Almighty painter

Chapter 515 Weeds
Perhaps it's because Gu Weijing understands art much more than before.

Perhaps it was because he had personally witnessed the painting process of this "Picture of Worshiping the Buddha and Protecting the Dharma" stroke by stroke.

Or maybe it was just because of the conversation with the young monk about "heart reflecting heart".

After activating the calligraphy and painting identification technique this time, the world exposed by the thousands of strokes on the murals shattered was not like "The Ball at the Pancake Mill". It was like a mental patient's bizarre dream, invading Gu Weijing's brain, and making him He had nosebleeds and a splitting headache.

Behind the eyes of the Bodhisattva sitting on the lotus throne, the infinite world contained embraces him in a gentler way.

The body and consciousness seemed to be split into two people.

He seemed to still be standing in the square beside the Shwedagon Pagoda, bathing in the last ray of sunset on the horizon, listening to the sounds of Zen in his ears.

And the other half of him.

But like a silent ghost, walking through the world in Cao Xuan's mind.

Everything has an old documentary feel to it.

suddenly.

They passed by the rickshaw Cao Xuan was riding on on both sides of the road.

Gu Weijing thought that when he was studying fusion painting, he had seen an oil painting by Wu Guanzhong with Lu Xun as the subject.

Lu Xun wrote "Collection of Wild Grass" and it was first published by Beixin Bookstore in Peking, probably not long before the scene Cao Xuan recalled.

Meet, merge, and say goodbye to each other.

The eyebrows of the head were lowered, and the surrounding mountains, rivers and fields seemed to be still at that moment, and it seemed as if the earth was about to collapse.

Gu Weijing only regarded that painting as a part of the special "Lu Xun" plot in Wu Guanzhong's life. After casually viewing it, he put it in the back of his mind.

After seeing the news in the newspaper, some exiles began to drag their families with them and fled from Shanghai to northern Jiangsu to avoid disaster. A large cart pulled their mother and a pair of poles carried their children.

Calculate the time.

Not black and white.

There are soldiers of the 19th Army wearing British Tony-style steel helmets that look like black bowler hats, looking nervous but resolute.

This is really a story in the style of Pu Songling's "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" or Ji Xiaolan's "Notes from the Yuewei Cottage".

Gu Weijing no longer had the desolate feeling of ending his fate.

But it seems to have been filtered by a layer of memories, with a film-like old and yellowish thick texture.

Although his hometown is only more than 100 kilometers away from Shaoxing, where Lu Xun was born, and he can barely be regarded as a fellow villager in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, it is a pity that the two masters never had the opportunity to meet each other in their lives. In the year when Wu Guanzhong was admitted to Hangzhou Teachers College, Lu Xun passed away suddenly.

Mr. Wu Guanzhong, who passed away ten years ago, may be the last master of his generation who is slightly older than Mr. Cao in the Eastern Xia traditional Chinese painting circle.

The fireworks in the market and the solemnity of war.

They lined up in several lines and marched silently in the direction of Shanghai.

Scholars rushing to take exams or farmers who have lost their way inadvertently disturb the essence of calligraphy and painting, and their minds wander into calligraphy and painting.

When Gu Weijing first looked at the painting, he hurriedly scanned it on the computer screen, focusing more on the master's shaping of the painting's aura.

Not silent.

But throughout his life, Wu Guanzhong was a fanatical fan and devout admirer of Lu Xun. He created countless works related to Lu Xun, and even said in an art review article - "If you say something very excessive, I think a hundred A Qi Baishi is not as good as a Lu Xun. This is from the perspective of social functionality. Without Lu Xun, the bones of the Chinese people would be much softer than they are today.”

Until his later years, Wu Guanzhong's home always had a small bust of Lu Xun given to him by the famous artist and sculptor Xiong Bingming.

After experiencing the blossoming and decay of the mansion in one day, Huang Liang saw all the warmth and coldness of human relationships, red and pink withered bones, and all kinds of things in the world in one dream.

Gu Weijing saw the Rolls-Royce that reflected the arrogant face of the Western police officer like a mirror in the head office of a foreign company. He also saw the old prostitute with a wrinkled face who had fled and her birth into this world almost meant suffering. daughter.

Only in this passage, Gu Weijing suddenly realized that even after so many years, he could still recite every word casually without any special meditation.

The ten-mile foreign market is bustling with people like a sea.

