山群还被浓黑的云层笼罩着，太阳在云边发出微弱的光，恍若黎明或是黄昏。我想起了两句小时候背过的赞美诗，这两句（苏格兰文版本）也被《绑架》引用了：“假若我被黑暗笼罩，那我的黑夜应被变成白天。”云丝渐散，又在山边浮现，如烟囱里冒出来的余烟袅袅，镜花水月一般。

十一月份，我获邀参加第九届连州国际摄影年展“告别经验”。我很想参加。我还没去过广东的西北部，但一直很想去看看那里的山。摄影展的内容看起来很丰富，其中还包括一个英国摄影师的作品展。由于22日周五晚上和23日周六早上我都要上中文课，所以无法乘坐主办方安排的小巴。于是，周六晚上我在广东省汽车站搭上大巴前去，并计划第二天晚上回来。

选择晚班车是因为我不想把白天的时间浪费在旅途中。我打算用车上的四小时读完罗伯特?路易斯?史蒂文森的《绑架》，这部小说是关于一个年轻人在苏格兰高地的荒野、群山以及沼泽间逃亡的故事。小时候，我在学校的医务室里第一次读到此书，但可能是因为身体不舒服，或者因为对话中有许多苏格兰方言，我当时看不太懂。如今成年了，在汽车启程时我愉悦地读起了这本书，却发现车上没有阅读灯。借助一闪而过的街灯，我还是看了一会儿，可是当汽车驶出城外，我只能把书合上了。车窗上灰尘斑驳，夜幕降临后我几乎什么也看不到。我只能休息，而后陷入沉思。我想起日本作家川端康成的《雪国》里精彩的开篇。男主角岛村坐在夜班火车的车厢中。他隐约看到窗外的山脉，叠在山影上的是车厢里一位姑娘的脸庞。而他通过内心折射于其上的却是另外一个女子的面容，那正是他此行要去见的人。而我也想起了约四年前一次与人结伴乘大巴出游的经历。自傍晚至夜深，我们从重庆乘车到峨眉山。如今，开往连州的大巴在夜幕中穿行，除了迎面开来的卡车的车头灯光，我几乎什么都看不见。追忆从前，想到当下。我知道我们正在走山路，可是只能看到路边的斜坡。后来我睡着了，断断续续地，总被服务站的灯光晃醒。

抵达峨眉山的第一个早晨，我是被雨声和流水声唤醒的。在连州也如此，我听见了猛烈的雨声。酒店给我安排的房间烟味很重，所以我开着窗睡。黎明时分，天降暴雨。在我起床前，雨势减弱了。望向窗外，我看到连州的市民们在屋顶的花园里，把水从菜田里勺出去。当我离开酒店去买回程票时，雨又下大了。原想买下午五点的票，由于下雨，也同时因为我想好好看看来时经过的乡间景色，我后来买了两点的。即便这样我还是有五个小时可以看展。我被告知了从酒店走展览场馆的大致路线，但手里没有地图。走了15分钟之后，我来到一个丁字路口，于是决定向左转。我随即发现如果向右转，我会很快走到市中心和场馆，不过我还是决定走到路的尽头。于是我来到了河边，河面宽广，正好太阳也出来了。我决定沿着河岸走走，看看河边的菜园，还有在水边的洗衣妇。河流像一把弓绕城而过，最终把我带回了原点。

我再次启程，以高涨的热情，向摄影展进发。在连州市的主干道上，一些热心的志愿者给了我一张地图。他们在图上标注了主要的场馆，并指引我走到几百码之外的第一个展区。然而，我从地图上发现在展区不远处有一座山丘，山丘上有座烈士陵园，于是我打算看展之前先去那里看看。在公园的入口处，我经过了一所挂着红色横幅的房子，上面写着：“健康比钱更重要，山顶上见。”城市周边的景色被包裹在浓雾之中，偶尔有梦幻般的轮廓隐隐浮现。原来山在那儿！我心想，健康比钱更重要，的确如此。而比起照片，个人的经历也更重要。于是我沿路而上，走出城外，穿过水泥鱼塘和梯田。雨水沿着铺好的台阶细流成河。

 我向山顶进军（地图告诉我它叫巾峰山），起初没什么可看的。山峰完全被包裹着，正午时分，漆黑如夜。我看见眼前的台阶，台阶两侧散落着垃圾，还有刻在石头上的佛像和雕塑，幽灵般的松树高耸入迷雾中。起风了，我忽然感觉到，撇开垃圾不谈，这是一座有魔力的山。当我爬到山顶，除了四周的铁栏杆我什么都看不到。山顶上枯黄的草丛在风中摇曳，沙沙作响。正准备下山时，我发现天空第一次展露了两抹灰色的光影。待到云雾渐散，我才发现那深色的轮廓其实是山下的绿地，浮现眼前。五分钟之后，天空放晴，四周的山群逐渐清晰，并不很高大，却深远陡峭。城市坐落在群山的一侧，河流闪闪发亮。在另外一侧，山群还被浓黑的云层笼罩着，太阳在云边发出微弱的光，恍若黎明或是黄昏。我想起了两句小时候背过的赞美诗，这两句（苏格兰文版本）也被《绑架》引用了：“假若我被黑暗笼罩，那我的黑夜应被变成白天。”云丝渐散，又在山边浮现，如烟囱里冒出来的余烟袅袅，镜花水月一般。

我离开山顶的时候，一对年轻情侣正好上来，风吹得我很冷。下山回到城里之后，我已经没有太多时间看展览了。虽然我愿意多看几个展，不过至少还来得及看了一个：“外交官眼中的世界”。考虑到我目前的角色，我想这是我应该看的。从另外一个角度来说，我眼里也从未有过其他。

I was invited in November to attend the ninth international photography festival in Lianzhou, “Farewell to Experience”.  I was keen to go.  I have never before visited the north-west of Guangdong but have for some time wanted to see the mountains.   The programme for the festival, which included the works of  a British photographer, looked interesting.  As I  had Chinese lessons to attend in Guangzhou on the evening of Friday 22 and the morning of Saturday 23, I was not free to travel in the minibus arranged by the festival organisers.  I caught, instead, a coach from the Guangdong provincial bus station on the evening of the Saturday, planning to return on the evening of the following day.

