Reading Golden Whip Stream at Night
Reading Golden Whip Stream at Night by Li Shuiyun I did not stumble into that stretch of night by accident. I chose a drizzly, misty afternoon. A companion and I drove from Suoxiyu to Water Winding Around Four Gates, and then, as dusk was about to fall, began this ramble. Actually, before this I had only been to Golden Whip Stream once. After that, I always, intentionally or not, kept a certain distance from it. But at the same time, I thought of it like an old friend, always...
Reading Golden Whip Stream at Night
By Li Shuiyun
It was not by accident that I wandered into that stretch of night.
I chose a drizzly, misty afternoon. A companion and I drove from Suoxiyu to Water Winding Around Four Gates, and then, just as dusk was about to fall, we began this ramble.
In fact, before this I had only been to Golden Whip Stream once. Since then, I had always, consciously or not, kept a certain distance from it. But at the same time, I thought of it as I would an old friend, especially its appearance in the night. This faint, lingering imagining and longing hung over my heart like a huge suspense, making me feel endlessly wistful as I stood by the Suoxi River at countless dusks and gazed into the distance.
When we began to enter the gorge, visitors were hurriedly walking out in twos and threes, which made me enjoy a kind of happiness unlike any other right from the start.
The sparse rain did not fall directly on us, but first landed on the dense canopy overhead, then leaked down bit by bit. Yet we were never soaked; what was soaked was only the thick and thin green that filled the whole gorge… It was a picture difficult to create, and although it was only green, I did not know which painter could mix so many different greens on the same palette——the dark green of leaves, the deep black-green of tree trunks, the clear green of the stream, the mossy green of pebbles, the light green of weeds by the stream, the hoary green tinged with ochre on the cliffs, and the ink-green formed by overlapping shadows between mountains, and even the birdsong flowing through the air was filled with a trembling green… Among the various greens there were also clearly distinct layers of density and distance, and I even felt that even a light cough would dye that sound a crisp green.
We came to a huge cliff, where several old trees screened the ochre-red rock face, and a black bird was dotted like an ink drop on the stone wall. After standing quietly for a while, I asked my companion to shout to the cliff as much as he liked; I wanted to listen properly to that echoing back and forth. My companion cleared his throat, took a deep breath, then put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and shot the air from his chest toward the peaks in the twilight. I quietly watched the direction in which the sound flew. I thought the stone wall would surely be pierced. But it was not; the cliff was not hurt. Instead, the sound was steadily caught by the cliff and drawn into the cracks in the rock, then released again from those irregular folds. At first, it seemed the sound came rushing toward us from the opposite side, then the vibrations of the sound waves were felt overhead as well, and finally the sound seemed to be everywhere, gathering from all directions into a long, continuous surge, a wonderful harmony, so that the mountains trembled emotionally in that sound and remembered all the days that had once been full of green…
And by then, the dusk had grown heavier and heavier, and a feeling of blue mountains like the sea closed in on us from all directions. Standing there, listening quietly, listening to birds and the stream singing together of the lingering rain and mist and the hidden seclusion of the valley; watching quietly, watching a few wisps of cloud and mist lazily gather and disperse among the peaks.
I began to search for traces of the night.
I did not hear the sound of night walking, but I saw the lurking figure of the night. The night of Golden Whip Stream does not descend from the sky; it spills out from between the leaves and shadows of every tree, drills out from the cracks of every stone, flows out from the ripples of the stream. I even guessed that the night had followed us from beyond the mountains, stepping in our footprints, or perhaps it was a cry lost when a bird flew past, which fell into the stream, dissolved, and spread into this… In short, it definitely did not descend from the sky; it should have grown out of the earth. It should be a strange plant growing from the earth. Its roots and branches are equally immense and reach everywhere. Its growth cycle is extremely short and fast, so fast that we cannot feel its growth and withering at all. We always mistakenly think that our life has only one night, yet we do not know that every day is a different night and a different mood; it is only麻木 ourselves who have overlooked it.
We walked all the way to Zicao Pool, sat by the pool for a while, and then started back. I only looked roughly at the several scenic spots along the way. I do not like to make those beautiful scenes too fixed and too concrete. Letting them remain hazy in a state of seeming and not seeming, I think, can better expand people's space for imagination. The beauty of nature always lies between likeness and unlikeness; as the saying goes, looking at flowers in the mist, the flowers are not flowers, and that scene has a kind of misty charm all its own.
When we went back, the sky had completely darkened. Although we returned along the original path, because of the night we suddenly felt much unfamiliarity with the way we had come. After walking for a while, I stopped involuntarily, because I discovered a wonderful and moving sight: in the gorge at night, three streams were flowing at the same time!
The first was Golden Whip Stream, which had been lingering by our side from beginning to end, accompanying us all the way with its soft murmuring, always tenderly flowing beside us with moving music. The second was the walkway beneath our feet; because of the rain, the accumulated water on it reflected the faint skylight, making the whole walkway look as if countless crystals had been scattered on it, flickering with wave after wave of dim light. Walking on it gave a feeling of emptiness, one step high and one step low. And the third stream was in the sky, or more precisely, above our heads. It was actually a gap left between the facing peaks on both sides of the gorge, but as it wound tortuously with the faint skylight and rippled with the depth and mystery of the night, it felt to me in any case like a river flowing, and flowing right above my head, seemingly within reach yet far beyond it.
This discovery gave me a sense of trance and unease, and I could not help tightly grasping my companion's hand. My heart also beat violently in that instant. This was something I had never expected. Although before this I had had countless dreamlike imaginings and descriptions of this gorge, all of this was still beyond my expectations. I had to stop again and again, look up at the stream in the sky, look down at the stream beneath my feet, and then listen with all my ears to the relaxed singing of the stream beside me. My steps had already begun to feel a little intoxicated…
I must admit that this night's ramble was conceived and designed by me. I do not like to get close to this scenery I have long admired according to a route designed by others. I like first to describe and imagine it in my heart countless times, and then go to verify my various conjectures and feelings. This way, when I stand in the same place as many people, I can always keep my own unique feelings and discoveries, and for a long time I can enjoy alone the happiness of letting my soul gallop freely. I think this should be the true meaning of travel and where its mysterious pleasure lies.
Walking out of Golden Whip Stream, I looked back at that deep, secluded valley, and a difficult-to-express surge quietly rose and fell in my heart. Gazing back quietly, I held my hand together with my companion's. At that moment, I felt that we were not two people from the mortal world. I felt that we were two trees in this gorge. Two trees that had just been transplanted from the gorge. There was still a faint moisture and greenness clinging to us.