Trail To The Destination Chapter 9

The first thing I would like to recommend to you is the road from Jingxian to Huangshan. There is a section of the old Provincial Highway 322, which is now half abandoned and half abandoned. It crosses the mountains and is extremely quiet. After walking this road, I felt that I was physically and mentally prepared to go to Huangshan. When I arrived at Tangkou to stay overnight, the weather forecast said that there would be heavy rain in the mountains tomorrow.

In the evening, I read the "Xin'an Literature Records" compiled by Cheng Minzheng, and read "Travels to Huangshan" by Wang Zemin (a civil servant in the Yuan Dynasty). This is the earliest article I have seen about traveling to Huangshan. He described looking at Huangshan from afar: "When you reach Tangling, you look up at the peaks, which are still in the sky. The hills and ridges are intertwined, and the paths are carved out of the rocks. The rocks are steep and dangerous. The sound of waterfalls is like thunder. The stone forest stands on half of the wall, and the flying springs splash on your sleeves. It is the beginning of summer, but it is as sad as autumn." But I didn't see or hear anything. Fortunately, there is the Internet. I checked it and found that Tangling is in the west and has nothing to do with Tangkou. I was relieved. Continuing to read, he described the road: "Often climbing the cliff, pulling vines, or small trees sticking to the rocks, like a plank to cross, almost no one can stand, and facing the cliff, I was afraid to look down." I have acrophobia, and I was really excited when I saw this. And it says of the Thirty-Six Peaks: "They are stretched out in a row, stretching across the sky, with numerous peaks and ridges, all of which are of wonder and beauty to behold." This is a cliché, so let's just get some sleep on it.

The next morning, I opened my ears and heard the sound of rain. The streets were already as wet as streams. The locals advised us not to go into the mountains in this weather because we couldn't see anything. We didn't listen and insisted on walking a few dozen steps before turning back. We went to Yi County for a day and returned to the original hotel at night. The weather forecast said that the weather would be good tomorrow.

The next day we went into the mountains. We took the cable car to Yungu Temple. There were already more than a dozen people in front and behind us. We followed them wherever they went. Soon we arrived at a place where fog was rising from the low ground and soon the valley was full. I thought, this must be the sea of   clouds. There was a round stone peak opposite me. There was a sign next to me saying it was a fairy.

People who like to satirize should be careful not to make fun of the object too low. Stupid things are everywhere, so it is better to leave them as exercises for primary school students. For an adult, if he uses his intelligence on such objects, it is not only a waste, but also easy to be complacent, thinking that he is a smart person, and then become the object of others' ridicule. As for Huangshan, it is inevitable that there are some simple names given to it based on its shape, such as Golden Turtle Exploring the Sea, Dreaming of the Pen Producing Flowers, etc. Primary school students may use them to write essays and criticize them a few times, but for middle school students and above, it is best not to pay attention to those names.

The art of satire is not limited to any subject. The best way to satirize something is to satirize something that others consider sacred and wonderful, such as the tea ceremony and Huangshan Mountain. Looking around, there are many such objects. The more people think something is sacred and inviolable, the more it deserves to be satirized. And there are endless defenders, so the fun of satire is endless. Whether it is the country, religion, family friendship, love, anything that is guarded like a forest, and everyone gets angry when it is mentioned, even if we love it ourselves, if we cannot deal with satire, it is a primitive state, and it is our responsibility to help it evolve. However, we must not satirize for the sake of satire. If we cannot find the object funny, we don’t have to force a laugh. For example, I don’t find anything funny about Huangshan Mountain or people’s admiration for Huangshan, so there is nothing to satirize.

On the contrary, Huangshan gave me some serious thoughts. Huangshan pine looks a bit strange, but how about in the eyes of botanists? Botanists are also aesthetic observers, but will their botanical knowledge affect their aesthetic perception of Huangshan pine? Similarly, does Huangshan's granite look as "strange" to geologists as it does to us? Unfortunately, there is no data to support the answer to any of these questions, so I have to put some of my speculations back in my stomach.

