming Classics, fifty young soldiers", Liu Liu and the two were so young to become a soldier, it can be described as incredible, and their reputation was greatly enhanced for a while.
To what extent do you not get? We may get circumstantial evidence from Bai Juyi's inscription poem "At the inscription under the Tower of Ci'en, the youngest of the seventeen": there were 17 jinshi in that year, Bai Juyi was the youngest, and his peers were all older than him. It was the sixteenth year of Zhenyuan (800 AD), and Bai Juyi was 28 years old.
At the same time that Liu Zongyuan was demoted to Yongzhou, Liu Yuxi was demoted to Sima of LangZhou (present-day Changde, Hunan). The two exchanged letters for more than a decade, singing, debating, and discussing poetic and philosophical issues. Compared with Liu Zongyuan's sensitive introversion, Liu Yuxi's personality is more resolute and open-minded. This can be seen from the "Autumn Words" written by him after his depreciation, "Since ancient times, autumn is sad and lonely, I say that autumn is better than spring dynasty" and "Buried Room Ming". The exchanges between friends, especially Liu Yuxi's optimism and strength, should add a lot of light and comfort to Liu Zongyuan's lonely and desolate days!
Ten years after being demoted from the capital, Liu Liu and his men were ordered to return to Chang'an, but they were soon re-degraded. The cause is a poem written by Liu Yuxi when the two of them traveled to the Xuandu Temple in Chang'an, "The peach trees in the Xuandu Temple are all planted after Liu Lang goes." The magnates felt that they had heard complaints and dissatisfaction from the poems, so "Liu Lang" was degraded to the history of the state thorn, and "Liu Lang" was degraded to the history of the Liuzhou thorn.
In present-day Zunyi, Guizhou, the conditions in Bozhou were worse than in Liuzhou. Liu Zongyuan not only did not complain about his friend, but was worried about him, Liu Mother was nearly eighty years old, and this time he was transferred to Bozhou, and he would die. Therefore, he played filial piety to the imperial court, hoping to let Liu Yuxi go to Liuzhou and go to Bozhou for him. Yushi Zhong, Pei Du, was moved and helped to intercede, and Liu Yuxi was able to change the name of Lianzhou to Lianzhou.
If you have a friend like this, why ask for it! "Easy to sow with willow" became a good story.
The two walked together on the road of further depreciation. Walking to Hengyang, Hunan, I had to say goodbye. Infinite emotion, paid with poetry. Liu Zongyuan first gave a poem "Hengyang Parting Ways and DreamIng Farewell", "Tears are a Thousand Lines on Mao", And Liu Yuxi replied to the poem "Re-grant Lianzhou to Hengyang to Reward Liu liuzhou farewell", "looking at each other and thinking about it for a long time". You come and go, and you say goodbye.
Before he died of illness in Liuzhou at the age of 47, Liu Zongyuan wrote a suicide note to Liu Yuxi, asking him to raise his young son, sort out the manuscript, and send him back to his hometown. Hearing the bad news, Liu Yuxi "cried out in horror, as if he were madly ill", and zeng wrote "Sacrifice Willow Member's Foreign Language" to express his longing feelings, and wrote a poem "Hurting Yuxi". For the dying entrustment of his friends, Liu Yuxi did a good job one by one: escorting the coffin back to his hometown and returning its leaves to the roots; Wait for Liu Zongyuan's orphans to be "the same as their own sons" and raise them to adulthood; It took more than 20 years to sort out the manuscript for my friend and compile it into a collection, that is, the 30-volume "Tang Dynasty Liuzhou Thorn History Liu Jun Collection". Life and death are intertwined, liver and gallbladder are like this.
I wonder if there have been different snakes among the grass and trees on the shore of Yuxi? In the mirror of a thousand years of time, the strange snake of "black matter and white chapter" has become a symbol of yongzhou's remoteness and backwardness, and it is also a symbol of Liuzi's request for the people's life.
Whether he lived in the height of the temple or far away from the rivers and lakes, he was concerned about the suffering of the people and dared to drum and shout for the people. The persecution of political enemies and the hardships of life did not extinguish his original intention of doing practical things for the people, did not consume his courage to stand on the road, and did not pollute his bloody soul. His great personality and splendid Huazhang are all integrated with the landscape of Yongzhou and reflected in the heavens and the earth.
He is attached to the landscape, but his attitude towards life is always positive and persistent. He had two major activities in his life: one was to participate in the "Yongzhen Innovation" and the other was to lead the Guwen Movement. He not only practiced the political ideal of "inspiring talents and abilities, rejuvenating the power, bringing great prosperity to the people, and dying voices", but also advocated the ancient chinese movement of "Wen yi Ming Dao" together with Han Yu, and proposed to take the Confucian classics as the "source of the Tao".
Liu Zongyuan lived in Yongzhou for 10 years, not only wrote the "Eight Records of Yongzhou", but 317 of the more than 540 poems in the Complete Works of Liu Hedong were created in Yongzhou, leaving a huge ideological wealth for future generations.
Later, during his tenure as an assassin in Liuzhou, he devoted himself to reforms closely related to the people's lives, such as abolishing the bad habit of personal imprisonment, releasing slaves, building schools, building wastelands, digging wells, and promoting medicine. In order to commemorate him, the common people built the Liuhou Ancestral Hall.
"It is a sound of green landscapes", more than a thousand years of time, how many winds have been blown away by the rain and wind. Yingying's Qingbo in "The Fisherman", like the Yuxi water that does not give up day and night, can still wash our eyes today.
Approaching the summer heat, it is the hottest season in Shonan. But through the cracks of time, I seem to see a silent, lonely fishing man sitting on the bank of the snowy Yu Creek.
(Originally published in Hunan Daily-06 Xiangjiang 2022-08-05)