To Buy Osmanthus and Share Wine

Keywords: youthful wander

The phrase in the title is from Liu Guo’s “Tang Duo Ling: Lu Ye Man Ting Zhou”.

Reeds fill the banks of the Ting River, and cold sand flows in shallow waters. After twenty years, I return to the southern tower. The boat still sways under the willows, how many days will it last, it’s already mid-autumn.

Huang’s head rests on the river’s edge, is my old friend still here? The old landscapes have all become new sorrows. To buy osmanthus and share wine, it’s never the same, youthful wander.

I really like this poem. It’s one that I learned to recite when I was young. I know that it came from “Nian Nu Jiao: Chi Bi Huai Gu” (Recalling the Beauty of my Woman: Remembering Ancient Times at Red Cliffs). In the previous article, “Yi Zun Huan Le Jiang Yue” I mentioned, I secretly rummaged through my father’s bookcase while he was not at home and flipped through articles related to Red Cliffs. In the end, I found the poem “Nian Nu Jiao” and discovered this “Tang Duo Ling”.

As time goes by, I’ve forgotten my initial understanding of this poem when I was young.

But as I’ve grown older, gone through various stages, from middle school to high school, to college, to postgraduate studies, and now in my career, whenever I read or think of the last line, I always feel something, even though this feeling may have nothing to do with the imagery of the poem.

These feelings and memories seem to have happened just yesterday, except for the scent¹, everything else, including the scenes, temperature, and even the feeling of the wind, are still preserved in my mind.

The current me has accumulated the memories left by this line from previous stages.

It’s like wildflowers on the roadside on the way back home after a bustling market, it’s a warm breeze, it’s a leisurely bike ride.

It’s looking out of the classroom window, searching for the person I want to see in the crowd, it’s the deep blue sky, it’s the slightly cool but warming breeze.

It’s Lecture Hall 206 during heavy rain, it’s the classmate sitting in front of me, it’s my grid diary, it’s the route I took on my bike to the library.

It’s the warmth of the heater in the lab, it’s the experimental setup with supercritical carbon dioxide for dyeing, it’s the peach blossoms on Mount Qi’s Buddha in late spring, it’s the light that lingers after sprinkling water on the road from the canteen to the lab, it’s the corridor with that purple wisteria and the waterfall at the end.

…

Although the poem always speaks of autumn, most of what it reminds me of is spring and summer. If I were to imagine this scene, it would probably be a few people on a boat in a small town by the stream in the Jiangnan region, with peach blossoms blooming by the bridge. Everyone is lying down, reclining, or sitting, next to them is a jar of ancient-style yellow wine. Laughter and conversation fill the air, with the scent of poplar leaves mixed in…

Recently, the pandemic has been raging, and since it’s inevitable to be infected, I hope that everyone will have a can of canned peaches. When we recover, we can all promise to go on a youthful wander.