I and the altar of Earth

In several of my stories, I have mentioned an abandoned ancient garden, which is actually the Temple of Earth. Many years ago, before tourism began, the garden was deserted and neglected like a field, rarely remembered.

Ditan is near my home. Or my home is very close to the Temple of Earth. In short, we have to think that it is fate. Ditan has been there since I was born more than four hundred years ago, and my grandmother has lived near it ever since she came to Beijing with my father as a young woman -- moving several times over fifty years, but always around it and getting closer and closer to it. I often felt that there was a sense of destiny in it: as if the ancient garden had been waiting for me for more than 400 years through all the vicissitudes of life.

It waited for me to be born, and then it waited for me to live to my most arrogant age and then it maimed my legs. Over the past four hundred years, it has eroded the grandiose glass on the eaves of the ancient hall, faded the verdage showing off on the doors and walls, collapsed the high walls and scattered jade corrals, the old cypress trees around the altar have become more secluded, and the wild grasses and vines everywhere flourish freely and freely. I suppose it's about time I came. One afternoon, fifteen years ago, I rolled my wheelchair into the garden, where everything was ready for a man who had lost his mind. The sun was then growing larger and redder on its unchanging path. In the quiet light pervading the garden, it is easier for one to see the time and see his own figure.

Since that afternoon when I stumbled into the garden, I have never left it for long. I immediately understood its intention. As I said in one of my stories, "To have such a peaceful place in a densely populated city is like God's design."

For the first few years after I lost my legs, I couldn't find a job, I couldn't find my way, and suddenly I couldn't find anything, so I rolled my wheelchair and went to it all the time, just because it was another world to escape from. I wrote in the story, "With nowhere else to go, I spend all day in this garden. It's just like going to work or going off. I rolled my wheelchair here when everyone else was going to work. The garden is unattended, and people take short cuts through it during commuting hours. It is active for a while, and then it is quiet." "The garden wall slants a shade in the golden air. I drive my wheelchair in, put the back of the chair back down, sit or lie, read or think, and beat a branch from side to side to repel the insects who, like me, don't understand why they are here." "The bees, like a mist, stand still in midair; The ant shook its head and stroked its tentacles, suddenly thought of something, turned and ran away; The ladybug was tired of climbing, and when it was tired, it opened its wings and flew off. There was a cicada on the tree trunk, lonely as an empty house; The dew rolled, gathered, and bent over the blades of grass and crashed to the ground in a thousand rays of golden light." "All over the garden there was the sound of trees and plants competing to grow, all the time." These are true records. The garden was deserted but not decayed.

Except for a few halls I could not enter, except for the altar which I could not go up but could only look at from every Angle, I have been under every tree in the altar, and almost every meter of its grass has been marked by my wheels. I have been in this garden in all seasons, in all weathers, and at all times. Sometimes I would stay for a while and then go home, sometimes I would stay until the moon lit up all over the ground. I could not remember which corners of it I thought for hours intently about death, and with the same patience and manner I thought about why I was born. After years of thinking this way, things finally figured out: when a man is born, it is no longer a matter of debate, but a fact given to him by God; God, in giving us this fact, has incidentally assured its outcome, so that death is not something to be rushed to, death is a festival that is bound to come. After thinking about it this way, I feel relieved. Everything in front of me is not so scary. For example, when you get up early and stay up late to study for an exam, don't you feel relieved that you have a long vacation ahead of you? And rejoice and appreciate this arrangement?

What remains is the question of how to live, which is not something that can be fully figured out in a single moment, not something that can be solved once and for all, even if you live long enough to think about it, like the devil or lover who will be with you all your life. Therefore, after fifteen years, I still go to the old garden, to its old trees or the edge of the grass or the crumbling wall, to sit in silence, to think, to push away the noisy and confused thoughts in my ear, to peek into my own soul. For fifteen years, the shape of the old garden had been arbitrarily carved by those who could not understand it. Fortunately, there were some things that no one could change about it. For example, the setting sun in the stone door of the altar, the moment when the light of silence is spread flat, every rough spot on the ground is reflected brightly; At the loneliest hour in the garden, for example, a flock of swifts will come out and sing, making heaven and earth desolate; For example, the footprints of children in the snow in winter always make people wonder who they are, where they have been, what they have done, and then where they have gone. For example, those dark old cypresses, when you are sad, they stand there calmly, when you are happy, they still stand there calmly, they stand there day and night, since you were not born has been standing until this world without you; For example, when a rainstorm suddenly hits the garden, it arouses waves of burning and pure smells of vegetation and earth, which remind people of countless summer events. For example, when the autumn wind suddenly arrives, and there is an early frost, the fallen leaves or swaying songs and dances or calm and peaceful sleeping, the garden is full of ironed and slightly bitter taste. Taste is the most unclear, taste can not be written only smell, you have to be in the scene to smell to understand. The smell is even difficult to remember. Only when you smell it again can you remember its full emotions and implications. That is why I often go to the garden.