Restlessness

Author: Jia Pingwa
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: This is still a book about Shangzhou, but I must make a special declaration: The Shangzhou written about here is no longer the administrative region marked on the map. It is my fictional Shangzhou, my carrier Shangzhou, and my Shangzhou in my heart. And the reason I still use these two characters is simply because I love my hometown so much. I am unwilling to hear any more idle talk about "checking off seats." In this book, I only write a story about a river, which I call the Zhou River. According to my design, Shangzhou should indeed have such a river, and it is the only major river in Shangzhou. The people of Shangzhou always like to generalize about big things with "Zhou," saying, "Traveling through Zhou and passing through counties" refers to venturing into many large worlds. Any highway that can directly reach the Zhou is uniformly called an "official road," and a Zhou city is simply the shining center and sacred place of the entire world. Now, many people travel to Shangzhou for exploration, and the guides they bring are my previous novels, yet they often go with high spirits and return disappointed, blaming me for deception. This is all because of different hearts and different perspectives. It is unfair to blame me, but even though the current Zhou River is also unrealistic, the abundance of rivers in Shangzhou allows any visitor to experience them. These rivers almost all originate in the Qinling Mountains and eventually flow into the Yangtze River, but they are clearly unlike northern rivers or what are called southern rivers. They are strange and unpredictable, clear yet fiercely temperamental. In April and May, or during the winter months of Dongzhi and Laonian, they almost dry up, but in spring and autumn, they are full and overwhelming, with extremely fast currents, beyond the understanding and imagination of ordinary people. During the periods when they do not dry up or burst forth, they may seem ordinary at first glance, but the main channel never follows a straight path. It flows ten miles along the northern bank, then ten miles back to the southern bank. Therefore, the riverbanks in Shangzhou are all wide. The idiom "Thirty years the river flows east, thirty years it flows west" has been simplified here into a symbol "S," used by geomancers, as well as by villagers, old men, women, and even young children. Thus, my Zhou River is a river that I believe is the most restless in all of China. Restlessness is certainly not a virtue of the Zhou River, but it is a characteristic that sets it apart from other rivers. This is like how it bursts through caves and gorges with a thunderous roar, preferring grand and dramatic sounds—it only shows that it is still too young. In fact, the Zhou River is indeed the upper reaches of this river that flows through Shangzhou. It will flow through several provinces, traveling thousands of miles to the Yangtze River and the sea. Its future is to become deeper and more powerful with every step. For the Zhou River, we do not need excessive praise, nor do we need harsh criticism. It has passed through Shangzhou and is a necessary path. What is even better is that it now flows freely and as it pleases, flowing with its own existence and experience. × years ago, Confucius said, "The past flows like this." I always suspect that this sage was conducting an examination of the Zhou River.