April 4#
Time flies, and before you know it, it's Qingming Festival.
Du Mu's famous poem "Qingming" was often heard during my childhood at this time. Sometimes, I would be asked to recite this poem.
During the Qingming season, the weather is pleasant, the grass grows, and the orioles sing. The peach blossoms are red, and the willows are green. The cold and withered days of winter are gone, and the earth is clean and bright. This is the time for spring outings; ancestor worship is just one part of it, so why be so sorrowful?
The Song Dynasty's "Records of Seasonal Customs" states: "Qingming means that things are born clean and bright." "Questions about Seasonal Customs" mentions: "At this time, all things grow, and everything is clean and bright, hence it is called Qingming." There are also sayings in agricultural proverbs like "Before and after Qingming, plant melons and beans," and "Planting trees and forests, nothing surpasses Qingming."
Therefore, I still prefer Yan Shu's "Poem of the Broken Formation: Spring Scenery."
When the swallows come, it's a new society, after the pear blossoms fall, it's Qingming. On the pond, there are three or four dots of green moss, and under the leaves, a couple of yellow orioles sing. The days are long, and the flying catkins are light.
The clever smiles of the girls next door, meeting in the mulberry path. I wonder why last night's spring dream was so good; it turns out I won the grass fight this morning. Laughter blooms on both faces.
How wonderful! It has the flavor of "Which young man is not sentimental, which young girl does not long for spring" from Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther." This is the scenery of spring.
That said, I still don't want to go out for a spring outing. It's not that I don't want to; it's just that in China, I am not keen on going out during holidays. No matter where you go, it's crowded with people, and you have to queue for shopping, dining, and using the restroom. When I was in New Zealand, I was willing to go out on sunny holidays. I could casually go to a park, lie on the grass, and enjoy the blue sky and white clouds, which was quite pleasant.
Speaking of the crowds in China, I recall a funny incident. When I first arrived at my homestay abroad, on the first day of school, the hostess gave me a hug and told me to be mentally prepared because the school was in the city center, where there were many people. After I got on the bus, it was full within two stops, and there were even people standing, which made me a bit anxious. However, when I got home that evening, I told the hostess that she probably forgot I was from China; the number of people I saw in the city center today was not as many as in my previous school.
China has rich tourism resources, and if they could be seriously planned and developed, tourism could drive the development of many industries. What a pity.
April 5#
As soon as the holiday started, I thought about organizing my notes. I added at least one tag to all my notes in Heptabase for easier management. However, I still haven't solved the problem of note accumulation, which has troubled me for many years. I've tried many methods, including spaced repetition, but the effects were not significant.
In my TiddlyWiki note repository, I only reduced the number of isolated notes. However, I had an unexpected gain. My current value system seems to have formed around 2022.
In 2022, life at that time didn't feel particularly problematic, but looking back now, it was quite painful. At that time, we had to do nucleic acid tests every day. Zeze and I would get up early to queue for the first wave and then go home to sleep again. Later, as the surrounding areas were successively locked down, we would gamble on luck to go to different nucleic acid testing points. It was not a pleasant memory.
Despite all precautions, we finally avoided getting infected during the strict lockdown, but we all received achievement cards shortly after the controls were lifted at the end of the year.
I had never seriously reviewed my notes from 2022, and this unexpected discovery surprised me. Although I was always aware of the changes in my worldview that year, I didn't expect that I had thought so much and so deeply about certain things at that time.
Two weeks ago, I saw Uncle Mouse had written an article titled “Talking About My 'Worldview'”, advocating for self-improvement, doing valuable things, and being brave in making life choices. While this is correct, it feels a bit like "chicken soup" when viewed in the current context.
A person's worldview can change significantly depending on the broader historical context. Similarly, how a person lives is also related to the era. Many of us often think that our achievements are entirely the result of our hard work, completely forgetting that everything people have is a product of the times.
If Oppenheimer were in China, would he achieve such great accomplishments?
April 6#
I had originally booked a flight back to Beijing tonight to stay for a few days and take care of some matters. However, I didn't expect to receive a cancellation notice early in the morning due to severe weather.
As I was cursing the message, a loud thunderclap sounded outside, and I hurriedly put down my phone, curled up, and burrowed into Zeze's arms.
I don't know why I'm afraid of thunder. Whenever there's thunder, I get scared, and if it continues, I even tremble all over. I'm already in my thirties; it's really embarrassing.
During thunderstorm weather, I also feel a bit dazed, with a circle of sensation around my temples. The doctor couldn't explain it clearly, vaguely saying I'm sensitive to changes in air pressure. However, as someone who loves hiking, I've never felt sensitive to changes in air pressure.
Today, the wind and rain are heavy, and there's a mist outside, making visibility extremely low. It gives me a sense of an impending apocalypse.
The frequency of extreme weather events is increasing, and humanity is finally beginning to swallow the bitter fruit of the last two or three hundred years of excessive consumption. Last summer was already hard to endure; this year is likely to be even hotter and last longer than last summer.
What I fear most is the heat. When it's cold, I can just wear more clothes—thermal wear, cotton jackets, down jackets, military coats—all layered up, and it won't be that cold, right? But when it's hot, even if I strip down to nothing, it will still be hot.
Bai Juyi wrote quite a few nonsensical poems, one of which goes like this:
Everyone escapes the heat like crazy, only the Zen master stays in his room; it's not that the Zen room is not hot, but a calm heart makes the body cool.
The idiom "A calm heart naturally cools" comes from here. Why is it nonsense? The Zen master doesn't go out because the Zen room is well-ventilated and naturally cooler than outside; he would be foolish to go out and seek suffering. If you put him under the sun, let's see if he can still shamelessly say, "A calm heart naturally cools."
I'll stop writing here and pack my bags.