In Ashes of Time, Ouyang Feng says that everyone holds on to a belief that may look like a waste of time to others, yet feels absolutely important to the person who keeps it. Perhaps Xia Zhiyao’s decision to leave behind the person she loved most and return to marry was driven by something like that. We might call such persistence obsession. But who can say that profound devotion is not a kind of obsession too?
I used to believe that when two people still carried each other in their hearts, they ought to hold on to their love. To miss each other in spite of that feeling seemed like one of life’s cruelest tragedies. That was why Yang Guo eventually reunited with Xiaolongnü, and everyone celebrated: the devoted, it seemed, had finally been rewarded.
Only after seeing more of life did I begin to understand that the ending of Eighteen Springs may be closer to reality. “Shijun, we can’t go back.” Sometimes you know, even before you say it, that the past is truly beyond recovery. Sixteen years later, Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü could meet again, but Guo Xiang spent her entire life in pursuit of something that ended only with her entering the Buddhist path at Emei. To want something and never receive it may be the deepest form of suffering.
I wonder how Tian Tingting is doing now, and what her life will become. Imagine that several decades from now, an old Xia Zhiyao meets an elderly Tian Tingting. Suppose both of them have remained single. Would they regret having spent all those years remembering one another instead of finding their way back together?
Or perhaps Tian Tingting will already have someone else beside her—Huashi, or another person entirely. Would either of them be able to say, calmly and without bitterness, “As long as you are happy, that is enough”? Whichever ending awaits them, it seems unbearably lonely. A lifetime is short, and it can disappear almost unnoticed while we are looking back at what has already passed.
Some people cherish the memory of “a cup of wine in the spring breeze among peach and plum blossoms,” and spend their whole lives preserving that moment. When the person you wanted can no longer be yours, remembrance is all that remains. Memory gradually beautifies everything: even the arguments begin to seem sweet, because they were part of a shared life that can never be asked for again.
I was once something of a devotee of beautiful memories myself. Beneath Glass Prison, I wrote that some people—not necessarily Yeesun—may actually be happier by guarding their memories. Perhaps that is the real fairy tale, more beautiful than a princess simply ending up with her prince.
Yet in little more than half a year, my own feelings have changed so completely. “All conditioned things are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows; like dew or lightning. This is how they should be regarded.” However intense love may seem, perhaps it is only an accidental meeting between an accidental person and a particular moment. In the scene we long for, we ask one person to fulfill a fantasy that might have been completed by someone else.
Buddhism speaks of desire, anger, attachment, and delusion, and of smiling at a flower. Taoism says that rather than keeping one another alive in mutual dependence, it may be better to forget each other amid the rivers and lakes. The paths are different, but they seem to lead toward the same place: a release in which everything can finally be allowed to pass. Very few people, however, truly understand that kind of letting go.
I have said all this in a rather disordered way because I only want to tell Xia Zhiyao one thing: I hope you will be happy. Whoever you choose to be with, I hope you will not let your whole life pass unused. If you have already learned to forgive your father, why not try living differently as well? The hatred you once carried, like the love you once held, will eventually pass.
—On reading Turned Upside Down