Ji Xianlin <
I never expected that after 35 long years, I would return to this country tens of thousands of miles away from my motherland. The small town is coming.
I was on the train from Hamburg to G?ttingen and I couldn't believe it. Is it a dream? I asked myself frequently. This is of course very ridiculous, it is the truth after all. The impressions in my mind are chaotic, and the faces are various. People who have not thought of it in the past 30 years have come to mind; things that have not been thought of in the past 30 years have come to mind. The smiles of some of my respected teachers appeared in front of me again. The kind face of my landlady, who was like a mother, also appeared before me. The cute girl Ilmgard also started to move in front of my eyes. The narrow streets, the shops on both sides of the streets, the dense forest on the hill to the east of the city, the small cafe deep in the dense forest, the deer among the yellow leaves, and even the little white flower snow clock emerging from the white snow in late winter and early spring, there are many other things. All the things are rushing to appear in front of my eyes. For a moment, the images were chaotic, and my heart was violently turbulent as if a pot was boiling.
As soon as the train stopped, I jumped off and set foot on the land of G?ttingen. Suddenly a poem emerged:
The young man left home and returned home,
The local pronunciation has not changed and the hair on the temples has faded.
Children look at each other but don't recognize each other,
laugh and ask where the visitor is from.
How could such a poem appear? I was a little confused and confused for a moment. But I immediately realized that this foreign town with only about 100,000 people had already become my second hometown deep in my heart. I spent ten whole years here, which were the prime years of my life. My footprints cover every inch of the city. I have been happy, distressed, pursued, disillusioned, shaken, and persisted here. This small town actually determined the path I would take in my life. All of this will inevitably leave an indelible mark on my soul. I subconsciously regard it as my second hometown. Isn’t it very natural?
I returned to my second hometown today, and a lot of thoughts, sweet and bitter, came to my mind. There is an inexplicable emotional pressure that makes me breathless. It seems like relief, like melancholy, like regret, and like yearning. The town has hardly changed. The famous bronze statue of the Goose Girl standing in the square in front of the City Hall is exactly the same as it was 35 years ago. A group of pigeons are still wandering around the bronze statue as leisurely as before. Maybe at some point a whistle would fly up to the spire of the chapel behind. It seems like I left here just yesterday and I'm back today. We walked down to the basement and went to the underground restaurant to eat. The furnishings inside are the same, the seats are the same, the lighting is the same, and the atmosphere is the same. Even the young waiter seemed to be the same one from back then. It feels like I just ate here last night. The large and small shops around the square have not changed. Those famous restaurants, such as "Black Bear", "Young Master Restaurant", etc., are still in place. The two bookstores are still in place. In short, everything I saw was exactly the same as before. Has it really been 35 years since I left this small town?
But, as the ancient Chinese say, the country remains the same, but the characters are completely different. The environment has not changed, but the characters have changed greatly. Some of the people I recalled on the train would have been over 100 years old if they were still alive. There is no need to ask whether these people live or die. I don't dare to ask those who are not that old in calculation, for fear of hearing news that I don't want to hear from the person being asked. I only asked a few roundabout questions, and the answers I got were often unclear and vague. I can't blame anyone else, because my question is vague. I really appreciate this ambiguity now, and there is hope in the ambiguity. Unfortunately, even this vagueness cannot completely conceal the truth. The result is:
Visiting the past is half a ghost,
Exclaiming in surprise is hot in the intestines.
I can only exclaim with a silent voice in my heart.
While exclaiming, I still insisted on visiting the old days with a heavy heart. First I'm going to take a look at the house I've lived in for ten whole years. I know that my motherly landlady, Mrs. Opal, has passed away long ago. But the house still exists, and the neat street is still as neat as new.
