Chapter 5 Chapter Four: Su Dongpo's Breakthrough

one Living in this half-mountain residence away from the busy city, there is tranquility, but loneliness also comes, sometimes fiercely, especially in the middle of the night.I had to walk around the room alone, draw the curtains, and separate the cliffs and the rolling tide outside the window, and glance at the milky white phone beside the bed from time to time.It rang, and I rushed over. It was a call from the "China Times" office in Taipei. A female reporter who I didn't know said that my book "Cultural Journey" was selling well in Taiwan, so I wanted to make an overseas report. telephone interview.They asked me a lot of questions about my background, experience, and hobbies.The last question is: Which writer do you like most in the history of Chinese culture?I replied: Su Dongpo.She asked again: Among his works, which ones do you like the most?I replied: I wrote those articles about Chibi in Huangzhou.The reporter said without a pause: You mean "Nian Nujiao‧Chibi Nostalgia" and the previous and later "Chibi Fu"?I said yes, and I was immediately happy for Su Dongpo. His works are the universal codes of Chinese literati, and they can be read at one point, even if it is mid-night in the middle of the mountain, blocked by the Strait, and has never been acquainted.

Putting down the phone, Huangzhou Chibi immediately appeared in my mind.I was there last summer and was very impressed.I remember that before going there, some friends from Wuhan came to dissuade them. The reason was that the famous Battle of Chibi was not fought there. Su Dongpo was nostalgic for the wrong place. To make it ugly is to add more mistakes, the weather is so hot, the road is so far, why bother? I know that most historians don't believe that the Battle of Chibi was really fought there, most of them say it was fought in Jiayu County.However, in recent years, several young and middle-aged historians in Hubei Province held the opposite opinion, believing that Su Dongpo's nostalgia for the past was not wrong, and that Chibi in Huangzhou was the main battlefield of the war at that time.I have always been interested in this debate. No matter what the prospect of the debate is, I still want to visit Huangzhou, not from the perspective of history to see the ruins of the ancient battlefield, but from the perspective of art to see the feelings of Su Dongpo.Even if a great artist is wrong, he will also be wrong about charm.As Wilde said, there is only beauty and ugliness in art and there is no right or wrong.

So I went anyway. This is Huangzhou Chibi.The steep ochre-red stone slope is facing the mighty river going east. There are dangerous roads on the slope that can be climbed and overlooked. There are small boats on the river to look up. There is a comparison between the great and the small, and the variation and perversion of the visual space, so there is also the value of sightseeing and meditation.The objective scenery only provides an aesthetic possibility, and different tourists make this possibility realize in different degrees.Su Dongpo injected meaning into Huangzhou's natural scenery with his own spiritual power, and it is this meaning that makes the inanimate natural form beautiful.Therefore, it can be said that Su Dongpo is not only the discoverer of Huangzhou's natural beauty, but also the determiner and builder of Huangzhou's natural beauty.

However, the complexity of the matter lies in the fact that natural beauty can also determine and construct human beings in reverse.Su Dongpo fulfilled Huangzhou, and Huangzhou also fulfilled Su Dongpo. This is really an interesting relationship that complements each other.Su Dongpo's masterpieces written in Huangzhou not only announced that Huangzhou has entered a new aesthetic level, but also announced that Su Dongpo has entered a new stage of life. Both aspects are promoted together, and no one can do without the other. Su Dongpo has traveled to many places, many of which are far more beautiful than Huangzhou. Why can a remote Huangzhou give him such a huge surprise and shock?Why can he bet such profound historical meaning and life meaning on Huangzhou?Why can Huangzhou become the most important station in his life?All of this depends on his reason and mentality for coming to Huangzhou.

He came from the prison, he came with a very small official position, actually as an exiled criminal, he came with the dirty water thrown at him by the officialdom and the literary world, he walked away full of luck and despair Come.He was escorted away from his family, and he was not qualified to choose any place other than Huangzhou, and walked towards this desolate town at that time. He was very tired and embarrassed. He went out of Bianliang, crossed Henan, crossed the Huaihe River, entered Hubei, and arrived in Huangzhou. The depressed Huangzhou did not prepare any residence for him, so he had to live in a temple.He wiped his face and took a breath. There was silence around him, not even a friend. He closed his eyes and shook his head.He didn't know that at this moment, he had completed a cultural breakthrough that would go down in history forever.Huangzhou is destined to have a magnificent dialogue with this scarred breakout.

