Essay on ancient Chinese prose of city wall

I have been fascinated by the city wall since I was a child.

Climbing the wall is children's nature, especially children in rural areas, but they can only climb narrow adobe walls. They can only imagine the tall and wide wall where carts can walk, and even dare not look up.

In fact, the straight line distance between the village and the city wall is 60 miles. If it is straight, it may be closer. But in that era when riding a donkey was also enjoyed by the bride, 60 miles was indeed a long distance.

I have several cousins who were born and raised in this city. In my mother's words, they grew up eating white flour and drinking milk, and they were all foreign. In my generation, the respect for the citizens is almost as high as the respect for the city wall, as long as it is, and it is beyond our power. Sometimes overlooking the sea is almost a luxury. As far as I can remember, almost every summer vacation, they always like to take turns to go to their aunt's house in the country for the summer. In addition to the joy of picking birds and melons, I didn't say three words, but I turned my face and boasted about my own wall, chinese odyssey. Overlooking the battlements, the city has a panoramic view, and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Drum Tower is close at hand. Dig holes at the root of the city wall at will, and occasionally dig out ancient pottery to make money. Fortunately, there are silver ingots. All this is naturally not available in the countryside, and it is not comparable to the adobe walls in the hinterland, especially for rural children like me who have never seen the world. The wall in the dream is so magnificent, with white clouds around it. The earth wall in the country, west of Zifeng and seven miles north, has been deformed. Even the Great Wall of Bao Xu, which is dozens of miles to the east, is not on the same level. Although the story of the fortress wall is only heard, the high and low narrow pressure is not seen with my own eyes.

At that time, the biggest dream was to go to the upper city, climb the wall wider than the country road and grander than the Li family's brick old house, and look at the towering bell and drum tower, which was the supreme blessing. Even if you stand on the wall for a while, you can feel what is majestic and what is small, and you can see the world. But this opportunity is always so hard to meet, like the wind blowing across. My mother said that the city is too big, and the streets are winding, which can't compare with the countryside. I am afraid I will lose it. In fact, I know that my uncle is too busy and tired and has a heavy burden. My aunt is a patient. My mother doesn't want to give him any more trouble because of her children, although as far as I remember, she has never been to that city. I leafed through the borrowed picture book and looked at Liao Liao's sketched Song wall. I only see the uneven top of the wall, but I can't feel the height of the wall.

One day, climbing the city wall and broadening my horizons became my childhood dream.

More than ten years have passed, and the dream is still a dream, wrapped tightly by the years, and I almost forgot. The opportunity I didn't want came. When you go out to study, you have to go through the ancient city and go to Dongtangpo outside the east gate. My heart is pounding, and I suddenly recall the dreams of many teenagers, as if I had stood high on the watchtower, and the sky was high and the clouds were light, which made me feel relaxed and happy. It's really beautiful to look at the distance. The car drove slowly towards the city. For the first time, I saw the legendary wooden bridge built by the Chinese and Japanese people. It was built on the Imperial River with a dry riverbed and crossed the east and west. Some gray sleepers have been blackened, supporting the mud-paved bridge deck. Compared with the cement bridge I have built for several years, it is like a rustic country girl, but its body is quite strong. From time to time, carriages and tractors slowly passed by the bridge, and there was no feeling of trembling and shaking, which was very smooth. After many artillery attacks and a fire in recent years, it is still intact. The city wall seems to be on the west side of the Yu He River, but it was not until we entered the east gate, under the white-haired old pagoda tree, that we saw the shadow of the city wall. On the way to the railway station, I passed through most cities, and I saw several rickety residual walls, some of which have become the back walls of residents' homes. There are several holes in the waist of the wall, and the front is separated by doors and windows. I don't know if it is inhabited or full of debris. Most of the city walls, that is, the center of the earth, have long since disappeared. It is not too early to say that the PLA was basically intact when it entered the city peacefully.

