Where is the "bitterness" in "Cultural Journey"?

The most painful article in Yu Qiuyu's "Cultural Journey" should be the "Taoist Tower". The first time I read this article I thought it was ridiculous, the second time I read it I felt ridiculous, but no matter what, I couldn't laugh. When I read it the third time, I felt a kind of bitterness, which is a kind of Coptis chinensis soaked in bile. bitter. At this time, I understood why Yu Qiuyu named this book "Cultural Journey" because he felt the pain of civilization being trampled on with the cultural conscience of a literati.

"Taoist Tower" suffers from the fact that the most splendid culture in ancient China was destroyed in the hands of an ignorant and fearless Taoist priest. When he was the head of the Mogao Grottoes, he was wandering around the cave. He was a little dissatisfied with the murals in the cave, so he found two helpers and brought a bucket of lime and a straw brush with a long handle. , dipped it in the bucket of lime, and began his whitewashing. The first coat of plaster was too thin, and the various colors were still faintly visible. The farmer was serious about his work, so he applied the second coat carefully. The air here is dry, and the lime has dried in a while. There was nothing left, the smiles of the Tang Dynasty, the clothes of the Song Dynasty, and the cave became pure white. Later, he suddenly thought, why not get some heavenly masters and spiritual officials and bodhisattvas here? He asked his helpers to borrow some hammers to bend the original sculptures

a bit. It was a good job, but within a few strokes, her graceful figure was reduced to pieces, and her soft smile turned into mud. I heard that there were some masons in the neighboring village, so I invited them over, mixed some clay, and started to mold his heavenly master and spiritual official. The mason said that he had never done this kind of work before, and the Taoist priest comforted him and said, it doesn't matter, as long as you have the intention. So, like a naughty boy building a snowman, here is the nose, here are the hands and feet, and he can finally sit firmly. Okay, let's get some lime and whiten them. Draw some eyes and a beard, look presentable. The Taoist priest breathed out a sigh of relief, thanked several masons, and then made next plans. After reading this, we are filled with anger. Can we pour the flood of anger on this ignorant and pitiful Taoist priest? The greatest outpouring can only be to play the piano to a cow. His ignorance, stupidity, and insignificance doomed him to be unable to bear this heavy cultural debt.

It wouldn’t be very painful if the matter ended here, because this ignorant Taoist priest only destroyed a very few statues, and our Mogao Grottoes still contain a large number of documents, scriptures and precious of tapestry and painting, but the scary thing is that this is not the end, just the beginning. When the Taoist priest opened a door that caused a sensation in the world, when he showed the cultural relics in the cave to the county magistrate, when the epigraphy expert suggested that these precious cultural relics be sent to the provincial capital for safekeeping, he failed because he could not afford the freight. Let these cultural relics be sent around the officialdom. When we had no freight, foreign scholars, archaeologists, sinologists, and adventurers traveled thousands of miles and slept in the open air to come to Dunhuang. They are willing to sell all their belongings to pay for the smuggling of one or two cultural relics. In this way, the civilization left by our ancestors was transported to all parts of the world by carloads and boxes. What our Taoist Wang got from it was a few silver coins. These cultural relics caused a sensation abroad, but our experts from the Dunhuang Academy had to humiliate themselves time and time again to buy microfilms of Dunhuang documents from foreign museums, and study them while sighing in front of a magnifying glass. This is a joke that makes people laugh until they cry.

Bitterness, a kind of suffering that comes from the depths of the heart, a kind of suffering that comes from the depths of the soul, is so bitter that our Yu Qiuyu wants to say cruelly: These scriptures should not be allowed to be used by Chinese officials It might as well be well preserved in a London museum. Although it seems that this sentence should not be said, we can imagine that if these scriptures have been in China, sent and flown in the officialdom, if they meet someone like Taoist Wang again, they will give it to them again. If they were to change their appearance, their fate would be unimaginable. They are kept in foreign museums and now we can see these artifacts just like visiting an adopted child. This can be considered a bit of comfort. Although it seems absurd, it is really helpless.

Is it not painful for an ignorant Taoist priest and a group of incompetent officials to destroy the treasure house of an ancient civilization?

In addition to the most painful "Taoist Tower", there are also some hardships in the book. For example, in "Yangguan Snow", Wang Wei's "I urge you to drink another glass of wine, leaving Yangguan in the west without any old friends" mentioned Yangguan. As a historical relic, it has been forgotten by modern people. An ancient city collapsed into a mound, collapsing into the spiritual territory of a nation. It eventually became ruins and a wasteland, with sand graves behind it like the tide and cold peaks in front of it like waves. In "Liuhou Temple", Liu Zongyuan, a great literary figure of a generation, was constantly marginalized and exiled.

The disaster gave him peace and time to meet nature, so we read "Eight Notes of Yongzhou". When he was demoted to Liuzhou, he took advantage of a small demoted official position to dig wells, set up schools, plant trees, build temples, and free slaves. His political achievements were beyond the reach of favored officials. of. Nowadays, tourism is booming, and all scenic spots are overcrowded, but it is quiet in front of Liuhou Temple. The author and I firmly believe that there will be some young people or teenagers who will stop in front of Liuhou Temple to read the inscriptions. The steadfast female teachers in "The Archway" planted the archway in the hearts of students and local villagers instead of on the roadside. In "Guichi Nuo", when a Taoist priest was summoning the souls of locals who died in a foreign land, a primary school principal led a group of students to destroy the place, leaving Yu Qiuyu still full of doubts. The Nuo style of Nuo opera is relatively well preserved thanks to another primary school principal. This ending is bittersweet.

Of course, there will also be some joy in the book, such as "Shayuan Hidden Spring". The previous part tried its best to lay out the holiness, majesty, gracefulness and elegance of Shayuan Hidden Spring. It is not until the end of the article that we are told: The mountain is called Mingsha Mountain; the spring is called Crescent Moon Spring. All are within Dunhuang County. The surprise these two sentences gave me made me open my mouth for a long time. It turned out that these were Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Moon Spring. I also like a metaphor in the article. When the author saw a clear spring in the desert, he compared this feeling to an old and loving father scolding his beloved daughter, saying: Why don't you run away? Get here! What a wonderful metaphor, so apt.

In short, what you feel when watching "Cultural Journey" is a literati's love for culture. When culture is trampled upon, a kind of pain will surge in the author's heart. I feel the cultural conscience and cultural literacy of a cultural man, and I can't help but stand in awe of this contemporary cultural master.