two People may sometimes think foolishly that a great writer like Su Dongpo who has been shared by Chinese people for thousands of years should be the supreme pride of his era. People around him will cherish him carefully and look up to him devoutly, and they will never want to Are you going to trouble him?In fact, on the contrary, the more cultural celebrities transcend the era, the more incompatible they are with the specific era in which they live.The mechanism of China's secular society is very peculiar. On the one hand, it is willing to spread and bombard the reputation of a cultural celebrity, use him, squeeze him, and seduce him; him, spoil him, destroy him.The booing-style propaganda is transformed into the booing-style derogation. Both kinds of booing originate from inferiority and cunning coveting mentality, and both kinds of booing are contrary to a healthy cultural atmosphere.

Before Su Dongpo came to Huangzhou, he was caught in a case called Wutai Poetry Prison by literary historians. The specific content of this case is special, but it reflects the common experience of cultural celebrities in Chinese society. It is worth mentioning.Only by clarifying the faces of the various people in this case can we understand what kind of encirclement Su Dongpo broke through when he came to Huangzhou. In order not to make readers spend their attention on the specific content of the case, we might as well explain the bottom line of the case first.Even from the standpoint of the imperial court, this is a completely unwarranted and ridiculous incident.A group of cultural bureaucrats, big and small, insisted that Su Dongpo expressed his dissatisfaction and disrespect for the government in many of his poems. The method was to make superficial inferences and interpretations of the words, sentences and images in his poems. He believed it too much, and almost had to convict Su Dongpo between half-belief and doubt.Among the emperors in ancient China, Song Shenzong was definitely not bad. He had no intention of persecuting Su Dongpo in his heart. He was well aware of Su Dongpo's talent. He also respects his grandmother's opinion very much. In this case, isn't Su Dongpo very safe?However, regardless of the will of the Emperor Shenzong and the Empress Dowager, Su Dongpo, who was well-known in Kyushu and the official residence of the prefect, was sent to prison.This powerful and evil force is worth studying.

It's a long story.The rulers under the autocratic system often put on a posture of paying attention to public opinion, and sometimes even set up so-called admonishers who specialize in finding faults and faults among officials at all levels, acting as the eyes, ears and mouthpiece of the court.This may seem like a good thing at first glance, but in reality it has many disadvantages.The words of these admonishers who have the image of public opinion cannot be defended by others, and there is no investigation mechanism or arbitration mechanism. Everything depends on their private qualities, but there is also no mechanism for examining private qualities, so the so-called public opinion This often becomes a social disaster that distorts facts and reverses right and wrong.This is like if modern newspapers lack sufficient professional ethics and corresponding laws and regulations. What a mess!Su Dongpo has long seen the seriousness of this problem, and believes that this so-called public opinion and criticism without any restrictions is enough to change the mentality of the court decision-makers, and has great political lethality (talking about Chengyu, the emperor will change his face, If it is related to Langmiao, then the prime minister will be punished), we must be vigilant, but Emperor Shenzong could not realize this because of his different status.Unexpectedly, it was Su Dongpo himself who had tasted the bitter fruit he had predicted. In order to maintain his image of respecting public opinion, Emperor Shenzong could not speak for Su Dongpo when the criticisms of Su Dongpo were almost unanimously gathered together.

So, why did the criticisms of Su Dongpo converge at the same time?I think the shortest answer is what his younger brother Su Zhe said: What is Dongpo's crime?The name alone is too high.He is too good, too loud, he can compare the pen and ink around him very poorly, and he can compare the literati of the same generation to a little embarrassment, which arouses some people's sour jealousy, and then you punch me and kick me, it is almost inevitable. .In this ignominious siege some men of letters of low character took the vanguard. For example Shu Yu.This person can be called a professional whistleblower. While exposing Su Dongpo, he also exposed another person. That person was the benefactor who recommended him to be an official.This great benefactor wrote him a letter, taking his son-in-law's homework and asking him for advice and counseling. This was a very normal small matter between friends, but he unexpectedly wrote an inexplicable report to the emperor in an ungrateful manner. The report said that both of us are officials, and I am in the field of public opinion. It is not appropriate for him to ask me to tutor his son-in-law.After reading his report, the emperor demoted that person.This is simply the story of Mr. Dong Guo and the wolf.It was such a disgusting person who, echoing He Zhengchen and others, wrote an article to tell the emperor that Su Dongpo's letter of thanks to the emperor after he took office in Huzhou contained sarcasm about current events.The emperor had already read Su Dongpo's thank you letter, and found nothing wrong with it. However, Shu Quan painstakingly analyzed it one by one for the emperor. , Loyal and righteous people, all the degree of indignation!To be angry is to be angry with Su Dongpo, and to be sorry is to be sorry for the emperor.How many loyal and righteous people are indignant?He said it was everything, that is, 100 percent, nothing was left out.This kind of quantitative statistics cannot be verified at all, but it can make Emperor Shenzong, who pays attention to social reputation, feel relieved.