In the meantime, although I hurried by several times, I never had the honor to witness the complete city wall. The large piece of blue brick foreskin, from the root to the top, showed the style of the city wall, not the rural school. It may be the wrong place or the wrong angle of view. At that time, I didn't doubt that a few honest people could blow cows out of thin air.

A few years later, due to work reasons, I entered this ancient city and lived in Laodapi Hutong. It's just a stone's throw from the Four Pailou of the Drum Tower and the famous Upper and Lower Huayan Temple, and it's not far from the desired city wall. No matter which direction I go, I can't get a cigarette. I lived here in the dark, with plenty of time, and I changed the streets in almost a few days. The so-called four streets, eight lanes and seventy-two lanes are almost legends. The initial vision gradually disappeared, and there were some inexplicable disappointments. Don't say the city wall, the so-called ancient city, has long been a misnomer in the eyes of our country. Apart from Gu Lou and Huayan Temple, it's not even fragmented. Like Dapi Lane, where I live, the old shops in the front row near the road are gone. They were all newly built later, and the local houses in the back are still there. After several repairs, it has been unrecognizable, not to mention antique, even the ancient outline is gone, semi-new and not old, similar to the south yard of our village, but worse in scale and momentum.

Finally, the only remaining ancient city walls were found, which were tightly surrounded by residential courtyards or became part of a unit. The bare city wall is scarred, let alone broken. The blue bricks wrapped in the city wall have disappeared without a trace. The watchtower and other towers have become legends, leaving only high and low mounds, just like those left by our neighboring village, only longer than that. In an instant, I didn't even want to climb. Once, I was dragged by a friend and got out of the waist hole where the sundries were piled up. The wall is uneven, and there are several half-dead Artemisia annua, which is far from being as wide as legend or imagination. Walking side by side is almost the same as an old ox cart. The earth wall was covered with deep holes and shallow holes, large and small. I don't know whether it was dug later or the bullet holes left by the past war. The old people who listened to the warm roots of the city wall said that when they were young, the city wall was still intact, although it was not as high as recorded in the literature. It is said that after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Dourgen could not capture the ancient city for a long time, and after the city fell, he ordered the city wall to be cut off by three feet. It's not that high after it's repaired. On the eve of liberation, the city walls left in the early Qing Dynasty were basically intact after more than 300 years of wind and rain. Later, when the city was rebuilt, no one managed it. Residents tore down bricks, stones and wood at will, and even dug up the foundation to borrow soil. The exposed walls were weathered by the wind and rain. It has become this mutilated appearance, cut into dozens by roads extending in all directions, surrounded by residential houses, and almost disappeared in residential areas.

Standing under the residual soil wall, I think, times have changed, and the era of cold weapons has faded out of people's sight and memory, and gradually drifted away. The city wall is really useless except for viewing, and it seems natural to fall down. Moreover, people at that time were used to the space of the city wall, which was no more practical than the courtyard wall at home, and few people would yearn for the city from their fascination with the city wall like me. And my infatuation is also very vague, lacking that kind of closely related emotion. The mill and stone mill in rural areas are very sacred, and they have been intact for decades or even hundreds of years. But I saw it quickly disintegrate, disappear and fade out of people's sight after the appearance of electric mill. In the end, it only stayed in the memory of our generation, and it is normal to miss it. Metabolism is one of the most basic laws in nature, and emotional nostalgia is understandable. I read an article about the memory of my eldest brother's childhood wall. True feelings and friendship are as deep as my memory of the village. I have never seen the real city wall, let alone lived under it. The only regret is that I have never seen the whole picture of the city wall. Then it faded. The history related to the city wall, after all, is far away and has long since faded out of our sight.

I traveled to Pingyao ancient city and boarded the real ancient city wall. At that time, I thought that the ancient city wall in our cloud must be more spectacular than it. Pingyao is just a county town, and the county government is just a small corner in the ancient cloud. Now it is also called the county corner, and its scale and momentum can't be compared with the border town. But after all, people have been preserved and basically intact, and our ancient city has been unrecognizable and has long existed in name only. Thinking about this, my mood is inevitably a bit bleak, and I am invisibly dwarfed. Although I felt a lot when I was traveling, I just left and did something else, and I forgot all about it. I only remember the unique flavor of cold beef slices and Pingyao girl's dialect, which is a joke for the boss of Rishengge to ride in a big carriage. It seems that it has nothing to do with yourself.

