Text/Yan An
/Biography/
Yan An was born in August 1965 in the countryside of northern Shaanxi. He is currently the vice chairman of the Shaanxi Writers Association, a member of the Poetry Committee of the China Writers Association, the director of the Shaanxi Poetry Committee, and the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Yanhe. In 2014, he won the poetry award of the 6th Lu Xun Literature Award for his poetry collection "Sorting Stones". He has published many books such as "Tidying Up the Stones", "The Earth With the Spiders", "The Crow Skimming Over the Old City", "Toy City", "Seven Summers of the Blue Child", "The Canyon of the Headless", "The Time Patient", "The Fish King", "The Naturalist's Manor" and so on. Some of his works have been translated into Russian, English, Japanese, and Korean, and have been published abroad.
Yan An Luo Le/Painting
It is believed that reading can make the world lighter, or that through reading books, you can obtain a kind of psychic technique that makes the world lighter, and then the world changes its original properties, becomes omnipotent, and can always escape the bad luck and turn the danger into a disaster at a critical time.
I'm talking about my grandfather, the man who escaped from the battlefield, who started the fire not only to make his family, but also to make the whole village creepy veterans, a certain belief in reading a book that a man who had never read a day' worth of books, and the strategy of pretending and pretending to be sophisticated when he taught future generations. He said don't look at our narrow ditch that can't even turn around, in ancient times there was a reader who was as good astronomy and geography down, his name was Re Lianghao. Grandpa probably heard someone talk about the "Three Character Classic" when he was a soldier, and misunderstood the phrase "Ruo Liang Hao" as a personal name, and the three words "Re Lianghao" were written on a paper to confirm my inquiry.
My grandfather always told the story of Re Lianghao repeatedly when I was a child, but he could never tell what era this reader lived in, always talking about ancient times and ancient times. Once, or many times, when I stubbornly questioned and asked which dynasty Re Lianghao really was, forcing grandpa to say this to count things, his self-esteem was hurt, he smashed the rice bowl that was just eating in his hand on the ground, blushed and roared at me, saying that the ancients were teaching you the truth, not to hang out with you, when you were three years old, looking old, I saw that your little bunny cub would definitely not be a lice fleas in the future. As I said earlier, my grandfather was a soldier for fifteen years when he was young, participated in the agrarian revolutionary war, the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, fought vicious battles and brought miscellaneous soldiers, killed many people, was overbearing, and did not like others to disobey him, even in small matters. Many times, we just broke up.
Thinking about it now, I just want to dig out more details from Relianghao's story in an era when there weren't many books to read. This story fascinates me, and details are the soul of the story, and only details can give me more basis while looking at the abyss-like sky overhead in a daze.
My grandfather said that in ancient times, Re Lianghao, who liked to read all his life, was disheveled, did not care about others, only took the examination at the age of eighty-three, when the list book came down, he was almost paralyzed in his own kangtou, and he did not even have the strength to go out of the village. The greatest feat of Relianghao's life was that one year, a large gray turtle suddenly flew from an ancient tree in the village the size of a gate fan, which caused a sensation in the whole village at that time, and the villagers found that the big turtle obviously fell on the treetops, but it was so light that even a leaf could not be bent, to be precise, it was as if it did not fall on the tree, but fell into the air. In this way, everyone could not help but feel frightened, and immediately a sense of fear began to spread throughout the village, thinking that there might be a catastrophe about to descend on the village. At this time, someone remembered Re Lianghao and thought that he read a lot, and he should be invited to see what was going on. Saying that this hot Liang Hao listened to the end, did not hurry, with the closed fan bone to lift the curtain, leaned out half of the body, a casual look, the hand to build a pergola only looked at the tree, said a "millennium turtle, light as ash" and turned back to the room. This sentence threw the boulder that was about to crush the hearts of the whole village rumbled and flew away, and the whole village was immediately relieved of its fatal burden, and everyone was relieved. Since then, the village has indeed survived, and it has flourished and lived endlessly.
The story never mentions where the giant turtle went next. For most people in the village, they are satisfied with the story at this point, but for me alone, things can't be so unfinished, and I desperately want to know how the story unfolds next: where the turtle on the tree ended up, and how it left our village. Finding the answer to this question took a lot of effort. I said above that my grandfather was a cold and domineering man, in fact, the other side of him was that he was extremely sensitive, a man who from time to time boasted that he could judge the speed, direction and distance of bullets on the battlefield based on the sound of bullets rubbing against the air, and he had an almost morbid and unforgettable vigilance, which became the biggest obstacle to my determination to find out the whereabouts of the turtle from him. My grandfather would only occasionally tell the story of Relianghao when he was happy, but his certain depth and fickleness made him rarely happy, and even if he had a happy time, as long as I was present, he would talk to his mouth and then withdraw it, never mentioning the matter of Relianghao. I remember many times, trying to solve the answer, I tried my best to make a flattering compromise and grandpa almost, all of which were recognized by him, and he stared at me with sharp eyes and expressions, making me uncomfortable, at which point he would seize the opportunity to turn around and leave, and with his arrogant and rough back, he would throw me aside alone.
