Chapter 3 roman holiday

one There are many beautiful words in the world that can be assigned to various cities in Europe, such as exquisite, rustic, magnificent, smooth, classical, cutting-edge, tranquil, comfortable, strange, mysterious, spectacular, and solemn. Instead of sticking to the word, there is competition. There is only one word, they won't fight, and even if they get it, they won't use it. They just let it quietly sit on a high position that is not bright, and leave it to the only city. The word is great, the city is Rome. Greatness is a faint atmosphere, overflowing from every old window, overflowing from every ancient brick, overflowing from every carving, overflowing from every bunch of old vines.However, other cities also have old windows, ancient bricks, carvings, and old vines. Why do they obediently think that they have nothing to do with greatness?

The greatness of Rome lies in the fact that every dynasty has a complete legacy, every legacy has a high-spirited gesture, every gesture has been designed by a master artist, and every design constitutes a harmony of front, back, left, and right, and every harmony All make time and space look at each other peacefully, and every time they look at each other makes other cities feel ashamed and avoid it. The greatness of Rome is thus a kind of eternal paragon.The designers of other cities in Europe have a shadowy Rome in their dreams. two When I went to Rome for the first time, I made an appointment with a group of friends, and invited a special friend, Mr. Jiang Xianyang, who everyone knew, to lead the team.What makes Jiang Xianyang special is that he was originally a famous tenor singer in Shanghai. He has settled in Rome for many years because of his love of Italian bel canto.He first drove to Germany to pick us up, and then went to Italy via Luxembourg, France, and Monaco. He saw countless sculptures and palaces along the way, but as long as we stopped and looked up for a long time, he raised a finger and shook it lightly, saying :No!No!Look at Rome, that's the source.When we laughed at him too much, he responded with a more confident smile and stopped talking.But once we entered Rome, it was the other way around. We were the ones who were silent. Everyone was indeed overwhelmed by an indescribable aura, but he became more and more active. Wrong?

Today, I visited Rome again, and I have a bottom line in my heart. After listening to my introduction, my partners are also full of energy. They just want to take a good look at a truly great city.However, who would have thought that the most surprising thing happened. The partners couldn't believe their eyes, they stared blankly for a while, then turned to look at me, as if asking what was going on, but they immediately found that I was more flustered than they were. It turns out that Rome in front of you is almost an empty city!How can this be? The doors of every store were closed, and the streets were empty of pedestrians.

The thousand-year-old city gate is wide open, and there is silence inside and outside the gate.There are also guards with swords at the city gate, but they are sculptures, with a pair of live pigeons standing on bronze shoulders. Even if all the citizens of the city go out to fight, it will not be so quiet.Even if the Roman Empire was bloodbathed, it would not be so dead. Of course, occasionally a few pedestrians appeared from the corner of the street, but it was clear at a glance that they were foreign visitors like us, not the owners of the city.After finally seeing two old men coming out of a room, they stopped to inquire quickly, only to find out that a long vacation started yesterday, and everyone went on vacation.It is said that 30 million of the 58 million Italians have gone abroad in the past two days.

It's hard for me to believe such a proportion of people, but after I checked into the hotel, I saw that TV stations and newspapers said so. Historically, Rome has only done big things.I stood on the empty street and thought, this wide road, this tall gate, this mottled building, I have seen how many neat crowds come in and out. Today, the descendants of these crowds leave in a mighty way. It's a big deal to leave us an empty city, to strangers who don't know where they came from. In Xinjiang, China, I have seen the ancient cities of Jiaohe and Gaochang that were suddenly abandoned by the ancients. Walking among the ruined houses and walls, I was terrified and inexplicable.Ordinary people have limited acceptance of extreme aesthetic images. I know that the deserted empty city is beautiful, but I always dare not stay after dusk, not because I am afraid of thieves, but because I am afraid of the atmosphere.Just imagine, if there is no movement in the entire empty city of the Western Regions, the moonlight is hazy, the wind is harsh, and Kitaro's phrases come to mind, intermittent, magical, and you are only alone, how can you bear it?

What is in front of me today is a huge empty city that is older but never deserted, and it is also extremely difficult for me to accept it.There is no age without people, and it suddenly becomes very unspecific.Those buildings originally designed to gather the crowd, look down on the crowd, laugh at the crowd, and fascinate the crowd never thought that one day they would lose the crowd, so they were proud of the emptiness, majestic in vain.However, the roar of no object may be louder, the streets without age can hold all the stories, the empty pride reaches the sky, and the vain majesty reaches forever.

