Chapter 4 Chapter 3 The Fragile Capital

one A prosperous capital suddenly disappears without a trace. Such a thing will not only arouse great interest of historians and archaeologists, but also will always be a huge suspense for ordinary people no matter how many years apart. The sudden annihilation of the ancient city of Pompeii more than 1,900 years ago is still an enduring topic for all mankind.The ruins of Pompeii began to be excavated in the 18th century. It has been dug from generation to generation, and only half of it has been dug up to now. Tourists from all over the world have always been in an endless stream. Feelings are very complicated.As long as one is a human being, seeing that everything is like one's own kind has produced such a dense gathering in such a distant ancient time, enjoying a daily life that is not far from our sensory needs, one cannot but produce a profound experience about human beings and human nature. recognize.But this realization was immediately driven away by the almost unimaginable instant of destruction, and replaced by a horror of unspeakable grandeur.Finally, he came out of the horror, walked and watched in a sacrificial atmosphere, and under his feet was the human Pompeii.

There should be an older and more glorious capital in the west.Plato mentioned in his famous "Dialogues" that an Egyptian priest told the famous Athens poet Sauron that according to historical records, Athens fought a powerful army from the Atlantic island of Atlantis in ancient times. This island is a magnificent and magnificent capital city. There are wide freshwater canals dug around the capital city. The sails on the river are like forests. The roads in the city are orderly. But for some reason, the capital was hit by a strong earthquake and tsunami overnight, and the whole city disappeared.To this day, there are countless articles about finding and verifying the geographical location of Atlantis and the reasons for its disappearance, but there are still thousands of papers emerging every year.

In the East, the fall of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is also an eternal mystery.More than a hundred years ago, a hunter discovered a majestic building complex ten kilometers wide in the large forest in the north of Phnom Penh.This discovery shocked the world. According to textual research, it is known that this architectural complex actually represents a dynasty that has been lost in history｜the Khmer Dynasty in the seventh century AD. It is impossible for the oriental sculptors and architects to avoid this ancient building complex.However, what people are most interested in is why such an oriental capital was suddenly abandoned by humans in the jungle without leaving a trace in the annals of history?Everyone guessed that there are four possibilities: one is that the whole city is infected with the plague and no one is left; the other is that there is a famine in the whole city and people have to abandon the city; The political forces fought among themselves and killed each other, and the victorious party was infected with the plague in the pile of dead bodies.No matter which of these four possibilities, there can be thrilling scenes, which can be imagined with eyes closed.

When I was traveling in Ning’an County, Heilongjiang Province, which was the famous place of exile in the Qing Dynasty, Ningguta, I knew that the former exiles were deeply surprised by the huge relics of the city wall in this area.Most of the exiles are university scholars with sufficient historical attainments, and they can't think of any kind of capital city that stood here in the distant ancient times.Their common sense judged that a city wall with such a broad base must be extremely magnificent, so the capital must also be very imposing, but why is it a wasteland at all?Who is it?A few of them have made guesses in their hearts, but they are rigorous scholars, and the harsh conditions they live in do not allow them to review materials, measure and excavate, so they can only swallow their guesses.

I don't know if any of them think of the story about the poet Li Bai that is widely circulated in China.The story says that once because the emperor asked him to write something, Li Bai actually asked Yang Guozhong, a dignitary in the court, to hold an inkstone and grind ink for him, and Gao Lishi took off his boots for him.What important thing did the emperor ask him to write to tolerate our poet's airs so much?People remember that the emperor received a letter from a country called Bohai. No one in the court could understand that kind of writing, which was very embarrassing. Later, He Zhizhang recommended Li Bai to solve the problem.Li Bai wanted to help the emperor write a reply, of course he could put on airs.

The story is just a story and cannot be believed as history, but the foundation of the city wall discovered by the exiles is indeed the location of the capital of the Bohai Kingdom!The first thing I saw was the foundation of the city wall of the outer city. It was a rammed earth foundation more than two meters high and about ten meters wide, stretching far into the distance like a naturally formed embankment.On this pedestal, there should have been a majestic high wall made of huge bricks and stones. Unfortunately, this is not the virgin forest where Angkor Wat is hidden, but the bright and open northeast plain. It is difficult to preserve an abandoned city. What, everything that can be taken away by human power has been taken away by people, generation after generation, every corner has been scoured clean, leaving only this foundation made of rammed soil, with grass and trees growing , wait quietly.Going further in, I saw the bases of the city gate and the pillars, which were also impossible to take away.It is said that many scattered objects were unintentionally or plannedly excavated from the ground. The clues gathered together, coupled with some historical evidence, the scale of the former capital can be vaguely imagined.