Another example is Li Ding.This is a high-ranking official who once caused people to scold him for his disobedience to filial piety after his mother's death. He attacked Su Dongpo most fiercely.He summed up many of Su Dongpo's crimes, but after careful identification, I found that he paid special attention to Su Dongpo's poor background in his early years, his current status in the cultural circle and his social reputation.None of this could be classified as a crime, but he seemed unable to repress the points where he expressed his greatest indignation.It is said that Su Dongpo started from a humble beginning in the grasslands, had no academics at the beginning, gained a reputation indiscriminately, and his diction, although unreasonable, was enough to encourage popular customs, and so on.Su Dongpo's background aroused his dissatisfaction and let alone talk about it. He insisted that Su Dongpo was ignorant and poor in diction, which really surprised me.But if he didn't say that, he couldn't assert that Su Dongpo's social reputation and secular motivation were indiscriminate.All in all, Li Ding's attack obviously hides one of the most secret elements under various superficial motives: jealousy.In any case, it is too stupid to slander Su Dongpo's knowledge and literary talent. This could not add Su Dongpo's crime at the time, but it has become a laughing stock for thousands of years later.But jealousy will get out of control once it gets deep, he will only find the parts he hates the most to attack, and he no longer cares about the credibility and rationality even if it is pretending.

Another example is Wang Gui.This is a domineering and hypocritical old man.Based on his qualifications and status, he thinks that his writing is the best in the world. In fact, he can't do without the words Jinyu Jinxiu when he writes poems and essays. Everyone secretly smiles, and he still feels good about himself.Now, Su Dongpo, a rising star, is well-known in the literary world, so of course he must do everything possible to deal with it.Once he said to the emperor: Su Dongpo did have a double heart for the emperor.The emperor asked: How can you see it?He cited the word Zhelong in Su Dongpo's poem about juniper trees as evidence. The emperor was puzzled and said: What does the poet's writing about juniper trees have to do with me?He said: When you write about dragons, don’t you write about the emperor?The emperor was sober-minded, and retorted: Not necessarily, people call him Zhuge Liang and Wolong!This Wang Gui is so low-minded, how can the article be any better?Not to mention competing with Su Dongpo.A few strands of white hair can sometimes pretend to be a teacher and cover up evil, but they cannot deceive history.In the end, history did not rank his name in front of Su Dongpo because of his age. Another example is Li Yizhi.This is another special case. I was a small sesame and mung bean official. In Lingbi County, Anhui Province, I heard that Su Dongpo wrote a garden diary for a local garden. Report to the emperor, and analyze that this kind of thinking will make people less aggressive, and it will also affect the selection of scholars.It seems that this Li Yizhi has not only bad intentions, but also a serious problem with his intelligence. You can see that he even found nondescript grounds for framing.However, in the absence of a rational court, even the most stupid accusation can be established, so it constitutes an encouragement to Li Yizhi scattered all over the country.Why would people with such a low class squeeze in to besiege Su Dongpo?Mr. Li Yibing, a contemporary researcher of Su Dongpo, said it very well: He also came to intervene. If there is no other, an unknown official, if he can participate in a major event that brings down celebrities, it will be enough to gain weight.In a sense, his purpose has indeed been partially achieved. For example, when I write this article today, I still write the name Li Yizhi because he participated in the siege of Su Dongpo, otherwise he would not have Any reason was written down in print, even by a contemporaneous person. Some of my young friends, based on their multi-faceted observation of today's secular psychology, feel that people like Li Yizhi are not necessarily trying to leave their names in history, but out of a mischievous psychology that can be called smashing windows.At night, a group of children stood in front of a building and pointed, picking a stone and throwing it to see whose window was lighted. It didn't have any purpose, just trying to show some limelight among a few children.I think my young friends regard Li Yizhi as too modern and too urbanized.Li Yizhi's actions were mainly motivated by a kind of political speculation. He heard that Su Dongpo was in trouble, so he made the trouble a little bigger. Anyway, he would not be morally responsible internally, nor legally responsible externally.Such a person would not have the guts to take the lead on a cultural celebrity like Li Ding, Shu Quan and Wang Gui. Maybe they were bragging about where they had the honor to meet Su Dongpo two days ago, insisting that Su Dongpo was his friend. Even teachers. Another example is that I really don't want to write this name, but