Later, in order to write a small book about Datong attractions, I thought of the ancient city wall. Speaking of the ancient city wall, it is natural, but I still think that if the ancient city wall is well preserved, it will naturally be regarded as a big landscape, called the ancient city, and that is the real reputation. Can you still openly claim to be an ancient city, and have no conscience in your heart?

Anyway, I dare not say the ancient city. To tell the truth, the city is blushing.

Without the reconstruction of the ancient city wall and the ancient city in recent years and the restoration of the Ming style, the Qing dynasty gradually became a Manchu style, and naturally there would be no so-called ancient city wall. After years of silence, an iron-fisted man came to the city with a grand plan to build the city. If it is just a dream, that is enough. It happened that the doer, with a ruler in his hand, razed four streets almost overnight and got the nickname "demolition", which has both positive and negative meanings. Almost every day, I get up early and come home late, wearing those worn-out leather shoes and stepping on the mud, staying at the city site with migrant workers, and even twisting the proportion of sand and ash by hand to command and supervise the implementation of the city-building plan. In five years, the southeast city wall was completed, the north side was basically erected, the west side was under construction, and it was almost surrounded. Also dug the east moat, and built green belts on the east and south walls. Almost all the old buildings in the city wall circle have been demolished. It is said that the grandeur of Daming will be restored, such as fools replacing palaces, temples and ancient houses. This is indeed a grand reconstruction plan, which requires courage and courage, and needs strong economic backing to support it. Looking back at the prospect, I really don't know whether to praise or satirize.

How many times you stand under the newly built ancient city wall and look for the ancient meaning, even a little, can prove the significance of reconstruction. I saw a brand-new and tall antique city wall, like a huge mold, on the demolished ruins. Perhaps, in another ten years, twenty years, or even hundreds of years, the city wall will be old and dusty and become an ancient city wall. But the answer is still no, for example, the skulls of our modern people will not be Hemudu people in seven thousand years. In the past, the city wall itself had a meaning of existence when it was built. It went through the war of regime change. Although it is not important to stop the invaders from entering the city, the bullet holes, blood stains and battle stories on the wall are enough to increase the thickness and historical significance of the wall. And what's the significance of the new city wall, whether in reality or in history, even after another hundred years? The value of antiques is not only the age.

Facing the brand-new city wall, my thinking and imagination almost stagnated. I can't think of the smoke filled with history, and I can't go back to that specific bonfire era that I'm not familiar with. Even in old age, although there is smoke, the wall in the modern sense is not even an obstacle. Theoretically, the actor is blameless and morally correct, but in fact, that is another matter. You made a mistake at the beginning, or your thinking was wrong. The more you do, the more mistakes you make, and the bigger the mistakes you make.

I suddenly thought of the story of Gong Yu moving mountains. The spirit of moving mountains is commendable, but what is the significance of moving mountains? Just like the story we have been praising since childhood, isn't it a waste to grind the needle with a pestle? Not only raw materials are wasted, but also huge time and will. Moreover, while recreating nature, it also destroys the balance of nature and wastes people and money. It is really not clear to judge right or wrong in one or two sentences, or it is impulsive. With such great ambition and commendable fighting spirit, it is important to have so much money to do many things that really benefit the people. Aside from the background of the city, it can be said that it is unfair to Yugong, no, it is unfair to the builders of the city.

There are no ancient city walls to be found. Nature is not a real city wall. No matter how many years later, there will be no feeling of climbing the ancient city wall, because it lacks the historical Cang Sang and heavy feeling, and there is no settled story.

History cannot be copied, nor can the background in history be copied.

For a long time, standing under the newly-built city wall, the wind blew and my heart was desolate.