Stones also have expressions. The stones that are accustomed to life are either cut horizontally and vertically, or carved softly and smoothly, like a woman who has applied thick powder, covering up the traces of age, and drowning out her true expression.
Go to Hua Ao Island not to see the flowers, but to see the stones that are said to bloom like flowers. From the city, take the highway and cross the sea bridge, which is more than two hours by car. In the distance, I saw a lonely stone peak standing, like an old man sitting in Zen, appearing calm and serene; when I approached, I felt like an old man sitting on the top of the mountain; closer, Fang knew that the peak was the top of an island in the sea, and it was the destination of this trip, Hua Ao Island, which was only separated from the land by a narrow bay. The ferry leaves the dock and curves towards the island, the peak, and approaches.
In the early winter on the eastern coast of Zhejiang, the cold and humid air from the north smeared the clear autumn sky with a layer of solemn gray tones, and the sky, sea and beachhead were the same. The blue-brown stone peaks standing outside the ship's window no longer saw the original kindness, and there was a hint of gloom and unfathomable. The tour guide told us that the local people of That Stone Peak are called Big Buddha Mountain, and there are also called Buddha Head Mountain, Big Nose Mountain, and Jigong Mountain, and the aesthetics and imagination of different people determine the name of this peak. In fact, that stone peak is not immutable, and the aesthetics obtained by different people, different directions, and different perspectives are different. Listening to the tour guide say this, everyone twisted together to look out the window and found that the stone peak was no longer a twilight monk, but transformed into a nursing mother and son, a whispering couple...
Located on the east side of the mouth of Sanmen Bay on the Xiangshan Peninsula, Huaao Island is an outlying island of Gaotang Island, which is the result of volcanic eruptions and hundreds of millions of years of sea erosion in ancient times, and is known as "the fairy country of the sea and the city of Yingzhou on earth". The island is full of bare rocks, ravines, cliffs and bays, and the vegetation is thin and green, which seems to have nothing to do with flowers. From the air, the whole island looks like a rockery bonsai floating in the water, or a flower of stone blooming in the sea and the sky. More than 350 years ago, Zhang Cangshui, the hero of the Anti-Qing Dynasty, spent the darkest time of his life here.
A rough stone path leads us along a long, winding coastline on one side and a mixture of mixed greenery and greenery of weeds and ferns that grow tenaciously through patches of irregular mountain rocks across thin layers of sediment. The early winter sea breeze has begun to take shape, blowing wet and cold on the face. Looking around, the sea and sky are still one color, as if two horses of infinitely expanding, stretching gray silk, faint halos occasionally or pulsating with some white light spots, let people see that there are some sunny things in life. Just like the island at your feet, even if it is just a mountain of ugly rocks and piles of rocks in the sea and the sky, you must strive to blossom and become a flower, an island of flowers.
Bypassing several bays, to a headland, the legendary flower of dreams suddenly appeared in front of the eyes, and everyone stopped, watching while sighing and marveling, while pulling out their mobile phones to press the shutter at the focal length, busy and happy. In the face of the miraculous natural creation, people often show a naïve side, get up early in the morning and run away, and just to glance at it, they feel that this old half a day is worth it, and it is not in vain.
This is the legendary Stone Garden, or Stone Forest in the Water. The erosion of the sea tide for hundreds of millions of years, the sun and the wind and rain washed away the old and desolate, and a huge opening was pulled out of the southeast side of the island - a steep C-shaped section. Different from the common cliffs, the cliffs are made of dense and different shapes of giant strips of stone pillars in disorder, or majestically upright, or reclining horizontally, like a wedge, wedged into the sea by some mysterious force; reminiscent of high-rise buildings, those deep underground concrete pile foundations; the cliff stone forest they support, it is said that there are only three places in the world, and the most unique and magical place in front of them belongs to one of the world's three volcanic rock native landforms.
