4.30
A Chinese animated film
I want to recommend an animated film released last year. Its official English title is Nobody, but the direct translation of its Chinese name is Summer of a Little Monster.
The story is quite simple, developed from a famous Chinese novel called “Journey to the West”. It’s about a low-level monster finding out the dirty secret of high-level, trying to identify right from wrong, trying to save but being saved by the Monk Tang’s group.
I love it so much! Probably because “Journey to the West” has been one of my favorite novels since I was a kid, and the art style is just like the cartoon books I had read before.
It was released with English subtitles, so maybe most of you guys can follow the story.
You can watch it here for free: https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep706666
4.27
Saturday
It’s Saturday today, but I didn’t go hiking as usual, because we only have one day off this weekend.
There is something called Tiaoxiu(调休) in China, which means we need to compensate for resting on workdays by working on holidays. A little weird, right? I hope you don’t have this type of thing. Tomorrow is a tiaoxiu for a five-day national holiday happening next week.
So I decided to have a relaxing day today. I did my laundry and pruned my roses. I’m waiting for a package of accessories I bought two days ago for my new action camera. Then, I’ll try out my camera along the river near my apartment.
I’ll add some captions to one of my hike videos this evening. It’s about the view from the foot of Mount Lu to the top. You can watch it here.
If you have any advice, feel free to let me know.
Have a nice weekend.
4.26
Three Laughs by the Tiger Brook
There is a famous story that took place in Mount Lu.
It was said to have happened over 1600 years ago. There once lived a knowledgeable Buddhist master named Huiyuan. He was the founder of Donglin Temple in Mount Lu. To improve his study of Buddhism, he vowed two things: not to leave his temple and not cross the Tiger Brook – the stream in front of Donglin Temple – when seeing his guests off.
One day, the well-known poet, Tao Yuanming, visited him with a Taoist master. Although the three studied different subjects, and two of them belonged to different religions, they were so happy in each other’s company that Master Huiyuan nearly crossed Tiger Brook. They didn’t notice until they heard a tiger roaring at the top of the mountain. Then the three of them laughed and said goodbye to each other.
It’s a simple story, but it was revered in Chinese history. Many famous poets, including Li Bai and Su Shi, wrote poems about it.
I used to think the story was about the pleasure of greeting a friend from afar. Recently, I realized it was also about relationships with friends with different perspectives and beliefs.
Just as Confucious said, the noble ones unite with others without forming cliques.
P.S. I took a video of Donglin Temple and Tiger Brook when I visited there. You can see it here.
4.24
Azaleas in Jiuyangping
I went hiking again on Saturday.
The destination was a mountain in the Fuyang district of Hangzhou City called Jiuyangping. The traffic was a little heavy and it was a little far from Shanghai, so it took us more than four hours to get there.
Nevertheless, we all thought it was worth it because the azalea flowers in the mountain were so beautiful. It was a good time for them to bloom.
You can see them in this video.