Farewell to Melancholy (Inspired by the water town of Wuzhen)

Author: Zhao Xinsan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: "What matters most is the lingering melancholy after singing, the village bridge and original trees resemble my homeland." — Wang Yu, Song Dynasty
"Goodbye" is our destined fate: "Cry three times after birth, and your fate is set." First, we bid farewell to the mother's womb, this is the original farewell. Then, we bid farewell to our carefree childhood, and later, we bid farewell to elementary and middle school. On graduation day, we don't feel melancholy yet. Because we haven't matured to the stage where we can experience such feelings. In the spectrum of human emotions, melancholy is a subtle, refined, and highly advanced emotion. When we graduate and the day of leaving school arrives, a faint trace of melancholy begins to rise from the depths of our hearts.
When we bid farewell to traditional agricultural civilization and transition to a modern Western machine civilization lifestyle, the melancholy we experience becomes deeper, richer, and more profound. It is because it is fundamental. Melancholy has levels and hierarchies. For contemporary Chinese people, bidding farewell to the agricultural civilization that has gradually receded and vanished on the horizon of the faraway land, the melancholy we feel belongs to the highest level and the deepest tier. It is because it is philosophical. We are bidding farewell to the traditional agricultural civilization of China that has spanned thousands of years. The melancholy that rises in our hearts is bound to be profound, fundamental, and philosophical. At this moment, a sudden sense of melancholy emerges—"The year is drawing to a close at night, yet a million miles away, no one returns." It is great melancholy, a highly advanced form of melancholy.
The magnitude and level of melancholy born from bidding farewell depend on the nature of the object being bid farewell and its position and scale. Bidding farewell to agricultural civilization ultimately means bidding farewell to a traditional way of life. This way of life has endured for thousands of years. The Chinese people have emerged from this ancient tradition. The value of Wuzhen in the Jiangnan water towns lies in the fact that it has become a striking symbol that fully and vividly embodies this tradition, a symbol of architectural space. Without the traditional Chinese architectural spatial language symbols system (including stone bridges and pagodas), Wuzhen would cease to exist.