Exclusive article by China's well-off network.
Text|"Well-off", China Well-off Network, Sun Yuanyuan.
For the Chinese nation, the Yellow River is still a mirror spread on the earth, reflecting on history, reflecting on shortcomings, and foreseeing the future.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
The Yellow River not only passes through the earth, nourishing the crops and people's hearts along the river, but also forges a corridor of time for itself, allowing the shadows of different civilizations to pass through it, just like the galaxy reflected on the water and dancing brightly, constituting a majestic poem. In August 2023, Tang Rongyao's new 300,000-word book, The Gift of the Yellow River, was published by the Ningxia People's Publishing House, in which he wrote.
From childhood to adolescence, from youth to middle age, the place of study and work, with his hometown as the origin, has been more than 500 kilometers along the Yellow River between Lanzhou in the west and Yinchuan in the east, constituting a "thousand miles of Yellow River life map" in Tang Rongyao's life. This poet and writer, who grew up listening to the sound of the Yellow River, believes that the Yellow River culture is undoubtedly an important part of the long scroll of China's 5,000-year-old civilization and a "gift" from the Yellow River to the Chinese nation.
Xiaokang" magazine and China's well-off network interviewed Tang Rongyao. He said: "A river that is always alive will always call for new writing. From my birth to the present, born and raised by the Yellow River, my interest in the Yellow River has never been interrupted, and my understanding of the Yellow River has been deepening. Can you write for your own Yellow River and then continue? This kind of questioning became the original impetus for the birth of this book. ”
The Yellow River is ethical.
Xiaokang: How did you start your writing career?
Tang Rongyao: I had published more than a dozen books before I became a professional writer, but I think it is not strictly a kind of writing, but a journalist's observation, which is expressed in a way that is between literature and journalism.
My family lives on the edge of the Yellow River, one of the most remote villages in Jingyuan County. The county seat and my home are by the Yellow River, there are many canyons in the upper reaches, there is no road to reach from the county seat to my home, and I have to walk more than 100 kilometers of mountain roads in the middle, and I have to climb over a snow-capped mountain with an altitude of more than 3,000 meters in the middle, so it is really difficult to go to school and go home.
There is also a mode of transportation, is to take a sheepskin raft, or a small wooden boat to row to the other side of the Yellow River, there is another county, from the village to the neighboring county Jingtai County is only more than 20 kilometers, although it is close, but to walk to the county seat of the Baolan Railway through the railway station, take the train to ** city and then reverse the train, in order to go to Jingyuan County, where I studied high school. In this way, from our home to Jingtai County, we have to cross the Yellow River once, and then take the train, and we have to cross the Yellow River once to get to the place where I studied. When I was in the third year of junior high school, I left my hometown to study in the county seat, and I could only get to the county seat by raft, car, and train.
When I was a child, the Yellow River could be crossed by ice in winter. In the summer, you have to take a sheepskin raft to get to the other side, where the great-grandmother, grandmother and mother live, and later, a small wooden boat appears. The ferry is between the two counties, which provides great convenience for me. Nowadays, the crossing of the river with the boat on the water, the car on the boat, and the people on the car is still the scenery floating on the Yellow River in the hometown. A wire rope is used between the two banks, and a pulley is used to use the impulse of the water, and a large boat carrying vehicles, people, and things can reach the opposite shore safely.
Due to the turbulence of the Yellow River, the sheepskin raft is often pushed far downstream, and then people have to drag it up, which is dangerous and laborious. After this boat appeared on the Yellow River, I, like the people on both sides of the river, felt a sense of gratitude and admiration from the bottom of my heart.
In the first semester of my sophomore year of high school, I wrote an essay on the boat and submitted it to the essay competition for middle school students organized by Gansu Provincial Radio Station. Unexpectedly, after the radio broadcast, the owner of the ship heard this essay on the radio, so he asked me everywhere - it turned out to be the student baby on the other side.
The owner of the boat specially found me and said, "You are a talent on both sides of our Yellow River, and you don't need money to cross the river from now on!" As long as it's someone in your family, your father, your mother, your brother, and your brother are all free! "I thought that I still had such a benefit for writing about the Yellow River, because of an essay, our whole family would take his boat for free for more than ten years, and if the family gave him money, he would stare at him fiercely. The owner, who has a sense of investment and a legend, and my dad became friends.
Many years later, when I came home and he was still on the other side, I shouted, "I have something to cross." "My voice was pushed to the other side with the sound of the waves, and he slowly swung the boat over, and I was very touched by this scene.
