Liang Xiaosheng's Essay: The Wall of Silence

Of all the things that are silent, the relationship between walls and people is the most special.

If there is no wall, there is no home.

When building a home, the first thing to build is the wall. In order to make the wall strong, it is necessary to lay a foundation. for the roof shall be covered on the battlements. Such a wall is called a "load-bearing wall".

The load-bearing wall is easily immovable. Any careless alteration of it, such as opening a random door or window on it, can lead to the serious consequences of a sudden collapse of the house one day. And if you tear down a load-bearing wall, it is almost equivalent to self-destruction of the house. It is difficult for people to endure the filth of the walls of the house. Such a person, even if the windows are bright and clean, is still unclean. People are especially worried about the cracks in the load-bearing walls, and they are extremely frightened about their tilting. If the load-bearing wall is in such a situation, the person will be in a state of restlessness. Because it poses a threat to human life at all times.

Before the wall existed, one could design its thickness, height, length, width, and structural orientation in a future home on the drawings. You can also change everything on the drawing. However, the wall, especially the load-bearing wall, once it exists, also declares a kind of independence. At this time, in front of the wall, man's will can only be in vain. There is almost only one thing that can be done by man, and that is to make it beautiful, or to strengthen it. Anything contrary to the truth, it tends to shake it. It is self-evident how unwise it is to shake a load-bearing wall.

Man, by collective strength, is enough to move mountains and reclaim the sea. With individual perseverance and ambition, people can do what seems to be something that only a collective can do. As a result, man became a role model and even a hero. A very ordinary person, in his own home, in the scope of the home has expanded a little, such as in the yard, is simply God. His will is like God's will. He can move all his furniture at any time, changing their position again and again. He can dig up a pot of flowers from one pot and plant it in another. He could also dig up a tree from here in the yard and plant it there. He can even climb up to the roof and replace the tiled roof with a tin roof. If there was a layer of water underneath his house, he could make a well in the middle of his house if he wanted to. Whatever he could, there was one thing he couldn't, and that was to remove a load-bearing wall from his house. Moreover, the wiser the person in this matter, the more he knows that he can't.

As long as it is a load-bearing wall, it can only be beautiful and reinforced, not canceled. Whether it's a poor man's house wall or a rich man's house wall. Even the walls of the palace where the emperor lived, as long as it was built in the direction of load-bearing, could never be demolished. Of course, it is not absolutely impossible to dismantle it, so before dismantling it, replace it with a steel frame or a pillar of stone and wood.

Even if the load-bearing wall has been abolished, the load-bearing role of the load-bearing wall still exists in disguise.

The wisdom and strength of human beings have enabled human beings to go to the sky, to go to the sea, to enter the earth, and to get rid of the great attraction of the earth and fly through the atmosphere into space and land on the moon. However, in the face of any load-bearing wall of fait accompli, whether it is an ambitious individual or a united collective, in today's highly developed science, or like the ancients thousands of years ago, there are still only three choices: either to value its existence as a fait accompli; Either it is prudent and thoughtful to replace its load-bearing role with another form; Either tear it down and blow it up, or at the same time simply "cancel" a house, or a factory, or a high-rise building.

The wall, once it is built, means that it is the "opposite" that man himself has built for himself.

The load-bearing wall is a prerequisite for the common architecture of ancient and modern China and foreign countries, and it is the foundation built on the foundation. It is not only the "opposite" that man himself has built, but also a solid reality that man has designed and "made" himself. Its existence has the taboo that people have to pay attention to it. It means a three-dimensional "principle" that can be seen by the eyes and touched by the hands. The fact that it stands there in silence represents that "principle". Even if people destroy it, they still can't destroy that "principle". The fact that something else has replaced its load-bearing role proves that the "principle" is absolutely unquestionable.

And the meaning of "principle" can also be understood literally as such a kind of truth—a kind of primitive truth. A doctrine that preceded human beings on earth. Because it is older than human beings, and because it lives and dies with the earth, it is a kind of magic on the earth that governs human beings. It is the force given by the earth itself. Whoever respects it, to whom it serves; Whoever violates it, it punishes whom. In ancient and modern times, there is no one on the earth who has violated it and has not reaped the consequences.

The wall is a sign that a person occupies a certain space on the earth. The load-bearing wall reinforces this symbol over time. Walls are more closely related to people than beds, chairs, dining tables and desks. Because people are only in bed for a few hours a day. Because people don't sit in chairs all day. I don't eat or sit at my desk all day. But as long as the human eye is open, as long as it is indoors, almost all the time you see the first thing is the wall. Even if a person suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night, he is likely to be faced with a wall first. For people, the wall really looks down and you don't see it when you look up.

