At the intersection of Nanjing East Road and Henan South Road, walk south along Henan South Road for about 20 minutes, and you will reach Yuyuan Garden and Chenghuang Temple.
This is an antique building complex composed of old houses, temples, old streets and gardens with Jiangnan characteristics. Strictly speaking, this building community should be divided into two parts, namely the City God Temple and the Yuyuan Garden.
Chenghuang Temple is an open business district, which consists of several magnificent temples and several old-fashioned blocks. Business jewelry, jade, antiques, all kinds of folk arts and crafts, all kinds of local snacks.
Tourists of all colors and languages come in an endless stream all day long, and there is a bustling and noisy atmosphere.
If you are willing to spend 30 yuan to buy a ticket to visit Yu Garden, it will be another world.
This garden building, covering an area of more than 30 mu, was originally a private garden built in the 1960s with a history of more than 400 years. The typical features of gardens in the south of the Yangtze River are not inferior to those in Suzhou, whether in architectural style or scale.
Houses with cornices and arches, winding corridors, patchwork rockeries, delicate bridges and flowing water, quiet ponds and lush ancient trees all show their exquisite, ingenious, elegant, strange and beautiful charm. The ingenuity of designers and builders has been fully brought into play.
Wen Yiduo, a famous modern poet, said that a good poem should have the beauty of architecture, music and painting. I'll change this sentence, and it's more appropriate to put the beauty of architecture in the front to evaluate Yu Garden. This ancient garden building combines the beauty of poetry, painting and music.
The design and construction of classical gardens in China is different from that of ancient masters who used their clever and industrious hands to write an ancient poem with a long artistic conception, draw an ink painting with appropriate shades and play a melodious and euphemistic ancient folk music.
This is a material and cultural heritage. It is material, but more is the embodiment of national aesthetic consciousness and traditional humanistic spirit.
Four hundred years ago, the essence of the people sparkled and turned into a magnificent private garden. After more than 400 years of vicissitudes, it has been coated with a thick patina, which has become a national treasure and a public property of the people. The owner of the garden also inadvertently repaid a debt of conscience owed to the people.
A few days ago, I went to a medium-sized city in the north for some reason, and I was lucky enough to visit a West Lake site in Ouyang Xiu's time. Nearly a thousand years ago, it was as famous as Hangzhou West Lake and Yangzhou West Lake. Because it is located in the old course of the Yellow River, the sediment gradually deposited on the lake and was finally abandoned. But now, several unremarkable Roman columns, European medieval knight sculptures and fake Eiffel Tower have all been built on this ancient West Lake site, which is several times larger than Yu Garden. This ancient West Lake site with thousands of years of cultural accumulation has been destroyed.
In the modern metropolis, in the urban forest composed of steel, concrete and cement, few such traditional classical buildings stick to it and live in harmony with modern high-rise buildings. The strong contrast between time and space, while bringing visual freshness, is also enough to shock the soul.
After visiting the bustling Nanjing East Road, the travelers come here with tired steps, seeing the majestic eaves of the flying pavilion, the extremely circuitous zigzag bridge in the half-acre square pond, enjoying the graceful lotus leaves in the pool and tasting the koi fish, just like travelers trudging in the desert of desire and seeing an oasis, the sense of fatigue disappears.
Standing on the old street of Chenghuang Temple, looking through the eaves and tiles, the towering skyscrapers in Lujiazui, Pudong are as unreal as the setting of a drama, but they are so high that you can look up.
Think about it. For more than 100 years, Shanghai and even China have struggled to survive and fight under the pressure of this steel and concrete western civilization. How many cultural treasures of the Chinese nation, burned and looted by foreign bandits and abused by domestic thieves, have fallen into a state of perdition.
One hundred and twenty years ago today, a huge empire, eroded by ants and squirrels, fought a bitter war with a tiny island country in the northeast of China and suffered a waterloo in Asia.
Today, if fate still pushes these two countries into this sea area, will the historical tragedy repeat itself?
