The story of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest is a piece of music, and after Ji Kang completes its impassioned climax, those lingering words of compassion and forbearance fall into Xiang Xiu's life.

Xiang Xiu doesn't like politics and likes to read, and the truth in the book is much more interesting than the fighting and killing outside. He was interested in ontology in philosophy and pursued the realm of the Occult. met the talented young man Ji Kang, so Ji Kang, Xiang Xiu and Lu An became the "iron triangle" of the Ji family villa in Shanyang. Ji Kang is the guiding beacon of Xiang Xiu's life, and Xiang Xiu follows him very convincingly, like a shadow.

In Ji Kang's Shanyang villa, there is a large willow tree. Ji Kang diverted water and dug a small ditch around the willow tree. In the summer, Ji Kang, Xiang Xiu, and Lu An struck iron in the shade of willow trees, and Xiang Xiu gave Ji Kang a hand, and some of the ironware he made kept for himself, and some of them were given to people who were pleasing to the eye. When I was tired, I sat under the tree to eat roast chicken and drink wine. Of course, debate is indispensable. One of their favorite debate topics was "health preservation", which Ji Kang later wrote as a thesis. Ji Kang likes to say that to maintain health is to abandon desires, not to eat grains, and not to seek wealth. Xiang Xiu waved the roast chicken leg and said, then what are you still eating it for? Man is the primate of all things, if we just passively conform to nature and do not let nature be used by us, and the sages of the past generations have worked hard to cultivate grains and brew fine wine, will they be full of food? Ji Kang naturally disagreed, so he came and went until the sun set in the west and the day passed.

It seems to be really a peach blossom paradise in troubled times, happy to forget worries, and I don't know that old age is coming. If Xiang Xiu's life passed like this, he just happily ran a trick in history, and occasionally invited him to come out to make a cameo when we talked about Ji Kang's story. But history decided to give Xiang Xiu a chance to show his face, and murdered the protagonist Ji Kang when they couldn't spare their lives in troubled times. Xiang Xiu watched in amazement as Ji Kang burned himself in a resolute way, the autumn wind swept away Ji Kang's embers, but the days still had to go on.

Xiang Xiu, who was pushed onto the stage, looked confused.

What could he do? There are not a few celebrities in the world such as Ji Kang, and they all use their flesh and blood to block the iron cavalry of the Sima family on behalf of Wei, but those flesh and blood supported by affection and faith are all destroyed under the iron-blooded butcher's knife. If he chooses to be the same as Ji Kang, Xiang Xiu can foresee his own ending. It's just that when the whole world is making a fortune with the Sima family, what use can his death be except for one more orphan and widow?

Xiang Xiu, who had lost the direction of his life, wandered and was confused, and suddenly he was carried to Sima Zhao by the good deeds in a daze, giving him a chance to reform himself - both sides of the "Iron Triangle" were put on anti-government hats, and they were killed cleanly.

Xiang Xiu, who was in front of Sima Zhao, was a little depressed. He has been immersed in self-reflection, and the past and the present overlap like a dream, like Zhuang Zhou's dream. He wondered what the future should be. In the past, philosophical debates were all about wine and meat, and any kind of utopia, as long as it can be justified. Now, when eloquence is really needed, Xiang Xiu's brain is a little dull. Until Sima Zhao said to him with a condescending attitude of a victor: "Ziqi, how did I hear that you envy Xu Youthem, who ran to Jishan without being an official, and want to be a hermit?" "The subtext is, what do you mean by coming here to me?

As if walking in the night when he couldn't see his fingers, he suddenly fell into a black hole-like pond, Xiang Xiu was stunned, and smelled Ji Kang's blood in this seemingly joking sentence. So he bowed and replied, "Xu You they are so pedantic that they can't understand Yao's good intentions, and they have nothing to envy." ”

After a long time, Sima Zhao sighed, and finally another rebellious thinker disappeared. He cut off some people's heads, and many more, like Xiang Xiu, faded themselves in the face of the threat of death and the lure of profit. As a person in power, he hoped that the people of the world would abide by his etiquette and system, but as a former literary youth, he was choked by it.

And Xiang Xiu was shocked by his answer on the spot. He finally abandoned the freedom and exaltation of Ji Kang, and abandoned the path to happiness that he once believed. It turned out that so many of his previous articles simply could not stand the test of practice. Of course, he also refused to admit that his theory was wrong, he was wondering, people have the nature of being afraid of hardship, tiredness and death, and the pursuit of happiness means abandoning life? Does happiness make sense without life?

In the early winter of this year, taking the opportunity to go home, Xiang Xiu took a detour to Ji Kang's former residence. Sitting in front of the rapidly dilapidated Jishan Villa, Xiang Xiu was still thinking about this problem. If a man had a soul, he would be willing to sit here and wait for Ji Kang to come back and ask him. It's just that a withered yellow bamboo leaf brushed his face in the cold wind and fell into the canal, reminding him that it was a page in his life and that there was no way to come back. It's like the old year, but it's just the same.

Many years later, Xiang Xiu, who had been in and out of officialdom for many years, finally got the answer, and was stolen by Guo Xiang and transformed into the most important "Zhuangzi Note" in Chinese history. And now, the sound of the flute whimpering from nowhere, makes Xiang Xiu's heart full of memories. Whether he wants it or not, it's time for him to say goodbye to the past. At this moment, the philosopher's rationality is replaced by the poet's sensibility, he barely thinks, the past flows out of the tip of the pen, but he can't vent it wantonly, he wants to cry and scold, but he is afraid of the eyes that are everywhere around him. So this article stopped in a hurry at the beginning, but the ending had already fallen into the title - "Thinking of the Old Fu".