Standing here, I suddenly understood why the four-line poem written by Liu Yuxi in the Tang Dynasty in China formed such a boldness in people's hearts that even the great poet Bai Juyi said that he was a poet who knew the future and no longer spoke.These four poems are: the mountains surround the homeland, the tide beats the empty city and returns lonely.To the east of the Huai River is the old moon, and it is late at night to pass the female wall.People say that this poem is inspired by nostalgia. I say that there are many nostalgic poems and prose in the world. Liu Yuxi is unique in creating a quiet environment.

The emptiness in Rome today is not created by poets, but a reality.A real stone city, a stone city that once belonged to Caesar, Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian.This kind of emptiness that can be touched and the silence that can be heard deeply are incomparable to any poem. It is all Roman citizens who create such an empty and quiet environment.It was only then that I suddenly remembered that there were indeed so many strange vehicles going against us from the city along the way.Some towed RVs with bedrooms and kitchens, others had yachts strapped to the roof, and some even towed small gliders.In short, they went on vacation thoroughly.

three What is a complete vacation? In form, this is a closed cut off from daily work.Where to go on vacation, there is no need to let colleagues in the same office know, and there is no need to report to the direct supervisor.Contrary to the busy people in China who turn on their mobile phones even when they are on vacation, they no longer think about the phone ringing when they go on vacation, and they will not feel like a sleepy beast because they haven't talked to anyone for two days.When they were on vacation, they became a different kind of people. They were usually well-dressed and well-mannered, but now they were casually dressed, laughing again and again, completely playing with a mentality of playing with nothing to do.Yesterday I was walking in a hurry on the streets of the city, staring straight in the eyes, and staring at no one. Today I met everyone on vacation and greeted everyone affectionately. In fact, I didn’t know each other. I only knew that they suddenly became Tianya colleagues.Same thing?This thing is a vacation.

Conceptually, it obeys the European philosophy of life, which regards individual leisure rights as paramount.Chinese people work hard and take breaks occasionally, but that is only for better work; Europeans, on the other hand, think that they work hard on weekdays, mostly for vacations, because only during vacations can chores be interrupted, anxiety freeze, and limbs become restless. Regression reappears the family relationship, that is, people temporarily leave the state of alienation and restore their humanity.This kind of concept dissolves the main principles of the West, such as individual rights and returning to nature, and it is easy to be widely popularized, deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and even go to extremes.A friend of the Chinese embassy in Italy told me that once a Chinese leader visited Rome, the plan had been planned for several months, but one week before the leader’s arrival, the person in charge of the Italian plan suddenly disappeared, leaving everyone behind. Anxiously became an ant on the hot pot, so I had to start planning again.Strangely, the people on their side were only anxious and not angry, because the sudden disappearance of the person in charge had a holy reason: he was on vacation.