after thinking about it again and there is no reason to avoid it, I should write it: Shen Kuo.This famous scientist who occupies a considerable position in the history of ancient Chinese science and technology also framed Su Dongpo out of jealousy, and the method he used was still to expose the tendency of satirizing the government in Su Dongpo's poems.If he and Su Dongpo were political enemies, that would be fine. The problem is that they were once good friends. The poems he denounced and exposed were the recent works that Su Dongpo had recorded and given to him as a souvenir when he parted from him.This is really bad taste.According to the analysis of historians, this probably has something to do with the emperor saying good things about Su Dongpo in front of Shen Kuo. Shen Kuo had a silent contrast in his heart and did not want Su Dongpo to have a higher cultural status than himself.Another possibility is that he knew very well that Wang Anshi and Su Dongpo had different political views, so he bet on Wang Anshi's side.But after all, Wang Anshi is also a master of culture who pays attention to character. He has paid attention to Shen Kuo, but in the end he came to the conclusion that this is an unapproachable villain.Of course, the inaccessibility of personality does not affect our affirmation of Shen Kuo's scientific achievements. There are still some besiegers, and I would like to mention just a few. The reasons for Su Dongpo’s sudden predicament can be roughly seen, and we have also experienced a group of small typical cultural groups that may transcend time and space.It would be very difficult for any one of them to bring down Su Dongpo alone, but in the absence of a strong anti-defamation and anti-framing mechanism in society, a person's adventure of probing one's brains will easily attract a bunch of people who join in the fun, As a result, even the Emperor Shenzong became suspicious of Su Dongpo and ordered to investigate clearly, and it was Li Ding and others who went to investigate. Su Dongpo didn't care much at first.Someone secretly told him that his poems had been reported. He was taken aback at first, and then said coolly and humorously: From now on, my poems will not worry that the emperor will not see them.But the development of the situation became less and less unrestrained. On July 28, 1079, the imperial court sent people to the state government office in Huzhou to arrest Su Dongpo. Su Dongpo was at a loss when he heard the news in advance.A literati is a literati after all. He has no idea what crime he has committed. Judging from his aggressive appearance, he will probably be executed. He is afraid and hides in the back room and dare not come out. Friends say hiding is not the way, and he is already waiting in front of him. It's caught, and I can't hide it if I want to.When he was about to come out, he hesitated again. What kind of clothes should he wear when he came out?I have already committed a crime, can I still wear official uniforms?My friend said, I don't know what the crime is, so I should wear official uniforms.Su Dongpo finally came out in his official uniform, and the officials sent by the imperial court pretended to be silent for a long time, deliberately acting out a scene that was overwhelmingly overwhelming.Su Dongpo became more and more flustered, and said: I probably annoyed the court, it seems that I must die, please allow me to go home and say goodbye to my family.The officer said that this was not the case, so he asked two officers to tie up Su Dongpo with a rope, and set out on the road like driving away chickens and dogs.The family members came and cried loudly, and the citizens of Huzhou City also shed tears on the side of the road. The long-distance escort was like showing off to the public all the way. Unfortunately, there were almost no media at that time, and the people along the way did not know that this was Su Dongpo.In a barren and ignorant land, a world-class great poet is bound by a rope, advancing step by step.Su Dongpo is showing the public, and the whole nation is humiliating. The cause of all the encounters is still unknown. Su Dongpo was afraid that his relatives and friends would be hurt. When passing by Taihu Lake and Yangtze River, he wanted to commit suicide by throwing himself into the water, but he failed due to strict guards.Of course, it is also very possible. Then, what will be submerged in the rivers and lakes will be a large section of the particularly bright and beautiful Chinese civilization.This is the fragility of civilization. One step away will change the whole thing, and it is a group of villains who push the representatives of civilization to this step.The fact that a group of small people can accomplish such great things can only be attributed to China's unique national conditions. The villain leads the master, and the master leads history.The villain shook the rope heavily, and the master and history became the incarnation of sin.A piece of Chinese cultural history has been tied up in the dock for a long time, and most of the judges and plaintiffs are a group of winking villains. What exactly is the crime?Check it out! How to judge?beat! An official who was once held in the same