Good book and recommended
"More than Just Travel"
By Liu Jun
Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore
Read travel on days when you can't travel
The sudden outbreak of the epidemic has brought the world to a standstill overnight, the Olympic Games have been postponed, performances have been cancelled, planes have been suspended, and travel has become a distant dream. Those places where the heart desires, those dreamed Eden have become "hanging gardens", and those prepared raiders have become "paper soldiers" that are far away. Fortunately, in this hungry and thirsty day of not being able to travel, I encountered the book "More Than Travel", followed it into the sky into the sea, and enjoyed the great rivers and mountains of the motherland; followed it for thousands of miles to appreciate a different exotic style. As the author of this book himself puts it: what she cares most about is not the food, but the scenery and culture along the way, and the spiritual core behind the culture.
As a graduate of the Chinese department of a prestigious university, her tentacles are sensitive and sharp. A small study in the Suzhou Coupling Garden touched her sensitive heart. As a talented woman, she was uneven for the mistress of the garden, Shen Bingcheng's wife: "The third lady has such a room but has not left more words, the reputation of Jiangnan talented women can only be witnessed by the study, and the talents of a generation of talented women have been buried by history." What is even more lamentable is that we do not even know her real name, not even where her ancestral home is. We only know that she is the wife of the Inspector of Anhui, and we only know that she is the third wife of Shen Bingcheng, known as the Third Lady. Marrying a chicken with a chicken marrying a dog with a dog, everything is in vain in the face of powerful feudal etiquette; even if you are talented, your status is still an appendage of a man, even if your identity is still someone else's wife! "Maybe it is empathy, maybe it is the same disease, the author's delicate pen reveals an unwillingness, an indomitable and helplessness to male power."
Literature, of course, is a subject that the author does not miss. Naturally, Heidelberg, the ancient German city that inspired many poets, also made the author endlessly reminiscent and full of flowers. From Goethe to Eichingdorf to Hölderlin, the author strolls down the philosopher's path, recites the poet's poems, and expresses his heartfelt admiration for "the romance and beauty of Heidelberg on the one hand, the rationality and wisdom of the Germans on the other; the epitome of poetic Germany on the other, and the negatives of the philosophical nation on the other; the sensual arbitrariness of romanticism on the other, the fine rigor of philosophical research on the other; the completely inspired, illogical imagination on the other, and the metaphysical full of abstract concepts and intellectual discernment on the other." Philosophy thus became an insurmountable topic, from Kant to Hegel, from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, from Heidegger to Gadamer, and the author relished the history of Philosophy in Germany.
Art, no doubt, is the beloved of the author's heart. From the Piano Museum in Xiamen to the Former Residence of Mozart in Salzburg, from the Naxi Ancient Music in Lijiang Ancient Town in Yunnan to the La Scala Opera House in Milan, music is a strong stroke of the author's book, no wonder the author wrote: "From London to New York, from New York to Boston, from Boston to Sydney, I have chased drama, opera, musical, drama symphony, and experienced the classic, modern, avant-garde, magnificent and solemn, and my life is happy, therefore wonderful, and therefore tends to be complete! In addition to music and painting, starting from a painting of Sleeping Venus at the Tate Gallery in London, the author carefully counts many famous paintings of Venus in the history of Western painting, and then concludes that "unlike the bright, bright and vivid human themes shown in the previous paintings with Venus as the theme, the harmonious picture of the long hair fluttering, the flying dress and the sparkling ripples in "The Birth of Venus" is difficult to find, and the fresh and flowing abundance and flower-filled woods in "Spring" The light and beautiful artistic conception created by the spring-filled fields has disappeared without a trace, and the pastoral poetry of Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus" with its warm sunset, the breeze blowing leaves, and the layered villages no longer exists, and the whole painting presents the silence of dead ash and the gloomy horror, which disturbs people's hearts and panics. Venus, the goddess of beauty that has represented beauty since the ancient Greek poet Horace, is not dead, but the beauty she represents seems to be gradually leaving us" The conclusion made me read the author's delicate and delicate writing and thick cultural heritage.