Judging from the ruins, the capital of the Bohai State, known as Shangjing Longquan Mansion, is composed of three rings: the outer city, the inner city, and the palace city. The circumference of the outer city is more than 30 miles.The whole city is divided into east and west districts by a wide avenue that runs through the north and south, and is divided into many square areas by more than ten main streets. It is completely the layout and style of Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty.The northern half of the capital is the palace city where the ruler works and lives. The city wall has a circumference of five miles, and there are five resplendent palaces lined up inside. Outside the east wall is the imperial garden, with lakes, pavilions, and rockeries.One of the most complete relics in Miyagi is a well found in the literature, called Babao Liuli Well. The walls of the well are made of basalt stones, and there is almost no damage.I lingered by the mouth of the well for a long time, imagining everything that happened around it for more than a thousand years.It shone like a cold eye that had seen too much and was finally tired.

Mr. Liu Ping, the deputy director of the Mudanjiang Cultural Bureau who accompanied me along the way, was in charge of the excavation and management here before. He said that, judging from various materials, the city was probably built between the eighth and ninth centuries AD. One of the largest cities in Asia, it was not only the top of the 100 cities in Bohai State at that time, but also a trade hub in Northeast Asia, connecting the distant Chang'an and Japan into an economic channel.People can infer the prosperity of the city at that time from a simple comparison: the remains of five bridge piers across the river are densely lined up on the Mudan River in the west and north of the capital, and today, a large piece of land nearby In the modern busy life of tens of thousands of people, only one bridge is more than enough. Think about it, what kind of scene it would be that day!

Such a city would really disappear so completely? two Now, I am living in a world-class city with a history of only more than a hundred years at the southern end of the Chinese territory, and I often stand in a daze by the window facing north.Hong Kong is too young, but the bustling streets, granite buildings, dry vines on the corners, and wrinkled old people under the vines often give people an illusion that the city’s presence here is a natural creation and self-evident. Yes, it seems that it should be like this from the distant past to the distant future. It has not been changed and there will be no major changes. It is only an internal change in the city with more buildings and fewer buildings, narrow roads and wide roads. How can it be imagined? What about its overall decline?Where to drive so many people, so many cars, and so many buildings?In daily life in the city, the bus stop is moved, and the road needs to be detoured for renovation. Everyone feels uncomfortable, and they must restore it to the original state before they can feel at ease. Almost no one realizes the temporary nature of the original itself.

What's more troublesome is that any decent city has an invisible and intangible social and psychological norms. Speech, behavior, pace of walking, and sophistication are all inseparable from this. Has its own unique style.Could it be that this kind of style that permeates every street, every room, and every person will suddenly disappear in one day? The Chinese have long realized the vicissitudes of the world and life. There have been words such as vicissitudes of life and a pillow of yellow beams to describe the huge and rapid changes, but these words themselves reflect that this perception basically stays in the agricultural culture. within the scope of Of course, the good songs in "A Dream of Red Mansions", the Tanci in "The Palace of Eternal Life", and a large number of poems praising the rise and fall also refer to urban life, but they mainly refer to the ephemerality of wealth and power, rather than the overall fate of the city.

