Life Essays

Life Essays, Perceptions and Moods, Phoenix City, Qi Ruhong, I have finished several of my travel notes, and I can resume the [Life Essays] column this week. In fact, going out…

Life Essays, Perceptions and Moods, Phoenix City, Qi Ruhong. Several of my travel notes have been completed, and I can resume the [Life Essays] column this week. In fact, traveling is also a part of my daily life. However, in order to make the details clear, I have arranged the travel articles separately to avoid confusion. What makes me feel gratified is that regardless of travel articles or life essays, they have been loved and resonated with Phoenix readers and have been sincerely praised many times. This is the greatest encouragement and spiritual pillar. It is this invisible force that makes me dare not stop writing and do not want to live up to the love of readers. In the past six months, I have published many travel articles in the Alberta Times. I have traveled twice and recorded my travels. In June and July, there are seven chapters called "Tour of the Treasure Island," and in October there are seven chapters called "A Wandering in the Rockies." Last time I flew to Vietnam and passed through Taiwan Island, where I stayed for seven days to travel and visit relatives and friends. After reading it, many friends from Taiwan said that my description was very good. Some said, "I haven't been back for a long time. After reading your travel notes, I really want to go back and see the current situation." Some said, "I rarely traveled in Taiwan before. Reading your article made me want to travel." This time, October is the eighth month of the lunar calendar. To celebrate the birthday of The Queen and our wedding anniversary, we made a special trip to the Canadian Rockies to roam. The travel notes were published and received favorable reviews from readers. A friend said: "I'm afraid of the cold, but after reading your vivid description, I really want to experience it. I'll go to the Rocky Mountains in June or July next year." Another lady said: "I have traveled before, but it seemed very ordinary, nothing special, and I didn't have as much fun as you did!" Oh! I remembered someone saying the same thing to me in the past. It was 1986 in Vietnam, and the people in the south were unfamiliar with the north. The south had always lived in a liberal democratic capital society. After being liberated for ten years, it was still not accustomed to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, the government innovatively encouraged people to travel to the north to communicate with each other. Travel expenses were very cheap and the state provided financial subsidies, but there were only a few tourists. In July of that year, a group of Chinese friends decided to let down their guard and respond to the call of the Fifth District Cultural Palace to try sightseeing and understanding the environment. They invited me and my wife to accompany them and registered for a ten-day tour of Hanoi. However, the glass factory was booming at that time, so Tai Zuo stayed to help manage the business. I took my eldest son Guoping there with me. It was the first time in my life that I took an American Boeing plane, flew to North Vietnam for the first time, set foot on Hanoi, the capital of the Communist Party, and took the Soviet-aided icon plane for the first time on the return trip. Let me explain here that the Vietnam of my childhood was a French territory, under the Nguyen dynasty, Emperor Bao Dai was on the throne, and the capital palace was in Central Hue. In 1954, France was defeated at Dien Bien Phu and returned to the country under the flag. The Geneva Treaty divided North and South Vietnam, and the north was under the jurisdiction of the Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh. At that time, international communism was described as falling behind the Iron Curtain, and the actual situation was not well known to the outside world. The South was called the Free World. Ngo Dinh Diem, supported by the United States, came back to rule, abolished the monarchy, established the Republic of Vietnam, elected a president, and made Saigon its capital. From then on, the North and the South launched a communist struggle, resulting in the Vietnam War that shocked the world. In 1975, after the Vietnamese Communist Party liberated the south, only the number of people from the north going south increased, while the number of people from the south going north was very rare. Ten years later, the country promoted tourism, but the people of Saigon were still hesitant and uneasy. Very few people were willing to travel, and they were even less familiar with the capital Hanoi. Because of this, our fifth district cultural palace tour group was very popular when we arrived in the north, especially when we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and were received like VIPs. After returning from the trip, I wrote ten articles in a row under the column "Travel Notes on Beautiful Mountains and Rivers in the North", which were published in the "Land and People" section of Liberation Daily. This attracted readers' attention and aroused people's interest in traveling. However, a friend came back from traveling and said to me: "Your descriptions are so attractive. Why do I feel so ordinary and featureless when I travel, as if I have been deceived." By the way, this is the crux of the matter, it lies in perception and mood. When we travel, we must be immersed and concentrated in order to appreciate the fun. Don’t think that you will be happy when you go sightseeing. The most important thing is your mood. Whether traveling in a group, traveling alone with relatives and friends, or even visiting scenic spots alone, you need to put aside your worries, relax your mind, concentrate on it, put your soul into it, face it objectively, and enjoy it. Only in this way can the viewing have charm and you will never forget to return. Otherwise, if you are absent-minded and turn a blind eye to the beautiful scenery in front of you, or you are subjective and persistent, and you are too picky, how can you feel fun! Facts have proved that the beauty or ugliness of a scene, good or bad, does not lie in the scene itself, but in the feelings of the visitors. I often mention a good poem circulated by Vietnamese: "What joy can a person enjoy when he is bored with scenery?" (ng ườ i bu ồ n c ả nh vui đ 鈛 bao gi ờ?) The meaning of the poem points out that scenery has no expression, no joy or sorrow. If a person is depressed, he will not be happy watching any scenery. On the contrary, if an individual is full of joy, he will find the scenery in front of him particularly interesting. This is a matter of perception and mood. When we travel, we mainly focus on sightseeing and understanding new realms. There is a big difference between optimism and pessimism. I keep an open mind and think for the best, so I have a pleasant trip. If others don't like everything, have preconceptions, and have prejudices, how can they enjoy watching it happily? Just like Lin Daiyu in "A Dream of Red Mansions", she has infinite sorrow for falling flowers, "If you bury flowers today, you will laugh like crazy. Who will he bury next year?" But Xue Baochai's view is completely opposite. She is full of confidence: "The good wind will send me to the blue clouds with its power!" The perception of mood is very important and we cannot ignore it.