alone on the road (top)

When I can't go abroad (in fact, it's not that I can't go abroad, it's that I have to come back and quarantine for 14 days), I have not been able to answer whether reading travel books is "Wang Mei to quench thirst" or "drink poison to quench thirst". In any case, travel notes are also a kind of literature, such as Liu Zongyuan's "Eight Records of Yongzhou", Su Shi's "Qian Chibi Fu" and so on. I remember when they were in middle school, their travel notes were one of the model essays, so their demeaning emotions were incorporated into the natural scene, expressing their aspirations and expressing their feelings.

Coincidentally, I recently finished reading two books, both of which I used travel notes to express my feelings, namely "Walking" by Mr. Long Yingtai and "There is Always Some Time on the Road" by Mr. Pan Guoling.

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Since Mr. Long left officialdom and returned to civilian status, he soon moved to Chaozhou, Pingtung. The work "Under the Dawu Mountain", published in 2020, is a novel written in Chaozhou as the background. The first half is a travel writing, describing people and things in Chaozhou. "Walking" (the Hong Kong version is named "Walking") published this year (2022) makes me feel like a travel journal.

Teacher Long has always been a person who dares to challenge. She challenged the system when she was young, such as "Wildfire Collection", "Please Use Civilization to Convince Me", and another pseudonym Hu Meili challenged patriarchal articles (later compiled into a book). , titled "Beautiful Right"), and later "Dear Andre", which "challenged the mother-son relationship"... This time, she chose herself and did something that she would not normally do.

On pages 14 and 15 of the book, Mr. Long lists the projects to be done, such as walking a road that has not been traveled, going to the cemetery, learning about a crop, learning about a bottle, getting to know someone who has not known before, discovering A surprising thing, disconnected from the Internet, sitting in the dark, watching... 20 items in total.

The reason for her awakening is that her mobile phone erodes her alone time, so she set these projects to keep herself alone:

What's more, the so-called solitude does not depend on whether the body is alone, but whether the mind is honestly closed to the inside.
It is not necessarily a quiet meditation in the secret room. The real question is whether my heart is alone with all things in the universe and all beings in the world, whether it is awakened between actions and stops, calm when listening and hearing, whether it is always present Submerge and walk with the lonely "self" in the body. (pages 8, 9)

Have you ever tried to look up on the road you often pass by? Often times, something new is always found: the tree seems to have grown taller, and the iron net is already full of cannonballs. When one's mind is still, one sees everything as if it had never been seen before.

Teacher Long is still like his previous works, using small things to bring out the truth that people rarely think of, such as "Watching" in "Watching", to watch the son's back, to the father to watch her back, and then back to her to watch the father's burial, Understand that it is normal for everyone to watch their family/relatives go, and they know you don't have to. This is the charm of her words. There are many examples of this in this book:

When people don't know Huoxiangji[Note 1] or Qingyu[Note 2], they call it grass.
When people don't know it and don't like it, it's called a weed.
Once you know its name, everything changes your relationship with it in the universe. (pages 69, 70)

You may wonder why the title of the book in the Taiwan version and Hong Kong version is different. Teacher Long has publicly explained [Note 3] that the word "walking", when read in Cantonese, will become "walking man". So the Hong Kong version is named "walking".

She actually knows that "walking" will become "walking guy", no matter Cantonese or Taiwanese. "Long Yingtai walks away", not very good. However, the editors in Hong Kong may not have told her that "walking" will remind people of "walking the rivers and lakes".

A good sentence "walking the rivers and lakes"! But what about the next sentence?

I would like this sentence: "I walk alone in the world, and I don't have to send each other."

(to be continued)

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[Note 1] Ageratum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age-Thistle

[Note 2] Qingyuan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinghuan

[Note 3] Long Yingtai's "Walking - The Practice of Being Alone" reader meeting (1:43:26 - 1:44:05) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9AwgYmWQUw

"Walking" (from blog)
https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010914593?sloc=main