Wentu/Ying Zhigang

Luzhi Ancient Town is very quiet in the afternoon, with light wind and light footsteps.

The landlady selling crabapple cakes, green dumplings, and silk jewelry leaned back on the chair and took a nap with her head tilted. Tourists in twos and threes, listless by the sun, chose shady places to walk.

In the alleys, under the stone bridge, between the corridors, and at the end of the river, those unfinished oil paintings are hanging on the easel, but the owner has no idea where they have gone.

Every day, children who come to paint can be seen in every corner of Luzhi Ancient Town. They come from different art schools across the country.

Nowadays, tourists are quite familiar with photography. When they meet those who refuse to leave after occupying a good place, holding their cameras and mobile phones to take photos, terms such as "angle" and "composition" will pop up in their mouths.

I have never learned photography, but I also like to speculate. One day, looking at these children sketching, I suddenly had an idea: photography should be consistent with painting. Standing behind their easel and following their line of sight, the "angle" and "composition" are probably not bad.

So there was a dialogue. That day, I was standing under the Huanyu Bridge, behind the easel of a group of art students, holding up the camera and pressing the shutter. A generous girl looked up and asked me: Uncle, how do you think my painting is?

What she painted was a roadway leading directly to the bridge, a towering horse-head wall, and a winding stone road. The watercolor spread out, giving a feeling of a camera slowly pulling the wire.

I don't know anything about painting, but it's nice to face. I talked paradoxically about my personal perceptions about the ancient town.

In Jiangnan, if you want to find a few ancient small bridges, buildings with white walls and black tiles, and scenery of people with flowing water, all towns with a little history will probably be standard.

The same body can only be called the wind and moon if only the interesting soul is permanent.

This is true for Luzhi Ancient Town.

Tell me about the woman squatting at the river bank washing the pulp, the aunt waving the pulp on the boat, the shopkeeper greeting the guests in soft Wu dialect, and the uncle slowly saying "excuse me" among the crowded crowd. All of them are the foundation of the ancient town's "wind and moon" background.

Throughout the ages, interesting souls have come and go in this ancient town that has been soaked in thousands of years of wind and moon.

There is Lu Guimeng, a poet and agronomist of the Tang Dynasty known as "Mr. Fuli" who lived in seclusion here all his life; there is also Ye Shengtao, a leading figure in new education who wrote "I collected more than three to five buckets" and taught and lived here for six years.

There is also Wang Tao, the "pioneer of the newspaper industry", whose cry that "Prosperity and strength are the foundation of governing the country" issued in the turbulent late Qing Dynasty still encourages people in this land to forge ahead.

I told the girl that buildings are dead, and people are the most interesting soul of Luzhi Ancient Town.

The girl nodded seriously. Looking at her young and clean face, I couldn't help but sigh for a while. It's so good to be young. Young people are not worldly. If it were an "old martial arts world" who gave me this "lecture", I'm afraid he would have spat first and then left in a flick of his sleeve.

But soon, I regretted my rude words.

Because the buildings of Luzhi Ancient Town are also alive. That was a burst of cheers from the heart after entering Baosheng Temple to pay homage to the "Half Wall Arhat".

Yang Huizhi, a talented sculptor with the reputation of a sculpture saint, created 18 sculpted arhats with shining divine lights here during the Kaiyuan and Tianbao periods of the Tang Dynasty.

After thousands of years of ups and downs, there are still 9 statues in existence.

Different from the Buddha statues in the temple that are arranged in turn and worshipped, and the Buddha statues that sit uniformly in the Thousand Buddha Cave, these nine arhats sit scattered and lifelike.

According to their respective origins, each arhat is located on a fairy island on the sea, hidden in a cave abode deep in the mountains, empty, bare chest and belly, beautiful eyes, or full of wisdom. The towering cliffs, rolling clouds and rolling waves on the sides are all lifelike.

No wonder Zhao Mengfu, a master calligrapher in the Yuan Dynasty, called him "unparalleled Buddha statues in Jiangnan", and Niya Omura, a Japanese art history professor, praised him "although he is a famous master of mountains and rivers, it is difficult to compare with him."

Looking at these nine arhats, I suddenly realized that after coming here many times, I still misunderstood Luzhi Ancient Town.

Many years ago, my first girlfriend, who taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, once came here to sketch with her easel on her back. She said to me: You can smell the smell of an old grandmother in Luzhi Ancient Town.

Many years ago, on the last excursion before my teacher died, he also stood at the bridge of the ancient town and said: This is a living ancient town.

Many years later, I came out of Baosheng Temple and hurriedly returned to the Huanyu Bridge. I said to the girl seriously: Every building in Luzhi Ancient Town is alive because every building lives with interesting souls.