prison, just across the wall from Su Tungpo's cell, wrote in verse: Take pity on Beihu Wu Xingshou, I can't bear to hear the criticism all night. He insulted and tortured all night to the point that other prisoners couldn't stand it, and the object of the insult and torture turned out to be Su Dongpo! Allow me to pause here for a moment.I believe that all cultural consciences will tremble here.How many people are as lovely, noble and charming as Su Dongpo in China for thousands of years?But cuteness, nobility, and charm often constitute neither social appeal nor self-defense. What is really powerful is evil, vulgarity, and brutality. They are almost invincible, invincible, and invincible.Now, Su Dongpo was being held and kneaded in their hands, the more lovely, noble, and charming he was, the harder he kneaded.A gentle and gentle man like the breeze in the forest and the white clouds in the deep valley, it is impossible to make any decent rebuttals in the face of this completely unfamiliar language system and behavior system. He must have become very clumsy, unable to mobilize the basic words and complete simple logic. .His response in the cell was absolutely no better than that of an ordinary thief.So the interrogators were both angry and happy. It turns out that such a famous person is an idiot, and your usual eloquence was eaten by dogs?Looking at you like a bear, you can still write poems and lyrics?Is it purely copied from others?Then there was a round of beatings, the poet wailed with a voice like pure silver, until he wailed hoarsely.This is a place where all you need is to wail. You write such a beautiful poem, it’s already ridiculous, shouldn’t you play it?Hit, hit you until you wear light makeup, hit you so that you can go home with the wind, beat you so hard that you go hunting in Mizhou! At the beginning, Su Dongpo tried to answer with some normal logic, but the interrogator insisted that his poem was meant to ridicule the imperial court. Come.All framers like to dress up as discoverers with some sinister intentions. Su Dongpo pointed out that they are not discoverers but manufacturers.That is to say, the sinister intentions inferred by the framers can be regarded as their own hearts, so they should bear it by themselves.I think that all people who have been framed will think of this simple truth sooner or later. If this truth can be popularized in China, the number of false accusations will be greatly reduced.However, in the prison cell, Su Dongpo's line of thought provoked even more severe insults and tortures, which can only be done when the framer and the investigator are completely integrated and linked together.Finally, Su Dongpo couldn't take it anymore, couldn't stand the continuous extortion of confessions day after day and all night long. He wanted to close his eyes and take a breath. The only way was to admit it.Therefore, in his previous poems, there were bitter plums on the side of the road, which meant that he was not valued by the court; Wrote a poem chanting Chao Tide, Wu Er grows up to love Taoyuan, it is said that he is alluding to the emperor's construction of water conservancy!Even Su Dongpo, a romantic poet, found it difficult to jump over this kind of bold association, so it was not easy to admit it in one step.The sentence that often appears in the case file records is: hide one by one, don't tell the truth, and then investigate and trick.Su Dongpo took all the moves, and at the same time he knew that he would die.Just imagine, if the emperor is called Wu Er, and the construction of water conservancy is called playing with water, and when watching the tide of Qiantang, he is thinking of writing anti-poetry, how can he still live? All he wanted was death.He felt that he had burdened his family, felt sorry for his old wife, and missed his younger brother very much.He asked a kind-hearted jailer to bring two poems to Su Zhe, in which there are sentences like this: It is a green hill where the bones can be buried, but he is alone in the rain at night, and he is brothers with the king and the world, and he will have an unresolved cause for the next life.The place where the bones are buried, he hopes is the West Lake in Hangzhou. It was nothing but verse that drove him to his death.I don't know if he complained or even hated poetry in those days behind bars.Unexpectedly, at this moment, a kind of cultural conscience scattered everywhere began to gather indistinctly, and his poems actually produced a positive response in this critical time. His readers slowly raised their heads and wanted to say A few words worthy of my heart.Many people dare not say it, but there are still brave people after all; most of his friends avoid him, but there are still chivalrous people after all. The fathers and people in Hangzhou remembered all the wonderful deeds he had done when he was an official in the local area. After he was imprisoned, he openly set up a dojo to understand evil, and prayed to the gods to bless him; Hot water for washing feet was prepared every night; his friends Fan Zhen and Zhang Fangping in the court were not afraid of being implicated, and wrote to the emperor, saying that he was a genius in the world in literature, and hoped to be