Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - A Love Letter

Author: (British) Carol Ren Min
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The ancients said, "Travel ten thousand miles and read ten thousand books." For modern people, traveling ten thousand miles is easy, but reading ten thousand books is difficult. The wheels of technology are sweeping across the world at an astonishing speed. The modern people, busy in front of computers and all kinds of machines all day, have turned the Earth into a village with wires, optical cables, tracks, or air routes. Clicking the mouse, we can paste ourselves anywhere in the world. However, facing the vast civilization, without the foundation of reading ten thousand books, we not only frequently encounter the awkwardness of "meeting face to face but not recognizing each other," but we also keep accumulating the strangeness that comes from the bottom of our hearts. For this, we long for a deeper understanding, a desire for a connection of the soul; a desire for a return to a way of traveling—before traveling ten thousand miles, put a few books in our spiritual backpack so that our steps and souls can go further. A spiritual journey does not require "writing poems in youth and studying until the hair turns white," nor does it require hanging the head on the beam, breaking through the wall to steal light, or having a red sleeve add fragrance while never putting down the book. A spiritual journey only requires reading a few classics in the leisure of a moment. Novels, essays, and poems can all be made into soup for the soul; buses, subways, and even the palm of your hand can be our desks. Therefore, we have tailor-made a "pocket library" for busy urban dwellers. Classics are the soul of the library; easy to absorb is the essence of the library; carrying it with you, reading anytime, anywhere, and in any way is the purpose of the library. The selected titles in the library are all the timeless classics that have been refined after exposing themselves to the harsh realities of different civilizations; the illustrations, carefully selected and painstakingly collected from hundreds of rare books and private collections, are a true restoration of the essence of the classics. The small format design makes it as clever as a wallet; the special printing technology makes every book "filled with the fragrance of osmanthus." Classics are not afraid of time, but life cannot withstand the erosion of "time flies." The charm of classics is better seen than heard. It is better to use them to mend the gaps in our time, to add value to the fragments of our days; it is better to use on-the-go reading to gather wisdom piece by piece, and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least travel expenses, reach the furthest distance of life.
This is a middle-length fairy tale by British fairy tale writer Lewis Carroll. The story tells of a girl named Alice who, while dozing off, suddenly sees a white rabbit in clothes running past. Alice follows the rabbit and falls into a black hole, taking a long time to land on a pile of dry leaves. She walks into a hall with many doors around. In the center of the hall, on a glass table, is a keychain of gold keys. She uses one of them to open a small door, which leads to a beautiful garden. The door is too small for her to fit through, so later she drinks a bottle of drink on the table and shrinks to the size of a ten-inch tall person. She eats a cake under the table and grows to nine feet tall, unable to fit through the door again. She is so desperate that she cries, and her tears form a river. The white rabbit appears, drops a fan, and she uses it to fan herself, shrinking back to a small person. She accidentally falls into her pool of tears and barely manages to swim to the shore. Alice comes to the white rabbit's house and sees a bottle of drink on the shelf. She drinks half of it, and her body grows, her head touching the ceiling, her arms extending out the window, and she is unable to move. The rabbit picks up stones and throws them at her, but the stones turn into cakes when they land. She eats them and immediately shrinks again, so she grabs the door and escapes, running into the forest and eating some mushrooms to restore her original shape. Alice enters the garden of a Duchess and meets the Red Queen K and the Queen Q. The Queen is easily angered and often cuts off people's heads. The Cheshire Cat angers the Queen and is sentenced to be beheaded. However, the cat's body disappears, and the executioner doesn't know how to cut a head without a body. In the end, the Queen orders the head of Alice, who refuses to testify against the absurdity, to be cut off. Alice wakes up in self-defense. This fairy tale is considered a peak of 19th-century British absurd literature.