Chapter 2 Preface to the Millennium Sigh

This is a diary, which records my experience of inspecting the relics of human civilization for tens of thousands of kilometers. The purpose is to find the roadbed of ancient human civilization, but it turns out that there are so many road sections with wild grass, dense trenches, and bandits.The wheels of the jeep clung to the ground, mile after mile, not knowing what to expect in the next mile, all they knew was a string of true horror stories: Here, religious extremists shoot dead in minutes There, three batches of foreign hostages were kidnapped by anti-government armed forces in the past two months; before that, more than 30 policemen were killed by drug cartels. When writing "Cultural Journey" and "Mountain Dwelling Notes", I have also been involved in physical and spiritual adventures again and again, but compared with this time, I was always able to find help and protection around the bush.But this time, the small convoy was like ants squirming on the wasteland, and any kind of unexplained violence could smash them to pieces.Not just wasteland.In the depths of the wilderness, there are ruined castles, shadows, and shining eyes.It would be untrue to insist that I have no fear, but more than half of my fear was covered up by the shock, the collapse of the giant structure that shocked human civilization so bleakly.How exactly did they collapse?History books have provided some speculative answers, but most of them are generalized and vague.In fact, all devastation is specific, and all grievances are difficult to express, so those answers are also questionable.There is no need to doubt the result, the decayed grass and rubble, carrying disasters from ancient times to the present.

I am willing to face all this in a dangerous situation with no protection mechanism, just like taking off my gloves to touch the scars of an old man. This kind of touching often leads to hard thinking: As the base of our life, the Chinese civilization is also scarred, but how to avoid the collapse of the whole?How costly is this avoidance?Which costs are positive and which are negative?Can the avoidance of the past guarantee the future? More importantly, the young civilizations that are alive and well in the world today will repeat the fate of most ancient civilizations after a while. This question runs through the entire diary.

It is not easy to write a diary every day during such an adventure.I went on this expedition with the cross-country team of Hong Kong Phoenix Satellite TV. At first, no one expected me to persist in visiting these countries one by one.I drive for more than ten hours a day, and I can’t buy anything decent along the way. After finding the hotel, I’m still hungry and sleepy, so I fall asleep, but my friends will look at me with concern before falling asleep. Everyone knows that I have to stay up late to write .I don’t know how to smoke, and the only way to refresh myself is to drink tea. However, there is no hot water in the hotel rooms in the ten countries along the way. Zhao Wei, who was in the same car, took his own thermos every day and went to the restaurant to ask the waiter for half a cup with a smile on his face. The rest of the cup of black tea, pour it to me after asking for it.Some other friends know that I like to eat radishes, and they search all over the streets in every city they go to. Finally, they buy a black radish in Iran and send it to me. Unfortunately, this kind of black radish is really unpalatable.

In many places where I can’t write, I can only write lying on the car and squatting on the side of the road, so most of the handwriting is crooked.These handwritings have to be transmitted thousands of miles by satellite on the same day, and the recipients cannot read them clearly, which causes many mistakes in the publication of various newspapers and periodicals at home and abroad.I put the original manuscript in a plastic laundry bag and carried it with me. It was not until a few minutes before I entered Iraq that I remembered that the laundry bag had Israeli Hebrew printed on it. I had to stop and change it quickly. Otherwise, if the Iraqi customs found it, I don't know how serious the consequences will be.How can I tell clearly, what kind of diary is this thick pile of hieroglyphs in the pockets of the enemy country?

When crossing the borders of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, which is currently the most dangerous area in the world, I put this package of manuscripts in the backpack closest to my body, and even dreamed of running away with this package of manuscripts every day. The result of each escape is the same: snowflake-like pages of paper fall in pieces among the barren mountains, and the gangsters try to snatch them one after another, but they don't know what it is. For this reason, I cherish this way of writing, and I am willing to carefully preserve its original state and rough state. I will only hand over this package of manuscripts to the publishing house after the motorcade enters Beijing on the Spring Festival day, basically without editing.This approach is a bit like modern performance art, everything is only done during the performance process, and no more painting outside the performance; it is also a bit like Chinese calligraphy, there are always many regrets when you swipe a big brush, but it is not appropriate to fix things after finishing the brush trace.Roots climbing, muddy water stains are kept, the picture is real.

It's also a fringe experiment in writing attitudes.There is no information to check, no time to think about the text, and it has been sent out for publication before revision, which completely blocks any attempt to do learning or make a fuss.My early prose still has some traces of work, and it is easy to scratch some areas that I have left. This time I can finally express my confession in this way.Compared with writing, I pay more attention to steps; compared to articles, I pay more attention to life; compared to fineness, I pay more attention to roughness.The sighs on the wasteland are always rough, if I want to adjust them into soft voices in the study or sharp voices in the salon, how can I be worthy of the resignation journey I started many years ago?

The longer the time, the more grateful I am for my choice.Those who support my choice are the silent readers, so just walk with peace of mind and feel refreshed. This preface was written in the middle of the night on January 31, 2000, when I was at the Hukou of the Yellow River, looking down through the window, I saw thousands of waves were frozen, there was no wind, no snow, no sound, but it was extremely cold, exhale hand to write.Five days until the end of the Millennium Tour. Written on the night of January 31, 2001, on the morning of February 1, and was abridged when it was republished on December 30, 2001.