Eastern Travel Sketches: Japan (Part 4)
The night before leaving Kyoto, my professor held a farewell dinner for me in the lamplight of Ponto-cho. Kaiseki cuisine and Japanese sake surrounded us. As we raised our glasses and chopsticks, he never once asked about the progress of my thesis over the past three weeks, but only repeatedly expressed his admiration for my deep interest in Japanese history and culture. His expectations for me lie not in academia but in society, in China's development and prosperity. The Kamo River flowed quietly beside us; outside, the lights and shadows were deep. Yet I felt the cup in my hand seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. The next day, I packed up and set off, taking the Haruka from Kyoto to Kansai Airport. Outside the window, the sky was high and clear, perfect weather for mountain climbing. I couldn't help thinking that a few days earlier, on another such clear and sunny day, I had gone alone to Arashiyama in the western suburbs of Kyoto. In midsummer, Arashiyama was lush green everywhere. I walked from Togetsukyo Bridge upstream along the Oi River, searching for a memory from the last century. Eighty-nine years ago, there must have been a young man who climbed Arashiyama along the same path, except it was early spring then, with a fine rain falling, blurring the road ahead. Suddenly a ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, showing the young man light. So he descended the mountain and boarded a ship back to his country. On the other side of the sea, the May Fourth Movement was sweeping across China like a prairie fire. Another cycle of sixty years passed; the young man of yesteryear had long passed away, but the Japanese people who admired him forever engraved his name and his youthful poem on Arashiyama. The stone monument for Premier Zhou Enlai's poem 'Rain in Arashiyama' stands silently deep in the woods. At its foot, the Oi River surges onward with rolling waves. What a tranquil and secluded place. But why do I distinctly feel, amidst this tranquility, a heroic spirit of the human world galloping and roaming?
Thus, I descended the mountain, packed my belongings, and began a new journey.
Late August 2008, in Hong Kong