When I was in middle school, I wrote a small article by accident, which can be regarded as my writing about the origin of the Yellow River, and it is also a gift from the Yellow River.
Xiaokang"·China Xiaokang.com: What kind of opportunity made you think of writing the book "The Gift of the Yellow River"?
Tang Rongyao: In 2008, China National Geographic magazine was named one of the "Top Ten New Heavenly Mansions". When we mention the "land of abundance", it is the Chengdu Plain, but in fact, the Chengdu Plain in history is really not the first and most influential land of abundance. Through the rational use of water resources in the past millennium, especially in recent years, progress has been made in water conservation and ecological protection, coupled with the restoration and protection of lakes and wetlands, the Ningxia Plain was finally selected as one of the "Top Ten New Tianfu in China". As a Yinchuan person, I am also quite happy. This was a major event in Chinese culture that year, which changed Ningxia's low sense of presence in the country to a certain extent.
The ferry is another mouth that tells the story of the Yellow River, which has witnessed wars and dynasties along the Yellow River from glory to decline. At the same time, the ferry port is also a symbol of peace. For example, when Wang Zhaojun crossed the Yellow River north in Jiuyuan, she became a symbol of peace. The Yellow River is a symbol of the best, Maojindu represents the profound historical and cultural heritage and friendly cooperation between Shaanxi and Shanxi, symbolizes the friendly contract between the two major powers in the Spring and Autumn Period, and leaves a good story of peace.
When I wrote The Gift of the Yellow River, I was wary of the traditional way of writing about rivers. Particular attention was paid to human intervention in the Yellow River, including the intervention of modern technology. Last summer, I saw a group of people rowing in the water at the foot of Niushou Mountain, and I asked you what you were doing. He said they were in exercises. What exercises, I asked? He said what to do with the Yellow River after the pipeline rupture.
The pipeline they are talking about is an oil pipeline, buried just below the Yellow River. In other words, there are already new scientific and technological products under the Yellow River, which are oil and gas pipelines that are closely related to us. In addition, there is a subway running down the river in Lanzhou, and Yinchuan has built a gas transmission project through the river.
In general, we look at the Yellow River as a holistic ecological view, with buildings increasing in height, plants decreasing, species differentiation, and modern bridges across the water......Modern technology has intervened in the Yellow River in an all-round way.
I consulted botanists and zoologists, and they observed that there has been a marked change in the migration of waterbirds along the banks of the Yellow River, including the size of the wetlands.
When we call the Yellow River the "Mother River", this metaphor is too apt. When the mother is young, it is instinctive for the mother to give the baby milk, how can there be a mother in the world who exchanges milk for money? But when the mother of the Yellow River is old and sick, especially when she is harmed by sewage, noise pollution, light pollution, etc., how do we as children give feedback? The river is the river ethical, it is a mirror. When we sing the praises of the Yellow River as the mother river, we take it for granted, regardless of whether it is overwhelmed or sick.
Many provinces along the Yellow River have built riverside roads, which have squeezed and restrained the Yellow River. However, the Yellow River has lost its free spaciousness and nature, and when it flows slowly, it has sediment, and when it sweeps away the sediment, there are fish, animals, and plants in the water, and there are ......Once the water of the Yellow River is constrained and changes, a series of changes are taking place in the surrounding ecology.
Why I wrote the book "The Gift of the Yellow River", I sang both a praise for it and a concern for its overwhelm, especially the light pollution and sound pollution ...... written in the bookBecause this is the "ecology" of the 21st century.
Xiaokang: Your writing language style is very poetic, for example, in "The Gift of the Yellow River", "the smoke of boiling tea is the alarm clock of the desert" and "the pear blossom falls asleep with the sound of the waves", does the experience of writing poetry also affect your writing style?
Tang Rongyao: Language style is a writer's recognition. I am a poet, and in my feeling, the Yellow River is really a majestic poem, and the appearance it presents to us is diverse.
When the spring flowers bloom, the water of the Yellow River flows down from the upper reaches clearly, like the peach blossoms in Lanzhou, we can call it a hazy poem, as a romantic poem. However, when the Yellow River floods, and even when some catastrophic events occur, it is extremely cruel, and at this time, it becomes a realist poem again.
The writing of the Yellow River is a kind of reverence tradition for Chinese literati, because poetry is too hazy, the audience is too narrow, and the threshold is high, how to apply the language of poetry to prose, and raise the threshold of prose style, which requires talent and skill.