In fact, it is precisely the overall fate of the city that is most worthy of deep thinking and emotion for modern people.Standing at the window facing north, I thought, how many dotted cities have appeared in the land of China in thousands of years, and how many of them can maintain a long life?Mr. Tan Qixiang once said that there are only seven cities that can be called the great ancient capitals of China in terms of social and political influence and long duration, and these seven cities are divided into three classes. The first class is Xi'an, Beijing, and Luoyang. The second class is Nanjing and Kaifeng; the third class is Anyang and Hangzhou.There is no doubt that this ranking is fully authoritative, but from today's perspective, there are quite a few cities in it that really cannot be said to have national socio-political influence.Even the few cities which are still important and prosperous have changed so astonishingly that, with the exception of certain monuments, we can almost regard them as other cities.This is especially true of cities not included in this list, such as Yangzhou, which used to be the center of the most flamboyant and comfortable lifestyle in the Eastern world, read these verses: With a waist of a hundred thousand, Riding a crane to Yangzhou. The moon is three points in the world, Two points alone according to Yangzhou. Dreaming of Yangzhou every ten years, Win the honorable name of the brothel. Yangzhou is still there today, but it has experienced the raging wars of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and with the new traffic pattern replacing the function of the canal, it has lost its former importance and prosperity.What we can go to today is actually another Yangzhou. I felt this kind of situation more deeply when I was traveling in Dunhuang, Gansu a few years ago.In order to shoot the movie "Dunhuang", the Japanese spent huge sums of money to build another Dunhuang city in the Tang Dynasty in the desert.Their movie had already been shot when I went, leaving only a ghost city there.I was walking on the streets of the empty city. All kinds of shops, houses, and vehicles were almost the same as the real ones. The water signs of the shops clearly stated various goods and prices. The staircase corridors of each house can lead to rooms. Criss-crossing, flags fluttering on the surrounding walls.I walked curiously, lonely, and finally scared again.Compared with today's Dunhuang County, this place is closer to the original city of the Tang Dynasty that made it famous through the ages, but where have all the people in the original city gone?Empty let me walk alone, like walking in a dream.Yes, it is in a dream, and the film artist just built it according to the dream, but once it is built, it allows us to see a certain unreality of another modern county town also called Dunhuang.In a certain sense, an original Dunhuang has disappeared many times, and has been dreamed many times. All in all, compared with mountains, lakes, deserts and wastelands, cities are very fragile.The more lively things are, the more fragile they are. This is what the Chinese philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi has expounded long ago. However, the bustle of the city is the gathering of human nature. Human nature is still fragile even when it is gathered so densely. This cannot but be said to be a part of human nature. Great tragedy. In addition to the destruction of pure natural forces like Pompeii, the reason for the disappearance of many cities is human beings themselves.Human beings, especially the Chinese, what are the underlying reasons that make them both obsessed with cities, covet cities, and have trouble with cities? In order to solve this problem, I thought of the capital of Bohai State in Hong Kong.I thought of the ruins among the high-rise buildings, the bustling Huadu of the past in the desolate fishing village of the past, the bustle of more than a thousand years ago amidst the hustle and bustle of more than a hundred years later, and the desolation in the vast bay of Tolo Harbor. The eight-treasure glazed well in the grass.Despite the distance, Hong Kong is a modern metropolis, and it has many large-scale and well-stocked libraries, which can provide me with materials that I couldn't get when I wandered around the ruins.After a long time of crawling and searching, I finally learned that there are very few historical materials about the Balhae Kingdom. There are some similar records in "Old Book of Tang" and "New Book of Tang", Japan and North Korea also preserved some sporadic auxiliary materials, while their own records have been obliterated, just like a A deceased who did not leave any diary or self-report, can only piece together his life process by relying on the scattered memories of the neighbors around him. I know from the information that Bohai State was the most advanced autonomous vassal state in Northeast China that was most influenced by Tang civilization at that time.It is conceivable that tribes who have just come from a relatively primitive nomadic ecology will experience a long and arduous struggle whether to accept the Tang civilization, which was perhaps one of the highest civilizations in the world at that time.After struggling over and over again for many years, it finally defeated the conservative with the advanced and the backward with the civilization. It reached its peak in the period of the Great Renxiu (817-830 A.D.). The West stands side by side in the world.However, don't be optimistic. Has the advanced really defeated the conservative?Does civilization really triumph over