I remembered that I read a preface by Zhao Xi (a Neo-Confucianist in the Yuan Dynasty) in the Records of Xin'an Literature, saying that "the beauty of Huangshan is rarely heard of in the world". In my impression, Huangshan gradually became famous after the Xin'an School of Painting became influential in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and it flourished in the last century. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in art history, so this impression may be completely incorrect. I also think that the appreciation of Huangshan, a kind of interest that has been around since ancient times, suddenly became popular during the emergence of the literary schools of Jingling, Gong'an, Tongcheng, and Yanghu. We know that although Gong'an strongly criticized Jingling, their spiritual temperaments are somewhat similar. Unfortunately, I am not very knowledgeable about the changes in the literary style of the early Qing Dynasty, and I am short of words to say, so I had to stuff some of my speculations back into my stomach. At this time, I had passed the Shixin Peak and was about to reach "Beihai".

After passing the "North Sea" and going down into the deep valley, you will reach the "West Sea". The narrow and steep stone steps along the way were really dangerous, and my knees were getting more and more uncomfortable. On this road, I finally saw the strange rocks that everyone talks about. People who grow up in plains see rocks that look like they are lying down or sleeping, but the rocks here are standing up like a fighting animal. It is not surprising that painters use them to express their feelings.

If we really want to get to the bottom of it, there are so many different shapes and forms of stones, why do we consider some of them to be strange and others not? First of all, it is human nature to be surprised by what is not seen often. However, when a certain aesthetic taste is established, some factors have long been not uncommon, even after seeing them thousands of times, but we still consider them "strange". Why is that?

In the 18th century, William Paley, famous for his "watchmaker analogy," argued that if we saw a stone in the field, we would think it was nothing special, but if we saw a watch, we would think it didn't belong there and must have been made by a watchmaker.

The watchmaker analogy has become notorious in the struggle between theology and atheism and especially evolution, but we will borrow part of its reasoning, that is, there are some things that, at least in terms of common sense, can make us believe that it is not a natural thing, but an artificial thing. What I want to say is, are there some natural things that, because of their appearance, make it easier for us to project ourselves onto them and temporarily (or permanently for some people) give them a mixed attribute? There is a word called "ghostly craftsmanship" to describe natural things. What do we want to say through this word? Correspondingly, the works of masters of Jiangnan gardens, in that larger place, include the beauty of mountains, trees, rocks and springs. At this time, another word appears, called "qiaoduotiangong". What does it mean?

Let's put these questions aside for now, or I'll fall into the valley. I went down to the bottom of the valley with fear, got on the subway, and returned to the human world. I went up to Guangmingding and down to the Welcoming Pine. I walked in a proper manner. It was less than two o'clock and I was about to leave Huangshan. Looking back, there were many more tourists than in the morning. I summed up my thoughts and said to myself that Huangshan was still very beautiful.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about Huangshan, which is not actually natural. For example, when walking into an old-style garden, who can help but admire the author's meticulous work, and who can not be annoyed by the offense to nature? Who can not despise the performative self-pity, and who can not sympathize with the owner's spiritual dilemma? For me, the more it is related to the old-style lifestyle, the more confused I am; how can one's observation not lose its historical nature, and at the same time be completely here and now?