I chose an evening coach as I did not want to waste daylight hours travelling.  I intended to use the four hours of the journey to finish reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped, the story of a young man’s flight as a fugitive across the wilds, mountain and moor, of the highlands of Scotland.  I first read the book as a young boy in the sick bay at school but, either because I was unwell or because of the large number of Scottish dialect words in the dialogue, I did not understand it at that time.  I was enjoying the book now as an adult when we set off, but then found that the coach had no reading lights.  I was able to read for a short while by street lights flashing past, but closed the book as we moved beyond the city.  There was a streaky film of dust right across the coach windows and as night fell I could see little outside.  I could only rest and reflect.  I remembered the brilliant opening passage of Snow Country by the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata.  The principal male character Shimamura sits in a railway carriage at night.  Outside he can faintly see mountains, and superimposed on them the reflection of the face of a girl in the carriage.  His mind’s eye further superimposes on what he sees his interior reflection of another woman, one he is travelling to meet. As for myself, I also recollected a coach journey that I had made with a companion about four years ago.  We travelled from Chongqing to mount Emei as evening had turned into night.  Now, as the coach to Lianzhou travelled through the darkness, I could see little outside except the headlights of trucks coming the other way.  I reflected on the past and I thought about the present.  I knew we were going through mountains but I could not see beyond the slopes at the side of the road.  I later slept fitfully, waking up as we passed the lights of service stations.

The time when I visited mount Emei, I woke up the morning after I arrived to the sound of falling rain and a running stream.  In Lianzhou too, I heard rain falling hard.  The hotel had given me a room that smelled of cigarette smoke so I had slept with the windows wide open.  Around dawn, there was the sound of a torrential downpour.  This eased off before I got up.  Looking out from my bedroom window, I could see citizens of Lianzhou ladling water from the vegetable beds in their roof gardens.  The rain set in again hard as I left the hotel to buy a coach ticket for my return journey.  In part because of the rain but also because I wanted to see the countryside we had driven through, I booked a coach leaving at 1400 rather than 1700 as I had planned.  This still left me more than five hours in which to see the exhibitions.  I had been told the general direction to walk from the hotel in order to reach them, but I did not have a map.  After I had walked for fifteen minutes or so, I came to a T-junction and decided to turn left.  I realised quite soon afterwards that if I had turned right this would have brought me to the centre of town and the venues, but I decided to continue to the end of the road.  There I reached a wide river and as I did so the sun came out.  I decided to follow the river bank, looking at the vegetable gardens beside it and at the women of the town washing clothes at the water’s edge.  The river runs around the town like an ox-bow and this walk brought me back to my starting point.

I set off again, in greater earnest, for the exhibitions.  In the main street of Lianzhou, some helpful volunteers gave me a map.  They marked out for me the main venues and directed me to the first of these, just a hundred yards further on.  I could see from the map, however, that there was a Martyrs’ Park on a hill just beyond the venue, and I thought I would climb to see the park before I went in to look at photographs.  At the entrance to the park, I walked past a house with a red banner: “health is more important than money, look from the top of the mountain”.  The landscape around the city was hidden in fog, but every now and then a phantasmagorical shape loomed briefly into view.  There be mountains!  Yes, I thought, health is more important than money.  And personal experience is more important than photography.  So I followed the path up hill, out of town, past cement fish-ponds and terraced fields, the rainwater running down the well-paved steps in streams. 

As I climbed to the top of the mountain (a map told me it was mount Jin Feng) there was at first little to see.  The peak was completely shrouded: darkness at noon.  I could see the steps in front of me, the litter all along the way beside the steps, Buddhist statues and sculptures carved into the rock nearby, ghostly pine trees emerging singly through the fog.  The wind picked up and I had the sense that, despite the litter, this was a magic mountain.  When I reached the peak, I could see nothing at all before the iron railings on any side.  The dried yellow grasses on the summit rustled and shook in the wind.  I was about to go down, when I noticed that for the sky in front of me was for the first time at least two shades of grey.  As the cloud cleared further, I could see that the darker colour was in fact the green of the land emerging below.  After five minutes, the sky cleared to reveal range after range of mountains on all sides, not high but strange and deep.  The city lay in its entirety on one side, the river silver.  On another one side the mountains were still covered by black cloud, with the sunlight glimmering beneath as if this were dawn or dusk.  I was reminded of two lines from a psalm which I recited as a child and which are quoted (though in a Scottish version) in Kidnapped: “If I say peradventure the darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned to day”.  Thin strands of cloud vanished and appeared beside the mountain, no thicker than smoke from a household chimney, dancing like will o’ the wisp.

I left the mountain top when a young couple arrived and the wind started to chill me. After descending to the town I had little time left to view the photography exhibitions.  I would have liked to see much more but I did, at least, see one display:  “The World in the Eyes of Diplomats”.  I thought that, in my current role, I ought to see this.  In a sense, of course, I am never able to see anything else.   

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笔者在连州看到的标语