Book City Traveler: Walking on the Border

Every time I have breakfast with Grandma Anne and my wife, I can always understand why Grandpa Mike always takes pains to say, "Hay has never been a great book town for me. She is just Hay by the Huai River, that's all. Indeed, after living here for more than ten days, I deeply feel that Hay is not only a small town founded on books, but also an ordinary village and town on the border of Wales, and there are not so many lingering legends and reputations.

Sometimes, the golden signboard of Shuzhen is too shining, but it obscures our view of this place, so that our impression of Haiyi is only Shuzhen, and there is no other face to think about. However, after unloading the burden of book town, Haiyi and its neighboring areas are still worth tasting. Haiyi, who has nothing to do with reading, also has its own stories and legends.

For example, in Hay, because it is located at the junction of Wales and England, you can always see the traces of the two regions colliding here and finally being inclusive. Take the most obvious language as an example. Although it is not far from Herefordshire, England, the signs in the two places look quite different.

In Hay Town-or you can say the whole of Wales-there must be two rows of words and two languages on their official bulletin boards. Passengers who first meet these two lines of characters will be curious about what the typesetting outside English means, garbled? Or is the writer's English too bad? Or is the billboard output wrong?

In fact, that row of incomprehensible words has the same meaning as another row of English. What makes it unique is that it is not English at all, but originated from the ancient Welsh of Indo-European and Celtic languages.

Compared with English, which has a far worse relationship, Kangwa Whisper and French Brittany are its relatives. At present, there are still about one-fifth and nearly 6, people using this language in Wales. Thanks to the Welsh Grammar Act promulgated by Britain in 1993 to avoid the gradual loss of Welsh, slogans, notices and traffic signs written in Welsh can be seen everywhere in Wales, and the town of Hay, which is located on the border between England and Wales, is naturally the same. Under such a "Welsh background", Hay Town even has its own Welsh name "Y GelliGandryll", but the definition of this term is still controversial.

In addition, it also witnessed the early war history between Wales and England. Near Hay Town, there is a small town called Welshpool, and the little-known Powis Castle is here. This castle was built in the 13th century, when the kingdoms of Great Britain were at war. In order to strengthen the control of Wales, England built many castles and fortifications in Wales, and many castles in Wales remained to this day. However, this Boisburg is a very interesting counterexample. It was not a stronghold used by England to balance Wales, but was built by the Prince of Wales at that time to resist foreign aggression.

With the war and displacement, this castle was bought by a wealthy Herbert family, and its scale was gradually expanded from generation to generation. It was not until the early 2th century that a certain generation of descendants could not afford the high inheritance tax that accompanied many castles that Boysburg was transferred to the National Trust for operation and maintenance. However, the Herbert family, who abandoned the castle in those years, still holds a place in the castle, and their descendants sometimes come back for vacation. At this time, the castle will raise the flag of the Herbert family.

On my first weekend in Hay, Grandma Anne took me here for an outing, saying that she wanted to show me the Welsh castle and the well-preserved gardens here. Although the courtyard is really beautiful and the area is amazing, what impresses me most is the history of Boisburg itself.

This seemingly ordinary old castle vividly witnessed the happiness and sadness experienced by Wells in these hundreds of years. After a hundred years, I can stand here and touch those years that I can't participate in, except for God's blessing, I can't help but thank the British National Trust for its painstaking maintenance and Grandma Anne's kind invitation.

I walked up the steps and came to the empty tower on the right of the castle. I pushed open those locked windows and looked at the whole of Yuan Ye from the castle. The solidified window in front of me had mountains, water, trees, clouds, sunshine and the earth, and the face of this corner of Welsh Pu a hundred years ago seemed to be still shining in front of my eyes. At that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that Ms. Zhang Manjuan wrote in "Let's Start at Dawn", "Staring at the clouds of hundreds of millions of years in front of the mountain castle, I suddenly felt older than ever. When I read it in those years, I only felt that my pen was slightly heavier, but now I go back and chew it, but I feel so sincere.

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"Good morning, dear. "I just walked into the kitchen when Grandma Anne smiled and handed me a cup of hot tea." Would you like to go out with me to the ancient canal today? Amanda called me yesterday. She wants to take the boat to Brecon for the Jazz Festival. She needs our help. When I first heard the invitation, I nodded like a garlic, swallowed the hot tea in my mouth and replied happily, "Oh, my God, it's my pleasure. It's as interesting to participate in the daily life of Welsh people as to visit Shuzhen. Grandma Anne, I must say that coming here every day is amazing, and life is like one adventure after another! "Grandma Anne smell speech, overflow with a very shallow smile, gently touched my head," this is a good girl who will live!

Amanda is an action artist who usually lives in her beautiful blue boat. As she will go to Brecon to attend the Jazz Festival in the near future, her boat will become an exhibition place for placing artworks. In this way, the boat moored on the shore on weekdays must follow the master's footsteps, go all the way back from an unknown town, pass through Talybont-on-Usk on the Usk River, and finally dock the boat at the pier near Brecon.

This connected waterway is called Brecon and Monmouthshire C ***, which was previously named Brecknock and Abergavenny C ***. It was built between 1797 and 1812 to transport stones and lime for local quarries.

the canals of Brecon and Monmouth once went into history in 193 due to disrepair, but they were reopened in 197 with the support of British Waterways Board and Brecon Beacons National Park. This canal was a great project in those days. Because of the mountainous area, it was very difficult to dig a completely horizontal canal. The craftsmen could only "climb the stairs" when the slope rose sharply through the Lock like the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. There are at least 7 such organs on this 53-kilometer-long ancient canal, which shows how amazing this waterway is.

However, because the canal was built early, all these water valves were operated by hand, and Amanda, who was on the road alone, could not control the boat and operate the water valves at the same time, so she invited her grandmother who lived nearby to help, and I was honored to be invited to learn how to help the boat pass the water valves before visiting the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River.

We always passed five water valves along the way. Except for one or two at the beginning, the whole ship was in a state of panic because we were not familiar with the operation, the later voyage was getting better and better. Not only could we handle the water valves along the way gracefully, but we also began to enjoy all this, and we slowly followed the canal with a history of more than 2 years, drifting from the stream to anything.

I sat at the bow of the boat with snacks and tea, quietly studying the flowing river scene in front of me. Because the ancient canal flows through the mountains, lush forests will always come with greenery, and the vast hilly land on both sides will flash through the cracks in the branches from time to time. The only disadvantage of sitting at the bow is that you need to bow your head sensitively from time to time to avoid low and quaint stone arch bridges and some mottled and dark tunnels.

These unscheduled but unexpected scenery are both real and unreal. A few weeks ago, I never thought that I would sit in this blue boat and sail slowly into the deep forest along the canal dug by people to transport goods 2 years ago.

After the voyage, my grandma and I took a walk to a lonely youth hostel deep in Brecon Mountain National Park. They ordered coffee and chatted outside, while I took out my unfinished postcards and sat in a sunny greenhouse to continue writing.

at that moment, when I was in the full sunshine, I wished I could collect these light and shadow and breeze with pen and ink and transcribe them all on this small card. Then, let it carry the temperature of this moment across the ocean, and the road will reach another island on the west side of the Pacific Ocean, and finally make the sunshine of two latitudes embrace each other.