backwardness?not necessarily.Darwin's theory of evolution often hits a wall when applied to social history.Haidong Shengguo is too eye-catching, and it is too easy to arouse the hatred of the people around it. Its close contact with the Tang Dynasty is too disgusting to other nomadic tribes. The wealth it gathers is too enviable. It can stimulate other people's desire to occupy, and its great reputation spread all over the world can too incite others' ambition to devour it.Thus, its strongest period is also its weakest period.Don't be happy because the crowds pay their respects. Look at the eyes of the admirers. The most serious crisis is already in ambush there.Only a hundred years have passed since the Great Renxiu Period. In 926 A.D., the Bohai Kingdom was suddenly destroyed by the Khitan. It seemed that a dramatic drama suddenly had an unexpected ending, but when you think about it carefully, this ending is also logical. of. Since there is such a powerful Tang civilization, how could it be destroyed by nomads?Friends who ask this question are naive.No matter what kind of civilization is unable to compete with barbarism at the most superficial level, the sad scene of scholar meeting soldier will appear frequently.The distant Tang Dynasty can sometimes help in terms of strength, but it is also very limited.The Tang Dynasty itself also experienced complicated internal struggles, and later perished, how could it help?Therefore, the advanced elements in the Bohai Kingdom who advocated accepting the civilization of the prosperous Tang Dynasty were doomed to be lonely tragic figures.They are likely to be said to be pro-Tang sects who have forgotten their ancestors, but the Tang Dynasty will not regard them as their own.In this regard, the gate art of the Bohai Kingdom during the Tang Xuanzong period is a typical example.His elder brother was once the ruler of the Bohai Kingdom, and he always wanted to fight against the Tang Dynasty. After several disputes, he fled to the Tang Dynasty.My elder brother negotiated with the Tang court, saying that my younger brother Damen Yi hid here against the military order, and you should help me kill him.Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty sent several diplomats to Bohai State, and told the elder brother, Da Damen Yi came to me in desperation. It is unreasonable for me to kill him, but we should respect your intention, so he was exiled to Lingnan, a place of smog. .Originally, the matter was over, but those diplomats who had lived in Bohai State for a long time made a slip of the tongue, revealing that Damen Yi had not been exiled.So the elder brother became angry and wrote to Tang Xuanzong to express his protest. Tang Xuanzong had to punish several diplomats.Sima Guang once made an interesting criticism on this matter in "Zi Zhi Tong Jian", to the effect that the Tang Dynasty should rely on prestige to convince its subordinate countries.The younger brother from Bohai Kingdom came to join you in order to prevent a war against the Tang Dynasty. You should have the courage to declare that he is right and innocent, while your elder brother is wrong.Unexpectedly, Tang Xuanzong was neither capable of subduing that elder brother, nor protecting that younger brother uprightly, so he would play tricks like a villain in the market, and in the end, he could not lift his head when he was questioned back, so he had no choice but to be rude to his diplomat , It's really embarrassing. (See Volume 213 of "Zi Zhi Tong Jian") Sima Guang said it well, but this historian should know that all politicians are realists, at least most of them will not stay away from They paid too much for their own civilization and culture.The younger brother named Damen Yi could only hide in Chang'an City. He fought for the civilization of his hometown capital, but the hometown capital couldn't tolerate him.Later, due to its own change of dynasty, Balhae State further moved towards civilization, but in this way, Balhae State itself became that younger brother, and became lonely, vulnerable, and helpless due to the high degree of civilization. It is true that a strong psychological norm and social order have been formed within the walls of the capital of Bohai State, which is moving towards civilization, and it will not degenerate soon, but the barbarians have their own methods for this.After the Khitan occupied the capital of the Bohai State, they first plundered as much as they wanted, and later discovered that a city is a concentration of invisible emotions, a stereotype of cultural understanding, even silent masonry eaves, walls, and thoroughfare. The strong nostalgia for the homeland and the idea of ​​revenge, want to capture but don't know where to go, think it's gone but permeate the surroundings.The Khitan people were angry and looked timid again. The combination of timidity and barbarism can always do the worst bad things in the world. They ordered to vacate the capital, move the whole country south, escape from these streets and buildings, dismantle these emotions and atmosphere, and then Set a big fire and completely burn the city down. We can’t describe the fire now, we can’t imagine the frightening scene after an Asian metropolis is completely thrown into the sea of ​​fire, and we can’t guess that countless Bohai people who are used to the prosperous life of big cities are forced to drag their children and daughters to the south and look back at the fire. mood and vision.I remember the local archaeologists told me that when excavating the ruins, you can always see some bricks, tiles, stones, etc. fracture.The fire seemed