When traveling in southern Anhui, you can't miss going to the "ancient town". I didn't go there much this time, because every town has a gate, and every gate requires a ticket, which is really expensive. Let's say that I came to a certain town one day, walked around for half a day, and rested in a small pavilion on the opposite hillside. Looking from a high place, the town in the mist and rain is really lovely. I can't help but admire the attention paid to details by the predecessors, and I can't help but think of what I saw in the town just now. For example, an old house that is hundreds of years old, although it has been repaired one after another, the old rules are still there. I don't know whether I should pay tribute to it or look back and scold myself for being useless. On the one hand, I would think that there is nothing strange about this house. The owner of the house, no matter how exaggerated the inscription on the stele is, is just a corrupt scholar in the Qing Dynasty or a vulgar official in the Ming Dynasty. The couplets that have been preserved with great difficulty are stale in meaning and the calligraphy is not impressive, and so on; on the other hand, I admit that these are not only pleasing to the eye, but also have a kind of spirituality. Regardless of the height, the flow itself is something that makes people respect. On the one hand, I think spending over 100 yuan to see this kind of house is a failure in life. On the other hand, I think this town is very meaningful and can be pondered for several days. The ticket price is not expensive at all, it should be 200 or 300 yuan. By the way, there is a business in the town that rents small benches. You can sit for a while for very little money.

During these days in Huizhou, I was always in a daze. Fortunately, I like to be confused and like to let my thoughts stay in a liquid state. When I left, I took the Xin'an River, which is "clear and shallow, as bright as a mirror in winter and spring", and then took the Fuchun River, which is "unique in the world with its unique mountains and rivers". I took the road north of the river in both places. I think I may have taken the wrong path, but I still have the opportunity to come to the riverside and imagine for a while. Thousands of years ago, there was no such thing as what I see now, and there were more things that I didn't see. It was really beautiful, but I don't know.

It’s a pity that imagination is just an internal cycle and can’t provide anything new. Otherwise, I could stay at home and wouldn’t have to wander around.

My home is near the Hutuo River. If imagination can work, I can recite half of a poem written by Zhu Yizun when he visited Yanmen Pass, "The upper stream of the Hutuo River is swift and rapid, and it is pitiful to ride a horse on the slippery spring ice. The hundred-foot floating bridge is empty and broken, and the lonely city's sad horns stir up the desolate smoke." If I close my eyes, I will feel happy. Unfortunately, when I open my eyes, there is neither a floating bridge nor a lonely city. If it weren't for the city's fun and the construction of a dam to hold back a pool of water, there would have been no water. But I saw a young mother supervising her young son playing by the river or the reservoir. The little guy kept picking up bricks for paving and throwing them to the lower place. What was underneath was hidden by flowers and trees, so I couldn't see it from here, but I really hoped that he would hit something alive.

Water and soil

I casually read the travel notes of the great traveler Ibn Battuta (translated by Ma Jinpeng), and he wrote about the city of Lair, saying that "the dirtiness of the city is the worst in the world" and "the stench is due to the smell of fish everywhere and the blood and feces of slaughtered camels everywhere. After I arrived in the city, I would rather stay at the risky seaside than stay in the city." When I read this, my nose resonated greatly with Ibn's lungs, and my inappropriate imagination made a familiar smell linger in front of my face for a long time.

Last year, I was wandering around a small town in the south and accidentally walked into a large fish market. I didn't know the way and couldn't get out for a while. Afterwards, I threw away a pair of shoes because they were stained with blood from the street. When I entered the hotel elevator, people next to me frowned. If I had extra clothes, I should have thrown away that shirt too. It was not only soaked with fish flavor, but some fish jumped around in the water tank and splashed soup on me.

The locals were full of enthusiasm. They picked, sorted, cut, and shook, and the cats followed suit and shouted. The variety of aquatic animals in this market was amazing. I felt that all the fish in the world were here. In addition, there were shelled, tentacled, slimy, slippery, red or blue, with eyes or without eyes that I didn't recognize. On that hot afternoon, they burst out their last vitality. Before this, I had been wandering around Wuyi Mountain for a few days, and my nose was full of the smell of tea. I thought I would never get rid of it for the rest of my life. It was not until here that the tea fragrance was driven away.

