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《景观设计学》2016年第6期
作 者：法雅•加瓦赫里安（Faryar JAVAHERIAN），安妮•惠斯顿•斯本（Anne Whiston SPIRN）等类 别：景观出 版 社：高等教育出版社有限公司出版时间：2016年12月
俞孔坚•阅读西溪南
——《景观设计学》2016年第6期“主编寄语”
Reading the Book of Xixi’nan
By Kongjian Yu
景观是一本书，每个村子都有属于自己的那一本——有的厚重，有的轻薄；有的深邃，有的浅陋；有的华丽而喜气，有的含蓄而凄楚。徽州的西溪南则是一本美丽动人又充满意味的书！
除去我的故乡浙江金华的东俞村，坐落在丰乐河南岸的西溪南村便是我最爱不释手的一本景观之书了。它章节分明，有人与自然和谐共生的智慧，有充满恩怨情仇的故事，有历史的宏大叙事，也有当下的邻里政治，令人百读不厌。
这本书的第一章——也是浓墨重彩的开篇——便是村北的枫杨林，这是我在祖国见过的最美的河滩林地了！枫杨是江南地区最适应河水季节性涨落生境的乔木树种，这样的枫杨林曾广泛分布于大小江河之畔。但在过去几十年，由于无度的水利工程建设（包括河道的硬化和渠化），它们大面积地消失，美丽的丰乐河上也仅存这一处林子了。春汛来临，河水淹没滩地，林在水上，俨然复原了古西溪南村八景之一的“山源春涨”；汛期过后，我每每徜徉其中，深深呼吸着带着蘑菇香气的空气，视线透过树干编织的幽帘，眺望依稀的古桥、村舍、远山和波光，这样的徽州恍如梦境，只是梦与现实在这里可以如此相近！
书的第二章是村庄边缘的菜园。致密的菜畦中，生长着种类繁多的果蔬，有萝卜、青菜、茄子、辣椒、大蒜、洋葱、生姜、大豆、花生，还有被齐齐架起的蔓生的豇豆和黄瓜，它们成条成块地拼接在一起，高低错落却井然有序，如鳞次栉比的村庄瓦顶；在这里，采摘的妇女可以隔着豇豆架对话，也常常互换各自的成果，菜园成为了住宅邻里关系的延伸。这里不仅产出了果蔬，还培育着友谊、促进着交流。穿梭其中，就如品读词语朴实、断句纤巧、娓娓道来却妙曼无限的寻常故事。
书的高潮便是村子本身。每座房子都是一个单词，房子围合成的院落构成了一个个词组，街道串起了院落而成为句子。众多的句子南北穿插，曲折幽深，描绘着神秘的历史故事与当下的寻常生活。我常常陶醉于在村子里迷路的感觉，这种迷路是悠闲的、探幽的，也是快乐的，就像爱丽丝梦游仙境，绝没有慌张与焦虑。每一块刻字的青砖、每一方磨损的石板路面、每一个屋角的“石敢当”、每一阶临水的石埠、每一尊残破的柱础或石臼……都是下一个故事或情节的暗示。一个曾经富甲一方、响誉江南、名士云集、诗画璀璨的千年名村，悄悄述说着它辉煌的过去和凄楚的经历。
串起上述三个篇章的物质和精神的纽带，便是那水系。作为古徽州地区的后代，宋代诗人朱熹的《观书有感》最准确地表达出了西溪南的水的精神与形态：
半亩方塘一鉴开，
天光云影共徘徊。
问渠那得清如许？
为有源头活水来。
村头的林子和梦境、村边菜园的寻常故事、村子里院落与街道的神秘和凄楚，皆因这充满智慧的水系而灵动了起来。那汩汩活水源自黄山主峰，是新安江上游唯一以黄山为源的溪流。清澈与灵秀自不必说，而锤炼千余年的理水艺术，更使西溪南的水系显得精妙绝伦：通过古堨和鱼嘴分水，将水引入村中；而后由一个石关控制流量，旱涝无忧；水口是一组由桥、庙、石埠和大树构成的景观，像是一个重重的感叹号；随后，水流过家家户户，或被引入庭院和天井，或进入方塘，遂成古村八景之一的“清溪涵月”；最后，被引入下游的良田美池，用于灌溉。
景观是一本书，每个村子都有属于自己的那一本。中国有数以百万计的村庄和无限的田园美景，有的甚至已经存在了数百年乃至上千年之久，它们经由数以亿计的人民世代“编写”，或用泪水，或用血汗！品读它们，就是品读中国，就是品读我们的祖先；呵护它们，就是呵护我们自己。如今，它们有的破败了，有的满是喷绘涂鸦，有的甚至已被夷为平地。就像不孝的子孙将族谱毁掉，我哀叹我们这一代不孝的子孙们正将这样魅力无限而意味深远的景观之书毁掉！
The landscape is a book. Every village holds its own book of the landscape — some are thick and heavy, others thin and light; some villages are profound, others crude; often they are magnificent and jubilant, and at times implicit and miserable. Among the books of villages, the Xixi’nan Village in Huizhou, Anhui Province is a beautiful book, deep with meaning.
