up early in the morning, you will find the
ground strewn all over with flower-like pistils fallen from locust trees. Quiet and smellless,
they feel tiny and soft underfoot. After a street cleaner has done the sweeping under the
shade of the trees, you will discover countless lines left by his broom in the dust, which
look so fine and quiet that somehow a feeling of forlornness will begin to creep up on you.
The same depth of implication is found in the ancient saying that a single fallen leaf from
the wutong tree is more than enough to inform the world of autumn’s presence.
The sporadic feeble chirping of cicadas is especially characteristic of autumn in the
North. Due to the abundance of trees and the low altitude of dwellings in Peiping, cicadas
are audible in every nook and cranny of the city. In the South, however, one cannot hear
them unless in suburbs or hills. Because of their ubiquitous shrill noise, these insects in
Peiping seem to be living off every household like crickets or mice.
As for autumn rains in the North, they also seem to differ from those in the South,
being more appealing, more temperate.
A sudden gust of cool wind under the slaty sky, and raindrops will start
pitter-pattering. Soon when the rain is over, the clouds begin gradually to roll towards the
west and the sun comes out in the blue sky. Some idle townsfolk, wearing lined or unlined
clothing made of thick cloth, will come out pipe in mouth and, loitering under a tree by the
end of a bridge, exchange leisurely conversation with acquaintances with a slight touch of
regret at the passing of time:
“Oh, real nice and cool—“
“Sure! Getting cooler with each autumn shower!”
Fruit trees in the North also make a wonderful sight in autumn. Take jujube tree for
example. They grow everywhere—around the corner of a house, at the foot of a wall, by
the side of a latrine or outside a kitchen door. It is at the height of autumn that jujubes,
shaped like dates or pigeon eggs, make their appearance in a light yellowish-green amongst
tiny elliptic leaves. By the time when they have turned ruddy and the leaves fallen, the
north-westerly wind will begin to reign supreme and make a dusty world of the North.
Only at the turn of July and August when jujubes, persimmons, grapes are 80-90 percent
ripe will the North have the best of autumn—the golden days in a year.
Some literary critics say that Chinese literati, especially poets, are mostly disposed to
be decadent, which accounts for predominance of Chinese works singing the praises of
autumn. Well, the same is true of foreign poets, isn’t it? I haven’t read much of foreign
poetry and prose, nor do I want to enumerate autumn-related poems and essays in foreign
literature. But, if you browse through collected works of English, German, French or ⊕⊕網⊕
Italian poets, or various countries’ anthologies of poetry or prose, you can always comes
across a great many literary pieces eulogizing or lamenting autumn. Long pastoral poems
or songs about the four seasons by renowned poets are mostly distinguished by beautiful
moving lines on autumn. All that goes to show that all live creatures and sensitive humans
alike are prone to the feeling of depth, remoteness, severity and bleakness. Not only poets,
even convicts in prison, I suppose, have deep sentiments in autumn in spite of themselves.
Autumn treats all humans alike, regardless of nationality, race or class. However, judging
from Chinese idiom qiushi (autumn scholar, meaning and aged scholar grieving over
frustrations in his life) and frequent selection in textbooks of Ouyang Xiu’s On the Autumn
Sough and Su Dongpo’s On the Red Cliff, Chinese men of letters seem to be particularly
autumn-minded. But, to know the real flavour of autumn, especially China’s autumn, one
has to visit the North.
Autumn in the South also has its unique features, such as the moonlit Ershisi Bridge
in Yangzhou, th