to be quite big, and I don't know how long it lasted.The well water in the eight-treasure glazed well that I looked at must have been boiling at that time, so the countless water sources that nourished it from afar would also become dry and hot, evaporating underground.But transpiration is just transpiration. After a while, everything cooled down again. The long wind in Shuobei blew away the last wisp of burnt smell, and the thick ice and snow wiped away any heat on this land. It seemed that everything was gone. happened before.People who migrated from Bohai to the south were scattered everywhere, and after several generations, even a descendant of Bohai people was hard to find. We can still only say that history once had a dream about a city on this desolate upper land.The dream was quickly shattered, and I woke up desolate. three Other cities in China have not suffered as tragically as the capital of the Bohai State, but they have similarities in terms of social and psychological atmosphere. "Huainanzi‧Yuan Dao Xun" said: "Gun built a city to defend the emperor, and built a Guo to house people. This is the beginning of the city."It can be seen that the construction of the earliest city walls in China was mainly to achieve the two projects of Weijun and Juren, so it has political, military, and economic value in many aspects, and it is very powerful at first glance.But at a more essential level, the vast Chinese land is infiltrated from the root with a scattered agricultural civilization, and the emergence of cities is a highly concentrated non-agricultural social movement, so it is a rebellion against this land.This essential opposition makes the city doomed to encounter many troubles.From a time-to-place perspective, cities are far superior to rural areas; but from a broader perspective, China's rural areas are much stronger. For example, cities do not directly engage in agricultural production, but must absorb a large amount of agricultural products.It cannot be separated from the countryside, but the countryside does not necessarily need it.A well-developed city needs its own well-developed handicraft industry and commerce. With well-developed handicraft industry and commerce, it has a sufficient reason to exist in the world, and the countryside cannot do without it.However, in ancient Chinese cities, the handicraft industry has not been able to achieve substantial development. In one point, it is not much different from the small workshops in the countryside. Business is even more discriminated against by traditional cultural concepts. Or donating officials, or buying land, still pays to the bureaucratic agricultural civilization, but does not bring much accumulation to the business itself.Therefore, China's cities can be said to be a kind of existence that is difficult to stand on their own, and it is difficult to maintain a long-term advantage over the countryside. In "Dream of Red Mansions", Grandma Liu, a peasant woman, went to the city several times and went to the Grand View Garden a few times, admiring her admiration. However, the source of Jia's wealth is from court rewards and farm donations, and court rewards are not only extremely unreliable And to make ends meet, it mainly depends on the farm.After all, it is extremely difficult for the farm to support such a big scene. Once the political backing is shaken, it has to fall apart.Even if the richest and most senior mansion in the city is like this, the fragility of the whole city can be imagined.In the end, even the popular daughter of Wang Xifeng had to rely on the countryman Grandma Liu to rescue her. The parasitic nature of Chinese cities encourages the simple agricultural thinking of planting melons and reaping melons from the negative side.In the eyes of peasants, those who do not directly engage in agricultural production but own wealth are probably unrighteous. Therefore, they need to take back the wealth they directly produce on a regular basis. This is what the peasant uprising army captured cities time and time again.Chinese peasants have always believed that looting houses in the countryside is an act of thieves, while taking down cities is a feat of joy.The insufficiency of the city itself, coupled with the psychological resistance to it from the vast countryside, makes it even less confident.Many city dwellers come from the countryside, and they also have doubts about the urban ecology. They have a strong sense of living here, and their way of thinking is still rooted in agricultural civilization.One of the most recent examples is the quatrains by Zhang Yu of the Song Dynasty that may still be included in elementary school Chinese textbooks today: into the city yesterday, return with tears Those who are all over the body, Not a silkworm farmer! According to the logic of this poem, it is only reasonable to let the silkworm farmers wear all kinds of brocade, and the farmers enjoy all the agricultural products exclusively.It is an extremely normal urban logic that people who are all over the body are not silkworm farmers, and it is not surprising at all, but it seems to people with rural eyes that they will have such a strong emotional reaction: they are full of tears!The first sentence "Entered the city yesterday" very precisely clarifies the opposite emotion between the poem and the city, which is of great value for cultural research.In the past, this poem was often interpreted as expressing class rebellion, which was a mistake, and Zhang Yu himself would not agree.What's interesting is that this very hypocritical little poem has become so popular that all modern Chinese