At one point, I was determined to find the answer on my own. I first looked for trees in the village, and I even wanted to find the tree that grew in the village when Relianghao was alive, to experience and imagine how the turtle descended on the top of the tree with the lightness of its feathers, and how it left the village in the depths of the narrow canyon with the lightness of the wind, but there was no tree in the village. I went out of the village and looked for it on the many hillsides outside the village, and there were not a single tree on those slopes, not even much grass. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, before the remote villages of northern China had time to plan family planning, every household had a large number of children, the rural population soared, and there was no modern fuel such as coal at that time. In a frenzied state of near-escape, people dug three feet into the ground to search for firewood and grass, the grass had to be dug up one by one, and the trees had to be rooted out, first digging out the wild trees and grass in the ditches and mountains, and then risking being imprisoned, they stolen the few trees left by the production team, and the result was that the land in many places was scraped off. It was a desolate and miserable time when there was no grass and no trees, when children went up the mountain to collect firewood and ended up with nothing but to go home empty-handed, so they were repeatedly beaten by their fathers. It was in these times, in our village, that I began the search for a tree at an inopportune and whimsical time.
After a long time of not being able to find the tree, slowly I became a ghostly and worried person. But once, when things finally took a turn for the better, I heard an old man in the village whose white beard was not much better than a goatee's beard say that there was the only tree in the village that grew on the top of the highest mountain in the village, and that mountain was called Dingtian Mountain, and that tree seemed to grow in the sky. Sure enough, on a relatively high but gentle mountain outside the village, I saw the mountain in the sky and the lone tree that had reached the sky. I spent about a year preparing and planning, and I was going to climb the Top Heavenly Mountain and look at the tree on the Top Heavenly Mountain. The reality is that to get to the top of that mountain, you have to go around multiple huge and steep cliffs in a row, and climbing is climbing the sky, even more difficult than ascending to the sky. But one day at noon, when the summer was approaching the wheat harvest, I sneaked out of the village alone and began to climb the top of the heavenly mountain alone, when my desire to see the tree was so strong that I was almost confused. At that time, I was just in my early 10s, and I was weak, so of course it was impossible to climb to the top of the Heavenly Mountain. In fact, I got lost shortly after I reached the top of the Tianshan Mountains that day, and when I tried to cross a wheat field in search of a shortcut, I was unfortunately lost in the depths of an overwhelming wheat wave. The wheat of that year grew fiercely, and seemed to rise much higher than my head, and I entered the wheat field as if I had fallen into the jungle, and immediately my breathing was short and dizzy. I struggled in the depths of the wheat like a drowning man in the abyss, constantly fluttering, sinking deeper and deeper in an indescribable loneliness, despair, and fear, and when night fell, my physical strength was exhausted, and my body gradually fell into numbness as if poisoned. Realizing that I was going to die in the wheat field, I sobbed silently alone for a long time, and then, due to extreme tiredness and sorrow, I slowly lost consciousness and entered a groggy dream. I dreamed that I came to the courtyard where Relianghao was studying in ancient times, and the tree that had fallen in the story was still there, but the turtle on the tree was gone, and I wanted to jump up, jump as high as the treetops, and then see what was going on. I jumped a few times, and when I jumped high again, it turned into a cloud and flew up to the top of the tree. As a cloud, I saw nothing on top of the tree and decided to leave the tree and fly to the top of the mountain, and then fly off into the distance. But having just flown into the air where I could see the summit, I felt my whole body inexplicably heavy and began to fall downwards, heavier and heavier, faster and faster than the next, and when I had completely fallen into the canyon, I became a rock and eventually lost consciousness.
I don't want to dwell on this matter any further. When I woke up, it was an afternoon three days later, and I felt small, floating like a crumpled ball of paper, curled up in a pile of futons, and my grandfather was like a legendary giant guarding the treasure, with his hands on his back, standing motionless in front of me. I heard my grandfather say in the confused high fever, Grandpa doesn't know where the turtle has gone, if you want to know, you should read well, and when you read more books than Hot Lianghao, you will naturally know! I learned later that my exodus that day had become a major event that alarmed the eight neighbors, because in order to find me, my grandfather in the weizhen township mobilized almost all the young and strong laborers of the surrounding villages, holding torches, firing guns and cannons, searching all over the four fields, and tossing and turning the mountains and depressions in our village for most of the night, and finally found me when the chickens were crying at dawn.
