One

  I grew up in a small village nestled between mountains and rivers, a true "child of the mountains and rivers". A group of mysterious female teachers suddenly appeared, and together with my mother, they pulled me away from my hometowns mountains and rivers into books. Later, books pushed me into the city. After reading many, many books and experiencing many, many disasters, I finally had an epiphany and realized that the ultimate standard for all cultures, the final measure of human right and wrong, is still the mountains and rivers. To be more accurate, its the promise of survival that the mountains and rivers can provide.

  With this realization, I finally escaped and fled back to the vast expanse of mountains and rivers. From then on, my footsteps would never again tread on thin air, my writing would never again be grandiose or empty, and my thoughts would never again leave the wilderness. However, this was not just a "return to ones hometown", but rather taking the boundless and vast real space as ones own home.

  What delights me is that the vast number of readers have accepted me. Moreover, following my lead, from book club culture, officialdom culture, mutual admiration culture and mutual exclusion culture, they have moved towards a calm and low-key ecological culture.

  Ecological culture! How many detours people have taken, and finally they are embracing it again with a gray head and a purple face. I was fortunate to take the lead, and I am often asked how I had such foresight? Perhaps it is related to the origin of my life as a "son of mountains and rivers".

  Many years ago, I expressed a view in a book: what really ended the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" disaster was the Tangshan earthquake. China suddenly caught a glimpse of the bottom line of human survival.

  In other words, a natural disaster from heaven has fundamentally negated the man-made political disaster. The instantaneous destruction of tens of thousands of lives stunned China, which was originally trapped in ultra-leftist madness.

  People rushed to offer aid, but what could be done for a land that was impoverished to the extreme? At the time, there were still a few people who wanted to turn "natural disasters" into "man-made disasters", continuing to make political hay out of the blood-soaked ruins. However, the vast majority of Chinese people had lost interest in them and instead learned a lesson about the "bottom line of survival". I have always believed that the end of the Cultural Revolution shortly after the earthquake, as well as the subsequent reform and opening-up, were all continuations of this most basic course.

  When the Tangshan earthquake occurred, I was studying Chinese cultural classics on a mountain in my hometown. Due to the earthquake, I thought of the myths created by our ancestors when they encountered natural disasters, such as "补天" (Mending Heaven), "填海" (Filling the Sea), "追日" (Chasing the Sun) and "奔月" (Racing with the Moon). Suddenly, I grasped the "survival baseline" of Chinese culture. This process was written in my book "Chinas Cultural Pulse".

  From then on, the "survival baseline" of Chinese culture has always been lingering in my mind.

  Later, I also systematically studied the achievements of 14 countries around the world in philosophy, aesthetics, and art, and wrote several books, gaining a high academic reputation. But soon, I turned back to my original academic starting point: only from the perspective of cultural anthropology and historical geography, to explore the survival state of Chinese culture.

  It was for this inquiry that I gave up everything and went into the wilderness alone twenty years ago.

  Because I quit cleanly, I walked very far away.

  "What is the relationship between reading ten thousand books and traveling ten thousand miles?" This is the question Ive encountered the most.

  "There is no either-or. The road is the book."

  Academically speaking, I have transitioned from textual culture to ecological culture.

  My ecological culture can also be considered as mountain and river culture. I find my way between mountains and rivers, using my short life to touch a corner of this stars ruggedness.

  Two

  Then lets take a brief look at the survival state of Chinese culture.

  The earth, this tiny particle that is almost impossible to find in the galaxy, seven-tenths of which are oceans and three-tenths of which are land. Among these pieces of land, the largest one is Eurasia. On the eastern edge of this continent, there is a place surrounded by mountains and seas, that is China.

  This place in China, the east is the ocean, the northwest is the desert, and from west to southwest, its a plateau. Just saying this still sounds ordinary, so it must be immediately clarified that the ocean is the Pacific Ocean, the deserts are not just one, theyre all very large, and the plateau is the roof of the world. That is to say, this is a piece of land that has been thoroughly "sealed" off.