lenient; his political enemy Wang Anshi's younger brother Wang Anli He also spoke uprightly and said to the emperor: since ancient times, a magnanimous king has never sinned with words. If Su Dongpo is severely punished, future generations may say that your majesty cannot tolerate talent.The most interesting thing is the empress dowager we mentioned above. She was dying of illness. Emperor Shenzong wanted to pardon the criminals to pray for her life. enough!The most straightforward one was Wu Chong, the left chancellor of the dynasty. Once he talked about Cao Cao with the emperor. The emperor didn’t think highly of Cao Cao. Woolen cloth? To these people, whether it is the jailer or the Queen Mother, we must be deeply grateful.They understand the value of Su Dongpo better than researchers, and even the basin of water for washing feet is full of cultural heat. According to Wang Gong's "Jiashen Miscellaneous Notes", Li Ding, who took the lead in framing, investigating, and interrogating Su Dongpo, was triumphant all day long. One day, he was waiting outside the gate of the Chongzheng Hall with Manchu officials to tell everyone about the interrogation of Su Dongpo. Regarding the situation, he said: Su Dongpo is really a genius. He can remember poems from ten or twenty years ago clearly during interrogation!He thought that there would be many officials interested in such a famous case that had spread to the government and the public, but the strange thing was that after he said these words to provoke others to ask questions, no one spoke up or asked questions. There was silence outside.He was a little flustered, pretending to be emotional, and sighed a few times, but there was still silence in response.This silence is not a struggle, nor is it a public opinion, but it does have a bit of nobility.In contrast, there has always been some irresponsible excitement around many framers, fueling the frame with noise. In this situation, the emperor released Su Dongpo and relegated him to Huangzhou.The importance of Huangzhou to Su Dongpo is self-evident. three I really like reading "The Biography of Su Dongpo" by Mr. Lin Yutang. I can't remember how many times I have read it, but every time I always feel that Mr. Yutang's description of Su Dongpo's situation and mentality in Huangzhou is too ideal.Mr. Yutang loves Su Dongpo's Huangzhou poems and essays, so he renders them from poems and essays, and from his love, rendering them elegant and holy.In fact, as far as I know, Su Dongpo was still very miserable in Huangzhou, and his beautiful poems are the struggle and transcendence of misery. Su Dongpo's living conditions in Huangzhou have been described very clearly in a letter he wrote to Uncle Li Duan.The letter said: Since being offended, he has been deeply isolated, wandering in the mountains and rivers, and mixed with woodcutters and fishers.I have never seen a word of relatives and friends in my life, and I don’t answer them when I have books. Fortunately, I am almost immune. When I first read this passage, I was very shocked, because everyone knows that Su Dongpo, a cheerful celebrity, has many friends.The day-to-day entertainment and the endless chants have almost become the basic content of his life. Half of his life is for his friends.However, once something happened, not only did my friends stop writing, but they also stopped replying.They all knew that Su Dongpo had been wronged, and now that the incident was largely over, they were still unwilling to write a word or two of consolation, even if it was to greet the daily life.Su Dongpo's letters, written with exquisite pen and ink that illuminated the history of Chinese calligraphy, were brought out from Huangzhou with great pains, but they could not exchange any news of friendship.I believe that these friends are not bad people, but just because they are not bad people makes me sigh deeply.All in all, the original world has disappeared with a bang, so a generation of celebrities are also mixed among woodcutters and fishermen and are not recognized by others.Originally, this was likely to be easy, but he felt that there were still countless pairs of eyes watching him in the distance. For the time being, he still couldn't feel that the world still had a very warm response to his poems, so he could only panic in loneliness.Even for this irrelevant letter, he made a special note not to show it to others.In daily life, before my family picks me up, I mostly sleep during the day, go out for a walk alone at night, and drink a glass of local wine whenever I see it, but I never drink too much, lest I will slip up when I get drunk. Is he really scared?Yes and no.What he is afraid of is trouble, but he is never afraid of righteousness, for the common people, and even for the court and the emperor.He has already understood through the Wutai Poetry case that even if a person has been framed, he will die without a reason. You can't find the target of your impassioned speech, and you can't grasp the reason to die calmly.You want to be a hero without hesitation, but somehow you are dressed as a clown; you want to be a steadfast and unyielding martyr, but you make trouble and become a prisoner of deep repentance.There is no way to wash it