When writing The Gift of the Yellow River, I had to digest thousands of literary and historical materials about the Yellow River, as well as local chronicles. To write about this great river, we need to face it calmly and awefully, and we need to express it with a poetic vision and poetic language. Combining traditional literary virtues, fashion literature, geographical writing, and humanities and history into the language of poetry is a blessing given to me by God! Poetry is a language that has a threshold, but that's my forte.
New book published In August 2023, Tang Rongyao's 300,000-word new book "The Gift of the Yellow River" was published by Ningxia People's Publishing House. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Water is what makes a city character.
Xiaokang: You tell a lot of legends and stories along the Yellow River in your book, how did you collect and write these stories?
Tang Rongyao: When I was a child, I grew up by the Yellow River, and I was familiar with the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. The county seat where I went to university is 27 kilometers away from the Yellow River for 8 years after graduating from university, and the domestic water in the county is from the Yellow River to irrigate 761 water.
I was introduced as a talent in 2000 and worked in Yinchuan for 23 years, which is a riverside city. At the end of 2023, I was introduced to Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu, which has always been surrounded by the Yellow River. Over the years, the language, jokes, and stories of the people I have come into contact with are all related to the Yellow River, and the accumulation of materials has reached a certain stage, and it is natural and natural.
Recording is a journalist's instinct, and writing is a writer's vocation. From journalist to writer, it was my years associated with the Yellow River, and my professional experience was of great help to me in collecting these legends.
Since I arrived in Yinchuan, I have been doing cultural reports, which requires me to go to the site to interview clues, or dig historical materials, which is the basic work of writing the Yellow River. Writing about the Yellow River, I walked, interviewed, listened to, spoke, read, and so on.
I grew up by the Yellow River and regarded the Yellow River as my mother. When your mother is old and can't work anymore, and she wants to comb her hair, you can't help but pick up the comb, whether her hair is white or not, and whether she has ...... or lessBecause when you comb your mother's hair, you can't make her squat, you will let her sit down, you stand, and in the act of combing her hair, we maintain a kind of awe and gratitude. It is too old, it has flowed for tens of millions of years, nourished us, and nurtured a history of Chinese civilization.
The legends, anecdotes, and wild histories that the Yellow River has nurtured are, in my opinion, really equivalent to another version of a textbook. It is the other side of the Yellow River, and it also has a story, which is equivalent to a wordless book, telling us what the Yellow River is like, and it is also some of the "Yellow River Gaiden" written into this book.
Xiaokang: What do you think is the significance of the Yellow River to the Chinese nation?
Tang Rongyao: The Yellow River is a grand history of civilization, how is this history of civilization shaped? In China's case, the Yellow River is a shaper. When the Yellow River and the desert meet, such as Ulan Bu and the desert, why does the wind and sand rise? The Yellow River originally passed through that desert, so sometimes the Yellow River shaped the desert, sometimes the canyon, sometimes the wetland oasis.
I think it's more important to shape the character of the sons and daughters of the Yellow River; The Yellow River has also created the things she has given her, including the character of the city. When the industry developed rapidly, people began to ask for space from the river, and even dams, iron bridges, roads along the river, and man-made landscapes appeared, but some projects asked for space from the river due to lack of planning, so that some aborigines-like animals and plants lost their homes. If we continue to encroach on the space of the Yellow River, what kind of Yellow River will we leave to future generations?
The tributaries of the Yellow River include sweet water, bitter water, and alkaline water, and what the Yellow River leaves us is the mind and momentum of the sea, and its ability to shape human beings is particularly strong. When it flooded, it forced the people on both sides of the river to improve the level of scientific and technological water conservancy for flood control - the embankments along the river, on the one hand, because of the obstruction of the big river, inspired the people on both sides of the river to cross the river to explore. When it is peaceful, it will open its arms to this spirit of exploration, unite the people on both sides of the strait, let them have friendly exchanges with their sons and daughters, and connect with each other, and jointly create a peaceful world and kinship relations.
The Yellow River is like a mirror, constantly showing a law of the rise and fall of dynasties for future generations. Our country, like the Yellow River, has the bearing of embracing all rivers, forming a diverse and rich Yellow River culture and Chinese meteorology. For the Chinese nation today, the Yellow River is still a mirror spread on the earth, reflecting our history, reflecting on our shortcomings, and foreseeing our future.
Xiaokang: In your opinion, what changes have taken place in the ecological environment of the Yellow River Basin in the past few decades? Living by the Yellow River since childhood, what kind of changes have you witnessed?
