Wang Shixiang

Author: Chen Zhou
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-01
Features: In the Beijing of the 20th century, there was a man who always loved to gaze at the blue sky in the old house of Fangjia Garden in Dongcheng, with a transcendent mindset, listening to the pigeon cooing that he had grown up with and never grew tired of. He once wrote passionately: "In Beijing, whether it is the scorching summer after a sudden shower, the clear autumn with a sky as blue as washed silk, or the winter when snow is about to fall, you can always hear the sound of cooing from the sky. It is sometimes grand and sometimes delicate, sometimes far and sometimes near, sometimes low and sometimes high, swift and then slow, lingering and echoing, as if it were a divine and wonderful music from the heavens, making people feel exhilarated. It is the charm of Beijing, waking people up from their dreams countless times, drawing their gazes to the distant sky countless times, and bringing joy to both adults and children countless times." With this innocence and charm, he endured the historical changes of the 20th century, from chaos to order, with ups and downs, in the complex environment intertwined with chaos and order, old and new, Chinese and Western, and refined and vulgar, he accepted it with equanimity and faced it calmly. It was also because of this state of forgetfulness between oneself and the world that he could, like a pigeon flying in the sky, rise and fall, enjoying the joy of youth naturally, facilitating the transformation of youth, enduring the hardships of middle age, and smiling at the fruits of old age, and unknowingly hummed a few passages of 'The Final Melody of the Century' before the new century arrived, composing a magnificent symphony of the rise, fall, turn, and conclusion of his nearly ninety years of life... This man, cheerful and contented in the grand changes of life between desire and elegance, is the protagonist of this book—Wang Shichang.