  In ancient times, such seas were impassable, such mountains were unclimbable, and such deserts were difficult to traverse. As a result, this place developed a kind of "isolation mechanism". Fortunately, its territory was not small, with many mountains, many rivers, many plains, and many swamps. People settled in one corner, lived by the water, men farmed and women wove, spring planting and autumn harvesting, this is the survival state of most Chinese people.

  This survival state is also said to be "relying on heaven for food". A single character of "heaven" includes temperature, climate, precipitation and all kinds of natural disasters related to it.

  "Whats the weather like?" For the past 5,000 years in China, it started warm and continued through the Shang Dynasty. The Western Zhou was cool, warming up again during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period. The Qin and Han Dynasties were also relatively warm. The Three Kingdoms gradually cooled down, with the Western Jin and Eastern Jin being very cold. The Northern and Southern Dynasties warmed up again, staying warm through the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties. The late Northern Song Dynasty cooled down, with the Southern Song being very cold, warming up slightly during the Yuan Dynasty. The Ming and Qing Dynasties were both relatively cool, until the Republic of China when the temperature rose a bit, but not much.

  The temperature of climate has also become the temperature of history. I am in "Chinese Historical Geography" (written by Lan Yong)

  Find a temperature change curve graph above, according to the annotation, this graph is from "Chinese Cultural Geography" (written by Wang Hui Chang)

  This curve graph links temperature and dynasty, making people think of the repeated helpless migrations, the repeated withering winds, the repeated ecological wars, the repeated wilderness pioneering, and the repeated new smoke rising...

  I believe that, whether big or small, ecological reasons are the primary factor in history. Even from a minor perspective, the victories and defeats of famous wars actually have little to do with the emphasis historians place on the number of soldiers, the wisdom of monarchs, and strategic planning. According to legend, Huangdis victory over Chiyou was mainly due to weather conditions. To speak more recently, Zhuge Liangs greatest achievement was "borrowing the east wind", which determined the outcome of the Battle of Red Cliffs through accurate weather forecasting. Genghis Khan conquered the world with his strategist Yelü Chucai, who gained the highest trust by accurately predicting the weather; his descendants failed invasion of Japan was entirely due to a typhoon at sea.

  Mengzi clearly divided the factors of success and failure into three items: "heavenly timing", "geographical advantage" and "human harmony". This broke through the closed self-sufficient system of human beings, relying again on the power of heaven and earth. However, limited by his field of vision, he proposed a pattern of lightness and heaviness: "Heavenly timing is not as good as geographical advantage, geographical advantage is not as good as human harmony". In fact, a more macroscopic conclusion should be: "Human harmony is not as good as geographical advantage, geographical advantage is not as good as heavenly timing." Humans are too small, how can they surpass heaven and earth?

  It is heaven and earth that gave us a foundation for existence, thus also giving us a foundation for culture.

  Three

  In the strict and realistic closed structure, Chinese culture has three largest heaven-earth lines, which can also be said to be the basic warp and weft of Chinese culture. In order of importance, the first line is the Yellow River; the second line is the Yangtze River; the third line is more complex, in the north of the previous two, it is the dividing line of 400 mm rainfall, which is also the heaven-earth line that distinguishes agricultural civilization from nomadic civilization.

  My cultural exploration is mainly a long trample on these three lines between heaven and earth.

  The Yellow River, I almost walked from the source to the estuary. The current estuary is in Dongying, Shandong Province, and the previous estuaries have changed a lot. I originally wanted to visit the old riverbed sites one by one, but unfortunately, I couldnt do it. It was in the Yellow River basin that I found the birthplace of Huangdi Xuan Yuan and served as the chairman of the "Huangdi International Academic Forum" for many years. I speculated about the battlefields of Huangdi, Yandi, and Chiyou, and then lingered in the Yin Ruins for a long time. Of course, the most time-consuming thing was searching for the footprints of pre-Qin scholars in the Yellow River basin and comparing them with their peers from India, Greece, and Persia. To make comparisons, I even traveled thousands of miles to examine the lands where those philosophers lived, analyzing different or similar ecological reasons. The Yellow River made me feel the basic character of Chinese culture, as well as the possible height of thinking that elite figures can reach.

