For many young people, leaving one's homeland or staying behind can be an entangled, irresolvable contradiction — much like the dilemma in Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged: those inside the walls gaze out at the dazzling world beyond; no matter how comfortable life within may be, they can never shake the regret of not having tasted the outside firsthand. Those who venture far, having endured every hardship, come at last to understand: homesickness cannot be filled with material things. That was exactly how I felt back then. After graduate school I dug in for five years — my work and life were on a steady upward climb, the future bright. Yet watching my classmates and friends leave for abroad one group after another, I felt an inexplicable emptiness. In the end I caught the last train out. But the sky over a foreign land was so strange — the constellations I knew from childhood summer nights, the fairy tales and daydreams that attended them, could never again be pieced together whole.
I recall those first days in England. Though I was already past thirty, though I'd come to Manchester alongside many friends, though I'd long since weathered in Beijing years of wandering far from home town — leaving my native land still carried an indescribable anguish: like a blade of grass torn out by the roots, battered by wind and rain, a vast bottomless emptiness and disorientation welling up within. At the start of term, in front of the student union building, every kind of student club was recruiting — bustling crowds, peals of laughter — yet I seemed to inhabit another dimension altogether, displaced from reality, unable to grasp the commotion around me, powerless to dispel a nameless melancholy.
Then came a decade of severance. Save for the companionship of Huaxia Wenzhai (China News Digest), and the occasional holiday phone calls or greeting cards to family, I had lost all contact with the motherland. Little did I know that this was precisely the decade in which China underwent its most earth-shaking transformation. Not until my first trip home in 2001 did I realize, with a jolt, that I had once again been displaced in time and space. Standing on the familiar yet alien streets of Beijing, watching the endless streams of people, I felt with an incurable certainty that this world no longer had anything to do with me. Was this the city that had left me so many warm memories? The Beijing I'd yearned for in my dreams now stood before me like a stranger! In the ancient capital I took such pride in, I could not understand the bustle around me, nor could I dispel that nameless melancholy.
Only my childhood hometown remains forever vivid in my mind, never fading. Thirty years have distilled the villages of southern Anhui into thick oil paints: golden yellow, fiery crimson. Endless fields of rapeseed flowers stretching to the horizon, and mountainsides aflame with azaleas in full bloom.
I have passed through countless cities and towns, witnessed many breathtaking scenes — the Gold Coast of Australia, the bays and forests of Vancouver, the autumn leaves of American national parks, and Niagara Falls in Buffalo — searching all the way, yet never finding rapeseed flowers and azaleas like those of home. Not until I returned to visit my family, catching the rapeseed bloom by chance, did I once again behold those patchwork fields of gold and breathe in the fragrance of the soil of home. I captured those golden expanses on video and stored them away, afraid they might slip away again.
Homesickness, like love, is an eternal theme of literature and art. From Li Bai's "Raising my head, I gaze at the bright moon; lowering it, I think of home," to Tao Yuanming's "Come Away Home"; from Chyi Yu's "Olive Tree" to Fei Xiang's "Clouds of Home"; from Ma Sicong's "Homesickness Melody" to the American folk song "Five Hundred Miles." In the still of night, in a foreign land, a gentle folk ballad flows like a quiet stream and soaks into my heart — it is the Kingston Trio singing "Five Hundred Miles," the shared melancholy of every wanderer under heaven.
Homesickness is an invisible net — where does the road of wandering end?
Written October 6, 2005, Buffalo
乡愁是一张无形的网（下）
对于很多年轻人，去国和留守是一对纠缠不清的矛盾：《围城》内外，城内的人看外面的精彩世界，哪怕城里舒适顺遂，也终觉没有亲历外部生活的遗憾；远游的人历尽艰辛终于明白，乡愁无法用物质来填补。我当年就是这样心情。研究生毕业一扎就是五年，工作生活蒸蒸日上，前途一片光明，可看见身边的同学朋友一批批出国，心里觉得空落落的。终于赶上末班车，然而，异乡的天空却如此陌生，小时候夏夜乘凉所识的星空，连同当年的童话和遐想，从此再也无法拼接完整。
想起初到英国的情形：尽管已经三十出头，尽管有很多同学一起来到曼城，尽管此前早已经历过离开家乡在京城的多年飘荡，但远离故国仍然伴随着难以名状的痛苦：好像一棵连根拔掉的小草，任由风吹雨打，内心充满着深不见底的空荡和恍惚。学期伊始，学生会楼前各种学生自发的俱乐部正招兵买马，熙熙攘攘，一片欢声笑语，我却似乎处在另一个时空，与现实错置，不能理解身边的喧嚣，也无法排解莫名的惆怅。
继而是十年的隔绝：除了《华夏文摘》的陪伴，以及偶然逢年过节给家人电话贺卡问候以外，完全失去了和祖国的交流。殊不知，这正是中国翻天覆地的十年。直到2001年第一次回国探亲，才猛然发现又一次时空错置。站在熟悉又陌生的北京大街上，看着熙熙攘攘的人流，不可救药地感觉到，这个世界已然与我无关。这就是曾经留给我那么多温馨回忆的城市么？我梦牵魂萦的北京，如今形如陌路！在我引为自豪的故都，我不能理解身边的喧嚣，也无法排解莫名的惆怅。
只有我的童年故乡，在我的脑海永远鲜活，永不退色。三十年时光把皖南家乡化成了浓浓的油彩：金黄、火红。那是一望无际的油菜花，和漫山遍野的映山红。
走过无数城市乡镇，看到过许多摄人心魄的美景，澳大利亚的黄金海岸，温哥华的海湾和森林，美国国家公园的红叶和水牛城的尼亚拉加大瀑布，一路寻觅，可就是见不到家乡那样的油菜花和映山红。直到回国省亲，正赶上油菜花开的季节，才重温了田野的片片金黄，嗅到了家乡的土地芬芳。我把这片片金黄摄入录象镜头，收藏起来，生怕它再次丢失。
思乡与爱情一样，是文学艺术的永恒主题。从李白的"举头望明月，低头思故乡"到陶渊明的《归去来兮辞》，从齐豫的《橄榄树》到费翔的《故乡的云》，从马思聪的《思乡曲》到美国民歌《离家５００里》。夜阑人静，异国他乡，轻柔舒缓的民歌象涓涓流水，浸润着我的心，那是 Kingston Trio 演唱的《离家５００里》，全天下游子共同的怅惘。
乡愁是一张无形的网，流浪的路何处是尽头？
记于２００５年十月六日，水牛城
From 《朝华午拾》. Original Chinese: 《乡愁是一张无形的网》.