Of course we would not approve of such a working attitude, but the Romans saw it differently.It's hard to say which is more important, work or vacation, they say.The person in charge lost the time to hand over the work due to some non-personal reasons. Since that is the case, if he is required to sacrifice his vacation time to do the handover, it is tantamount to turning the incompleteness of one thing into the incompleteness of two things, and both sides will suffer.A vacation makes a person lose a status, change a status, and this loss and conversion are as blameless as sudden death.Since that person came to the resort and changed into loose clothes, his identity as a civil servant has been temporarily buried in the mountains and rivers. How can you have extra hope for a dead identity?The continuation of the work can only rely on the successor, or wait for his vacation to be resurrected. I don't need to comment on such an idea, but at least I know why many friends around me don't have a good rest on weekdays. Many of our entrepreneurs and officials actually have vacations, and they can also choose a scenic spot that will not be disturbed. However, it is a pity that they can leave their work and family, but they cannot let go of their identity.Therefore, as soon as I arrive at the vacation spot, I just want to get rid of the emptiness and panic after letting go of my identity, and immediately use the phone to unblock all public and private networks, and even connect with relevant local agencies one by one.As a result, one can imagine that the frequency of phone calls, the number of visitors, and the abundance of banquets are often more than those before the vacation. After a few days, I have been thinking about when I will go back and have a good rest.Rest has become a dream that will always flash on the other side. Obviously, an important difference here is that other people's vacation is to switch identities, while our vacation is to superimpose identities.Superimposed in a place far away from the office, superimposed between mountains and rivers, how unnatural and hypocritical it is.You can close your eyes and let go of hypocrisy in other places, but hypocritical in private holidays, it really spoils the last secret corner of life, which makes people feel pitiful. Four So many Romans took holidays abroad, mainly to France, Spain and southern Germany, I think.The overall economic situation of the Italians is much worse than that of France and Germany, and a little better than that of Spain. They should be a relatively frugal group outside.Europeans generally don’t like to show off when they travel abroad, and most of them are willing to choose hard ways to test their mental and physical strength. This is very different from the Asian travelers with big pockets, groups, and constant shopping that we often see along the way. . But even so, many people in Europe cannot afford the economic pressure of long-distance travel, and some elderly people are unable to travel far due to physical limitations. They often only go to town villas for vacation, and rent a temporary residence if they don’t have a villa.In fact, this is the most common way for Europeans to go on vacation, but this time the vacation is long, and many people go for a long walk. We met an old man on vacation in a small town villa who typifies this approach, so it is unforgettable, and it may be useful to describe it. That day we went to Port St. George on the east coast, and when we passed a small town, we saw a white-haired old man stop us and insisted on inviting us to a nearby seafood restaurant for dinner.The reason is that he has been to China many times and is currently vacationing in a villa in this small town. Following him, we also visited the town by the way.The town is indeed very small, without a single luxury building, just rows of ordinary houses made of white stone, cement, and wood boards, and there are no special scenery or historic sites, the whole is gray and simple.Compared with the small towns in southern China, it even looks a bit shabby, but the simple colors and clean streets make people extraordinarily quiet.In our past experience, simple tones only belong to elegant communities, and the more rustic and secular, the more gorgeous they are.This characteristic is not only in mainland China, but also in Taiwan and Hong Kong.Why is such a small town in Europe so simple and harmonious?Just do the subtraction of color, how many grades have been increased. After walking for about ten minutes, we saw the small seafood restaurant.The old man didn't say anything else, let us sit down first, and serve a bowl of seafood noodles each. What's the secret of that bowl of noodles?We started talking with suspense.The noodles are actually Chinese style, not Italian pasta. The soup is very clear and covered with a thick layer of small shell meat, which is similar to the sea melon seeds that are often eaten along the coast of China.The meat of this kind of small shells is soft and tough in the mouth, and it is extremely delicious. Swallowing it with noodles and soup is really a great enjoyment.The old man looked at our expressions and smiled reassuringly, and began to speak. His first sentence was: Now I have explained to you why I bought a villa in this small town. The noodles are the best here in Italy.After speaking, he raised his glass to formally welcome us. It turned out that this bowl of noodles was his business card for meeting. However, it was soon discovered that this judgment was wrong, and his business card was much more complicated.He said at the intersection just now that he had been to China many times, so why did he go? His answer surprised us. He went to China as the Italian Minister of Foreign Trade, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and a senator!That said, the gray-haired old man sitting across from us is the real big shot. Today he is very reluctant to say too much in the role he has held because he is on leave.He tried to narrow down the reasons for stopping us to personal and temporary reasons.He said that his wife is a poet and is writing poems in the villa, but the villa is too small, he was afraid of disturbing his wife, so he went out for a walk and met our convoy. Hearing what he said, we asked with concern, does the wife write poetry all day long?Doesn't this make him wander outside all day?He said no, his wife went to bed in the morning and wrote poetry in the afternoon, so he only had to go out for a long walk. So we congratulate his wife for writing a good batch of poems this holiday season.He thanked her, and then said sincerely: Her poems are really good, really.That look, like a shy old farmer. After saying goodbye to the old man, we walked on the gray streets of the town again.I think such a small town is attractive and dispelling to all those who are tired of official duties.It has the ability to hide dragons and crouch tigers, and it has the ability to make them forget that they are dragons and tigers.This kind of forgetting makes many characters who are gradually becoming non-self become self, and makes this world more sincere real people.So the power of small towns, like the power of vacation, cannot be underestimated. Then Rome, every empty city of yours will inevitably bring about a major addition to your personality and humanity.