  Due to climate change, from the cold Western Jin Dynasty period, Chinese culture migrated southward with the fleeing crowds, migrating to the Yangtze River. The migration was forced and difficult, but it was a heavenly indication that could not be disobeyed.

  The Yangtze River has its own culture. Compared to the Yellow River, it seems to have more awe for the universe, more questions, and more worship. From the mysterious bronze poems of Sanxingdui in the upper reaches to the grand sacrificial white jade poems of Liangzhu in the lower reaches, they all converged on a series of "Heavenly Questions" by a man named Qu Yuan at the treacherous Three Gorges. Qu Yuan asked questions, the Yangtze River asked questions, and humanity asked questions. The great questioner is also the great poet. Since the Song Dynasty, Chinas cultural and economic center has shifted from the Yellow River basin to the Yangtze River basin. With many people gathering at the center, more people headed south. By modern times, a group of historical figures emerged from the Pearl River Delta.

  I want to especially talk about the third line, the 400 mm rainfall dividing line. This line closely connects "heaven" and "earth". Above 400 mm of rainfall can be planted with crops; below 400 mm of rainfall is grassland and desert, suitable for nomadic herding.

  Interestingly, this rainfall boundary coincides with the Great Wall of China in many places. It can be seen that the function of the Great Wall is to distinguish between two civilizations and prevent the farming civilization from being invaded by the nomadic civilization. Therefore, this is a boundary drawn by the power of heaven through the hands of Qin Shi Huang. In this way, the three heavenly lines of Chinese civilization are the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, and the Great Wall.

  Four

  From the perspective of the agricultural civilization inside the Great Wall, invasion is always a bad thing; however, from the perspective of the nomadic civilization outside the Great Wall, using horse hooves to open up space is the nature of ones own civilization and should not be blocked. Thus there are wars and a series of strange histories inside and outside the Great Wall.

  Dryness and dampness have come into conflict, coldness and warmth have drawn their swords, horse whips and ox whips are cracking together, pastures and fields are engaged in a tug-of-war...

  Conflict is another kind of fusion. The conflicts and fusions within and outside the Great Wall are precisely the core theme of Chinese culture, whose importance far exceeds the seemingly important struggles between states and dynasties. I have walked and written most about these regions throughout my life.

  For example, I repeatedly examined the Northern Wei established by the Xianbei people after entering China and found that it not only protected Han culture but also gave Han culture a heroic spirit on horseback. It combined with Indian culture, Greek culture, and Persian culture, making China finally move towards the Tang Dynasty.

  I also repeatedly examined the Rehe Imperial Summer Resort established by Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, and found that it not only allowed the ruling group to revisit its own ecological origins every year, but also allowed various eco-friendly combinations to avoid conflicts.

  I also inspected the site of Shanxi merchants who dared to cross the Great Wall and the northern desert, communicating with thousands of miles of business, and understood that China could originally obtain wealth and improve ecology through spatial breakthroughs.

  The articles I wrote based on these inspections have had a significant impact at home and abroad.

  Based on my interest in the internal and external heteromorphic civilizations of the Great Wall, I gradually developed a yearning for all heteromorphic civilizations. As long as there was an opportunity, I would go to investigate their confrontation and intermarriage, and track the consequences. For this reason, my solitary footprints were scattered across Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang, which I particularly love. According to traditional Han scholars, those are marginal areas, border areas, or even "areas without culture". They were wrong, because the most significant cultural phenomena all arise from the intersection of heteromorphic cultures. Small texts are next to them, while grand texts are in the vast wilderness.

