Mu Tao is a stupid person. Since I came to Shaanxi in 1993, I have been hanging on the tree of the Xi'an Federation of Literary and Art Circles, not swaying, not shouting, just hanging straight. The Municipal Federation of Literary and Art Circles has moved many times, and the editorial department of "Meiwen" has moved many times, from the initial cramped rental house to the current magnificent office building, Mu Tao followed the editorial department, marrying chickens and dogs, and he looked like he was from the beginning to the end, and he couldn't see what his opinions were.

Mu Tao is also a fine man. From the editorial department of "The Great Wall", the editorial department of "Wen Lunbao", and then to the editorial department of "Meiwen", from reading all kinds of manuscripts to writing only prose manuscripts. Over the past few decades, on the surface, the sword has gone sideways, but in fact, it is familiar and perfect, and skillful has become a skill, and the skill has advanced into the Tao. Those who have obtained the Tao, even the clay puppet can become a spirit, and the wild fox can also practice meditation, not to mention the person who awakens like Mu Tao?

The land of Shaanxi is rich in fertility, raising a solid and strong Shaanxi cultural people, there is no need to go out to eat, let alone begging, the inheritance left by the ancestors, the ground and the ground are full, lying in bed for three lifetimes can not be eaten, why run around the world, as a state of hunger and cold? Of course, there are also some people who do not follow the group one by one, for example, in recent years, Ye Guangqin has searched all the plants to make drafts, Wu Kejing has searched all the monuments to make drafts, Du Aimin has searched all the philosophical drafts, Zhu Hong has traveled all over the ruins to make drafts, and Mu Tao has searched all the books and drafts.

In the past, it was said that only when a writer went deep into Huangfu Village to eat, live and work with the peasants could he be regarded as having a down-to-earth life, which seemed a bit narrow-minded. Li Bai's "Five Mountains Seeking Immortals", Du Fu's "Mountains, Birds, Flowers, My Friends", and Shi Tao's "Searching for Strange Peaks to Make Drafts" are all going deep into life and being down-to-earth. In the past few years, Mu Tao has lifted the skirt of history, squatted in the pile of old papers, waved the Luoyang shovel, and used his hands and feet to find things, which is also another kind of down-to-earth. However, his interest is not to pick up leaks in the antique stalls, nor is it to compare the secrets of the palace and the power to fight for the yang, he really wants to find the long-lost fundamental elements through many obstacles, and summon the soul of the national culture.

In connection with Mu Tao's new book "The Previous Atmosphere", this point is more fully highlighted. I was the first to get a gift of this new book, but I can't say that I read it most seriously and deeply. I put it on my desk, and put it in a stack with the newly obtained Zeng Yanxiu's "Six Records of Life", He Zhaowu's "Going to School", Liu Shaoming's "Ice Heart in the Jade Pot", and Chen's "God Knows if People Are Sick". There are several prominent techniques that are used repeatedly in this book, and can even be said to constitute the basic elements of the so-called "Mu Tao style".

The first is the narrative of the explanatory text. Xu Shen's Shuowen Jie Zi is a linguistic work that explains the mysteries of character making and use by studying "text" (texture), that is, radicals, interframe structure, morphophonetic and semantic relationships, etc. "The Previous Atmosphere" and many of Mu Tao's articles are narrated through the interpretation of words and words, leading to discussions. This method is used a lot, almost everywhere.

Compared with Shaanxi writers, Mu Tao likes to "drop his book bag", and I say that he is good at citing historical classics. Note that I didn't say that he quoted scriptures. A "six classics are history", and scriptures are also history books. Moreover, many of the books he cited cannot be regarded as scriptures, some of them are "Niu Pu Ma Bo, the skin of the defeated drum, all inclusive, ready to be used" (Han Yu's "Study Solution"), and some are small and do not donate.

The third is the way of viewing viewpoint activities. This point is explained in detail in his "Letter to Jia Pingwa", in which he talks about "prophetic sense", rules, and doubts, but in fact talks about different perspectives of literature. A set of articles written by Jia Pingwa are very readable. I like "Collection", "Thousand Character Text" and "Another Pen" the most, Mu Tao is an editor-in-chief, but he keeps opening the editor-in-chief, and the loser also has a spiritual victory method, which is a bit of cross talk and praise. There are many reasons why Chinese landscape poetry and landscape painting are more attractive, one of which is the extensive use of movable viewpoint, or scattered perspective. We all know that the Buddha has a thousand-armed Guanyin, in fact, there are also a thousand-eyed Guanyin and a thousand-body Guanyin. Liu Zongyuan was still not satisfied, and joked with his monk friend Hao Chu, and even imagined: "If you want to become a hundred billion, you will scatter to the peak and look at your hometown." "Think about it, how many pairs of eyes, how many observation points should there be, how many kinds of insight will be formed in a hundred billion bodies?

These points constitute the basic physiognomy of the "Mu Tao Body", and they are also the basic techniques of the "Previous Atmosphere". The first two points can be approached by a stupid person through hard work, and the third point is that it depends on understanding and wisdom, not just hard work. What Mu Tao really makes people unapproachable and can't learn is his kung fu of turning stones into gold, or he turns fiction into reality, chasing after the wind and shadows, allowing us to see flowers in the mirror and the moon in the water.

Ancient alchemy was the precursor to modern chemical physics experiments, and various minerals were used as raw materials to make it. It's hard to say whether the product will be immortal. However, it has put forward many possibilities and hypotheses, which not only inspired scientists, but also enriched the imagination of writers, and has become the prototype of many literary motifs. Mu Tao uses language as raw materials for refining.

This time, we saw Mu Tao's hand stretched out behind the curtain of history, and when he blew a breath, he changed so many spiritual things, and it was really unclear how it changed. The next time we stare at his hairy hand to see where it is going to reach out, and what kind of goblins and ghosts will be conjured?

Li Hao