River subset

Author: Huang Chang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: On the morning of May Fourth, the ship arrived in Chongqing at nine o'clock. Boarding at the Taichangmen dock, I looked up and saw countless stone steps—so many! Yet I still managed to climb them smoothly. Four decades ago, rickshaws were a common sight everywhere, but now I couldn’t find even one. Without good stamina, Chongqing is not a place for the faint of heart. The Municipal Federation of Literature and Arts sent a car to pick me up and took me first to No. 50 Zengjiayan, the "Red Rock Revolutionary Memorial Hall Branch." The dilapidated building remained unchanged. In 1945, when I was a journalist, I had visited here a few times. The small reception room upon entering was where Zhou Enlai once hosted journalists. The tiny room was packed with people, and he would stand by the door delivering speeches, while the staff squeezed near the entrance or hallway, listening quietly. Sometimes Deng Yingchao would also squeeze into the crowd, knitting while listening. The reception always followed this pattern: journalists would start by asking questions, many of which were sharp, critical, or ill-intentioned. Hearing them, I couldn’t help but worry for the host. But it was never a problem—each reception always ended on a very warm and enthusiastic note. Everyone would applaud for a long time, including those who had asked the difficult questions. Every visit to Zengjiayan No. 50 brought me spiritual satisfaction. Returning to this place after forty years, I was filled with warm memories of the dilapidated small building and courtyard. After the meal, we set off separately for sightseeing. I went to Nanquan Hot Springs, another old haunt from forty years ago. Back then, I lived in Jiulongpo and often took a ferry across the river to walk to Nanquan Hot Springs. Along the way, I passed a small town called "Tuqiao," where there was a teahouse. In an essay titled "Miscellaneous Notes on the River," I described the lively scene of the town: the teahouse, the waterfall, the paddy fields, and the yellow locust trees—all vividly came to mind. Today, Nanquan Hot Springs has become a bustling street, with even more people and new buildings. The new prosperity has also brought new shortcomings: the past tranquility has turned noisy, and it’s not as clean. The May sun was unusually harsh, and the streets offered almost no shade. Dust rose in waves. I had spent two or three years in this mountain city, and I had stated my fondness for Chongqing’s weather, its fog and rain, and perhaps even its heat. Is this all just the nostalgia of youth? Walking into Nanquan Hot Springs, the Huaxi Stream still looked the same, but there were more pleasure boats, and orderly stone railings had been installed along the river. The shade under the trees was filled with visitors. In the rock caves by the mountain, there stood a statue of a white fairy. At the entrance to the cave, a painted fairy image on cardboard was displayed—she wore an elaborate imperial gown, her hair styled in high pigtails, but her head was hollowed out, serving as a prop for a freelance photographer to take tourists’ photos. Anyone could put their head inside and instantly become a "fairy." A group of girls were fascinated by this. One after another, they stuck their heads in, sticking out their tongues. Next to the Fairy Cave, there were some inscriptions about the legend of the "fairy." Guo Moruo had a poetic stele that roughly mentioned the Ming Dynasty’s Prince Jianwen, which triggered my memories of the past. When I first visited Nanquan Hot Springs forty years ago, I hadn’t climbed Jianwen Peak, but it still stirred some reflections. Why did I feel sympathy for the emperor who had been driven out by the Prince of Yan (Yongle) six hundred years ago and had wandered far and wide? Naturally, it was because many people, including myself, had become refugees at the time. P18-19