Rain

◎ Yu Dafu

Mr．Zhou Zuoren named his study “Bitter Rain”, which is opposite in meaning to the “Pavilion of Happy Rain”, the title of an essay written by Su Shi, but because of its rarity , any rain that falls in the north can be considered a happy blessing．Take, for example, the big flood we had this year．It was not necessarily caused by excessive rain, and blame should be placed on the river controllers who failed to take necessary precautions, but were only good at finding excuses to muddle through and were only interested in wasting the government’s money．If anything happens, they try to shift their responsibilities to others and save themselves from blame．Wouldn’t it be boring if things in one’s life remained static？For instance, doesn’t death draw attention to birth and tragedy highlight fortune？If this inference is true, isn’t the same true of climate？Without the rain, what would reveal the loveliness of a sunny day？Without the night, what would underscore the brightness of daytime？

Because I was born in the south, it would be natural if I disliked the rain, but what a lovely blessing it is to get a few drops of rain on a hazy spring day when the flowers are drying！Our ancient poets clearly described the benefits of rain：“The vernal rain pattering outside my attic fascinated me the whole night;”“Apricot blossoms, vernal rain, and the south;”“The mist and drizzle over the capital look dewy and gentle.”Summer rain has the effect of mitigating the heat and watering the crops - there is no need to elaborate on its benefits here．The misty and chilly autumn rain, on the other hand, conjures up a different picture．The ancient poetic line “Late autumn often has spells of rain; drizzle after drizzle makes my mood dejected”is composed, in particular, to describe the thought-provoking effect of the autumnal rain．As for “Autumn rain and autumn wind - autumn, a season that dispirits,”the prosodic sigh made by Miss Autumn (Qiu Jin) is nothing but a lament uttered by someone in a special mood - her feelings are ones of sadness, but they have nothing to do with the rain．Not many people, I am afraid, like the chilly rain of winter, but without having actually experienced it, who can see the true beauty pregnant in the poetic line, “The indistinct quacking of the wild geese from the distant south; the deep rustling of the hourglass in the faintly lit palace”？I remember that Zeng Bingu once used some famous lines from Poetry Taste to name a poetry book Poetry Collection from a Thatched Hut for Rain Appreciation．I have no idea how good he is at creating poetic imagery, but what a thought-provoking expression those words are：“a Thatched Hut for Rain Appreciation.”These words are especially evocative when it comes to the shift between late autumn and early winter, when “The chill of the green mountain is deep; the frost in the tall woods is thin.”

1. Yu Dafu (1896-1945), a founder of the Creation Society and a representative of melancholy romantic individualism at his early times, became a newspaper editor in Malaysia and Singapore when Anti-Japanese War broke out in 1937 and was finally assassinated by the Japanese soldiers.