I am certainly not as particular about cleanliness as Ibn Battuta, so I am not afraid to live in the city. But I still can't help but say that our vast rural areas, despite the beautiful scenery and friendly customs, have room for improvement in public health. There are many lovely mountain villages in the Taihang Mountains near my home. No matter where you visit, the windows and tables are clean, but the small streets in the village are all scattered with garbage, and most of the garbage is thrown into the river as usual. As for the condition of public toilets, it is really hard to describe. I just want to remind you that Duke Jing of Jin died by falling into a toilet.

When traveling, one should lower one's standards. Besides, I am not a very particular person at home. Despite this, there are still several experiences that make me feel that hygiene during travel is an appropriate topic. More than ten years ago, there was a heart-breaking night. It was in the plateau area. My companions and I were very cold and hungry, so we went to the nearest village we could find, the first family closest to the road. The owner was a bachelor. I couldn't see his appearance clearly in the dark, but I knew he must be the kindest person in the world. He was willing to open the door for us at two or three o'clock in the middle of the night, let us live in a room, and found something like a quilt to keep out the cold. I can no longer remember the layout of the house, nor can I remember its original purpose. My companions and I used flashlights to find a flat place to lie down. We were relieved because the danger was over. When my half-stiff body regained its function, I couldn't breathe. The fabric covering me was as heavy and hard as iron sheets. It felt greasy to the touch, and its smell... Oh, God, its smell! And this was only part of the source of the smell in my nose. My traveling companion was so exhausted that he seemed to have fallen asleep, but I did not sleep for even a second. Due to the cold, I could not take off my blanket, and I dared not move, for fear of sparking new thoughts.

This kind of experience is actually worth cherishing. You may suffer for a while, but you will savor it for the rest of your life. So, the sanitation issue can be viewed from two sides. On the one hand, people who travel should just go with the flow as long as they don't get sick. I don't think white gloves or magnifying glasses are necessary. On the other hand, sanitation issues need to be improved. For example, in urban and rural areas, it is necessary to point out what needs to be pointed out. If you think "it's normal for small places to be a little dirty", it is another kind of arrogance.

The cleanest person in my mind is Qu Yuan. "I bathed with you in the Xianchi, and dried your hair in the Yangzhi'a" and "I washed my hair in the Tanggu in the morning and dried my body in the Jiuyang in the evening" and so on. Although there are metaphors, they are not far from the truth. In ancient times, utensils were simple. The hygiene requirements in "Book of Rites: Inner Rules" were not necessarily well practiced even in the upper class. Qu Yuan was very clean, so it's no wonder that others didn't like him. Qu Yuan himself was clean, so he was qualified to say that he didn't want to "be clean and accept dirty things". We stay in the hotel on the road, with dirt on our shoes and sweat on our heads. We are far from "clean and white", so we don't care much.

Several times when I traveled with many people, it always took some trouble to find a place to stay because there were always a few clean people among the people traveling with me. When I arrived at the hotel, I hesitated when I stepped on the carpet and frowned when I looked at the ceiling. The rooms were ready, but I had to inspect them first, and then I went from Hotel James to Hotel Ethan, then Hotel Ethan to Hotel C, then Hotel C to Hotel James and Hotel Ethan again, weighing the pros and cons again and again. By then I could no longer walk, so I begged, "Let's stay here." The other party said, "It's not okay here, there are lipstick marks on the mirror."

The improvement of sanitation in the world is driven by these people, and people like me are just sitting back and enjoying the fruits of their labor. In my opinion, let alone lipstick marks, even a whole red mirror is no big deal. I am a little proud when I say this. I was treated to tea. The host was respectful and wiped the originally clean cup from inside to outside with a black rag. How many people can drink such water? I can drink it. Another time, a sturdy lama used his big hands to knead tsampa for us. After kneading, there was a noticeable white spot in the center of his palm. Afterwards, my companions and I said that it was the best tsampa we had ever eaten.