As my grandfather wished, I later became another reader in our village after Relianghao, or as my grandfather boasted to his neighbors, I actually became a more prominent reader than Relianghao. I will always remember the day I left the village in college, my grandfather sent me on the village road, I was in front, my grandfather was behind, the whole village of men, women and children also stood on the side of the road to participate in the farewell, my grandfather was high in the waist, his toes were high, he coughed loudly like a roar, and responded to various greetings with reason and pride. In stark contrast, my grandfather's attitude toward me suddenly became extremely humble and gentle, almost with a taste of flattery and flattery to me, and when he was leaving, he specifically instructed: You go to study well first, and I will have something important to settle you in later. Why my grandfather said such a thing, I was only slightly surprised at the time, but I didn't care too much. For many years, I always had a half-belief in my grandfather on many things, and of course I had to admit that he was a man who had experienced life and death and seen the world, but his rude arrogance and capriciousness towards people and things always made me full of hostility, and for many years, it was difficult for our grandfathers to become brothers. But this time I was wrong, and what happened afterwards made me look at my grandfather differently, and because my mistake was so small and shallow, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
My grandfather was suddenly seriously ill when I was about to graduate from college in my fourth year of college, and he felt that the mountains and rivers were dry, and he was about to die, but he closed his eyes a few times, and then he opened his eyes like a dream, and he could not swallow his breath for a long time. He told his family that he had sent a telegram to my college grandson to tell him to come back, and that I had something to settle him in. The road was long, and I struggled on the road for seven days before returning to the village, and my grandfather waited for seven days without taking a breath. By the time I got to Grandpa, he could only take a big gulp of death, and the first thing he said when he saw me was: If you want to come back a day later, I won't be able to wait for you.
My grandfather settled me down and said that when he was fighting in the northern desert, he had killed seventeen people, nine of whom had names and surnames, and eight of whom were nameless and nameless, and all of them died in the nameless wilderness, homeless, and came knocking on the door and knocking on the windows every night. My grandfather said, you are a reader, you cut seventeen notes, nine notes write the names of the nine people, eight notes drawn three circles on each of them to represent the eight people, go to the desert in the north and pile seventeen mounds, press seventeen notes on seventeen mounds, tell them that you are my grandson, you are coming to settle them on my behalf. My grandfather said, you just settle them down, I don't want to go there and continue to fight with these people, I want to live a peaceful and peaceful life from now on.
My grandfather then settled me down and said that when he was fighting on the southern plains, he was a machine gunner, and he didn't know how many people he had killed, but there should have been hundreds of thousands of people, and now these people were buried in the nameless mass graves of the southern great plains, and at night, the bodies of these people were piled up on him like mountains, so that he could not breathe a breath, and he would not let him go no matter how much he begged for forgiveness. My grandfather said, you are a reader, you cut ten thousand notes, each note drawn three circles to represent a deceased, and then go to the great plains in the south to pile a big mound, press ten thousand notes on the big mound, burn incense and pray, let the ten thousand corpses float into the air with ten thousand notes, and return him a relaxed and spacious from now on.
My grandfather's last words to me were that you had read so many books, much more than Relianghao had read, and now you must know where the turtle in the village who could not bend the treetops had gone. This last sentence, my grandfather called my little name to say, while saying it, he could not help but cry. After he had finished speaking, almost without even a word apart, he opened his mouth, stomped his legs, closed his eyes, grunted and swallowed the last breath of his life, and then almost in a few seconds his convulsions of farewell to life quickly returned to calm, as if he were asleep forever, and at this time he looked no different from a person who had lived a lifetime of peace.
The last words my grandfather said to me in his life made my sadness thunder five times, and also made my sadness calm and restrained, making me show a unique demeanor that was better than that of a hot and good reader. I probably cried low in a corner for a long time, and then I remained silent for longer, because of a great guilt that was worse than sadness. In fact, in the years to come, and even to this day, this guilt has continued to grow like a soil, or it can be said that it is continuing to ferment, and it is in the process of this growth and fermentation that I have gradually come to understand that in fact, in the story of My Grandfather's Hot Lianghao, the huge turtle exists and does not exist, you understand that it exists, you do not understand that it does not exist, any story, if you are very narrow to calculate, it must have an ending, but if you understand it very broadly, It must not mean some kind of ending. There is no doubt that since the divine turtle judged by the reader Re Lianghao is already so light and mysterious, there is no place in the world that it cannot reach, then all the wide places in the world and all the narrow places in the world cannot limit and affect it, so people, including the story itself, have no need to worry about anything for it.
Many years have passed, after my grandfather became a mound on the mountain, many people in our village have successively become mounds on the mountain, and now even our village no longer exists, but the story that my grandfather tirelessly told, the story of this man named Re Lianghao, the story of the reader in our village, has always fascinated me. I think that in fact this story is an inquiry into how man can live forever like a star of light, and gives a direct invisibility answer, that is, to try to constantly remove its own burdens and weights, to make the world lighter from the inside, and when it is light as if it no longer exists, it will naturally transcend the limitations of life and existence like a burden, and it will go on as long as it wants, to the farthest place, without breaking and dissipating at that time. The essence of the world is endless, wide and boundless as nothingness, light as nothing, light to control, so that it can be omnipotent.
Now, after I am sure and sure that our village no longer exists, my heart is desolate, but I am not sad, because I believe that this story is still circulating in other villages. Even if in the end the other villages are abandoned, no one lives, no one tells stories to people, and the villages themselves will continue to tell the story to the ruins.
And the wind will take this story to more incredible distances, even to stars and the vast and boundless universe filled with stars, so that it can take root and sprout farther and more inconsequential places.
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