Tang Rongyao: Since we entered the new era, the changes in the material sense have been particularly rapid, and the Yellow River, which is accompanied by such changes, has also undergone great changes in its background color, appearance, and spiritual temperament.
When I was in elementary school, the water of the Yellow River was clear and we could catch fish, but now there are no fish in these years. At that time, the water of the Yellow River was frozen in winter, which gave rise to the word "sealing the river" that was exclusive to the Yellow River. People on both sides of the strait walked back and forth on the ice. From the time I was in junior high school, until now, the Yellow River has never frozen.
After my work, I have witnessed the suffering of the Yellow River in interviews again and again: global warming has caused the snow line on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to rise, resulting in a decrease in the amount of water at the source, serious soil erosion in the Loess Plateau in the middle reaches, the increasingly serious sewage and air pollution in the coastal heavy industrial cities, a large area in the lower reaches of the Yellow River has been reduced, and even the phenomenon of a water flow has been cut off for a time, the grassland desertification in the first bay of the Yellow River in Jiuqu, and the direct discharge of sewage into the Yellow River by paper companies "ambushed" on the edge of the Tengger Desert. At that time, we didn't have a sense of environmental protection, and we always felt that with such a big river, what were we afraid of with this pollution? The facts tell us: no matter how majestic the river is, it can't help but discharge sewage endlessly!
At that time, the Yellow River was really unsightly, the whole river was like a stained rag, and even the migratory birds did not want to settle down. In recent years, the implementation of the national ecological strategy has been like decontamination of a glass mirror, turning the wetland park along the river into a paradise for birds, which are a barometer of ecological change.
The gift of the Yellow River is wisdom and wealth.
Xiaokang: You describe the historical changes and social significance of the Yellow River in your book, can you talk about the enlightenment of these elements to modern society?
Tang Rongyao: Our ancestors have never given up on guarding, governing and being grateful to the Yellow River, and even when war came, they also regarded the defense of the Yellow River as a symbol of defending their homeland and country. For another example, when the Japanese army invaded the Central Plains and coveted Tongguan, how many good Chinese sons and daughters "defended the Yellow River".
There is a term called "water war" in the West, and it is not only in this book that I wrote about the Mongol cavalry besieging Western Xia and flooding its capital Xingqing Mansion with the Tang Lai Canal, which is irrigated by the Yellow River. Today, Tanglai Canal has become a "World Natural Heritage Project". The Yellow River has left us two legacies: one is natural heritage and the other is cultural heritage, both of which are gifts from nature. In any big river, once the upstream residents threaten to barrage the river, it will be a deadly, non-forceful war for the downstream residents. In this scenario, water is a resource, a commodity, and even more. In China, the Yellow River has the "Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee" (full name "Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee of the Ministry of Water Resources"), and its role in China's agriculture and development is first and foremost to coordinate and make a large river serve the people as a whole.
I plan to write "The Yellow River Trilogy", which is the first book, "The Gift of the Yellow River", which is my understanding or awe of the Yellow River, which is the expression and presentation of words.
Xiaokang: How do you think we should better inherit and protect the Yellow River culture?
Tang Rongyao: For writers, it is important to excavate the story and culture of the Yellow River, and to use a modern context and a modern perspective to observe the Yellow River that has flowed for so many years. Someone once concluded that there are 12 cultures in Ningxia, and the Yellow River culture is one of them. In my opinion, the Yellow River in Ningxia is simply a book of Yellow River culture with a capital letter! It embodies in a concentrated and detailed way the culture of border areas, immigrants, military affairs, water transportation, and water governance. In terms of military culture, from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Xiongnu, to the Tang Dynasty to the Turks, the Song Dynasty to fight against the Khitan army, the Ming Dynasty to confront the Tatar tribes, the Qing Dynasty, when the Galdan rebellion was assessed, the Kangxi Emperor stayed in Yinchuan for more than ten days. Here, the Yellow River flows not only the dawn of peace and lotus-like kindness, but also the blood of countless soldiers and the sound of war drums.
In my opinion, travel and travel are two different concepts. Traveling is to measure, measure, and measure the mountains and rivers quietly by yourself, which is a kind of appreciation, observation, and understanding. And tourism is a group of people following a tour guide, running here and ...... in a panicThe Yellow River is more suitable and welcoming to travelers! I hope that people who read my book can at least complete a "journey to the Yellow River on paper".
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This article was published in the late January 2024 issue of Xiaokang.