When it comes to cleanliness, it is always associated with water. Water is the soup of life, but it can also wash away dirt and microorganisms from our bodies. In the past, some people in Europe believed that water was a dangerous substance that could penetrate diseases into the body, but it was only a temporary and local opinion. In general, bathing has been the top priority of hygiene from ancient times to the present. Speaking of which, my city has been suffering from floods in recent days. First it rained heavily, then there was a flood, and then everyone had no water to use. The area where I live is lucky. I heard that many other places have to rely on water trucks and queue up to receive water. An engineer friend of mine is writing a paper on "How to take a good bath with two bottles of 350 ml of pure water". I don't know how it is going.

So, what should we do if we encounter a situation where there is no water for washing during the journey? No washing. If there is no water for washing for several days in a row, and we cannot squeeze out drinking water, what should we do? No washing. What should we do if it is really uncomfortable? I have a way, called mud bath, which is to roll naked in the mud for a few times, similar to applying starch before frying meat, which can keep you healthy for several days. It sounds scary, but it actually makes sense. The mud makes our body or clothes look ugly, but that is only in terms of appearance. In fact, the mud is rarely dirty. For example, in our country, if there is no water for several days, it must be in some places in the north. The soil in the water-scarce area cannot even grow grass. It is actually pure land.

I almost tried this method. After living in the village for three days, I followed a winding gully up and found a place where the loess was as fine as finely ground cornmeal and dried to perfection. Just as I unbuttoned one of my shirt buttons, an old man came and stopped in front of me, following a few sheep. He probably wanted to find someone to chat with, but I was very angry when I saw his sheep rolling on the ground.

"The sheep ran away." I said, pointing to the distance.

The old man put his hand on his forehead and looked at it, saying, "That's someone else's house." Then he asked, "Do you live in Old Hu's house?"

I denied it. I just shook my head no matter what he said, but he didn't feel bored and refused to leave. I realized that I must have occupied his bath. So I left. I left the village and came to the county town, staying in a hotel that provided hot water. The hotel's sheets were worn and the towels had holes in them. Although there was hot water, it had a strange smell. At this time, I seemed to see the old man laughing.

Soil can be clean, but water can be unclean. There is little water in the north, and when there is water, it is mostly clear, with bare soil and rocks, and rare fish and algae. Such water has little to offer, but you can safely step into it. There is plenty of water in the south, but in the eyes of a northerner like me, it looks green and beautiful, but I would never dare to swim in it. Just look at the water spiders running on the water surface, and you will know that the life in the water is so vigorous that it is not suitable for humans to interfere.

Once, a friend of mine went to play in the creek, and I watched from the shore. He couldn't swim, so he looked at me and said doubtfully, "If I drown, you have to save me." I said, "Of course." He said, "How?" I said, "Call me." My friend was very dissatisfied. He really slipped and fell into the water, and half of his body was wet. During those days, I was always worried that he would get some strange disease, such as something growing in his body and then coming out of his chest. In the end, nothing happened. It seems that my worries were unnecessary. So this year in Guangxi, I washed a pear in the river water and gave it to a local child. I believe that gradually I will get used to and even like the water in the south, and one day I will swim in the river.

Indeed, part of our hygiene concept comes from experience or science, but a large part is like superstition and has no practical basis. For example, washing hands before meals has been popular for thousands of years according to Chinese and foreign written records or physical evidence, but I don’t think it is always reasonable. Once, four people went on a trip together, two of them had the habit of washing hands before meals, and the other two did not. We spent a few days in a cold and water-scarce place, and there were few opportunities to wash hands before meals, so the two people who washed their hands had stomach problems, while the other two were fine. I want to say that the stomach and intestines need to be exercised, and it is better to abuse them a little bit every day than to spoil them. At least, if you are going to travel to similar areas, avoiding washing hands a month in advance will be of great benefit to travel safety.

