Maybe it's for this scenery, maybe it's for the convenience of raising babies, maybe it's attracted by this unique hippie atmosphere, or it's a utopian dream. I want to stay after traveling for more than a year, and there is nowhere else to go.
It is difficult to cover my life in Dali these two years in a few words. Dali is not perfect or ideal at all, but more like a free experimental field. Anyone who wants to change his life can get a place to do his own life experiments. The perfect label attached to it is its sly silhouette. I entered this world during the stagnation period of my life.
In order to stay, carrying a bag is the most important thing, and soon I found a two-story single-family house with a hair dryer and a rice cooker. The house is not big, more than 50 square meters, plus a mini yard.
It was the long rainy season in Dali when I checked in. Full of freshness, I began to "pioneer" in the mini yard, sowing a bunch of seeds regardless of the season and climate. The seedlings that came out of the ground were exciting, but my first sowing ended in failure because of insufficient sunshine and too much rain. If you give me another chance, I will do it again. The process itself has given me too much interest.
I remember getting up every day, I can't wait to go downstairs to see what has happened to plants, pull out weeds and observe insects with great interest. I started watching Starscream, and then? Slugs are also considered a lovely creature. Later, I saw that the leaves of plants were chewed and gradually lost their health. Looking for information about pests, I gradually became sick. The expectation in the morning turned into harmony? 300 rounds of slug battle. At that time, I didn't know that balance was the natural way.
Before the one-year lease expires, the epidemic broke out and the travel plan fell through. Everything is unknown. To tell the truth, it is an intangible arrangement to live in Dali during the epidemic. It is like an independent bubble forgotten by the epidemic, which has little influence on people living here. I bought 20 masks at that time, but I haven't used them up yet. People still climb mountains, dance and eat fresh vegetables sent to their homes by farms. Of course, tourism has been hit hard.
The repeated outbreak of the epidemic broke the desire to leave and travel again and again, so I had to stay for another year. It's life, devotion. This time, I rented a three-bedroom apartment of 100 square meters, and I can see the spacious and bright kitchen in Erhai Lake. There are three rooms, one for sleeping, one for writing and one for meditation. Buy books and make fermented food at will, because there is a big cupboard to hold them. The balcony overlooking Erhai Lake is gradually filled with nearly forty pots of flowers and plants.
Rosemary, mint, thyme, basil, perilla ... Herbs like the sunshine on the plateau and thrive. For me, the secret of the pleasure of planting plants lies in the way of obtaining new varieties: seeds of citronella branches, geranium branches and calendula obtained from my friend's backyard, lavender cut on the road, thyme cut back from the farm, cave turtle bamboo cut from the hotel, coriander seeds distributed by my friend, mint sent by me, planted, grown and propagated on my balcony. This process is unparalleled.
For the first time in my life, I experienced the influence of solar terms on everything. The plants cut from the outside in early autumn have not changed for half a year, but suddenly grow out after spring. If only the lifestyle of modern people could conform to nature, work at sunrise, rest at sunset, eat local seasonal ingredients and freeze in spring and autumn. As the Tao Te Ching said, it is common to resume life, and it is clear to know what is common.
In fact, it is not my credit to raise plants well. You know, I used to be a person who even raised cacti and the green radish was dying. In addition to the climate suitable for plant growth, I also invited plant elves to settle on the balcony. I stubbornly believe that the lush Cangshan Mountain is related to countless hidden plant elves, so why not use local materials?
In short, there are more and more plants. For a small white novice, it is very lucky to taste the tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, potatoes and countless herbs that he grows. The most amazing thing is tomatoes. After eating my tomatoes from sowing, seedling raising, care and production in the past five months, I realized how wonderful the gift of nature itself is. Even the vegetables sent by organic farms are not as good as the fur of this taste-sweet and rich tomato flavor, sweet and sour.
The kitchen is bright and spacious, the ingredients are fresh and rich, and the number of cooking is gradually increasing. From a person who seldom cooks to a person who seldom goes out to eat. Yunnan's land and climate are suitable for crop growth. You can buy five yuan and three pounds of mangoes in March Street, which is much sweeter than imported Australian mangoes, and the flowers are cheaper and easier to buy. The wild flowers or domestic flowers sold by grandma in the vegetable market are dazzling, and ten dollars can fill a whole vase. The streets of Dali are as charming as its nature.
The climate with four seasons like spring is always used by real estate developers to make a fuss, but in my opinion, the seasons in Dali are not so pleasant, not divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter, but rainy season, windy season and dry season. Even in August in midsummer, it rained for three days in a row, and I was shivering at home. I never put away my down vest. When it rains or I go climbing, I can't live without it.
After a winter in Dali, I realized a common sense that is almost nonsense: the length and angle of sunshine in four seasons are very different. After the solstice in winter, the sunshine at home is getting shorter every day. Because I live at the foot of the mountain, the last ray of sunshine in the room disappeared before four o'clock. At this time, I always stand in the kitchen and look at the ancient city and Erhai Lake, admiring the sunshine there until six o'clock in the afternoon; The vernal equinox is coming, and the sunshine grows back inch by inch, covering the whole room.
