Almost Buddhist - 戲‧論

Chapter Four The sun is descending alone; the wind is getting stronger, and also chillier; some dark clouds hanging heavily in the eastern sky. The sunlight of the spring has been so miserable in a dream like this. I stand up—uncertain of how long—and that plain of deep green larches once again captures my eyes. Far in the distance, some little figures are approaching, worm-like slow, with music barely real; closer and closer, the white-wing birds upon the fields of wheat are frightened, then flying all together with mournful groans towards the hill. I see it—a group of people pacing in a hurry, raising up some gray clay; led by three and five drummers, a few men follow, dressing all in white, behind all of them, it’s a coffin. Oh, someone is going to be buried, even in the springtime. Up-thrown is a handful of hell’s money [7], landing back onto the wheat fields like butterflies. Dark clouds in the eastern sky are thickening. Willows are made much greener, which seems a bit wretched...

Chapter Three   Thoughtlessly gazing at those two little green slippers, I suddenly feel a quiver of that large curtain behind. I turn around. It is she, right there, still a girl of seventeen and eighteen, so delicate and light, like a fairy coming down from heaven but not standing firmly yet. Those little butterflies embroidered on the curtain are now all jumping out to play and dance above her head. I, however, retreat, for fear of her being scared if I only come one step further. In doing so, she immediately returns, to the look of twenty. She steps back as well, wildly laughing, getting more and more wrinkles on her face at the same time. I can no longer sit still on that small bed. Swiftly I rise and run to her, and amazingly she, in a blink, turns back to seventeen again. It takes me only a second to see all the changes of half her life. Certainly, she is not under control by time. Sitting in the chair holding her in my arms, surprisingly, my face also seems to be re-gaining...

Chapter Two   A love story is apt to be as ordinary as rain in the spring and frost in the fall. But ordinary people just like to find poetic flavor through that kind of ordinary story. Thus, I guess most of the things in the world must be lack of colors. What a pity! I hope this story of mine can be as colorful as it is supposed to be.   Not so beautiful as that time after all, I say ‘that time’…because that day, at that moment, everything was so pretty. The crab apple at her yard was blossoming into a big snowball of pink and white. Around the wall, bamboo shoots were freshly squeezed out. Blue and tender was the sky. Her big cat was sleeping tight underneath the flowers. Her parents were not coming home yet. No sooner had she heard my voice than she rushed out of the cottage in a flash like a flying swallow, wearing a pair of small green slippers, like two soft green leaves. She was as delighted as feeling the morning sunlight. Two apple-like cheeks were many times redder t...

Chapter One   Ching Ming [1] has probably gone. All of the crab apples have blossomed, haven’t they? The solar terms of this year seem to come by a bit later than they are supposed to be because butterflies are still too weak to dance around. Bees, however, always look strong since the day they were born as though to them this world was full of joy and happiness. Up in the sky there are three and four white clouds, small and light. Swallows are playing with, as well as decorating them with their tiny body shape and color. It is windless but the willows are deliberately swaying as if making jokes with greenness of the spring. Quietly the greenness in fields is creeping up the hill but it starts fading possibly because it is getting weak and exhausted while ascending; so at the top of the hill your eyes are prone to come across the color of yellow rather than green. Trees half way up the hill, though not so green, show their softness still, and I guess the blue sky behind the hi...

Preface    Translation is not that easy. That’s how I feel after translating Vision from Chinese into English. But it seems that I’m telling a lie since it doesn’t take me too long to finish my work [just three weeks]. Undeniably, over the past few weeks, I’ve racked my brains to make it ‘the best’ though I know nothing can be the best [only can be better]. Frankly speaking, I love translation very much because it’s full of fun and excitement, and through which both my English and Chinese can be tremendously improved. No doubt translation is mentally exhausting and requires patience and of course intelligence. On a regular basis, you must be quite competent in two languages. Obviously, my English is not perfect [what is ‘perfect’ then?] and it needs a break-through indeed. Despite intelligence always keeping me at bay, fortunately, I’ve got diligence, and that’s my legacy. I will carry on working hard and hope that someday I can attain my goal—to be a good translator. I choos...

Introduction to Vision People seldom know much about Vision because most of them don’t like it; they don’t like it because they still can’t make head nor tail of it after reading it several times. ‘What’s it REALLY talking about?’, that’s the question people usually ask when they finish reading Vision . It’s a fact that a Japanese scholar in Tokyo immersed himself in Vision for nearly twenty years just to work out the concealed meaning behind every sentence. Isn’t it so amazing and unbelievable? Among Lao She ’s short stories, Vision is absolutely special, for it’s so elegant, graceful and written in an ornate way. It’s not easy at all to be digested owing to the symbolism in every sentence, which in a way helps create a bittersweet aftertaste of the first-love experience. Lao She frequently uses Beijing dialect in his works and most of them are plain to understand, but Vision is an exception. Compared with what he wrote before, the style is totally different; it utterly stun...