There is another kind of people who should not wash their hands, that is, those who vow not to kill out of faith. James lay Buddhist I know was very sad and shed tears when he heard us, the secular people, talk about killing and harming lives. This is wrong, because there is lysozyme in tears, and when he was so sad, many small lives died. In my opinion, he should also kill all the white blood cells in his body. Of course, these are all unreasonable and not in line with the scriptures, but for the prosperity of life, we should still not wash our hands.

The layman shook his head at my fallacy, so I recommended to him a book called "Records of Conscripted Scholars" written by Qian Qianyi, which recorded a bookworm named Cheng Yuanchu in the late Ming Dynasty. Cheng Yuanchu was ambitious in studying classics and history, but unfortunately, his achievements were limited by his talent. Some of the books he compiled have been handed down to this day, but it seems that not many people read them. His death was very sad. He heard that the border affairs were urgent, so he rushed to Liaoyang to check the terrain of the city. When Nurhaci was about to attack Liaoyang, everyone advised him to flee, but he refused. When Liaoyang fell, he died there.

Qian Qianyi wrote about Cheng Yuanchu's study tour: "He had a family fortune of thousands of gold, and his wife and children enjoyed themselves, but he left them to travel around the country. He traveled without a blanket or a bed, and did not rent a house to sleep in. He did not wash his clothes all year round, and did not bathe for ten days. He would wrap rotten rice in his sleeves as food. In the summer, the stench would make people vomit, but Yuanchu could chew food freely."

Although I cannot reach it, my heart yearns for it.

Who is in the same industry?

Among all kinds of travel, exploration on a geographical scale is the most attractive and meaningful. But now, where else can we go? The last time humans walked out of Africa was tens of thousands of years ago; the Age of Geographical Discovery has also passed five or six hundred years. The penguins in Antarctica are sweating in the zoo in the north. People climbing Mount Everest line up on the ridge, and if it weren't for the high cost, the line would have stretched far down the mountain. James few days ago, I watched a documentary about brave people diving into a cave. The cave was so deep that the eyes of the fish inside had long since degenerated and disappeared. But I said to myself, is that it? Our exploration on this planet is coming to an end, and the remaining enthusiasm can only be turned to these fragmented things? Of course not, so I changed to a movie, the immortal "2001". This movie was shot entirely on the ground, but the space shots were made very realistic, at least to me, so I have watched it seven or eight times.

Virgil used a wonderful word when he talked about the sky: the vast expanse above us is "hereditary." Indeed, humans have been wrapped in the sky since the first day of their birth, and every child will ask this question as they grow up, and they will immediately get a very satisfactory answer.

Poets and philosophers established norms for gazing at the sky, and distinguished the poetic gaze from the ordinary people's gaze up to the sky, so that Oscar Wilde could confidently declare that only a few people "look at the stars"; even today, four hundred years after the invention of the telescope, there are still people - I suspect there will be such people four thousand years from now, and they will even outlive normal humans - who feel their souls are cleansed and redeemed when they look up, simply because their hearts are filled with poetry or philosophy, while astronauts have already flown above.

Michael Collins is an astronaut (the only one on Apollo 11 who did not set foot on the lunar surface). He said something that made me regret and ashamed: "If a future voyage includes a poet, a priest, or a philosopher, we may be able to understand best what we see."

I have serious doubts about this.

I lowered my head for a moment, and returned from the grand human affairs to my own trivial matters. My occasional and short trips were nothing more than going out to relax because I was bored at home, and the result of each time was that I returned home exhausted, not satisfied. Daily life is lovely, but I think that for everyone, the more lovely things are, the more likely they are to show their suspicious side. In daily life, there is almost nothing that cannot be explained. Everything, including the newest ones, carries its own instructions. If explanation is meaning, then our daily life is not lacking in meaning, but overflowing with meaning. Every day when I open my eyes, everything in front of me, whether it is on the desktop or on the TV screen, whether it is real or digital, does not appear in an isolated manner, or it already has a status, or there are several theories competing to include it. We live in the greatest tradition of mankind and have absolute knowledge of the known world. We are proud of this, but somehow, sometimes we are troubled by it. Mystics or people with other beliefs can live very well, but a poor wretch like me who has no mystical sentiment at all has no room to place my doubts.

