Zhu Ziqing seems to have been attached to "water" all his life and wandered around. Studying, working, traveling all over Jiangsu and Zhejiang, traveling from south to north. During the slightly stable period, I only spent ten years as a teenager in Yangzhou, and lived in Beijing for ten years after I was thirty (during which I traveled to Europe for one year). At the age of forty, when War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out, he hurried south from Beiping, and all the cities in the south disappeared. He returned to Beijing at the age of 49 and settled in Fangfang for two years. Unfortunately, he fell ill and died. This is probably one of the reasons why he loves reading and writing travel notes, and there are so many travel notes. Therefore, it seems that his travels can also be regarded as a book of worries in that turbulent era. Wandering on the water, however, has formed a calm and comfortable beauty, feeling the sorrow, sigh and indignation of the world, just like the bottom of an iceberg submerged in the sea, revealing a beautiful ice peak looming in the sun and water. Perhaps this is the beauty of the wanderer?

Summer in Yangzhou is a travel book in terms of genre and writing. But I think the difference between it and other travel notes is that Yangzhou written by the author is actually his second hometown where he has lived for more than ten years. He has never lived in one place for so long in his life. Therefore, it is better to write about Yangzhou than to write about other exotic places, such as Qinhuai River in Nanjing, ancient Rome in Europe and London Bookstore. I'd rather regard this "Travel Notes" as lyrical words similar to Moonlight on the Lotus Pond and Return, because this is a kind of homesickness expression when he lived in Beiping. Moonlight on the Lotus Pond has a vague artistic conception of escaping from reality, quietly enjoying the beauty of harmony between self and nature when you are lonely. "Hui" probably stems from my unforgettable memory of my father when I was alone. These are all written by hard work. The same is true in Yangzhou in summer. And in my opinion, this concise essay can be regarded as an aesthetic symbol of Zhu Ziqing's wandering mentality all his life.

At the beginning of the work, the author's rational spirit and aesthetic outlook are revealed, which is also his consistent attitude of observing and feeling life. He criticized ordinary people for following the poet's scribes and echoed his praise for Yangzhou, which he had never experienced before, and only relied on "ear food" to build a mirage about Yangzhou. Although he loved the beautiful water in Yangzhou, he criticized the name "Slender West Lake" as "pretending to be the name of the West Lake" and "so elegant and vulgar". We read his book review of Sun Fuxi's "Shan Ye Toast" and praised the book as "empty and empty, and all the benefits are only the author's own opinion"; The article "Nanjing" also emphasizes that only by being considerate at home can we write a fresh and unique feeling without singing other people's old tunes. "Moonlight on the Lotus Pond" is about the beauty of solitude, saying that "a person can think of anything and nothing under this boundless moon, and he feels that he is a free person. What must be done during the day and what must be said can be ignored now. " This is where Zhu Ziqing's "self-purification" lies. I'm afraid this is the beauty of his prose. Whether it is travel notes or other things, he tries to "stand aside", is unique, and is considerate and considerate. What is difficult is the leisure and spiritual freedom of the mind that is free from the daily bondage. The summer in Yangzhou is the practice of his rational spirit and aesthetics.

At first, he said that because he had lived in Yangzhou for a long time, he didn't have as many beautiful fantasies about Yangzhou as ordinary people. Even "his hatred may hide his hobbies." When describing the only summer scenery he missed in Yangzhou, he seems a little straightforward: he just leads readers to introduce the characteristics of famous scenic spots one by one along the winding moat. Then spend more pen and ink on the "boat" and "teahouse" outside the north gate. But if you savor it carefully, you will find that this kind of blandness contains Zhu Ziqing's unique aesthetic taste. Moreover, his narrative is ingenious everywhere! He said that most of the benefits of Yangzhou in summer are "water", which triggered a discussion about the differences between the north and the south, and vaguely felt that he was homesick. The next pen and ink fell directly or indirectly on the "water": traveling by boat and taking a winding Jiangnan waterway; Xiaojinshan, fahai temple, Wu Ting Bridge and Pingshan Hall are all vivid and picturesque because of the aura of a clear water; Talking about the types of boats and "boat girls on the Slender West Lake" is to set off Yangzhou's unique water interest. You see, in his eyes, "a person sitting on a boat and a person standing at the stern with a bamboo pole are simply Tang poems or landscape paintings." As for the fun of the teahouse, it also comes from "water". Because the teahouse is near the river, it is not only convenient for tea drinkers and tourists to communicate at will, but also convenient for people on board to have a pot of tea or one or two "small cage snacks" to enjoy leisurely by the river. Cruise ships are simply flowing teahouses. Although the lakes and mountains in Yangzhou are not deliberately depicted, what overflows at the bottom of the pen is the aesthetic feeling of Yangzhou water full of emotion and rhyme. This is the author's unique feeling of Yangzhou in summer and the elegant Yangzhou in Zhu Ziqing's eyes. At the end of the article, who can say that his "hate" for Yangzhou hides his hobbies? !

This work is concise, and the narrative is relaxed and comfortable. It can be seen that the author did not deliberately describe the emotional waves of night prostitutes in Qinhuai as he did in his earlier work, and the description of Slender West Lake Boat Lady, which he was interested in, was only a few strokes, not to mention the subtle moral conflicts in his heart when he went to Qinhuai. Unlike later travel notes, which deliberately hide "I" and depict objective things with meticulous strokes (such as Rome), they implicitly express their feelings with a leisurely and natural style. What is related to this gradually mature lyric style is that the language of the works is relaxed and smooth. The fragile literati vernacular that was deliberately carved in the early prose has been "washed away without carving", such as hibiscus, which is clear and natural.

In Zhu Ziqing's prose, the summer in Yangzhou is neither a "prince" nor a favored "girl". When I received the edition of You and Me 1936, the author's preface only said "favorite words" and even mentioned the writing background of most chapters, but said nothing about it. It is true that when it comes to exquisite scenery, people always think of moonlight in the lotus pond. If we talk about nostalgia, people will quote it back. As a travel note. The Qinhuai River in the shadow of the paddle lamp in front has expressed the author's clear and subtle ambivalence when he travels less around Qinhuai. The European miscellaneous notes and London miscellaneous notes behind him seem to convey his indifferent and quiet middle-aged mentality when bidding farewell to romance. But this little-known work, which combines the emotion of the author's early prose with the more colloquial language style of his later prose, is a typical embodiment of Zhu Ziqing's prose aesthetics-wandering aesthetics, and became famous in Cheng Guan during his wandering. It not only has the rich expressive force and rhyme of Tang poetry, but also permeates the bones and muscles of Song poetry, which is as worth pondering as those famous works.