One day at the end of spring, when I was walking on the road, I saw that the road was full of fallen kapok, a mess, and passers-by could not escape from it. In this situation, I can't help feeling a sense of regret.
Once upon a time, kapok branches are in full bloom, when it is warm and cold, it brings people a sense of pleasure that is valiant, heroic and passionate. People in southern China have special feelings for kapok. In the history of Chinese culture, kapok has been recorded for a long time. GE Hong's "Xijing Miscellaneous Records" of the Jin Dynasty recorded that in the Western Han Dynasty, Zhao Tuo, king of Nanyue, paid tribute to the emperor a local tree, which was "one foot high and two feet high, one book three grams, and was ready to burn until night." it is said that this kind of tree is kapok tree. In the eyes of scholars, kapok has a different beauty from other flowers and has special cultural implications. Su Dongpo said: "remember the last three days in the south of the city, kapok fell and tung blossomed." Liu Kezhuang, a native of the Song Dynasty, wrote: "A few trees are red for half a day, and people living in the clouds are kapok." Chen Gongyin of the Qing Dynasty specially wrote the Song of Kapok, which wrote: "thousands of trees and Zhu flowers have bloomed since February and March in the Yuejiang River." his famous sentence in the poem, "thick beard and face, good hero, why does the mighty crown fall?" so that kapok won the reputation of "heroic flowers." In today's China, kapok is regarded as a city flower in many places, such as Guangzhou, Chongzuo, Panzhihua and Kaohsiung. China Southern Airlines, one of China's largest airlines, uses it as a symbol of the company. My hometown is called Chaoyang County, Shantou City, the most populous county in China in the 1990s because it has a population of more than 2 million. The county flower is also kapok, and the county seat is called Cotton City.
In the southern folk, kapok is a popular good food and supplies. Ancient books record that kapok has the unique effect of removing dampness and clearing heat, and people also make it into a variety of medicinal meals, such as kapok tangerine peel porridge, kapok crucian carp soup, kapok shrimp tofu folding, kapok mushroom soup and so on. In my early memory, kapok flowers are rare and favored. I remember that in the campus of Chaoyang No. 1 Middle School, my alma mater, there were several tall and towering kapok trees scattered in different corners of the campus. Whenever the flowers fell, Zhou Bo, the janitor, would pick up the flowers on the ground one by one, and then put them in a neat row on the concrete floor, basking in the sun he could see.
Thinking about the long anecdotes and benefits of kapok, looking at the embarrassed flowers on the road, some of them were covered with mud, some of them were crushed and crushed, which became the main cause of the dirty streets at that time, giving people a sense of filth. Many people responded with a look of disgust. I don't understand why these former treasures have been reduced to this point now. I wonder how the mother tree feels about this kind of scene. If our ancient saints and sages who chanted kapok knew, how would they feel? Wandering under the kapok tree, I can't help thinking of Miss Daiyu. If she were here now, the flowers that had fallen to the ground would have been taken care of.
The sight of "falling cotton is annoying all over the ground" is not one or two places in this city, but almost everywhere. I called Mr. W in Yangcheng and asked him if there was such a scene in Guangzhou. Guangzhou is better, he said. In the old city, many locals will pick up the fallen flowers at home, but in the new area and some office buildings, there is also a scene of "heroic flowers falling all over the ground." I called my friends back home, and they said that there were some places in the county where no one was going to pick up the fallen flowers. The foot is covered with flowers, surrounded by hurried pedestrians. I looked at an unexpected cleaner who struggled to sweep the flowers on the ground. It was even harder for her to clean the broken flowers. Finally, a small pile of red flowers is poured into the cleaning cart, huddled with dirty paper towels, old plastic bags and leftovers. It is obvious that the destination is the garbage station, then the landfill, and finally rot and erode in the garbage juice. I asked my aunt why she didn't keep the kapok for use. She said what was the use of keeping these annoying things. She raised her finger to point to the kapok trees, and the most annoying moment had not yet come. In a month or so, the trees would fall off, and there would be velvet and cotton balls everywhere, and it would be even more annoying to clean them.
Looking at the figure of the cleaning aunt hobbling away, I seem to understand some of the reasons why the heroic flower is "down and out". It's not what it used to be. Things change. It is very natural for the same subject to have different experiences and destinies in different times, especially in the face of different people. Almost native southerners know the spiritual and practical value of kapok. But in the eyes of new immigrants, it is commendable to be able to name kapok trees. In the eyes of more people, isn't kapok a tree? Aren't the kapok flowers on the ground just pieces of rubbish the size of the palm of your hand? A former border town with only more than 30,000 people has become a city with a population of more than 18 million. In this city, there may not be many kapok trees, but now there are a few. Kapok trees can be seen almost everywhere. However, how many people in this city really know kapok? When heroic flowers meet new immigrants, they can only become discards, just like a fallen Bailishi in the State of Chu-what can a slave herding cattle do? It is nothing but being dealt with and humiliated. Seeing the treasure reduced to rubbish, what can I do as a "second new immigrant" who grew up in the south? It is nothing more than frowning, humming, meditating, and finally leaving behind your back.
But in the depths of my heart, what I look forward to most is that when the flowers fall next year, there will be teams that "love me falling cotton" to receive the blossoming red and make the best use of it.
Author: Wen Jie
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