So I went out. There are unfamiliar things on the journey, which can temporarily pretend to be new things or new order, or even new disorder, which makes people excited. For example, I met a man with a big beard that is out of tune with the local customs. Although there is nothing new in it, I can still mobilize the sense of novelty and thus generate interest. If this big beard suddenly speaks strange nonsense, coupled with the environment, I will feel the need to listen to his words. The best thing is that if he suddenly loses his mind and jumps off the cliff and falls to pieces, I will definitely exclaim loudly and be amazed at him. In fact, what I see is just familiar things, and there is not even a new combination. But for travelers who have expectations, a little change is enough to deceive themselves. Such a trip would have been wonderful enough, but unfortunately, there is always a time when you see your own situation again. That morning, you left the village where you had been lingering for two days and walked to the ridge. While there was still time, you cast your loving eyes on those lovely houses for the last time, relived the warm memories, and savored the few smiles you received there. Just then, like a cold wind running up your spine, you realize that you haven't actually been going anywhere.

I have read several autobiography of great men who have lived in prison, and when they talk about life in prison, they often mention how they paced anxiously. One person, I can no longer remember which one, said that he had walked the floor of the cell countless times, and from any position, he could walk with his eyes closed, stop, and his nose would be just a hair's breadth away from the wall, neither more nor less. I forgot if it was the same person, but he also said that one day he found a crack at the bottom edge of the window, which was obviously old, but he had not seen it before, which was unimaginable, because every detail in the cell, including every stain on the ceiling, every broken grass stalk on the wall, and every form of water stains, was studied by him. So, he spent the next few days excitedly and fulfillingly, studying the origin of the crack, wondering if it was some kind of miracle, or corresponded to a flaw in his own thinking, or hinted at the weakness of the cage, and so on.

Reading is sometimes harmful. More than once, I remembered these stories on the way, which was really depressing (I haven't even mentioned how they told them in the courtyard to relax). Reading is certainly beneficial. We can sit at home and let our minds follow Faxian and Wang Dayuan, Dias and Magellan, Vitus Bering and Roald Amundsen, and exclaim with them. Of course, this is just imagination. When they were frostbitten, our feet didn't hurt at all.

Imagination is indeed our wings, as the poet said. In the face of a mountain range that stretches for thousands of miles, what other way is there to pay tribute to our ancestors except imagination? In such a mountain range, there are only a few ancient passages, either winding up or following deep ravines, miraculously drilling out. How did the ancients discover them? We usually say "hard to imagine" about this. In fact, we can imagine that for hundreds and thousands of years, our ancestors kept moving forward, drilling into every valley, crossing every ridge, and groping for these roads and opening up the world on the other side of the mountains. If we can turn thousands of years into a moment and look back on the exploration process of our ancestors in our imagination, it really seems like blind crawling, driven by motives that they themselves are not fully aware of.

However, imagination itself cannot take us further. Many people believe that the power and boundaries of imagination are unlimited. For example, Emily D!ckinson said that the mind is wider than the sky. Few modern people think so, right? Modern people know that eyes and feet are pioneers, and imagination is just a wonderful way to deal with experience. How can fish in caves imagine light? Speaking of caves, Cicero once had a beautiful metaphor. Suppose a certain race has been living under the surface of the earth, with food, shelter, and works of art, living as well as us, or even richer and happier than us. Suddenly one day, the earth cracked, and these creatures rose to our world, and saw things they had never imagined before, the ground, the ocean, big clouds and swift winds, the sun creating day and night, the moon waxing and waning, and the sky, where the stars run along eternal orbits...

