Ordinary dissipation---my memories are being implemented

Author: Ouyang Yingji
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: Unique travel discoveries and alternative visual memories. Travel is a form of recollection, or recollection is a form of travel. When young, it's a good time for foreign travel, regardless of distance. It seems that only beyond the confines of one's home is life considered real. With blood and sweat, one still feels the urge to take photos for keepsakes. Familiar public recognition confirms one's existence and the fact that one has ventured out. Everyone preserves their travel experiences differently. Writing down the entire travel experience with words is one way, while documenting people and things encountered on the journey with photos is also a simple method. Ouyang Yingji, however, uses his expertise in images and words to present a travel map of the past 85 years for us.
Stories told through images, one image following another, evoke emotions (or people are moved by the images). We travel for just one image, touching the very essence that moves us. During the journey, we are astonished by the world's landscapes previously unseen, gradually immersing ourselves in all the scenes and contemplating the shapes of our memories.
A nonlinear whisper of travel, a slice-of-life confession, Ouyang Yingji's concise narrative of unfamiliar landscapes slowly condenses the emotional energy of travel into this small book, inviting readers on a journey of the heart.
Travel is, in fact, a form of recollection. To say this might sound a bit disappointing? Whether driven by adventure or leisure, the fantasies and impulses about the destination and beyond it are suddenly placed on hold, frozen in time, and movement becomes stillness. Because during the journey, every second is real, not just an adventure but not necessarily enjoyment. Instead, it's only after returning home, in some future moment, that the mind rapidly retrieves images, automatically cutting out the mundane and leaving behind only the good times and beautiful scenes. The places seen, the things eaten, the rest taken—repeatedly adding points in memory. With a poor memory like mine, I often turn bad experiences into good ones, which is perhaps why everyone thinks I'm optimistic.
Therefore, I dare to write about my travel logs from long, long ago and the most recent times. Taking responsibility for one's own feelings is, after all, part of the job. Moreover, most travelers are irresponsible. Even if one tries hard, it's still just passing through—there's no need to pretend to have seen it all. Dust and weariness are not good for the skin.
All in all, travel is still necessary. Only the ordinary folk like us can recall through experience—recollection, after all, is also a form of travel.