The tree has become a boat

Author: Chen Danyan
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-09-01
Features: Visiting museums, celebrity homes, and witnessing humanity's great creations displayed as still life, like watching a tree transform into a boat. As Chen Danyan walks, she nourishes her European soul, so traveling through Europe is like returning to her spiritual homeland. The great civilization of Europe, along with the charm of its ancient small towns, radiates a captivating beauty in Chen Danyan's words. If you have enjoyed "Chen Danyan's Shanghai," then "Chen Danyan's Europe" will delight you even more. Sometimes I think, it must be because of the way I grew up that I became so fascinated with Europe's museums, both large and small. Once in Europe, this feeling doesn’t vanish instantly. It’s as if sesame seeds opened a door, a fairy used a magic wand, tomb raiders entered the pyramids, and I stood in Mozart’s home where he composed "The Marriage of Figaro," facing the enchanting yet bewildered Venus by Botticelli, spotting the traces left behind by his scraper, hearing someone recite the beautiful Italian "Divine Comedy" in Dante’s former home, crying at the Berlin Wall Museum, almost passing out in the Baroque art museum, and in my heart, patching together the fragments of Europe encountered during my long, dark nights of growth into a spiritual homeland. Over ten years, dozens of museums—from the Louvre to the Bordeaux Sherry Museum—I worked like an ant for my spiritual homeland, because I first understood the emptiness of having nothing before I had the chance to gain. Step by step, step by step, step by step, passing in front of countless treasures carefully collected and deemed worth remembering, I carried them into my heart, observing how the world and I transformed from wood into a boat. When seeing the weathered stone houses in the Italian town of Arezzo, I recalled the city as depicted by Giotto five hundred years ago—Arezzo’s houses were still new, and one could always feel time flowing like a flood. Even five thousand years ago, Confucius expressed similar sentiments. The time spent experiencing these things isn’t long when measured over ten years.