In addition to culture and art, the author also touches on politics. Standing under the Berlin Wall, facing pictures of Brezhnev and Honecker kissing, the author is keenly aware that "the history of the East Germans has entered the old paper pile, the culture of East Germany is gone, the pluralistic culture is disintegrated, and it is swallowed up by the powerful Western culture." Politics representing East Germany also waned, and people could only meet the dead East Germany in museums. The Unter den Linden and Potsdamer Platz, which once belonged to East Germany, have no trace of the past, but are all shadows of Western culture, and only a few pieces of the Berlin Wall tell us the history of the past, telling us that the East German regime once existed in the name of the state, and now it has disappeared from the world map and has become a proper noun in the history books." The author further issued: "The word 'unification' itself is a neutral and neutral word in the context of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and should not be a 'Qin-Tun-Six Kingdoms' style of unification, 'merger' rather than 'annexation'." Both politically and culturally, it should be a fusion of each other, a 'good brother' of 'you have me, I have you'. Just like kissing, it is you and me, it is to give each other their emotions, and then to the sublimation of water and milk. However, the fact is that the aggression and crushing of weak civilizations by powerful civilizations is the total victory of Western civilization represented by the United States, which is rape, not the kiss of love." It has to be said that as a woman, the author's political vision is sharp, unique, and atmospheric. A sharp and breathless!
As a well-educated woman today, the author's focus on education is also admirable. Everywhere she went, she would visit a famous local school. From the university of Cape Town, the best university in Africa, to the well-known Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, Waseda, as well as the University of Melbourne and the Humboldt University in Germany, the author visited the world's famous universities, and then proposed: "Our universities should also be like Germany, open-minded and welcome all people who are willing to learn, whether they are flesh and blood, ambitious young people or ambitious, young people with young ambitions and dying years, as long as they have the will and the courage to enjoy the fragrance of books in the university. Listening to the thoughts of wise people, because learning is a lifelong undertaking, there should be no walls and barriers in space, and there should be no age restrictions and constraints in time, which is the inspiration of the world's famous universities to me! ”
Religion is also the subject of the author's book, from Buddhism and Taoism in the author's hometown City God Temple, to the White Temple in Thailand, from the Cathedral of Milan in Italy to the Cathedral of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom, religion has become a topic that the author has always paid attention to and cannot get around. She was concerned about the religious beliefs of Chinese, concerned about the spiritual territory of Chinese, and issued a deep reflection that "if Nietzsche's whisper 'God is dead' at the beginning of the last century is to declare the complete collapse of Western spiritual values and religious beliefs, then both the distorted stupas and the noisy Taoist temples seem to indicate that Chinese has never established its own true religious belief, and the faith of the Chinese has been hesitating, wandering, floating, and lost..." At the same time, it has its own sharp view of the theocratic struggle of Western religions: the elements of pure religion cannot be achieved through purely religious means, and even within the Catholic Church, it is the holders of those powers who can give the will of "God" to the structure of the church, and the so-called "theocracy" has been repeated over the past five hundred years...
In the book, the author also deals with movies, sports, and other feelings triggered by travel. But what moved me the most was that I had traveled to so many places, and the author was still most proud and praised by the history, humanities and natural landscapes of our own people. In "First Acquaintance with Yixing", she praised the spirit of the craftsmen of the big country, in the article "Suixi Sanzhou Mountain" she was grateful for the simple folk customs and folk feelings, in "Hanging at the Foot of Yu Mountain", she praised the heroes and benevolent people in history, and in the article "The "Big" of the Yellow Fruit Tree", she shouted even louder: "I think the Huangguoshu Waterfall should have enough national self-confidence, there is no need to climb those false titles, there is no need to squeeze the scalp to dip the 'big' light, to rub the so-called ranking hot spots." The yellow fruit tree itself is a light, a light that shines in the Chinese world, standing on the land of China, attracting endless tourists at home and abroad", full of national self-confidence and pride overflowing the pen.
In the days when I can't travel, the book "More Than Travel" is by no means a pastime book to pass the time, it is a window that allows me to breathe in the fresh air outside; it is a decoction medicine that irons my nerves that have become fragile and sensitive due to the epidemic; it is a thought that makes me look forward to the warmth of the sun on a dark and boring day, and look at my heart from different angles. Reading travel on days when I couldn't travel, I felt my horizons opened up and my experience improved. "More Than Just Travel" really isn't just a travel story!
Source: Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore
Editor: Duan Pengcheng