Standing at the intersection of classical architecture and skyscrapers, my mind is like a runaway wild horse.
Just as we face high-rise buildings, high-profile western tourists in old streets, resplendent temples, various traditional snacks and dazzling folk handicrafts, we are also surprised to open our blue eyes.
In this floating city, it is fortunate for Shanghai and China to have such well-preserved traditional buildings guarding the spiritual home of the Chinese nation.
Youth is a heavy rain?
This is the most perfect metaphor for youth that I have ever seen.
Metaphor is more like an explanation or even a definition.
What should the heavy rain look like? There must be countless cold raindrops without thinking, accompanied by indescribable sounds.
However, when it comes to heavy rain, the first picture that comes to everyone's mind is different.
This is the real charm.
Maybe your heavy rain is in an empty field, surrounded by no one, desolate and lonely. A basin of heavy rain comes as scheduled, and its unchanging single melody echoes between heaven and earth. At this moment, a flash of lightning runs through the heavens and the earth, like a crack in time, sucking away all the souls left by your immaturity. You are dull, quiet, in no mood and even expressionless, until the late thunder wakes you up intoxicated, only to see you rush into the rain without hesitation.
Maybe your heavy rain is in a city with many tall buildings and dense woodlands. You are standing in front of the French window, and the twilight is boundless in the distance. There is an unspeakable depression. I don't know whether a heavy rain came from the sky or fell from below. In short, a curtain has been opened in front of you. The world still seems to be busy. Human beings have built a civilization and avoided the pouring rain, but they can't escape the desolation that nourishes the soul and ridicule the torrential rain inside.
Maybe your heavy rain is on an invisible night, and the darkness you see when you open your eyes is purer than when you close your eyes. You're worried about stories that are obviously irrelevant but care about cracks in bones. Or maybe you are a person who comes out with a heart-shaped aura. You don't know about the rain, but it's raining harder and harder, and you just think about it in your heart, but your heart is full of indescribable happiness and mystery.
Maybe your heavy rain is on an ordinary road. You stand at the intersection with an umbrella, and the original firm direction begins to blur. You lift your feet, you take them back, you lift your eyes, but the umbrella eaves cover you hard, so that you can't see them with unread vicissitudes. Because the umbrella has pointed out the direction for you, you can only take a seemingly firm step in that direction, but your heart is still connected to the other side, and your heart is still hopeless.
If at this moment, yes, it is the moment when you read this, it is raining hard with nowhere to escape. What kind of attitude will you face the puffed-up face, and what kind of expression will you use to express your thoughts at this moment?
Will look up, the raindrops all over the sky, I don't know where they come from, I don't know how many, so overwhelming, rushing at us, obviously huge but extremely small, hitting our hair, splashing on our faces, getting wet, dripping into our hearts, so dull that we forget everything, and even can't tell what color the sky is at the moment.
Will run wantonly, splashing water bigger than raindrops, chasing the newly gathered stream running all the way, just set out, without asking the purpose, shouting out what is deposited in my heart, and returning it to heaven and fate with endless rain, and so on, until I run out of strength and loneliness, until my sight is blurred, until the earth becomes a support behind me.
Will hide under the eaves, quietly watching all the ups and downs outside, the cold wind whistling, but there is nowhere to escape, seriously looking in the rain, reaching out to try, raindrops are heavy, shake hands quickly, dry the residual water, restore everything before, continue to dress up before, but can not restrain the eager eyes, there is nowhere to hide.
I will walk quietly and enjoy my inner peace. Rain has become the most precious thing in this journey. The heavy rain washes away the inner memory and wets every story, but it is doomed to be indelible. Just think and watch quietly until you become the perspective of God in every inner memory, and until you reach a clear boundary, you can enter the role again. Then you will step out of the rain curtain without hesitation, dry the mark of the rain, but you can't look back.
at present
Did you get lost in the rain?
Because, dear friend,
Do you know
The rain made us forget where we came from and how to get home.