In the past, I often saw some old ladies washing the sidewalks with soap. Now the sidewalks still look as if they have been washed just now. If you lie down and roll around, there will never be a trace of dust on them. The food store at the corner of the street is still open, with colorful food displayed in the large bright glass windows. The owner doesn't know how many generations have passed. I walked outside the house where I had lived, looked up, and saw that the window of my room on the third floor was still filled with red and green flowers and plants as before. Of course, they were not made by Mrs. Opal. I suddenly felt in a trance, as if I had just left last night and returned home today. I pushed open the door and ran up to the third floor in rapid strides. I didn't use the key to open the door because I realized that another family was living inside now. The former mistress of this house may have been laid to rest in some cemetery, and the tomb was probably covered with roses. I often dream about this house and its mistress, but now the building is empty. During the ten years I spent here, I experienced joy and pain, experienced bombings, and endured hunger. After the male landlady passed away, I accompanied the female landlady to visit his grave many times. I, a young man from a foreign country, became the only relative around her. No wonder she burst into tears when I left. After I returned to China, we corresponded frequently for the first few years. Later, things changed and we lost contact. I once had a wishful thinking and wanted to see her again. Now I have indeed come to G?ttingen again, but I will never see her again, never forever.
I wandered the streets that I walked through every day. There are my footprints everywhere here. The small lawn in front of every house is still green. The winter snow came a little early this year. In mid-October, it snowed. White snow, green grass and red flowers complement each other beautifully. The bright flowers are in full bloom proud of the snow, seemingly even brighter than spring and summer. The crabapple flower I described in a short article "Begonia Flower" is still standing majestically. I suddenly recalled the winter of that year, when the sun was setting, the sky was overcast, and the snow was shining brightly. I supported my Tocharian and Vedic language teacher, Professor Sik, and slowly walked through the ten-mile street. I feel desolate in my heart, but also warm. After returning to my motherland, whenever it snows, I think of this old man who looks like a grandfather. Looking back, it has been more than 40 years.
I have not forgotten Schiller Lawn, which I went to almost every Sunday. It is right under the hill and is the only way into the mountain. Back then, I often walked with Chinese or German students on the Schiller lawn and then walked up the mountain along the winding mountain path. I once climbed to the Bismarck Tower and overlooked the whole city of G?ttingen; I once lingered in a small cafe; I once took shelter from the heavy rain under a thatched pavilion in the big forest; I once frightened away the foraging deer in late autumn and listened to their feet rustling on the fallen leaves. Escaped rustlingly. There is no end to the sweet memories that I can write. I'm here again today. The green grass is as old as ever, and the pavilions are as new as ever. But when I was young, I was already dejected, and my old friends had long since disappeared. Some left this world, and some flew far away to the other half of the earth. In this situation, people are not wood and stone, how can we not be filled with emotion?
I mentioned above that the country is still the same and the characters are completely different. Fortunately, it is not completely different yet. For decades, I have been dreaming about the people I most hope to see again and the people I most hope are still alive. My "doctoral father", Professor and Mrs. Waldschmidt, are actually still alive. The professor is already 83 years old, and his wife is older than him, at 86 years old. After 35 years of separation, we meet again today, and it feels like seeing each other and resolving doubts and dreams. The old professor and his wife were obviously very excited, and my heart was rolling like waves, and I was speechless for a while. We sat around under the dim electric light, and Du Fu's famous words suddenly came to my mind:
Life is not about meeting each other,
Movements are like participating in business.
What night is this night?
***This lamp is candlelight.
Forty-five years ago, when I first arrived in G?ttingen, we met for the first time, and the scenes of our ten-year relationship were vividly unfolding before our eyes. That decade was a decade of violent turmoil, with World War II inserted in the middle, and we were unable to live a good life for a few days. For the first few years, every time I went to their house for dinner, his teenage only son was there. Once the professor joked with his son: "There is a Chinese guest at home. You can brag about it when you go to school tomorrow." Who knew that as soon as the war broke out, his son was drafted into the army. One winter, he died in the Nordic battlefield. superior. The blow to the couple is indescribable. Soon, the professor was also drafted into the army. It’s hard for me to ask him what he’s thinking, and it’s hard for him to tell.
It seems that he is suffering in silence. He booked tickets for the theater. In the winter, when the theater opened and he was not at home, the task of accompanying his wife to the theater once a week fell on my shoulders. Late at night, after the performance, I had to walk a long way to send my wife to their home at the foot of the mountain and by the forest, and then walk back to my residence in the dark. For a long time, only my wife lived in their beautiful three-story building.
