Yangtze River Headwaters Volunteering Day 21 长江源志愿工作第21天

This is a series of journals recording my days in the Yangtze River Headwaters volunteering project. I will try to update every day but there might be delays in the days I work in the wild without the internet. I’m also trying to write bilingual if time allows. Like it? Follow my Instagram (@anar.chica.yichenguo) for updates!
这是我参与长江源志愿工作的一系列记录。我争取每日更新，但在野外工作没有网络的那些日子会有延迟。在时间允许的情况下，也会尽量使用中英双语。喜欢的话，关注我的Ins账号(@anar.chica.yichenguo)获取更新吧！

Over 75% of my activities today are concentrated in the early morning and evening, which is almost the same with black-necked crane’s feeding habit. I didn’t rest a second after waking up at a quarter past six until after nine o’clock. First station patrol, and then received my dad’s former colleague and his friends on the road trip together (they also took away a bag of trash with them). And then temperature measurement which immediately followed with a team of tourists from Guangdong who bought several sets of Mr. Yang’s photography album (Mr. Yang stayed in the post office at the beginning and signed the albums for them) and Doctor Han Mei’s stone drawings (doctor Han is very happy about that). And things finally calmed down after another few groups of tourists. The extraordinarily numerous activities and sold items need to be filled in the daily report one by one. I’m afraid I would need to work until 10 pm today.

And all of a sudden I started to miss the Bende Lake. After all, I have both mental and physical needs for being in the nature. Although it is also happy being busy in the station, it always lacks the feeling of spiritual mindfulness, even if it is already quite far away from the mundane world. I guess I might still not have a high enough spiritual level, that my mind is not peaceful enough, which makes it impossible for me to practice spiritually once I’m in the normal world. I feel a bit unreal today when I think of Tokyo, the city I’ve been looking forward to. My visa has been pending for almost half a year due to coronavirus and there is no sign of opening up again yet. And when I finally arrive there, I will be lost among tens of millions of people far away from the nature again… Maybe losing the intimacy with nature is what I have to sacrifice for learning necessary knowledge and skills. As long as time is not wasted, I’m fine with anything.

I’ve been reading <The Joke> by Milan Kundera this afternoon when there was no tourist to receive. I have no idea who donated this pirated book filled with typos, and I have no idea how many books of Kundera I’ve read. Anyway, this genius’ books taste different if you read at different stages of your life or in different environments. And the taste of today is: instant noodles. No matter what spice you add, as long as it is human being, different cultures could produce extremely similar thought patterns. Prague at that time reminds me so much of the cultural revolution of China. Even the wordings of their interrogations seem to come from the same group of people, which is comparable to the Ancient Greek rhetoricians – tricking the suspects into a trap that they could never clean up themselves again.

今天75%以上的活动集中在清晨和傍晚，几乎等同于黑颈鹤出门觅食的习惯。六点一刻醒来后一秒没停地忙到九点多。先是巡站，早饭后接待了爸爸的老同事和他一起自驾的朋友们（他们还带走了一袋垃圾），随后测温，刚刚测完邮局里又涌进一车队广东游客，大批量采购纪念品和杨老师的摄影集（杨老师起先在邮局，给他们签了不少本），以及寒大夫画的石头（寒大夫很开心）。之后又接待了几波游客，总算是清静了下来。今天这多得夸张的活动量，一项项填进工作日志里，恐怕晚上得忙到十点。

突然就想念起班德湖来。我果然是有身处大自然的心理和生理需求。保护站虽然忙得也很开心，但总觉得缺失了点“灵修”的感觉，尽管这里离“尘世”已经很远了。我想是我的境界还不够，心不够静，“入世”便无法修行。想到一直期盼着的东京，突然有一种恍惚感。被新冠疫情拖了半年的签证，什么时候下来还不得而知。而等我真的到了那里，我又将跻身茫茫人海，远离大自然… 或许这是为了学习必要的知识和技能必须牺牲的几年与大自然亲近的时光吧。只要时光不虚度，什么都好说。

下午在邮局看米兰昆德拉的《玩笑》，不知是谁捐赠给这里的错字连篇的盗版书，也不知是我看的昆德拉的第几本书。总之，这个神人的书在不同时期不同环境总会读出不同的味道。今天的味道是：泡面。不管加了什么料，只要是人，不同文化产出的意识形态总有可能极度相似。那个时期的布拉格竟有浓浓的文革即视感。连审问的话术都如出一辙，简直堪比古希腊的雄辩家，绕得人莫名其妙就洗不清了。