November 21, 1999, Tehran, Iran, overnight at Laleh Hotel

On the way from Hamadan to Tehran, I was in a very good mood.

Turning the first and second pages of Hamadan's occasional turn, I continued to stir up in my mind a superficial impression of Iran's history. First of all, I remembered that when I was in Greece, I saw a bay where Greece and Persia fought fiercely, and I watched it for a long time, and then I knew that the fiercer battle took place in Marathon. The Greek-Persian Wars were the pride of the Greeks, and they were good at writing, and I don't know how many history books and literary works have represented this subject. The ancient Persians looked down on writing, believing it to be the entertainment of a few women, and the serious business of men was martial arts and hunting. As a result, the triumphant essay of the Greeks became the definitive conclusion of history. In fact, the Persians were still very powerful, Cyrus had already established the largest empire before Rome, and Darius (Da

ius) was even more ambitious, advancing north to the Volga Valley, eastward to conquer the Indus Valley, and finally making a long expedition to Greece before losing the battle.

The administrative structure of the Persian government was very good, and Rome later followed it in many ways, but as a war-oriented regime, the army with huge power quickly corrupted, and many generals went to war with a large group of wives and concubines. I remember that there was a crucial battle, where the Greeks lost only a few hundred men, while the Persians lost 100,000 troops, the contrast was too great. Fortunately, Alexander the Victor was more sensible, and he married one of the daughters of Darius III, and it is said that he had a good relationship.

After Alexander's death, the political situation was very chaotic, and in the third century B.C., the nomads of the northeast established a dynasty headed by Azasius, from which the Chinese took the name of this chieftain and called this place Sabbath. The Sabbath dynasty lasted for more than four hundred years and was replaced by the Sassanid dynasty in the third century AD. The Sassanid Empire made great achievements in civilization construction, almost laying the foundation of modern Iranian culture, but was defeated by the Arabs in the seventh century AD, and Iran entered the Islamic period. Later, it was attacked by the Turks, Mongols, Timur, especially the Mongols in the thirteenth century, and suffered heavy losses. However, Iran has become an important center of Islamic culture in the midst of many disasters, and has entered modern times at a unique and slow pace.

When it comes to the defeat of the Sassanid Empire in Iran by the Arabs in the seventh century AD, we are involved in China. China originally had a close connection with Anxi in the Han Dynasty, and Anxi was a transit point on the "Silk Road" at that time. By the time the Sassanid Dynasty fought with the Arabs, it was already the Tang Dynasty, and the Sassanid Dynasty had asked the Tang Dynasty for help, but the distance was too far for the Tang Dynasty to help for a while. After the fall of the Sassanid Empire, the prince Belus (Pi

The Tang Dynasty first appointed him as the governor of the "Persian Governor's Palace" and then appointed him as a general, but he had no hope of recovering the country and died of illness in Chang'an. Even his son, the Tang Dynasty, appointed generals, but eventually died in China.

At that time, there were many Persians in China to engage in business, as officials, worship generals, and write as scholars, for example, the Persian named "Aro Shout" who found a tombstone in Luoyang at the end of the Qing Dynasty was a big official in the Tang Dynasty, according to modern scholars, his name may be Ab

Aham, now translated as Abraham, is a common name for Jews, most likely a Jew who lived in Persia. As for the literati, the most famous is probably the poet Li Xun in the late Tang Dynasty, who was known as "Li Bobo", who was a Persian merchant and wrote poems that have penetrated the essence of Chinese culture, which I discussed in the article "Chinese Complex" in "Cultural Journey".

When I think about it, the land in front of me has multiple charms for me. The real giants of ancient Asia swallowed mountains and rivers for a while, but when China really touched it and called it, its most powerful limelight had passed. Its second glory was side by side with our Tang Dynasty, but the Tang Dynasty witnessed the demise of this splendor with great regret, and repeatedly tried to comfort it to no avail. This is a "big family" who is very close to us and has a lot of contact, and I roam here like visiting my grandfather's old friend. Both of them have been "wide", and the paths they have taken are so different.

Iran has been conquered so many times, some of them so completely destroyed, that I don't think it's likely that you'll see a lot of ancient ruins here, as you did in Egypt and Greece, but there will always be some, like two in Hamadan yesterday.

So, let's take a look at the land. All stories and interactions take place here, and this is the eternal backdrop for all history.

As far as the natural landscape goes, I love Iran. Its biggest advantage is that it is not monotonous. It is neither an eternal desolate desert nor an eternal green grass, but a variety of changes and abundance. The snow-capped mountains are silver and holy in the distance, and the camel yellow is in the distance, and the rows of trees are not of other colors, all of which are smoked in the same tone, supported and guarded. Sometimes I am afraid of monotony, so I come to a row of poplar forests of more than ten kilometers, like white marks drawn by an oil painter with a thin and tough brush; Sometimes it is slightly pale green or burgundy, and it blends into the total color spectrum of camel yellow in patches, without jumping and dazzling at all. A snow-capped mountain of meltwater crossed the forest, glowing with a silvery white sky, but soon disappeared into the field and disappeared without a trace.

The main tone of the Iranian land is not a bluff of desolation, nor a mystical sense of pretentiousness, nor a sense of worldliness shrouded in smoke. A little desolate, a little mysterious, a little mundane, everything is synthesized into a poetry to be manipulated. Such rivers and mountains must be full of charm when they are great, they must be sad when they suffer disasters, and they must be indifferent when they are peaceful. It doesn't have much of a main tone on its own, just waiting for history to render it thickly. Again and again, it has been extended by great wealth and great calamity, and its poetry has become an ethereal form.