"You Have Creeping Grass and I Have Peach Blossoms (The Older the Book of Poetry, the More Beautiful It Is)" Author: Erya / Wendao Publishing House: China Overseas Chinese Publishing House

When I was young, I thought that the Book of Songs was a love poem. The waters of Han, Qin, Wei, and Qi are clear and cool, and I want to flow in them; the flowers of Hui, Lan, Zhi, Ruo, and Heng are beautiful and I want to pick them. I shuttled through the beautiful and dense verses, looking at the men and women on both sides of the ancient rivers, and their simple laughter and tears, happiness and resentment love stories, which were easily moved.

There are so many sincere and lifelike love stories in the Book of Songs. They do not call for greatness or loftiness, but those simple sentences are memorable. The gentleman's ardent pursuit of the graceful lady in "Guanju"; the man's longing and nostalgia for the wandering girl in "Han Guang"; the oath of "holding your hand and growing old together" in "Jigu" that has been passed down for thousands of years; and the gift of true love regardless of status in "Mugua" are all real love stories of ordinary people. The beauty of simplicity is fully revealed between the lines.

Of course, in addition to love, there is also the labor and wisdom of that era. With the falling stars, the ancestors cultivated, hunted, worshipped, gardened, married, etc. This is the way of life passed down from generation to generation. There are also corvée and wars of that era. In the distant and long years, the Zhou Dynasty has been fighting large and small wars with neighboring countries since its rise. We can read the sorrow and sadness of the lives of the ancestors. The Book of Songs is a true portrayal of the daily life of the ancestors of that era - it is completely different from the "Iliad" of ancient Greece, which is roughly the same era. The "Iliad" is almost a world of gods and heroes that are in the human world that was fictionalized by fantasy, and it is difficult to read its characteristics of the times.

We should thank the collection of poems, The Book of Songs. Although we are now living in an urban society with high-rise buildings and bright lights, reading it seems that we can return to the scattered villages, pure love, picking plants, sacrificial rituals... full of meaning. After three thousand years of long time, we can still feel the life of the people in the pre-Qin period. If there were no war, the quaint little village at the end of the field would have chickens crowing and dogs barking, and men and women talking about love. The "beauty" on the other side of the water, the "Zhongzi" over the wall, and the "quiet girl" who gave me the red tube... When the war came, there was the hope of making achievements and the heroic posture of galloping on the battlefield, but there was also the sadness of the woman who missed her husband and looked forward to the return of the soldiers. The stories of those who looked forward to the return of the soldiers were constantly played out in the distant years.

Living in a fast-paced world, we can't help but envy our ancestors and feel that the men and women in the Book of Songs are lucky because they live in the simplest place. In front of the door is a comfortable field, mountains and rivers, which makes people feel relaxed and happy. In this simple world, the air is filled with fragrance, the breeze is blowing, and people are picking plants, picking their own happiness, sorrow and hope. Every fragment of life can be sung and become a ballad. Perhaps this is the highest level of poetry, without embellishment, but chanting the purest music. So those poetry collectors who shook the wooden bell ran between the fields, listening to the beauty of nature and the pure singing of human beings, and immediately wrote them down quickly...

The Book of Songs, a book that records more than 500 years of poetry from the Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period in China, flows through the long river of history, full of the meaning and style of the time, and comes gracefully. Let the ancient wind pass through our hearts and feel the beautiful scenery that has been through thousands of years. In the complicated modern society, I hope that everyone who reads it can feel a clear sense of music.