Their situation is like this, and my situation is even worse. The war rages on year after year, and letters to families are worth billions of dollars. My motherland is suffering, my whole family is suffering, and I am suffering too. I lie on my pillow in the middle of the night with my thoughts racing around, often staying up all night. Moreover, there were plane bombings overhead, and there was no food in the stomach to satisfy the hunger. In my dreams, I only dreamed of peanuts from my motherland. Once I went to the countryside to help farmers pick apples, and the reward was a few apples and 5 pounds of potatoes. After returning home, I ate all 5 pounds of potatoes in one meal and was still not full.
For about six or seven years, the situation was like this. It was under this circumstance that I studied, wrote papers, took oral examinations, and obtained my degree. Every time the professor goes home for vacation, he listens to my reports, reads my papers, and puts forward his opinions. What little things I know today do not contain the hard work of the professor? No matter how small my achievements today are, if he had not treated me, a stranger from a foreign country, with no self-interest, he would What could I have achieved by seducing and teaching? Can I forget all of this?
Now we meet again. The meeting place was not in a house that I was familiar with, but in a luxurious nursing home. Others told me that he had donated his house to the Institute of Indology and Buddhism at the University of G?ttingen, sold his car, and moved to this nursing home. The courtyard is magnificent and has everything you need, including a gym and swimming pool. It is said that the food is also very good. However, to put it bluntly, the people who come here are all in their late teens and early 80s, and most of them have limited mobility. For them, gyms and swimming pools are literally deaf ears. They are not here to exercise, but to die. We ate and chatted together the first night, and maybe someone saw God the next morning. You can easily imagine how a person feels when living in such an environment. Then again, the professor and his wife were lonely. If they had not come here, where would they go?
It was in such a place that the professor met his disciples whom he had not seen for decades. How excited and happy he felt I cannot describe. As soon as I got out of the car, I saw the professor sitting upright in an armchair inside the tall and bright glass door. He might have been waiting for a long time and was looking forward to seeing what was going on. He looked at me with kind, dim eyes. It was as if he wanted to swallow me whole with his eyes. His hands shook a little when they shook hands. His wife is even more senile, deaf, and her head is shaking. She is completely different from the person she was 30 years ago. My wife also cooked specially for me the food that I used to eat at her home. The two old men said in unison: "Let's have a good chat about the old life in old G?ttingen!" They can probably only fill their daily lives with memories now. I asked the old professor if he wanted any more Chinese books on Buddhism. He asked me, "What use do those things have to me?" I asked him what he was writing. He said: "I want to sort out the old manuscripts; I think I will stop soon!" Judging from some small things, the old couple still have some contradictory opinions. It seems that the life of this pair of old people who depend on each other is gloomy and depressing. In front of them, just as Lu Xun wrote in "Passengers": "In front? In front, is the grave."
My heart suddenly became desolate. The old professor worked hard all his life, wrote many books, became famous all over the world, and was respected. Is this how he spends his old age? My coming here today has obviously brought them great happiness. What will happen to them once I leave here? ?But, can I stay here forever? I am really reluctant to leave, and I want to stay as long as possible. However, there is no feast that lasts forever in a pavilion thousands of miles away. I stood up and wanted to say goodbye and leave. The old professor said with pleading eyes: "It's only about 10 o'clock, it's still early!" I had to sit down again. Finally, late at night, I said to them, "Good night!" I stood up, said goodbye and went out. The old professor kept sending me downstairs. When they were brought to the car, they seemed inseparable. At this time, my heart was pounding, and I clearly realized that this was the last time we would see each other.
However, in order to comfort him, or deceive him, and to comfort myself, or deceive myself, I blurted out: "I will come back to see you in a year or two!" The voice came from my mouth to my ears. , seems empty and hypocritical, but yet sincere. This sincerity touched the old professor, and a smile appeared on his face: "You promised me to come back in a year or two!" What else could I say? With tears in my eyes, I got into the car. As the car drove away, I looked back and saw the old professor still standing there, motionless, like a statue.
After two days, I left G?ttingen. I took a train to another city. Sitting in the car, just like when I came here, the faces in front of me were blurred and complicated. All the people and things I saw in the past two days came to my eyes one by one; it was just that they were much clearer and more specific than the shadows I saw on the train when I came here. Among these confused faces, there was one that was particularly clear, specific, and prominent. It was the statue I saw the night before. I hope this statue will stay in front of my eyes and in my heart forever.
Started in West Germany in November 1980
Finished in Beijing in October 1987