The Old Tree

An old piece, written in 2013.

During the Qingming Festival tomb-sweeping visit, I saw in the neighboring village an old tree so broad that five or six people could barely encircle it with outstretched arms. It stirred in me a longing for my maternal grandmother's village. I have not been back to my grandmother's village for nearly twenty years. Ever since my maternal grandfather passed away, my uncle moved the whole family to the county town to make a living, and I have never returned. Yet I still remember quite a lot about going to my grandmother's village to pay New Year visits in my childhood.

A single old tree at the village entrance was the landmark of my grandmother's village. As a child, after hiking for hours along the mountain path, the moment I caught sight of that old tree from afar, my spirits would soar—my grandmother's village was finally near.

All these years, I have always remembered that old tree. Its branches were luxuriant, its roots coiled and knotted; villagers liked to tie their oxen to the roots that jutted out of the ground. The little mountain village had only a few dozen households, and most of the time it was quiet and serene. My cousin's house was an old home left over from the Republican era, its courtyard neat and orderly, with an antique charm. Regrettably, it was torn down a few years ago.

My father said that not only my grandmother's village, but even our own village had been full of towering ancient trees before the Great Steel-Making Campaign. According to him, when he was a child, the old trees at the village entrance and on the hill behind the village—trees that five or six people could barely encircle—were innumerable, and those that ten or more people could barely encircle were not few. Now there is not a single one left.

I am thirty-six this year. In the whole village, there are only one or two trees older than I am.

In a natural village like ours, where clans live clustered together, an old tree is the shared memory of untold generations of a lineage. From my experience of more than thirty years, the houses in the village change completely every twenty years or so. But the presence of an old tree freezes the village's memory in a state of permanence. The old tree is the lighthouse on the way home; beneath it was the playground of childhood, generation after generation.

Without old trees, it is hard to grasp the meaning of the saying, "The forefather planted the tree; the later generations enjoy the shade." The term "ancestral blessing," for common folk like us, ultimately comes down to a few old trees. The ancient trees planted by our forebears are enough to shield us from the scorching sun in the heat of summer, giving our descendants a place to cool off and rest after their labors.

Preserving old trees was a wisdom that arose spontaneously among farmers in the agrarian age. My father said that when he was a child, old trees stood everywhere in the fields. When people grew tired from work in the heat, they would rest under the trees; beneath many old trees there was also a well for people to drink from. Now the village fields have nearly merged into one continuous stretch, and between the fields not a single old tree remains. In the sweltering season, there is nowhere to escape the blazing sun.

Along with the old trees, the unique rural fellowship formed in the agrarian age has also vanished. Mr. Fei Xiaotong once said that the greatest feature of China is that such a vast country has a culture built upon a rural foundation. Rural culture is simple, solid, and carries its own ineffable charm.

Thus, when the philosopher Bertrand Russell set foot on Chinese soil more than a hundred years ago, he was deeply moved by the quiet, tranquil attitude toward life of ordinary Chinese people, and he felt that such a life was a life lived from the heart. He then sighed that Westerners, after the Industrial Revolution, driven by material pursuits, lived too busily, too strenuously, and with too little human warmth.

Had Russell lived until today and come back to China, he would surely feel lost. Today's China is no different from Europe and America a hundred years ago. Almost no young people remain in the villages. Larger natural villages still have the elderly and children keeping watch; smaller ones are dying out.

The environment in the natural villages is also very different from before. In recent years, whenever I return to the village during the busy farming season, walking through the fields, I can smell the pungent odor of pesticides everywhere. The idyllic life of the pastoral poem no longer exists. The countryside is struggling to evolve toward so-called modernization. Plastic garbage of every kind floats in the small stream at the village entrance. The village pond has long since turned into a foul, stinking ditch. Most of the newly built houses have their own toilets, with sewage pipes connected directly to the pond and the river.

During the Lunar New Year, the village chief still calls everyone together to raise money to revise the genealogy and perform village operas, but few respond. Neither the administrative leaders nor the spiritual leaders of the village can exert much influence on the young; apart from a slight hold over the elderly, they carry little weight in the minds of the young.

For my generation, where is our hometown? Before the age of twenty, we experienced a relatively simple rural life; then we washed our feet ashore, went to the cities to study or work, and when we returned home, there was little left in our hometown to evoke childhood memories. We have never quite adapted to city life. Where are we to go?

The countryside without old trees has no roots. A rootless village cannot hold memories. A life without memories is too monotonous, and has nothing to offer.