Literary China
More than 900 years ago, when Su Dongpo was demoted to Danzhou, Hainan, he wrote a lot of poems describing the scenery of Hainan, such as "who embellishes the clouds and the moon, and the sky and the sea are clear", "Flying springs are ten thousand, and the dancing cranes are both low", "Danli breaks the jade skin, and the yellow orange overflows with Fangjin", and so on. When I went to Hunan, I also told the comrades in Hunan that Hunan has beautiful natural scenery. Comrade Mao Zedong wrote in "Answering Friends": "The waves in Dongting are surging and the sky is snowing, and the people of Long Island are singing and poems. I want to dream because of the outline, the country of Furong is full of sunshine", the Song Dynasty writer Fan Zhongyan wrote in "The Story of Yueyang Tower" "The sand gulls fly and swim; Shore Zhi Tinglan, lush and green", "long smoke is empty, the moon is thousands of miles, the floating light is golden, and the still shadow is sinking", those are all beautiful scenery! I also went to Xiangxi that time, and I remembered the scenery of Xiangxi described by Shen Congwen in works such as "Border City" and "Xiao Xiao".
-- Speech at the Central Rural Work Conference (December 23, 2013)
Further reading:
When a literary work meets the beauty of China, it is a grand event suitable for spiritual travel. Su Dongpo went south, Fan Zhongyan climbed the building and looked into the distance, Mao Zedong's poetry surged, Shen Congwen stopped to listen, the scene was laid out, and the feelings were born.
The beautiful scenery of the country can not only stimulate poetry, but also give people comfort. When Su Dongpo was demoted to Danzhou, Hainan, he was already in his 60s, and he had previously been demoted to Huizhou, Lingnan. Life in Danzhou is more difficult than in Huizhou. When Su Dongpo first arrived, he temporarily rented a public house to shelter, and the public house was in disrepair for a long time, and it was moved three times a night when it rained. Later, he built a thatched hut by himself in the nut forest, named it "Nutnut", and "ate taro and drank water, and wrote books for fun" in the hermitage. In the southern wilderness island at that time, Su Dongpo not only recorded the beautiful natural scenery with poems such as "Flying Springs and Ten Thousand Birds, Dancing Cranes Double Low", "Danli Breaks Jade Skin, Yellow Mandarin Overflows Fangjin" and other poems, but also cultivated the open-mindedness of forgetting things and me, until he left Danzhou 3 years later, he also wrote the poem "I don't hate the nine deaths in the Southern Wilderness, and I don't hate it, and I am the best in my life".
When Fan Zhongyan wrote "The Story of Yueyang Tower", he had been demoted to Dengzhou, Henan, and his friend Teng Zijing was also demoted to Yueyang, Hunan. Fan Zhongyan faced the "Late Autumn Picture of Dongting" sent by Teng Zijing, spread the wings of imagination, and wrote "The Story of Yueyang Tower" with a wave, which became a famous chapter in the history of Chinese literature. The concept of "worrying about the world first, and enjoying the joy of the world after the world" expounded in it has become a spiritual treasure of the Chinese nation. In modern times, Mao Zedong's "Answering Friends" is also allegorical, expressing his yearning for an ideal society with "I want to dream of a few things, and the country of Furong is full of sunshine", while Shen Congwen's "Border City" and "Xiao Xiao" and other works have left a quiet pure land in the depths of the Chinese heart.
At the Central Rural Work Conference, when talking about the construction of ecological civilization, Xi Jinping quoted a beautiful chapter that has been passed down through the ages, precisely in order to hook a "beautiful China" in memory from these timeless words, a "beautiful China" that once made us yearn for it and needed our careful care. Xi Jinping once pointed out the direction of urbanization with "you can see the mountains, you can see the water, and remember the nostalgia", which is not the vision of building a beautiful China? Retaining the beautiful China in literary works is also to retain the beautiful memory and bright future for the Chinese nation.