Origin of Origins

Mattresses have been aired; bedsheets and curtains have been washed; mushrooms and day lilies golden with their fill of sunshine, have been sealed and stored. Everything is ready for the onset of the rainy season.

But day after day, the sun goes to work on time, as if nothing will happen. The sunlight is so generous, it appears extravagant. Roads remain dry. People begin looking up into the sky again and again. In the countryside, farmers pace anxiously to and fro in their fields. Water are carried out. Drought-resistance information fills the newspaper.

Expecting rain is like waiting for a garrulous old friend: you get annoyed if he comes too often, but if he does not turn up as expected, you become restless and listen for his footstep.

And then I remember the time when I was a kid, schoolbag on back, loitering by a pool of water and always late for school. Especially after a summer shower, no matter if the road was covered with dust and rotting leaves, the pools of water always reflected clearly the azure sky, the tufts of clouds and the moving branches. I remember there was a fairy tale which told of a boy who lost his foot and fell into a pool and roamed through a strange and marvelous world. To this day, I firmly believe in this story, the only problem being that it needs imagination to open this door.

A moss-covered spring, a brook leaping and winding through strange-shaped stones, a river flowing over a bed of rocks, they are all a delight to the beholder. Through the baptism of water, man would be softened and freshened up and become more sprightly. I once asked my teacher Cai Qiqiao: "Why is it that people are always moved at the sight of the source of water?"

"Because life originates in water," he said, with his head turned aside, as if listening to the sound of water pulsing through his heart.

"What do you like best besides water?" he asked me.

"Plants," I answered without thinking.

Older folks in my family say I turned to grasp a flowering fig the first time I found my feet without gripping at mother's skirt. I am often surprised at how plants express themselves. Artful hands can creates flower arrangements, but Mother Nature's flower shows remain for me the most gracious and harmonious.

My four-year-old son said to me: "Mom, grapes feel hurt when they are plucked green but when they turn red they are happy to be plucked."

"How do you know?" I asked in surprise.

"I know because when I pull them the green grapes grasp the branches firmly, but when they are ripe, they part so easily. And if we forget to pluck them, they will be hurt and fall to the ground one by one."
I bent to caress his face, like a mother tree stroking her blossoming buds.

I have the same experience as my son's. on campus, branches are pruned twice a year. When I pass by those flowers and twigs now scattered on the ground, I feel as if I were involved in a slaughter. Their silent screams frighten me; I run and run, trembling all over.

It was in the Guangzhou Botanical Garden that I got close to the secret of life.

It was an ordinary day between late autumn and early winter. The clouds were thin, and the sun missing. The water looked serene. It might be shallow too, but with a layer of dark green algae. The gorgeous canopy of a willow drooped over the surface of the water, as if a giant animal stood to drink there. Solemn water; quiet tree; wind fading away in the distance on tiptoes. Water seemed to be oozing out of the lawn under my feet. A feeling of coolness spread throughout my body. At that moment I became faintly aware that my name was being called in an inaudible voice, to which my whole body spontaneously responded. The willow was standing there, gazing at me, waiting to share its elusive secret.

Perhaps, I was once one of their kind?

I failed to figure out how to interpret the eye contact between the willow and myself. But I'm aware that my yearning for rain was that of a tree's love and hope. Now, isn't the relationship between mankind and water one of the inexorable principles of Nature?