  My life originated in the Yangtze River Basin; my cultural foundation relies heavily on the Yellow River Basin. It wasnt until much later that I discovered my distant hometown should be in Wuwei, Gansu, just outside the 400 mm rainfall divide line. As a result, these three lines of heaven and earth also became my own lifeline.

  It suddenly dawned on me that since my ancestors, we have been a team of ecological drifters. Why did I so resolutely quit my job and travel to the Gansu Plateau, continuing the thousand-year-old ecological drifting with "cultural hardship travel"? It seems like an arrangement made in the underworld.

  Five

  Having traveled through the cultural landscape of China, its easy to feel a little regret for Chinese civilization - that is, its estrangement from oceanic civilization. The Yellow River and Yangtze River are outstanding representatives of agricultural civilization, while the Great Wall represents the "dialogue across the wall" between agricultural civilization and nomadic civilization; however, oceanic civilization has never become the main character.

  This has always been a point of criticism for some Chinese commentators. They praise the maritime exploits of ancient Greece and Rome, envy the geographical discoveries that followed Spain, Portugal, Holland, Britain and Frances oceanic hegemony, and mock Chinas complete indifference to this, until the nineteenth century when they repeatedly suffered disastrous defeats in front of many sea invaders.

  This criticism overlooks a macroscopic premise: there is no "omnipotent culture" on earth. China, in its closed environment, focused on self-sufficient agriculture and had neither the need nor the possibility to launch external conquests. However, internally, it needed to unify the vast Yellow River and Yangtze River basins to avoid conflicts between different river segments over irrigation and disaster prevention. This agricultural ecological sedimentation formed a cultural psychology that pursued stability, unity, conservatism, and centralization, even with the possession of maritime technologies like those of Zheng He, there was no desire for an oceanic strategy.

  Yes, China has many shortcomings, but if you look at the Earth from afar, you will find that the tiny human beings are invading and harming their own kind on a small planet, how boring. In comparison, China has never launched a transoceanic expedition. I think, if heaven has eyes, what it cant bear to see is probably the destruction of Indian civilization by Europeans in the 16th century, and the invasion of peaceful China with opium and gunfire in the 19th century.

  I never believe in any hegemonic discourse, I only want to observe the facial expressions and eyes of mountains and rivers. Occasionally look up at the sky, guessing whether the universe has forgotten the earth. Its good if its forgotten, once remembered, its not a game.

  While there is still some time, I think its more interesting to walk around and explore the ecological reasons behind various historical choices. If you cant find them, guess; if you cant guess, imagine. Only by walking on the road can you get rid of limitations, get rid of obsessions, and make all choices, explorations, guesses, and imaginations full of vitality.

  My outlook on the future of humanity is a grand and beautiful pessimism. Only by walking on the road, making everything move, can we find a large number of real details with the help of mountains and rivers, truly feel that living once in the world may not be bad.

  Lets go. The unfamiliar mountains and rivers come face to face, and then retreat one by one. People who travel have the right to call everything under their feet "my mountains and rivers". With "my mountains and rivers", they roughly know what survival is.

  Even the grandest power cannot be retained, leaving only the silent mountains and rivers related to it. Lu You said: "Fine rain rides a donkey into Sword Gate." Sword Gate is an ancient magnificent pass on the map of power, and there are hundreds and thousands of such passes in China. But what dissolves them are just rain, just donkeys, just traveling dust, and just wine stains.

  The heroic epic will also become a text that exists in the world. Gu Yanwu said, "I often hang the Book of Han on a cows horn." Look, the grand Han Dynasty, which can contain thousands of comments and countless praises, is swaying on the cows horn. The cow is walking on the mountain path at dusk on a deep autumn evening.

  The actual footsteps between mountains and rivers make all great deeds ordinary scenery, making us relaxed. Humans should put everything down, putting it down between the mountains and rivers. So we also found the end point, the end point of value and the end point of life.

  This ultimate state was accurately expressed by Tao Yuanming: "With body and mind at one with mountain and stream."