people who have received primary education can recite it. The country people's mentality of looking down on the city with cold eyes conveyed in the poem has become a habitual mentality in China.Over the years, I have often listened to those children who are dressed up by their parents to reach the fashion level of an international metropolis, reciting this poem in a childish voice and forcefully mourning, and silently praying in my heart: When is the time, change it! Even the ordinary forms of life in the city are resisted and condemned in this way, let alone the promotion of the psychological rules of the city.It is difficult to cite a group of real urban thinkers in Chinese history.Reading ancient Greek and Roman literature, I saw those politicians and thinkers calling out loudly as soon as they opened their mouths: Citizens of Athens!Citizens of Rome!In ancient China, this kind of call was lacking.The first thinker with real urban awareness, I think Gong Zizhen, appeared too late, and he also failed to let his voice occupy any city. In an agricultural society, people all belong to the same production proposition, so although they are scattered, they have the same thinking; cities are the opposite, they are close to each other but have different ecology, and they are closely gathered but diverse.This diversity brings forward various life needs, making urban life more dazzling; this diversity also leads to the rapid communication of different information, making urbanites a group with broad vision, quick thinking, and many choices; This multivariate convergence will form a value comparison, which makes urban residents compare and judge the quality of life, life orientation, social trends, and political security far higher than that of rural diaspora.In this way, urban people became a humanistic group in Chinese society that violated the traditional principles of enlightenment, and it was difficult for both farmers and rulers to deal with.Urban consciousness, too, has almost become a heresy.Especially in modern China, after the force of the great powers and international civilization entered the coastal cities at the same time, the city consciousness naturally melted into international value coordinates and modern business principles, which was intolerable to the deep-rooted Chinese agricultural civilization.The struggle between the two civilizations has intensified from the last century to this century.The growth of urban civilization is very difficult and tenacious, while the encirclement and counterattack of agricultural civilization are even more severe. Modern Chinese cities are often subjected to de-urbanization movements that attempt to evacuate the vitality of the city.Or reorganize urban residential communities according to rural villages, and a large number of villages in cities appear; or let urban residents and factories go underground in batches in rural areas, and erode the cities bit by bit.Until the end of the 1960s, this de-urbanization movement reached its climax.In order to induce city dwellers to leave the city, the famous slogan "Don't live in the city" was put forward. This slogan contains ignorance and contempt for urban life, and is caused by a small peasant concept that regards direct agricultural production as the only means of creating wealth.Immediately afterwards, there was a national campaign to drive all the young students from the cities to the countryside.The reason why this movement is completely different from intellectuals’ support for frontier construction is that it draws all the life paths of all young students to the countryside, thus denying the necessity of the city’s continuation and inheritance at the intellectual level, and thus negates the need for the city to exist.At that time, graduates from every middle school had to go to the countryside, and children from every family had to go to the countryside, and they all went to the countryside for life. The only people left in the city were middle-aged and elderly people and young people who could not go to the countryside due to illness.If this movement does not end, but really becomes the basic national policy mentioned at the time, then within a few years, cities will no longer have any viable forces.The old people who missed their children and grandchildren in the countryside died in batches. Who will be left in the city?The streets and buildings are still there, but it has become the Dunhuang built in the desert, and it no longer exists as a city.The city has perished, perished in modern times, and perished in the invasion of the powerful small peasant consciousness.The horrific tragedy caused by this movement to educated youth is now well known, but the more horrific tragedy is that it directly points to the demise of the city.Fortunately, this movement lasted only ten years, and a prominent symbol of the new era is precisely the self-strengthening of each city. At the same time, some elements of urban ecology and urban consciousness have gradually infiltrated into the vast rural areas of China, making the great power of cities It is possible to moisten thousands of miles of mountains and rivers.Cities are, after all, the strongholds of China's modernization. Maybe not alarmist: We, really, have escaped a modern catastrophe that has wiped out countless cities.It should be noted that once this disaster is formed, it may be China's biggest retrogression since this century. But we can't be too optimistic.The rise and popularization of modern urban consciousness in China is not easy, and we still need to start with enlightenment in many aspects.The