Imagination cannot crack the earth. What really cracks the earth is the explorers of generations, whether it is to the depths of the world or to the distances, the frontiers of human activities, and also the frontiers of imagination and thinking, just as the degree of human progress, thank God, is defined by the pioneers of this species rather than the latecomers. In modern times, to say something offensive, the pioneers are scientists, not others.

James few days ago, I heard a friend talking about the decline of the United States. I contributed a little opinion, saying that any country will decline. If the US space program is no longer supported by the public, then it will decline. What I mean is that space exploration has a significance beyond stock price increases and mobile phone upgrades. I forgot where I saw a sentence saying that the space program has been going on since the dawn of mankind. This is really insightful. However, when it comes to these, I am very reluctant to use words such as "mission", "destiny" and "eternal impulse", which appear frequently when discussing the exploration process of mankind. I think they have a suspicious origin, full of motivation but unclear direction. For example, Anaxagoras, who was a contemporary of Confucius, said that studying the celestial bodies is the greatest goal of man. What did he mean? I forgot to quote Cicero's conclusion in the above-mentioned fable. He said that the species that rose from the cracks saw the magnificent things on the earth and in the sky, "they must have realized that gods exist."

In Cicero's time, it was natural to think so. From today's perspective, space is the most promising direction to make the chain of meaning not circular, and not to appeal to mystery as the last link. It is a place where humans can place their hopes on themselves. In short, is there any place more desolate than space? Gagarin came back from space and said: "I looked and looked, looked and looked, but I didn't see God." Even considering the ideological background of the Soviet Union at that time, his words were true. In this way, the monks don't have to be in the three-person space mission suggested by Michael Collins, otherwise once they return to secular life, they will disappoint their colleagues on the ground. As for philosophers, which space traveler is not a philosopher? If he is not a philosopher before he goes into space, he will be one when he returns to the ground. One astronaut recalled that when he saw the celestial bodies in space, he knew that they were not romantic or abstract things, but things related to his life and death, as real as things at home, and part of his existence. This is good philosophy.

Before the start of the space industry, a man took a hot air balloon to an altitude of 30,000 meters and later described the sky there as "hostile." This is a real feeling. James world without new threats is not a new world. The novelist and poet Vladimir Nabokov rented a TV to watch the Apollo moon landing program and said that stepping on the soil of the moon was the strongest "romantic thrill" in the history of human exploration. Touching the rocks, chewing the feelings of fear and glory, and deeply experiencing the unprecedented romantic feeling brought by separation from the earth, "My comments are these. As for the actual discoveries, I am not interested."

I am a little curious, if Michael Collins read Nabokov's statement, would he still recommend poets to go to space?

Not all writers are the same. There is an old saying that says you can look up to the sky, but your feet must be on the ground. It is probably meant to encourage people to keep their feet on the ground. The best rebuttal to this comes from novelist Paul Auster. He said that unless your hands can reach the sky, your feet are not on the ground.

Such a novelist may be qualified to take off into the sky?

The Rough Past

The last time I took a train was less than two years ago. In the past, I always drove to the capital. But last time, I had something important to do, so I didn't dare to drive, so I took the train. To enter the train station, you have to pass through the iron railings. This kind of railing has existed since ancient times and also exists in foreign countries. It was used to drive cattle. It is also used for people. It is ingenious. In the past, people (including me) didn't know how to line up. In addition to cutting in line, they also lined up in an irregular manner, with fat and thin people, and staggering. Now, there is no more sneezes and kicks. I walked into the station step by step, passed the security check, and got on the train.

The so-called big thing is to drink a lot. The last meal was after three o'clock in the middle of the night. I arrived at the station after four o'clock. The train I wanted to take was checking tickets. I was too lazy to queue up, so I sat on a chair for a while. When I looked up again, it was already eight o'clock in the morning. I was lucky that I would wake up in Henan instead of Hubei. I quickly bought another ticket and got on the train.