It is said.

The main subject of the painting is a man's head among weeds and flowers, depicted with a melancholy and tragic brushwork.

It's so funny, and it makes you want to cry.

There are gentlemen and ladies in suits and cheongsams, dignitaries in cars, and porters pulling rickshaws.

The world between heaven and earth is so solemn yet so noisy, so magnificent yet so unbearable.

But at this moment.

And in the other direction of the road.

He didn't think too much about the name.

After waking up, facing a piece of scrap paper and a few handfuls of rubble from the previous dynasty, I fully realized the true meaning of prosperity and prosperity. From then on, I escaped into Buddhism and ended my worldly fate.

He suddenly remembered the oil painting and the words written on the title page of "Collection of Wild Grasses" he had read when he was young.

This oil painting was named "Wild Grass" by Wu Guanzhong, named after a collection of prose poems by Mr. Lu Xun.

Many of the books I read when I was a child were read in a hurry when I was bored, and then forgotten in a hurry.

He only felt that everything around him had a grainy feel.

When the rickshaw passed over the joints of the road, the small brass bell hanging on the handlebar jingled. The footsteps of the soldiers followed each other, and the continuous "tap-tap-tap" sound gradually faded away, as if they were two kinds of things. A club of different tones.

"The heaven and earth are so quiet that I cannot laugh and sing. Since the heaven and the earth are not so quiet, maybe I won't be able to either. I dedicate this clump of wild grass between light and darkness, life and death, past and future, to Testify before friends and enemies, humans and beasts, those you love and those you don’t love.” - Lu Xun wrote on Baiyun Tower in Guangzhou.

This is a blood book condensed with dazzling and deep blood. A hundred years later, people who open the book can still smell the warmth and bright red of the blood spilled on it.

Almost a century has passed.

It is still unable to condense, still unwilling to condense, still warm.

of course.

For these men, women, and children who passed by Gu Weijing, it was when Mr. Lu Xun wrote the inscription of "Collection of Wild Grasses" on the Baiyun Tower in Guangzhou.

From a modern perspective, it is only something so recent that even the ink has not yet dried.

Gu Weijing gently stretched out his hand.

Everything is like a movie played many times faster.

The market sentiments of old Shanghai are like a piece of jade with a skylight cut into it.

The most brilliant side and the most miserable side all passed through Gu Weijing's field of vision within a few breaths of time.

From clouds to dust, from heaven to hell.

Scene after scene, frame by frame, the sound is in my ears, vivid in my mind, and deeply in my heart.

Gu Weijing really wanted to ask——

That Miss Su who bought the painting, did she and the gentleman next to her grow old together? Did the other party really buy a house in Hongkou for her family as promised?
If her family had moved in, it would have been just under ten years later.

On December 1941, 12, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Pacific War officially broke out.

Almost the next day, the Japanese invaders entered the concession and threw most of the residents and people in the concession into concentration camps.

Calculate your age.

By that day, she was only in her twenties and in her prime.

He wanted to know whether Miss Su, who said with a sad face, "Escaped from northern Jiangsu to Shanghai, and then from Shanghai back to northern Jiangsu, where do I start?", had she successfully escaped from this troubled world. if you can.

Gu Weijing wanted to ask more about the young soldiers who passed by Cao Xuan and his teacher while they were talking with their heads down in the car, and then disappeared at the end of the long street with a quick glance.

At the moment they walked towards the Magic City, did they know clearly in their hearts?

The appeasement policy of the so-called "Dean Wang" in the newspapers is of no use. Soon, the Japanese invaders will want to repeat the events of September 18th and invade Zhabei with arms.

It was just once, and the old story of withdrawing from the border without firing a shot will never happen again.

These young lives will die under the flesh and blood of war one after another. The 88th Division of the 2700th Army alone suffered more than casualties.

Do they know that they will fight very bravely and tenaciously?

They showed the majesty and courage of the Chinese and almost destroyed the formation of the Japanese army in the Miaohang victory. The Japanese fled four times and changed their commanders three times. They had no choice but to declare a ceasefire two months later.

The first shot in the fourteen-year war against Japan and national salvation was officially fired.

He wanted to ask more.

What was the old prostitute thinking in her heart when she was hugged by a child.

He also wanted to know, if life meant endless suffering, would the little girl leaning her head next to the telephone pole feel from the bottom of her heart that she didn't want to come to this world at all?