Therefore, the first thing people need to do to beautify the living environment or office environment is to beautiful the walls. For this purpose, people specially mix the ash of the walls and make wallpaper for the walls. In the past, wallpaper was nothing more than patterned flower paper, but in modern times, wall films with chemical fiber components and high-grade paints that are not afraid of moisture have been produced. Wealthy families even went so far as to wrap silk in the plates and stick them on the walls. People often go to great lengths for the wall.

But the wall is forever silent, eternally indifferent, eternally unfazed. Unlike beds, chairs, and tables, they make noises when they are old. And the wall, chiseling it, drilling it, nailing it, whatever it takes, it is still a wall of silence.

My childhood home was a small half-low, dilapidated house. Its walls are simply unpaintable. I can't paste it either. Besides, you can't afford to buy wallpaper. Only during the Spring Festival, use one or two New Year's paintings to make the wall beautiful. As soon as the Spring Festival is over, it will be removed and rolled up, put it in the old box, and leave it for the next Spring Festival to be pasted. The wall of the poor house is like a child of the poor family, and a new coat of the wall of the poor house is reluctant to let it be "worn on the body" all the time.

Later, my family moved once. Our home finally has four walls that are worth it. I was in the fifth grade of elementary school that year. From that year on, I started to learn to paint the walls. Brush the walls! What a happy thing! Lime was a rarity in those days. In order to paint the walls, I often searched all over the city in advance to see where the construction was going on. If you find lime piled up somewhere, go and steal a pot in the middle of the night. Sometimes in the winter, I walk a long way, and my hands are frozen when I steal it back. Also carefully smooth out cracks on the wall before brushing. I sift the ashes through a sieve and mix them into yellow mud to make my own cement. After a few times, I not only showed my experience, but also showed my talent. By adding some blue ink to the lime paste, the walls can be painted a light blue that we now call "cool". With some red ink, the walls can be painted in a light red that we now call "warm". But for the common people of that era, ink was very expensive. Reluctant to use ink again, he switched to the blue or red dye that his mother used to dye her clothes. That's a lot cheaper. A pack is only a dime. Enough to use a dozen times. When I was in middle school, I was able to spray flowers on the walls. The cardboard is carved out of the pattern, pressed on the wall, an old stiff brush is stained with mortar, the fingers repeatedly scrape the bristles, the gray spots splash on the wall, tirelessly, until the cardboard is covered with pulp spots, as soon as it is removed, the pattern is printed on the wall. There is another way to make the "impressionist" pattern appear on the painted wall, that is, twist the rag in half like twisting twisted flowers, and roll it on the wall with mortar, so that it rolls out rows of waves, rolls out clouds, and rolls out of indescribable strange beauty. As a teenager, I was addicted to brushing walls, often three times a year. Once at the beginning of spring, once at the end of autumn, and once before the Spring Festival. In order to be able to face your own good-looking walls at home, so you can spend the summer, "October 1st" and the Spring Festival in a better mood. Therefore, the residents' committee inspected the hygiene, and my family got a red flag every time. Therefore, I became famous in the whole hospital, in that small street. People often beg me to paint the walls, and the reward is a bath ticket, or a movie ticket......

Later, I went to the country, and my brothers were taken out of the country.

In the ten years that I have lived in a tube building in Beiying, the walls of my house have not been painted once. Because I've become a writer, I don't care much about painting walls. It's been more than ten years since I moved to Tongying, and I haven't painted the walls of my house once. Because before moving here, there was a wall film on the wall. In fact, the brush is also brushed. Of course, not with mortar, but with a brush dipped in soapy water. After four or five brushes, the initial yellow of the wall film has become lighter......

Now, the wall film on the wall has long been broken in many places. I'm too lazy to brush it either. More lazy to decorate. I am afraid that I will be annoyed by the loss of time, and I am also afraid of disturbing my neighbors. But I have another way to look at the wall. Where it's so dirty that you can't see it, you can't see it, and you can't block it by hanging a picture frame or something. So the visitor said, "Look at the wall of your house, it's too old, but you made it quite beautiful." ”

Now, directly above one of the main walls of my house, there is a square battery meter. Around 1983, a prize from a literary magazine called "The Ugly Duckling" was offered to me at a price of seventy or eighty yuan. At the bottom of the table, in a small picture frame the size of a book, is inlaid with a sexy Marilyn Monroe. I'm not the only man who is fascinated by Marilyn Monroe. There was only a small hole in the wall, and only a small picture frame was needed. Only by hanging such a small photo frame can the asymmetrical beauty be formed. I happened to be visiting the morning market and found that the stall was selling, so I bought it for 10 yuan. The number of photo frames with Marilyn Monroe on the wall is the smallest, and it is really a little aggrieved Monroe. Next to "her" is a black-framed Russian copperplate painting more than twice as large as "her", on which is the majestic and magnificent Maria Cathedral. It was given to me by a cousin who studied Russian literature and history in Russia and was really close to him. Underneath Marilyn Monroe, framed is a small painting of the sea and sky that a young artist gave me a few years ago. In addition, in the same size frame on the wall, there are two landscape oil paintings that he gave me, both of which are prints. In the mullion below, there is a photograph of a pair of swans in love with each other in the reeds. It is a coloring page of Nature magazine. I like to cut it out and put it on. To the left of a pair of swans, in a large frame of four semi-circular wooden segments, is inlaid with a landscape painting by Levistein: a quiet bay, a boat in the water, and a grove of trees on the shore. In addition, in another black picture frame on the wall, there is a full-body sermon of Jesus, inlaid with gold and silver leaf.