away, nowhere to justify it, let alone how to raise your own protest and publish your own manifesto.This is indeed very close to the sauce jar culture proposed by some scholars. Once you jump in it, you can't wipe it off.Su Dongpo was afraid of this, and no high-quality cultural person would not be afraid of it.But he still has a fearless side in his heart, or the disaster made him even more fearless.In his letter to Li Chang, he said: Although we are old and poor, we have truth in our hearts, loyalty in our bones, and we have to talk and laugh at the moment of life and death.Although cherishing the ups and downs of the times, those who can honor the Lord and the people will forget their bodies and do it, and give blessings to the creation. Such sincere bravery, such free and easy feelings, come from the pen of Su Dongpo, who has been naive for most of his life, and it is completely believable. However, where should he write this big article on life and morality?There is no place, no opportunity, no spectators and no adjudicators, only a big sauce vat that dyes right and wrong, loyalty, treachery, good and evil.So, just after Su Dongpo wrote the above few sentences, Zhi Yi thought about it and immediately added another sentence: Burn this letter after reading it. This is a true spiritual loneliness, and for a man of culture, there is nothing more painful.Na Que's famous divination operator used a beautiful artistic conception to express this kind of spiritual experience: When the moon is missing, hang Shutong, and when the moon is missing, people are still at the beginning.Who sees you people coming and going alone?Misty and lonely Hongying. Startled but turned around, there is no one to forgive.Pick all the cold branches and refuse to live, the lonely sandbar is cold. It is this kind of unspeakable loneliness that makes him completely wash away the hustle and bustle of life, looking for the silent landscape, and looking for the ancients who have passed away.Seek dialogue where it cannot be, and dialogue must be extraordinary.If a soul like Su Dongpo is silent, sooner or later a grand miracle will suddenly appear and surprise the world. However, even if he writes poetry and composition now, he will not pursue social sensation.In his loneliness, he reflected on the past, and felt that his biggest problem in the past was his talent and lack of self-knowledge.A section of tree pleases people by its gnarles, and a stone by its moire, but it is their fault that they can be used to please people, and that is not their proper use.I, Su Dongpo, have tried to win praise from others for more than 30 years, and most of my weaknesses are my weaknesses. For example, I wrote political and policy theories for the imperial examinations when I was a child. The official thinks he really understands this, and shows off complacently, but how can I actually understand it?I didn't know it until I faced death all at once, and I was flaunting ignorance.The biggest malady for more than thirty years is here.Now I finally understand that the me who came to Huangzhou is the enlightened me, and I am two people from the former Su Dongpo. (See Uncle Li Duan's book) Su Dongpo's introspection is not a kind of psychological adjustment to be well-behaved, but an extremely sincere self-analysis, with the purpose of finding his true self.He was ruthlessly stripping himself of every iota of alienness, even if it had brought him office, honor, and fame.He gradually returned to purity and emptiness. In this process, Buddhism helped him a lot and made him used to indifference and tranquility.The hard material life forced him to reclaim wasteland and cultivate land by himself, to appreciate the primitive meaning of nature and life. All these made Su Dongpo experience a rebirth in the overall sense, and also made his artistic talent obtain a distillation and sublimation. He has truly matured, like many masters throughout the ages, matured after a disaster, matured after extinction The rebirth of a man matured in the backcountry, when almost no one was around him.Fortunately, he is not old yet. During his time in Huangzhou, he was between forty-four and forty-eight years old. For a man, it is the most important age, and he has a lot to do in the future.In Chinese history, many people realized that they were too old in their twilight years, in other words, matured at the age of the season, and just about to enjoy the blessings of maturity, but their steps were already faltering. Compared with them, Su Dongpo was really lucky. Maturity is a bright but not dazzling brilliance, a mellow but not greasy sound, a calmness that no longer needs to observe others' words and expressions, a kind of atmosphere that finally stops appealing to the surroundings, a smile that ignores the noise, a kind that has washed away the extremes. A kind of indifference, a kind of unobtrusive thickness, a kind of height that is not steep.The vigorous pride has fermented, the sharp mountain wind has stopped, and the turbulent stream has merged into a lake. The prelude to guide the masterpieces through the ages has sounded, and a mysterious sky light shoots towards Huangzhou. "Niannujiao‧Chibi Nostalgia" and "Chibi Fu" will be produced soon.