But Gu Weijing was not only unable to laugh and sing.

He couldn't ask anything, couldn't do anything.

He is just a bystander, a ghost who comes against the river of time a century later.

Perhaps to him, the patrolmen, vendors, laborers, porters...thousands of people passing by him all around were ghosts.

This is the encounter between ghosts and ghosts across time and space.

Ninety years.

It's enough to turn the youngest child into the eldest old man.

Gu Weijing realized that the Xin'an Department Store still stood on Nanjing Road as before.

However, all the creatures in Cao Xuan's memory, those faces that were crying and laughing, with different expressions.

The long river of time has long since worn away the bones on the ground.

He and Cao Xuan.

The two young men looking at each other across centuries may be part of this small fragment of memory that was paved over with the use of calligraphy and painting appraisal techniques.

In the end there were only two people left alive.

Cao Xuan hugged the old prostitute, a boy hugged an old woman, but with the same compassion as a mother hugging her child.

A tear slipped from the corner of the woman's eye.

After washing away the poor quality powder that covered the rough skin and the unpleasant body odor, like two drops of turbid mud mixed with dust, dripped on the bloody ground.

When life is too hard, people become numb.

Don't know pain.

I can't tell you it hurts.

When she was displaced and fled to other places, she never cried.

She fell into the world of prostitution and accepted countless patrons. When hundreds of pleasure seekers bit, pinched, and even whipped her body, she never cried.

She never cried when she was dyed with flowers and saw her body rotting and collapsing bit by bit.

She didn't know how many men she had hugged in her life.

Maybe eight hundred?
Maybe a thousand.

When she was young, she was not a wild prostitute picking up clients in such a sewage-filled place. She also had romantic young men break her hair, and she was also hugged by a handsome foreign manager in a long and straight suit in Hongkou. Smoking cigars in the theater and watching fashionable silent films accompanied by dubbing from the sidelines by a pianist.

That was her just smiling, a vain, business-like smile.

From morning to night.

From dawn to dusk.

Laugh all day long.

But the moment she was embraced by this boy who was no older than her daughter, she shed a tear condensed from depression and pain.

In Egyptian mythology, Anubis, the god of death, would place the heart of the deceased on a golden scale to weigh the weight of a person's life.

If there really is a scale in the world that can weigh joy, anger, sorrow, and joy.

Then the weight of this drop of tear will definitely lift Qian Bairi Huan's jingling smile.

The old woman didn't know why she was crying.

Just like maybe Cao Xuan didn't know why he hugged her. Some things never make so much sense.

The woman suddenly felt so ugly and dirty.

Before the hesitant rickshaw driver next to her could say anything, the woman suddenly took a step back, pushed Cao Xuan away, and wanted to turn around and leave.

However, Cao Xuan had already jumped out of the car and ran towards Gu Weijing with open arms.

Gu Weijing subconsciously extended his hand to Cao Xuan. The moment he touched the other person's body, it dissipated like a layer of mist and then rejoined behind him.

The figures of two young people standing at opposite ends of the long river of time passed between each other.

It's like a crossing embrace between two different dimensions.

When Gu Weijing turned around again.

Cao Xuan had already picked up the dazed little girl behind the telephone pole. The two of them are probably about the same age.

Cao Xuan does not have the physique of a sturdy calf.

But when Cao Xuan picked up this tiny and lonely girl, it was as light as picking up a little person made of hollow straw.

He carried the girl to her mother.

"Take your mother to Renji Hospital in Shanghai to see a doctor. Take her to see a doctor."

Cao Xuan put the big wallet in his arms into the hands of the skinny little girl.

Most of the prostitutes here use coins to pick up clients, certainly not Yuan Datou or various Beiyang silver coins, but the copper (aluminum) plates with small denominations issued in the 12th year of the Republic of China.

It took her a few seconds to realize that the bag was full of money, a lot of money.

The little girl looked confused for a moment.

Then it suddenly widened, and a smile that was completely different from the smile just now lit up her pupils.

The rickshaw driver opened his mouth.

The old prostitute was at a loss.

Only the old painter in the car was stunned for a moment and suddenly burst into laughter.

"It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous. I've been teaching people my whole life, and I've been pretending to worry about the country and the people my whole life. In the end, I have to ask my apprentice to teach me how to be a human being. It's really a big joke."

(End of this chapter)