Why do you notice the lines of light at home? Because we need sunshine indoors in winter. To bask in the sun by fire is a cotton-padded jacket, thick down jacket and coat that lives in this plateau in winter. However, if the sunshine is insufficient and the fire cannot be made indoors to keep warm, it will be extremely uncomfortable. Last winter, I basically leaned against the heater, shaking my hands and typing. Accustomed to the winter in the north, I couldn't bear it, and finally "escaped" to Xishuangbanna when a continuous rain came.
"Escape from Dali" is a phrase that my friends and I often joke about. "Dali is ideal enough, why do you want to leave?" My friend in Taiwan Province Province asked me when I knew I had moved. Yes, it is always so beautiful. Even if it is artificially gilded by a large number of people, every time I look up and see the endless Cangshan Mountain and the changing clouds, I will always marvel at the beauty of this plateau lake. A quiet time, but something is missing. What is this? I don't know.
Only after I left did I know that what I lacked was a kind of truth and a kind of vitality. So I said, Dali is The Truman Show.
I don't think anyone moved here because I liked my old life very much, so I came to Dali to explore another way of life. When people come to Dali, there is more or less an element of escape, expecting the difference and change of life, or relaxing. Me, too.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with this. Everyone has the right to pursue a better life. However, beneath the surface, there is a past that has never been mentioned. People try to forget the pain, live in the sunshine again, work hard, don't touch the shadow, and break the connection with the past. It is precisely because this kind of effort shows the positive and beautiful, which constitutes the seemingly perfect Truman world.
However, the vitality of light comes from reality.
In Dali, there are many circles. Body and mind circle, Buddhist circle, Chinese medicine circle, farming circle, hippie circle, outdoor circle, art circle, elite circle from big cities, overseas study circle ... No matter which circle, what they have in common is health+drinking tea.
I have been to several tea parties, and I have also been beaten by the demon wind in Dali, and I have had too much contact. I have started to keep in good health and have been drinking tea in a fake way at home. I remember moxibustion in summer, drying my back in winter and cooking brown sugar and ginger tea in the morning. I also began to care about constellations and astronomical phenomena, because the astrological terms I know are zero, and sometimes I simply can't understand what everyone is saying. You see, that's how the environment affects people.
Generally speaking, Dali will feel very dry, after all, it is a plateau climate. A girl from Hainan said that she had a nosebleed on her first night in Dali. But in fact Dali is very humid, especially at the foot of the mountain for a long time. It is not as blatantly wet as the south, but in countless summer rainy seasons and windy nights, moisture will sneak into the body.
After leaving Dali for more than a month, the heaviness and fatigue in my body have disappeared. Some time ago, after getting up every day, I felt that I had no motivation and no strength. After breakfast, I even want to sit in a chair and feel that my body is an old lady of 100 years old.
At that time, I was thinking, what happened to my body? The same symptoms, Chinese medicine may say that the body is too wet, western medicine may say chronic fatigue, Ayurveda may say that there are too many toxins in the body ... I have heard too much, but I can't agree with it, and I am even more annoyed. I thought to myself, is it true that the age has passed the critical point after all, and the body has changed its habits but still continues in the past? Or is it all the fault of the plateau, I am too lazy to exercise because of lack of oxygen? In a word, I don't know why, but constant fatigue bothers me.
A lot of things can't be seen clearly until the distance is generated.
Now it seems that the reasons for fatigue and lack of vitality are too simple. One is poor sleep quality, and the other is less exercise. Looking back, I lived in Dali for two years and didn't sleep well. Before I go to sleep, I always have persistent fears and obsessive worries, and I will have many dreams.
In the past two years, except for climbing mountains occasionally, I basically did not move, and the time of lying flat at home reached a peak. The heaviness of the body is increasing day by day, and when it reacts, vitality and creativity have fallen to the bottom. Dali and My Life Before traveling, I often do yoga and run. In a word, exercise is a string in my mind. The past two years have been more like a negative experiment. I finally know why Haruki Murakami runs for an hour every day without hesitation.
Now I go to bed early and get up early, and my dreams are much less, so I regain the habit of exercising. You see, I still have the strength to write.
People in the spiritual world often say that this is the portal-a multi-dimensional entrance and exit. This is true, but because of this, this is a place where ghost dragons gather together, both at the human level and at the energy level. In Dali, it is common to be "recruited" from time to time and run out of energy. As a last resort, social interaction has been reduced again and again. Well, it's best that you can live in complete seclusion.
So I stumbled and fell for two years. Two years doesn't sound like much. For life, if you live to 80 years old, two years is one thirtieth of your life, not too short, except for the 20 years you were ignorant before you became an adult. How will it shape my life from now on? It is still difficult to see the answer. However, the answer can still be modified in every moment, because every moment of life is intertwined. Good can be bad, bad can be good.
What is my life experiment in Dali? I also ask myself. I think I'm doing an experiment of "living or joining the WTO". At first, it was a desperate option, but later it was "trapped" because of the epidemic. I can't help thinking, how did I spend my two years in Dali?
No matter how I live, it seems to have nothing to do with Dali itself. Everything outside, everything imposed on us by the outside world, is actually some options. Do you accept? Ignore it? Interact with it? After all, it is our own choice.
end