Gui Qu Lai Xi (Let Me Go Home)
The bright moon over the Huainan, cold over a thousand peaks; into the dark unknown she goes, no one to tend her.
—Song dynasty, Jiang Kui, "Treading on Grass" (Tasha Xing)
Take just these last two lines of Jiang Kui's ci-poem and read them alone; who knows how many people would be saddened to the core.
When I read these two lines, the scene that rises in my mind is this: a cold moon shines on a thousand mountains; ten thousand li away stands a solitary grave; yin and yang are parted, and there is parting grief and sorrow with nowhere to send the mourning. In the nether world, lonely is my mother; in this world, lonely am I. Again and again the wish arises to return to the countryside, till the fields in the south, and keep vigil by the grave for the rest of my life.
Life and death are great matters; impermanence is swift. Human life is as brief as between one breath and the next. After learning he had cancer, Steve Jobs decided to spend the rest of his life only on what matters most. I used to feel I had time to squander; but after my mother died of cancer, I realized how short life is.
I spent several muddled years in extreme chaos, and only recently have I gradually seen a glimmer of light. I have decided to end these chaotic years and plan and spend my remaining years as I wish. To till and read through my remaining years—that is my unwavering goal.
I used not to understand the feeling of "leaves falling and returning to the root"; now I deeply feel it. Life is like a parabola; searching and seeking, the happiest time is always back at the most original place.
My hometown carries all my longing. Let me go home; the trees over the grave have grown into a grove—why not return?
Having gone from the countryside to the city for more than ten years, I have after all never adapted to life in this concrete jungle, never adapted to this high-paced urban career. I wish I could finish all my life's tasks a day earlier and return to my hometown, living the tilling-and-reading life I want—tending my mother's grave on one hand and settling down to read and write on the other.
The ancient scholars even had the tradition of "dingyou" (mourning leave); in today's society, human warmth cannot match the stench of money, and personal feelings all give way to economic interest. Alas!
My weariness with this noisy, dusty world grows ever stronger. Luckily I need not bow for a pittance and can arrange most of my own time. Yet even so, I have had enough of the city. Though Qin Hui is despised by later ages, his idea that "southerners return to the south and northerners return to the north" is one I rather like. One who came from the jungle should in the end return to the jungle.