Zhuang Zhou, the Butterfly, and Me
In the Boshan furnace decorated with rolling cloud patterns and inlaid with gold and copper, the fragrance of sweet pine wafts into the air, and fragrant smoke fills the air.
Xu Lingwan leaned against a half-worn blue satin pillow with a hibiscus flower and bird pattern, holding a copy of "Travels in Mountains and Rivers" in her hand, staring blankly at a half-bushes of banana trees outside the window.
Thinking about it now, the past and present are all like a dream.
Before the plane crash, she was concentrating on reviewing her proposal PPT again on the open small table.
She had been leading her team for two months preparing for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's bid for a foreign company's agency project. If she won, she would be signed on for three years, and the commission she had agreed with the company would allow her to travel abroad for two months. She wouldn't bother with performance bonuses or client requests.
With this idea in mind, Chen Yuanyuan happily finished reciting the proposal process that she had already memorized in her mind, closed the computer and was about to close her eyes and rest for a while.
She was half asleep and half awake when she was hit by a violent jolt. Before she could react, a strong airflow pushed her body forward uncontrollably. At the same time, the oxygen mask popped out with a "bang"!
Then, the stewardess's voices of stopping, the children's cries, and the adults' shouts were mixed together.
She suddenly opened her eyes and realized in a moment that there was a plane crash.
Thousands of miles up in the sky, with no hope of escape, she even forgot to cry. Her instinctive fear of death made her tighten her seat belt tightly to prevent herself from falling out with the turbulence of the air flow.
As a sharp pain hit her head, Chen Yuanyuan saw everything on the plane being rushed around by the incoming airflow, and before she could react to her next move, she fainted.
When I woke up, I was here. I was wearing a wedding gown, sitting in a large red curtain, drinking a cup of wine with an ancient man of about thirty years old.
"The newlyweds drink the wedding wine together, and live together till old age, throughout all eternity."
"The newlyweds tie the knot of love and their love will last forever."
Chen Yuanyuan felt as if she was dreaming. She was just a puppet being controlled by a string, and in a daze, she completed a series of actions following the guidance of the people around her.
"The ceremony is over!" a female voice chorused joyfully. Immediately afterwards, a group of people in ancient costumes began to cheer joyfully.
"What a beautiful bride!"
"Second brother is so lucky!"
"Oh, the bride is shy!"
Chen Yuanyuan turned towards the crowd in a daze. When she saw someone smiling at her, she smiled back. When she heard someone call her "Sister-in-law, look over here," she vaguely knew that they were calling her, so she also nodded slightly with a smile.
It was like a dramatic play from a book. A vermilion stage, a cast of colorful characters, the clamor of gongs and drums, the melody of stringed instruments. Onstage, the performers sang, the audience packed with people. The drumsticks and theatrical strains blended into one under the flickering lights, accompanied by a continuous stream of cheers and applause.
In the chaos, all the noise around seemed to be in slow motion, as if covered by a layer of foggy gauze, extremely blurry.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a cold light that pierced through the haze, and saw a bearded man suddenly rushing out from the crowd.
"Be careful!" Chen Yuanyuan had very good eyesight. Seeing the big man stabbing the person next to him with a dagger, she immediately rushed over out of the instinct to save people and protected the man in the wedding gown under herself.
Unexpectedly, the dream was so real. The pain of the dagger piercing her back instantly spread throughout her body. Chen Yuanyuan felt her chest was tight, and even breathing was a luxury.
Then I heard a flurry of sounds all around me, such as clamoring, crying, shouting, falling, tearing, and running back and forth. In my daze, I could only hear the man in my dream hugging me and shouting at the top of his voice, "Ling Wan, Ling Wan."
A dream of life and death, close your eyes, the song ends and everyone disperses.
But she hadn't expected to find herself in front of an ancient scene when she woke up. Soon, she heard a woman's voice, expressing her surprise. Then, before her eyes, she saw the face of the man in the wedding gown from her dream, saying, "Ling Wan, you're finally awake."
Ling Wan, Ling Wan. Chen Yuanyuan remembered that the man in her dream had called her Ling Wan. Could it be that she was still dreaming? She immediately pinched herself in the quilt. Hmm, it hurt.
Then I thought that if I were in a dream, the pain in the nightmare was real, so I bit my tongue again. Oh my god, it really hurt!
This action frightened the maid next to her and she cried out, "Madam, what's wrong with you? Don't scare me."
Madam. Chen Yuanyuan squinted at her, a vague impression in her mind, and she instinctively blurted out: "Red Moon".
The voice was hoarse and low, but it made her personal maid burst into tears of joy.
Chen Yuanyuan felt dizzy and had a splitting headache. This body seemed to have inherited the memories of the original owner. Fragments of the original owner's life flashed through her mind frame by frame. Before she could ask the questions that the time-traveling girl often asked: "Where is this? Who are you? Who am I?", she fainted in shock and panic.
After waking up, she saw the ancient and charming scene again, and she knew that she had indeed traveled through time. Just like the time-travel novels she had read when she was a student, after the plane crash, her soul traveled to the body of a lady in a certain dynasty.
The current situation is not like "The Matrix", but more like "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow" that I watched in middle school.
Chen Yuanyuan loved Wang Anyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow. Her writing style is gentle and graceful, and her words are sober and insightful. While it depicts a fleeting glimpse of Shanghai life, she manages to create a sense of Guan Hanqing's long-act drama.
The book begins with Wang Qiyao on a film set, and ends with her lying in bed, trance-like, seeing what she saw 20 years ago, nearing death. Her intuition then was that life is a play, and a play is life. Now, the same sense of shock and sigh she felt as a teenager can be applied to her.
The separation of life and death is like Zhuangzi's dream of a butterfly. I wonder if Zhuangzi dreamed of the butterfly, or if the butterfly dreamed of me?
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