(Zhang Shuzhong)
Song Dynasty Fang Yue poetry: "Meat is not the strangest bone, transparent agate crushed glass." The old gluttony does not want to mutilate his teeth, but loves peach blossom nephrite. Time is an elusive concept, and decades are like day and night. Every time I look at the agate stones on the desk, I suddenly think of the past.
The first time I picked up agate was in June 1986, when the freshman course was just over, I went to Emei Mountain to practice "General Geology", and we lived in the Chengdu Diyuan (now renamed Chengdu Polytechnic University) internship base, next to Southwest Jiaotong University.
Not far from the "base" is a river, which is small but the river floods, as well as the river terraces, and accumulate thick layers of sand and gravel. The composition of pebbles and gravel is very complex, including basalt, granite, and sedimentary clastic rocks.
After dinner, we often walked to the floodplain to collect agate. The agate here was formed mainly during lava eruptions during the Permian Emei Mountain period, and after escaping from the basalt host rock, it was washed away by water currents and carried to the sand and gravel accumulation layer at the foot of the mountain.
Due to the accumulation of water over the river, the surface of the agate is smooth and rounded, and the color is very bright, with typical agate patterns.
Although I went along the river to pick up agate stones many times, I only picked up three small agate stones, and the water color was average. I remember Ma Aiwen picking up a large piece of red onyx, bright red like blood, bright as fire, hard, pure, and shining.
"Jasper bowl with red agate, well flower water to raise stone calamus". After graduation, Ma Aiwen went to Xinjiang Tuha Petroleum Development Corporation to "add oil" to the motherland like red agate. I don't know if he still went to collect agate in his spare time. And I, after work, rarely go out of my way to pick up agate...
Twenty-eight years later, in 2014, I returned to Leshan city again, but I could not awaken the excitement of my youth in any way. Although it is still the old scenery of the past, are you still interested in enjoying it? It is still the river of the year, do you still go to pick up red onyx?