temporary prosperity of a city does not mean the formation of urban order, let alone the establishment of urban civilization. Urban civilization is premised on dense crowds, so it must present a three-dimensional structure that lists social and cultural value levels layer by layer, and conduct orderly operations based on this.Without this framework, the density of crowds can have the opposite effect, which is a fact that we have often seen in the past.In the hustle and bustle of the crowd, even an unfounded gossip can turn into an emotional surge with disastrous consequences.Since modern China, almost all man-made catastrophes have occurred in cities, which is the reason.Without a structure, those gossips and troublemakers will thrive in the crowd, while the city's elite will be trapped in the siege of ruffians, foreign adventurers, gamblers and upstarts, unable to show their advantages. The few wise men who can be the soul of the city will be overwhelmed by the noise of the city.Without structures, they are fragile; without them, cities are fragile. It is impossible to imagine that Athens in ancient Greece would not have Aristotle, London in the Renaissance would not have Shakespeare, and Paris in the French Revolution would not have Victor Hugo.They are the spiritual masters of the city. Extended from them, a city's laws of behavior and tacit understanding of thinking are orderly, just like an orderly urban transportation network and drainage system.China also has high-level ideological and cultural masters, but in order to avoid disorderly crowding, most of them hide in thatched cottages, thatched huts, and jingshe, and most of them hide in the mountains to give lectures, preside over Yuelu Academy or Bailudong Academy, and the relationship with the city not big.This tradition has made it impossible for us to grasp and elucidate urban civilization at a high level until today, and most successful works of art are based on rural areas or small towns. Therefore, Chinese cities that have suddenly become bustling have not fundamentally shaken off their natural fragility. Therefore, we cannot say that today's Chinese cities have completed the victory over thousands of years of feudal concepts and small peasant consciousness. Cities still have the possibility of being eroded. Four As far as I am concerned, sometimes I am dizzy by the hustle and bustle around me, and I really want to avoid the city, so I have doubts about the necessity of calling for urban civilization.In particular, many western urbanites have put forward the slogan of returning to nature. Do we have to get into the vicious circle that others have already wanted to get out of? From this, I thought of the exiles of the Qing Dynasty who discovered the relics of the Bohai Kingdom.They were exiled from the city, and when they left the city with tears in their eyes, how would they feel when they suddenly saw the ruins of a metropolis?I think most of them will understand the boredom of fame in the city from the ruins, so as to gain peace and transcendence, and relieve the pain in their hearts. I remember that after leaving the ruins of the Bohai Kingdom, we went to Jingpo Lake not far away.Facing the tranquil beauty of Jingpo Lake, I once thought: the ruins are proud of the ephemerality of fame, and Jingpo Lake is further proud of the ephemerality of the ruins.The ruins of Bohai State have existed for more than a thousand years, and Jingpo Lake has existed for at least 10,000 years.The ruins are the remnants of previous achievements. Jingpo Lake has completely left the achievements, so there are no ruins. It will always be youthful and charming. It has been charming for tens of thousands of years and will not grow old. The contributors who have been charming by it have turned into dust one by one. , and it is still charming.How nice it is to be as deserted and indifferent as Jingpo Lake. Thinking about it this way, I seem to have achieved complete liberation, just like the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi once gave me, but soon I felt the falseness of this liberation.It is impossible for a flesh-and-blood person to really equate himself with Eternal Lake and Mountain. In fact, even if I live in Jingbo Lake for a long time, I will not be able to adapt due to loneliness and loneliness.Although I like quietness and respect nature, I will never be a hermit.As a modern person, I am more eager for the vigorous heat energy emitted by countless lives.Instead of staying in the mountains for a long time, it is better to bear the bustling crowd, hurried footsteps, and countless faces that are both familiar and unfamiliar.I will never pretend to be elegant by frowning and pretending to hate the crowding of the world, but I just wait for the morning to go out, and a few strangers in the market will say good morning to me, and then let the tide of people leave me. I melt. After all, I am a secular person and I love cities. My devotion to the city, of course, includes an acknowledgment of its evils.The evil of the city is a concentrated, warmed, fermented, and then disguised evil, so it is often more repulsive than the evil of the mountains and countryside; Controlling the overall situation and covering the streets, the most ordinary secular life is tenaciously spread in the streets.Therefore, if we cannot eliminate evil, we can walk quickly through it, and a few steps away is a vast oasis of secular humanity.Walking like this every day, walking through evil, towards humanity, towards the crowds and bustle of human beings, this is a kind of metaphysical anthropological action of the city.