Outside the other end of the C-shaped opening, there are two headlands, one large and one small, the large one is about half a court, the small one is only the size of a few desktops, also made up of a parallel stone pillar, in the distance, the sea and the wind and waves wash away the gravel and sediment on the top of the cape, and there is no turf tree shadow, only a square, triangle or polygonal geometric figure formed by a staggered stone column section, the high one is like a stone bench, the low one is committed to the waves, looming and floating. It is not difficult to see that the entire Hua'ao Island is actually composed of countless stone pillar arrays, and the accumulation of dust and wind and sand and the cover of vegetation make the combination of these giant stone pillar formations have a different appearance and scenery.
There is a hanging gallery under the stone wall. Walking up the overhang can bring people closer to these walled stone forests and explore their textures; at low tide, you can also go around to the bluestone beach under the stone wall opposite the C-shaped bend, and then climb up the two headlands. The headlands were originally integrated with the island, but the tide temporarily isolated them.
In the face of this tightly sewn stone forest, I suddenly felt how inaccurate it was to call them forest or flowers. It wasn't originally a forest or a flower. From the plane point of view, it is a wall blocked by countless columns of stone, and the plugs in the cracks of the wall are hollowed out by the waves and wind and rain, appearing so deep and sinister that people sweat at the stone pillars that are either weak or thick and tall, worrying about when they will not be able to withstand the waves and the wind and rain and the digging of their hands and collapse. From the perspective of time and space, excavation and collapse events can occur at any time. One by one, the deep and unfathomable sea caves, on the top are the hanging stone pillars that are put together, and the echoes of the waves and the fog generated by the waves escape from the cave from time to time, impacting people's nerves. Some stone pillars recline on the stone wall, the lower half is suspended in the air, as if it will slip down at any time; some are unusually tenacious, thin and slippery, allowing the tide to destroy and tease, that is, standing still, highlighting stubbornness like a stem. However, collapse is the norm, and not collapsing is not the norm. In the face of eternal time, all strength is temporary. Including the so-called flowers and groves. The flowers will bloom again, the forest is defeated and the earth is still there, after some time reincarnation, there may be another forest that is new and strong. What about them? Beneath the overhang are always roaring waves and gravel beaches everywhere.
These are lined with intricate stone pillars and stone crevices! There are so many volcanic eruptions in the world, and there are enough volcanic rocks left, and none of them are more deeply, thoroughly, and bizarrely torn than here, whether named by flowers or forests, which is far-fetched, and perhaps better described as anger - because life is impermanent, body and mind are not sent and angry - and the body, mind, liver and gallbladder are split! Or to put it another way, it's "flowers" that bloom out of anger!
Later, we went to visit the site of the anti-Qing hero Zhang Cangshui Bingzhai.
Zhang Cangshui, famous Huangyan, zi xuan, more than three centuries ago, with a weak body of a scholar erected the banner of the rebel army, united Zheng (Zheng Chenggong) to resist the Qing, once three into the Yangtze River, attacked Nanjing unsuccessfully, nine deaths. In June of the third year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1664), seeing that there was no hope of regaining sight, he disbanded the rebel army on the present-day Nantian Island of Xiangshan Mountain, and took a few intimate soldiers to live in seclusion on an isolated island in the sea, with the stones as walls and the stones as houses. This island is Hua Ao Island. Later, due to the betrayal of traitors, he was captured by qing soldiers and escorted to Hangzhou and heroically rebelled. The hero is gone, and the stone houses that once soothed the body temperature of the heroes and righteous soldiers have been messed up into a beach of rocks after more than 13,000 days of wind and rain baptism. Stones are the most "indigenous" on the island, everywhere. The training ground is still there, the mountain stone barge, the well that draws fresh water is still there, and the remaining secret passage exits in the rubble pile are like mouths that have been saying something wordlessly for hundreds of years!
What are they telling? Is it humiliating? Or anger?
-Ends-
Night Reading Columnist/Cold Stone
Editor/Peach's Death
The picture in this article comes from the network