Other than my hometown of Dongyu Village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, Xixi’nan is my most favorite landscape book. Located on the south bank of Fengle River, the village maintains a harmonious co-existence between humans and nature. A long history and various stories combined with current neighborhood trifles and politics make for a book worth reading and re-reading.
The first chapter of the book begins with a Chinese wingnut (Pterocarya stenoptera) forest to the north of the village, the most beautiful river floodplain forest I have ever seen in China. Chinese wingnut is the most suitable tree species for rivers with seasonal fluctuations in southern China. Similar forests used to be found widely in river areas of different sizes. However, over the past several decades most of these forests have disappeared as a consequence of the hardening and channeling of waterways. This is the only forested areas that have survived on the Fengle River. When the spring flood comes, the forest stands in flooded river, vividly reproducing one of the Eight Ancient Xixi’nan Scenes, the “Spring Flood Deep in Mountains.” I have often wandered in the forest after the flood season, deeply breathing in the mushroom smell in the air, gazing towards the old bridges, cottages, and distant mountains, feeling like I am in the dream of Huizhou, a dream so close to reality!
The second chapter is the vegetable gardens planted on the edge of the village. A variety of vegetables are grown in the dense garden plots, including radish, greens, eggplant, pepper, garlic, onion, ginger, soybeans, and peanuts. Clumps of cowpeas and cucumbers are tidily set up on holders. These plots range in size and are scattered by height, yet they remain orderly and well-regulated, mimicking the rows of tiled roofs. The women picking peas chat with each other across the trellises, or exchange their gains. The vegetable garden is an extension of the neighborhoods. It is a space not only for fruits and vegetables, but also friendship. When moving within the garden, you feel like reading an ordinary yet wonderful story told with artless words and delicate sentences.
The climax of the book is the village itself. Every house acts as a word, the blocks phrases, stringed together by streets to become sentences. These numerous sentences are interspersed north and south, they twist and turn, deeply and quietly, depicting the timeless stories of this place. I often stroll through the village, obsessed by the feeling of being lost in time and place. It is a leisurely, probing and pleasant kind of lost, just like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with no panic or anxiety. Every brick wall, every piece of the worn paving, every door with god stone tablets to ward off evil spirits in the corner, every step of the stone dock, every broken plinth or stone mortar is hints at the next storyline. The once wealthy village, whose fame is widespread in the area south of Yangtze River area, flourished with poetry and painting, quietly telling the story of its glorious but tragic past.
The material and spiritual bond that links these three chapters together is the water system. Xi Zhu, a famous poet of the Song Dynasty, whose ancestors lived in the ancient Huizhou area, most accurately manifested the spirit and form of water in Xixi’nan in his poetry Reflections on Reading:
A square pond opens up like a mirror, clear and bright;
Shadows of the skylight and clouds reflected together into it, shining and shaking.
“Why is the water body so clear?” you may ask —
For the continuous flow upstream from its source.
The woods to the north of the village, the gardens on the edge, the homes and streets within the village come to life thanks to the intelligence of water. The flowing water comes from the main peak of the Mount Huangshan, the only stream in the upstream area of Xin’an River originating from the mount. Its clarity and beauty is made all the more exquisite through Xixi’nan’s water system developed over a thousand years. The system channels the river water into the village, and then separates it through a system of ancient weirs and fish-mouth dikes. The water is then sent through a stone barrier to ensure water supply during both drought and flood. The water inlet area consists of a bridge, a temple, a stone dock, and a large tree, looking like a weighty exclamation mark. From here, water flows to every house, it is channelized into courtyards, patios or ponds, or forming into another of the Eight Ancient Xixi’nan Scenes, “The Moon in Clear Water.” Finally, the water flows into downstream farmland and ponds for irrigation use.
The landscape is a book, and every village has its own. There are millions of beautiful villages and rural landscapes in China, some hundreds years old. Their books have been written by hundreds of millions of people, one generation after another, written with tears, sweat, and blood. To read them is to read China, to read our history and our ancestors. To protect them is to protect ourselves. Today, some of these books are dilapidated, full of graffiti, or razed to the ground. I am saddened by our generation’s devastation of these glamorous and meaningful landscape books!
Translated by Sara JACOBS Angus ZHANG