There are also two souvenirs of the children's film event. One is directly inlaid with the head of a Miao girl on the wooden board, and the other is inlaid with an artistic cow head. That year was the Year of the Ox. On the top of that one is "The Last Supper", which is directly embossed on a thin plate, unframed. There are also two porcelain sheep's heads on the wall, which are exactly the same. A cow's head, a whole cow, I bought it from a stall for a hundred yuan. There are also framed crafts made up of small pieces of twigs that have been given to me; There were also two young musicians who gave me their own photographs of Ao Bao; There is also a cloth painting pasted by a female middle school student in a township in Hunan Province, which is a girl with a handkerchief feeding chickens, and even the frame is made by themselves. This is what I cherish the most, because the hearts of the maidens are so devout; There is also a string of colorful zodiac signs sewn from cloth, which I bought at the morning market for ten yuan; There are also wishful knots, wishful bags, small lanterns and so on, all bought for two or three yuan in the morning market......

All of the above blocked the broken and dirty spots on the walls of my house and made the walls beautiful.

I have introduced in such detail the things on the main wall of my house, in fact, I want to summarize my feelings about the wall - wall, wall, forever silent wall, what a kind character you have! Whoever wants to hammer a nail on you, then knock it, you silently bite the nail. Whoever wants to hang something on you, then hang it, no matter what it is, beautiful or not, on the contrary, you have silently approved of it. Wall, wall, what kind of inclusiveness do you have!

Although, people can write whatever they want on the wall, paint whatever they want, hang whatever they want, and paint the wall in whatever color they want - however, no matter how high-grade the wall paint is, it will not last long, and will gradually fade and peel off with the passage of time; If you deceive yourself or are deceived by others into painting inferior wall paint on the wall, then you must be the victim yourself. The walls of cement and brick will not be destroyed to any extent.

Time has passed, and the slogans written on the walls have long since become traces of history, and the people who wrote them have long since died, while the walls still stand silently and upright; The painting on the wall has long since been blurred, the person who painted it has long since died, and the wall still stands silently upright; The things that hang on the walls have long since changed hands, from precious to worthless, or from worthless to a hundred times worthless, and the walls still stand silently upright; The war has long since become a distant event, the walls are riddled with bullet holes, and the walls stand silently and upright......

The wall has seen everything, heard everything, experienced everything, but it stands forever silent. The wall seems to understand that man will never take its silence as a sin of it. Everything has a vocation to exist. The wall understands that its vocation is nothing but upright.

The wall understood that as soon as it made a sound, its upright began to waver. Even if the wall is tired and old, and it is about to fall, it will alert people in its characteristic way, such as tilting, such as cracks......

People know that some walls cannot be knocked down, so they are constantly observing their condition and repairing them from time to time. People need them to stand upright somewhere, not only to mark the past, but also to mark the future. For example, the wall of the Paris Commune in France. People know that there are some walls that cannot be torn down without tearing them down. For example, the wall that separates love; For example, the wall that forcibly separates a country and a nation in two......

For example, the invisible wall of racial discrimination; Take the Berlin Wall in Germany, for example.

People excavated ancient city-states from under the volcanic ash and under the desert, and those walls that did not fall down when they saw the light of day were all load-bearing walls! They stand upright in silence, even under volcanic ash, even under the desert, even after earthquakes and hurricanes.

People like walls are not lovely. A person like a wall will have no lover and will also keep loved ones away. The upright image of the wall is higher than the image of any individual.

The magnificent wall represents a grand image, and only such solemn concepts as the nation and the state can be used as metaphors. Epoch after epoch passed, like new wall paint covering old wall paint; A group of characters from the Stormy Gathering have been integrated into history, and another group of characters from the Stormy Gathering have also been integrated into history, like a photo frame hanging on the wall has been changed and replaced; Wars are gone, disasters are gone, turmoil is over, even glory and greatness will pass, like furniture, some days on one wall, some days on another......

And the wall, always the wall. Silently erect.

And the load-bearing wall, with its inability to despise, tells people: man can do many things, but man cannot do everything; One can be ambitious, but one cannot be without taboos, even against a wall......