Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Swaying Foxtail Grass on the Hillside Brought Tears to My Eyes
The Harvest Magazine is housed in an old Western-style villa nestled within the Writers’ Association compound on Julu Road in Shanghai.
The beige walls are covered in creeping ivy, with last year’s withered leaves still lodged in the cracks between the bricks.
The three-story building, with its pointed roof, bears the eclectic style of the Republican era. Above the arched porch, faint, entwined patterns are carved; the cast-iron railings of the bay window on the second floor are stained a bluish-green by rain, echoing the half-wilted asparagus fern on the windowsill.
Judging by its outward appearance alone, the building is worthy of the illustrious name Harvest.
If measured purely from the literary heights it attains, Harvest stands in a league with People’s Literature among literary journals, with countless others trailing behind.
Even setting aside People’s Literature, Harvest, together with October, Contemporary, Flower City, and Zhongshan, is known as one of the “Five Great Pillars,” and firmly occupies the leading position.
Here, even Yu Hua would approve.
Xu Chengjun gazed at the villa, his feelings a peculiar tangle.
It was a sensation strikingly similar to his first visit to the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2008 in his previous life, though not quite the same.
Was it pilgrimage? Not quite.
Conquest? Even less so.
If anything, it felt like the exhilaration and unease of clutching a long-coveted, newly bought “Auldey Double Diamond” model car as a child.
-----------------
The editorial office was in a large, south-facing room on the second floor, a space of just over twenty square meters crowded with five desks.
There was no air conditioning. When Xu Chengjun arrived, he found everyone fanning themselves with palm-leaf fans as they reviewed manuscripts.
He was led upstairs by editor Kong Rou, who spoke in a gentle voice. After hearing his purpose, she said little more, guiding him to a small sofa on the north side of the editorial office before returning to her desk.
Kong Rou was born in 1922. In her early years, she was sent down to Yunnan; after her rehabilitation, she returned to Shanghai to serve as an editor at Harvest.
Historically, it was she who edited Chen Rong’s “Middle Age” and she had even won the national award for outstanding literary editors.
In this field, she was top-tier!
The one in a gray-blue Zhongshan suit and black-rimmed glasses was Xiao Dai. Manuscripts towered a foot high on his desk. He had been responsible for editing Harvest since the 1950s and played a central role in its revival.
By the window sat Wu Xikang, crow’s feet etched deep at the corners of his eyes, translating while listening to the radio.
Kong Rou, meanwhile, brewed strong tea in an enamel mug as she meticulously proofread a manuscript, word by word.
The other two desks were unoccupied—presumably Lin Xiaolin and editorial board member Wang Xiyuan were out.
Seated quietly to the side, Xu Chengjun was not bored. For half an hour, he observed these most honored editors of the era at their work, indulging his tourist’s curiosity.
Then he bent his head and pondered the poems he needed to write soon.
He had promised Liu Zuci three poems, yet not a single one had been written.
Poetry is unlike other serious literature.
Poems are the “outlet” for the emotions of an era. Sometimes, a fleeting inspiration is all it takes—a phrase plucked from the brilliant river of stars, and that line will shine forever in the river of literature.
Just as you may know the line “How pitiable the bones by the River Wuding, still the beloved of those dreaming in boudoirs,” yet not know Chen Tao; know “The pavilion near water first sees the moon, flowers by the sun are earliest to bloom,” but not Su Lin; or know “Beyond the green hills, towers rise anew, how will West Lake’s songs and dances ever end?” but not Lin Sheng...
Emotion and inspiration are the soul of poetry.
---
Especially for Xu Chengjun, who had endured the clash and tearing of two worlds, his heart brimmed with complexities and ruminations, and his mind overflowed with countless poems and lyrics, broken into fragments across the next forty years.
He would not claim to be the greatest poet of this era.
But he was certainly one of its most inspired chroniclers.
On the train, he had already decided what his second poem would be. All that remained was to write it down.
...
It was a short poem titled “Foxtail Grass on the Hillside.”
It came from the memory of Tan Weiwei’s cover on a variety show:
“The foxtail grass on the hillside sways, my tears fall—
How are you, over there?
Sometimes when I think of you,
I call your name again and again,
but sadly, you can no longer hear.”
He could recall no more of the lyrics, but the powerful emotion from that song remained vivid.
...
When he first crossed over, Xu Chengjun’s favorite thing was to climb the little hillside near Xujia Village at dusk, after a hard day’s farm work.
Perhaps it was to carve out a private space in this unfamiliar world.
Perhaps it was to find inspiration for stories about the granary, in a broader landscape.
Or perhaps it was for emotions he dared not speak—such as homesickness...
Each evening, as the setting sun stretched the mountain’s shadow long, Xu Chengjun would haul his leaden legs up the slope.
Clods of mud on his cuffs would be blown away by the wind, striking the grass with faint, intermittent sounds, like his own labored breathing after half a month without rest.
The wind on the slope was rougher than in the fields, swirling the foxtail grass toward the edge.
The furry seed heads bowed under the wind, then straightened again, white fuzz clinging to his sweat-dampened collar, tickling like the ends of thread pricking his mother’s finger as she sewed his pants long ago.
He would sit on a slab of bluestone, a dull ache creeping up his spine.
The palm he’d split open on the scythe’s handle that morning still bled, drops falling onto blades of grass, where the wind tangled the blood with the foxtail’s white fluff.
In the distance, the granary shrank to a black knot in the dusk, just as it had appeared to him, newly arrived, lying on a plank bed.
Back then, he’d always imagined the wind of 1979 would be dusted with gold, that a breeze could set his days winging into flight—
Now he knew better: the wind carried barley awns, earth and dust, and the shredded scraps of pages he’d ruined, spinning with the foxtail grass on the hillside.
One foxtail grass stood taller than the rest, its head nearly touching the ground, yet its roots gripped tightly in the cracks of stone.
Xu Chengjun reached out to touch it. As his fingers brushed the soft bristles, the wind suddenly surged, the seed head snapping against the back of his hand—
A soft, sighing sound.
...
He couldn’t say what emotion pressed him down, as if he were sinking into the deep sea.
And so, in the office of Harvest,
A small poem was quietly written.
...
Foxtail Grass on the Hillside
By Xu Chengjun
When the wind passes, they lower their heads—
not in submission, but to tuck sunshine
into their fuzzy little pockets.
Last year’s snow is not far gone
when the grass tips break the frozen ground,
laying their shadows over the slope, so ants
can practice mountain climbing in the spring.
/
When a butterfly rests on the third leaf,
the whole hillside softens.
Among the downy tufts, slivers of time are hidden,
swaying and swaying, into the lilt of a mother’s call,
into the itch in our palms
as we clutch them on the walk home from school.
/
No need to bloom, nor bear fruit—
They stand in the crevices of the years,
their roots pressing deep into the silent earth.
Last year’s foxtail grass withered,
but this year’s springs up from the same place,
like the unspoken longing
that shivers gently in the wind.
/
When the sunset dyes them with golden gauze,
even time itself slows.
Every tenderness left unsaid
grows into a fuzzy period,
waiting on every hillside, every dusk,
for someone willing to bend low
and read the patterns on the tips of the grass.
...
For a long while, Xu Chengjun remained wrapped in his feelings before he realized someone was standing nearby.
She was a woman in her early thirties, short hair cut at the ear, dressed in navy-blue work pants, her features bright with competence.
“You must be Teacher Xu? I’m Li Xiaolin,” she said. “I saw you writing poetry just now—I didn’t dare disturb you. If you don’t mind, may I take a look at your poem?”