Birds' Paradise
Ba Jin

We had supper at Chen’s school. The heat had subsided. The sun had gone down behind the hills, leaving its glorious glow on the horizon, on top of the hills and on tips of the trees.

“Let’s go boating!” Chen suggested. We were standing by the pond in front of the school gate, watching the scene over the hills and on tips of the trees.

“Let’s go boating!” Chen suggested. We were standing by the pond in front of the school gate, watching the scene over the hills.

“Good idea,” the other friends fell in with him cheerfully.

We went along a gravel path for some distance and soon got to the river. There was a straw pavilion by the water. We went past the pavilion and found a couple of small boats under two tall trees along the river.

We jumped into one of them one after another. A friend unfastened the rope and pushed off the boat with a bamboo pole, and the boat moved slowly toward the middle of the river.

Three of us took turns to row the boat, and Chen and I sat enjoying the scene around.

On the hillside in the distance there stood a tower surrounded by many green trees. Such towers were hard to find elsewhere in the neighborhood. That was where Chen’s home was located.

The river was wide, the whitish water was undisturbed and the boat was floating on its smoothly. The three oars were paddling in the water with regular rhythm.

The river narrowed at one point. Clusters of tree leaves, leaves with lovely greenness, reached out over the water. They were many exuberant banyan trees, but their trunks were invisible.

As soon as I said they were “many” banyan trees, I was corrected by my friends. One of them said it was only one, and another said there were two. I had seen many big banyans before, but it was the first time I had seen a banyan as big as this one.

Our boat was nearing the tree, and I was able to see at close hand what it looked like: it was a huge tree, with numerous branches out of which roots grew and many of them drooped to the ground and dug into the earth. Some branches hung down to the water, looking from a distance like a big tree lying buoyant on top of it.

This was the season when trees were thick with dense branches and leaves (the tree began to bear small fruits and some had fallen). It looked as though the banyan was trying to show to us all of its exuberance. It’s so heavy with leaves in clusters, one piling on top of another, leaving hardly any space in between. The emerald green shimmered in front of our eyes, as if in every leaf there was a new life pulsating there. What beautiful trees of southern China.

Our boat slowed to a halt under the tree and stopped there for a moment. We did not get off to the bank as it was wet there. My friends said the tree was a “paradise” for the birds’; many birds had nested in it and peasants would not allow anyone to catch them. I seemed to have heard the sound of some birds flapping their wings, but when I turned to look I could not see any one there. Instead there were numerous roots standing on the ground like wood stakes. The ground was wet, probably washed by the tides. “Birds’ Paradise”, but there were no birds in it, I wondered. Our boat, poled by a friend, moved on and glided toward the middle of the river.