Farewell to Melancholy: Inspiration from the Water Town of Wuzhen

Author: Zhao Xinsan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: "What happened after I sang, I suddenly felt melancholic. The village bridge and original trees reminded me of my homeland." — Song Dynasty Wang Yu, "Farewell"
"Farewell" is our destined fate: "Cry three times after birth, and your fate is thus." First, we bid farewell to the mother body, this is the original farewell. Then, we bid farewell to our carefree childhood, and then to elementary and middle school. On graduation day, we haven’t yet felt melancholy. Because we haven’t yet matured to the stage where we can experience such feelings. In the spectrum of human emotions, melancholy is a subtle, delicate, and highly refined 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 feel becomes deeper, more intense, and more profound. Because it is fundamental. Melancholy has levels and hierarchies. The melancholy contemporary Chinese people experience as they bid farewell to the agricultural civilization that has gradually receded into the horizon and disappeared beyond the horizon belongs to the highest level and deepest tier. Because it is philosophical. We are bidding farewell to the traditional agricultural civilization of China, spanning thousands of years. The melancholy that rises in our hearts in this moment—can it not be profound? Can it not be fundamental? Can it not be philosophical?
Suddenly, a melancholy emerges like "As the year draws to a close, a million miles away, no one returns." A great melancholy, a high-level melancholy. The scale and depth of melancholy born from farewell depend on the nature of the object being bid farewell, as well as its level and significance. 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 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, a vivid embodiment of this tradition, a symbol of architectural space. Without the traditional Chinese architectural spatial language symbol system (including stone bridges and pagodas), Wuzhen would cease to exist.