The fate is suitable for Yuanjingxi, and then he turns north. The Yellow River is rafted by boat, passing through the former residence of Shanyang. Looking at the depression of the wilderness, the rest is in the corner of the city. The relics of the two sons are the empty houses of the poor alleys. Sigh the sorrow of the separation, and the sad wheat show in the Yin Ruins. But the past is nostalgic for the present, and the heart wanders to hesitate. The building is ruined and destroyed, and the form and spirit are gone. Cialis was guilty, and sighed and groaned. mourning the eternal resignation of Ji Sheng, playing the piano in the shadow of the sun. Consignment meets comprehension, and the rest of your life is in the yin. Listen to the generosity of the whistle, and the wonderful sound will never be found. Stop driving and say that he will take a step, so he will help Han and write his heart.

After this poem is finished, he is going to Luoyang. laughed around Zhong Hui and Jia Chong, who had the blood of their friends on their hands. It wasn't until today, standing in front of the deserted Jishan Villa, that he suddenly understood that the poet who wrote "Huang Li" in the "Book of Songs" had a nostalgia for the country in his heart. Their ideal country is like Chaoge and Zhou Yuan, and those once glorious capitals have irretrievably declined. But he, the man who should have disappeared, is still standing on top of this ruin.

The cold sound of the flute is the most unbearable to listen to when you are lonely, but it is always sounded when you are sad. Even the strongest person like Wang Anshi can't resist the sadness it brings, and eight hundred years later, he and Xiang Xiu are far away:

The state bridge thinks about the mountain pepper, and looks back at the sorrow and does not realize the distance. Tonight, I heard the old whimpering again, but I looked at the mountain Huazhou Bridge.

In the past, Wang Anshi, the pioneer of reform who walked comfortably on the Bianjingzhou Bridge, once longed for the moonlight of Zhongshan Mountain in Jinling, but when this old man in the middle of the mountain listened to the cuckoo crying blood and the flute in Jinling in his later years, he remembered the state bridge and the young and enthusiastic self who had pointed out the rivers and mountains there.

Those ordinary pasts, because they are full of youthful spirit, beliefs and dreams, have no time to look forward to the scenery beside the road. It's just that the days and evenings, through the rebellion and evasion of the rules, and the seemingly beautiful ideals, I only found that the memories are so beautiful and irreplaceable.

Memories are a weakness that hits with one blow, and you can't pretend to be invulnerable. In later life, Xiang Xiu often felt burned inside.

surrendered to the Sima family, and the court treated him very well: the scattered cavalry squire, the Huangmen squire, the scattered cavalry squire, and the officials given to him by Sima Zhao and Sima Yan were all powerful ministers. But he wasn't interested. It's not about eating and waiting for death, but he also played a role in the revenge action of the metaphysicians launched by Shantao and Pei Kai. But what can be done well is not necessarily what you love to do, and politics is still disgusting.

What he cares about most is the answer about ideals and happiness that makes him unable to eat and sleep. That Ji Kang answered with his life, but he still couldn't refute his philosophical proposition. Not only Ji Kang, but also Ruan Yu and Xu Gan before have faced such a contradiction - they all just want to be alone, but they have to be pushed to wade into troubled waters, and they dare not die, so they have to succumb. The freedom they pursued encountered a serious crisis in Xiang Xiu: every example clearly marked the illusion of so-called freedom, and Zhuangzi was almost a big liar. Sadly, you can't admit that the ideals you've always agreed with are just a hoax.

For the wise, the crisis is an opportunity for faith to be reborn. The stimulus of Christianity turned Greek reason from aggressiveness to tenderness, the stimulus of Galileo forced religion and science to live in peace, and Xiang Xiu's freedom crisis finally made him realize that it was not that freedom was bad, but that they would have always been wrong about Zhuangzi.

It is its freedom to fly between heaven and earth, and it is also its freedom for small insects to fly around among the grass, and their freedom depends on their innate ability, and the ability to conform to them is freedom. And saints don't need to choose, they have the ability to do anything to be anyone, and they can be free anywhere. Southerners are free to eat rice, northerners are free to eat dumplings, Africans are free to eat bugs, and saints are free to eat anything. And he Xiang Xiu, he can be free to be an official, and his fate should be like this. The part of his nature that is afraid of death contributes to the reality of being an official, so to be content with his life is to be at peace with an official.

Therefore, Xiang Xiu, who disappeared from the history of thought, is back, this time not as an unruly performance artist, but as the founder of the Guo School Zhuangzi. Xiang Xiu did the ideological work for himself, and also solved the trap for future generations. Individual freedom and social responsibility can be combined, and there is nothing wrong with spiritual and material pursuits. Later people no longer have to experience the torture that Xiang Xiu has experienced, so there is a merry prime minister Xie An's consistent safety in the court and the opposition, and the later celebrities and gentlemen, in the wilderness, send love to the landscape, play the piano and drums, and when they arrive at the court, they should be killed and arrested, and there is no contradiction at all.

At the end of the day, faith is not the truth, it is peace of mind. An explanation is not the right answer, it is a proper answer. The reality is too cruel, and the smarter the person, the more painful. So it takes a little skill to make it flavorful. This technique may be called religion, or it may be called philosophy.