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Lying on the bed, I almost missed the enjoyment of seeing the flakes dancing in the air through the windowpane. Early in the morning when I drew the curtains open, the scene before my eyes amazed me: the lightsome and white flakes in a strife were fluttering to the earth. The soil far and near had been covered with the snow. The trees, the villages, the roads and paths, the cars and shelters were all in the snow. The sky and the earth was connected with each other by the snow, misty, chilly, white, blurring. A Chinese saying goes that an auspicious snow promises a good harvest. May the pandemic Covid-19 disappear soon and everything go back to normal! God bless our nation! Snow is love, which purifies the world, at least for a while tells people what a pure world looks like. No dirt, no filth, no corruption, no depravity, no hate, no war … That's why the Chinese poetry has never been in lack of poems on snow which inspires poets one generation after another to compose exquisite poems and proses to vent emotion in various context of political, social, cultural, economic occasions. Snow has become an important sign or image in Chinese poetry and almost every poet has ever written poems on snow which consist of a great part of Chinese intellectual mind. It symbolizes the lofty, pure, spiritually noble virtues of the educated. Although they have never won an independent position in the feudal society, they left a piece of spiritual land for the exit of a earthly world overwhelmed in conspiracy, cunning tricks, schemes. Snow seemingly increases the uncertainty of this superficially orderly and peaceful secular world. Uncertainty in ancient China implies more chances and possibilities to manipulate the destiny with witty words or memorial to the throne. Nowaday, uncertainty brings some sense of poetry. Science produces certainty, which is not the spirit of science itself, which spoils the sense of poetry as it goes against imagination of common people. For instance, in imagination, the sun is a chariot drawn by a galloping horse, but in science it's just a burning ball releasing energy continuously. There are misunderstandings about science in the minds of many Chinese people. The spirit of science is rooted in uncertainty rather than certainty. Certainty is the end of science while uncertainty the life. This is the unity of science and poetry. |
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