Paris
Jianfeng LI 2018-5
April again. Last April, I was enchanted by the peaceful charm of Cangshan and Erhai and the quaint freshness of Lijiang’s old town. This time, I’ve come to Paris, the city of romance, thousands of miles away. Paris lies in northern France, and in April the air carries a slight chill, deepening after a shower. But the mild cold can’t hold back spring. As the train slowly pulled out of Charles de Gaulle Airport, the world outside gradually opened up. Dense leaves, caressed by sunlight, glowed with a delightful tender yellow, like a breath of freshness spreading through my body. The train moved unhurriedly, the carriage quiet. Houses along the line drifted backwards, many walls adorned with irregular graffiti lines that sparked curiosity.
An hour or so later, after changing lines and emerging from underground, Paris revealed itself vividly before me. Paris? I began to doubt what I saw. Wasn’t this just like the Bund in Shanghai, yet far less grand in scale? A brand-new modern city, seemingly not romantic at all. After hastily settling into my accommodation, my first instinct was to sleep, as the time difference from home was six hours. Minutes ticked by, and I forced myself to stay awake. Six, seven, eight o’clock – what was happening? Even at nine, it was still bright outside. It dawned on me that this was daylight saving time. After half past nine, the sky slowly darkened. Lying in bed, I still felt as if I were on the plane. I drifted into slumber, then woke at two in the morning to pitch darkness. Looking at my watch, I realized it was already past eight back home. I tried to sleep again but failed, my mind floating until dawn finally broke.
The first order of business: Google. It’s a magical tool. Get lost? Impossible, unless you run out of data. A closer look at Paris revealed how small it is. Where was the so-called Greater Paris? Indeed, the city center is no larger than a circle with a ten-kilometer radius. So if you’re fit, walking the entire city isn’t that hard.
When Paris is mentioned, the Seine is a must-see. Nearly all of the city’s famous landmarks are built along the river – on its banks or on the islands in its midst. The Louvre is no exception, standing just a hundred meters from the water. Among the world’s three great museums, the Louvre ranks second. You’ll naturally ask: which are first and third? The British Museum is first, and our own Forbidden City is third. Built over a thousand years ago, the Louvre is vast in scale and richly ornamented. Its most representative features are the stone sculptures and murals. Huge oil paintings on the vast ceilings inspire awe. It is said that Louis XVI once lived in this palace, though such an enormous project must have drained the people’s resources, and in the end Louis XVI was sent to the guillotine. This echoes the ancient Chinese saying: water can carry a boat, but also capsize it. When speaking of the Louvre, three treasures can’t be overlooked: the Mona Lisa, Venus, and Winged Victory. To be honest, as a layman, I can’t truly appreciate such masterpieces, so I won’t pretend to have profound insights. The Mona Lisa is a relatively small oil painting compared to other exhibits. So many people were taking photos that I could only glimpse her from a distance – indeed, she was smiling. Compared to the fair-skinned, high-nosed young beauties of today, she’s hardly pretty.
Why then does she enjoy such adoration? As an outsider, I can’t understand. I wandered among the stone sculptures, cast a glance at various oil paintings, hoping some impression would stick. Now, I’ve forgotten almost everything. In retrospect, it’s all naked men and naked women, angels and Jesus – a puzzle I kept pondering. In the Louvre, oil paintings account for nearly half the collection, and among those, around seventy to eighty percent feature partially or fully nude figures. The sculptures are almost all nudes; children are virtually never clothed. Why? Everyone may have their own interpretation. Perhaps this is the most direct difference between Eastern and Western civilizations. Eastern civilization favors suggestiveness, stirring endless thoughts, leaving things half-hidden – too straightforward and it becomes bland. Western civilization, on the other hand, values realism; soul and body are not ethereal but concrete and real. There’s no need to deliberately conceal beauty. This might be one reason why the Mona Lisa and Venus are so acclaimed in the West – a radically different creative approach.
Thus I began to understand why figures beside Jesus are depicted with bare chests. Because the body is real and pure, whether slender or stout. Good and evil are merely souls hidden behind the body. No species comes into this world neatly dressed. So the Savior offers redemption, seeking inner balance, absolving the soul, until the final Judgment Day, when there’s only one choice: heaven or hell. This differs greatly from Eastern Buddhist culture, which speaks of the six realms of rebirth. Through cultivation, one can enter the heavenly realm, the human realm, or the asura realm.
After wandering out of the Louvre, I reached the central square. Directly ahead was the masterpiece by Chinese-born architect I.M. Pei: the glass pyramid. Actually, there are also three smaller inverted pyramids. Such a bold design – to place glass structures right in front of a thousand-year-old palace. Only France would dare to take such a risk, and after being washed by history, it has become a city icon. Whether the pyramid accentuates the Louvre or the Louvre promotes the pyramid is hard to discern. But the pyramid at night truly cloaks the ancient palace in mystery.
Further out, there was a modest square where countless people were reading, sunbathing, or gathering. Open and flat, no mountains in sight.
Not far from the Louvre, on an island in the river, stands the renowned Notre-Dame Cathedral, situated almost at the very heart of Paris. It is a Christian church. Stepping inside, beside you is Jesus nailed to the cross. Perhaps the great thinker Victor Hugo made this cathedral so venerated. Greatness is always associated with thought; without the embellishment of ideas and the weight of history, architecture is merely a shell. The cathedral towered grandly, and upon entering a sense of solemnity arose. Many worshippers were already seated in the nave, singing hymns. I saw a woman so devout that tears streamed down her face. Nearby, people of various ethnicities were confessing before the statues, seeking solace for their souls. A worldly person like me can’t grasp profound truths. Yet perhaps it was this cultural baptism that, during the Renaissance, produced so many great figures on French soil: thinkers like Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, and great mathematicians who almost dominated the world – Descartes, Laplace, Lagrange, Cauchy, Fourier, Leibniz, and more. Looking closely, I was astounded. Then I thought of my own homeland, which during that modern period seemingly had few such luminaries, and I couldn’t help but sigh. Today’s France has fallen far short of its ancestors’ brilliance – perhaps a case of prosperity giving way to decline.
After the Louvre, another unmissable place is the Palace of Versailles. Also a royal palace, it’s different. The Versailles Palace is far less grand than the Louvre, but it has its own charm – the gardens behind it. The gardens stretch as far as the eye can see, lush and symmetrically arranged. Standing inside the palace, you can take in the entire garden vista. Sculptures and fountains are neatly ordered, and the trees are trimmed as if cut with precision, which is truly astonishing. At the garden’s center is a man-made lake, but its design is utterly unlike Chinese feng shui. The lake has a strong religious overtone, shaped like a cross, with a circumference of over seven kilometers. A key difference from Chinese gardens is that everything is laid bare at a glance. Direct and impactful, like the scene from 300 Spartans. Chinese landscape gardens, by contrast, favor winding paths and hidden scenery. Lu You’s verse “Beyond mountains and streams, there seems no way; past dark willows and bright flowers, another village appears” captures that surprise. And in Dream of the Red Chamber, when the garden was built for the imperial consort’s visit, Jia Zheng praised the rockery placed right at the entrance.
The Arc de Triomphe directly faces the Champs-Élysées, and the surrounding streets radiate outward like rays. The buildings, not tall, are of Western style and likely centuries old. The Champs-Élysées isn’t as luxurious as one might imagine; along it you find mostly Western-style cafés and restaurants where people gather. Order a coffee, and you can chat away all morning.
Not far from there, the Eiffel Tower is one of the few tall buildings in Paris, and I won’t elaborate further. A modern tower that has become world-famous – it’s really unbelievable. But its success is beyond question!
