Tomb tablet in mountain village

The border between Germany and Switzerland is a world of valleys and woods, where most of the residents are farmers. Although there are railways and roads extending into their villages, their sight is still limited by mountains, not to mention Paris and Berlin, and even the cities near them seem to be tens of thousands of miles away from them.

They each keep their own clothes, their own dialects, their own customs, and their own way of building. The fir forest on the mountain is sometimes sparse and sometimes dense, and it is often impossible to walk in for a few days. There are few pedestrians on the forest path, but if there is a person on the opposite side, there is no one who does not nod to you, as if he were familiar with it. At every corner of the path, there is always a square stele, east, west, north and south, pointing you to some fresh and simple place names.

Once, I was facing a guiding tablet, hesitating, not knowing where to go. I saw another square stone in the grass beside it. When I looked forward, I saw a tomb stele engraved on it:

A passer-by, for some reason, died when he came here.

All passers-by, pass by here, please give him a prayer.

These four simple lines moved me so much that I really wished I could say a prayer for this unknown deceased. But I can't. When I was a child, I read Wang Yangming's article on travel, and I imagined it for the master and servant who died in the land of miasma. This is not the land of miasma, but since we are both passers-by, I unconsciously felt boundless sympathy. I felt that the deceased seemed to be a relative of himself, to put it more seriously, as if it were part of the lives of all passers-by. When I think of this, the last two lines of this inscription are more important and affectionate.

As a result of this tombstone, I have an interest that I have never had before: always pay attention to the side of the road when walking, will you find this kind of gravestone again in this silent nature? People say that you can't force everything. If you force it, you won't get it. But sometimes there are occasional opportunities, after you give up a wish because it can not be achieved, so that you have an unexpected harvest. Of course I didn't encounter a second such gravestone in those mountain villages and forests, but when I left there and returned to a bustling city, one day I rummaged about in a secondhand bookstore and unwittingly, a two-inch pamphlet fell into my hand. The cover reads: "the gravestone of the mountain village." When you open it, you can see that it is the inscription on the gravestone in many mountain villages in Switzerland, collected by a village priest.

Cemeteries near European cities are often good places for walking, where there are flowers, short trees and beautiful stone carvings on tombstones, and people try to make death as quiet as possible; but the epitaph is mostly the same. it's just words like "May you have everlasting rest from God". But what is collected in this pamphlet is very different, it reveals the simplicity and humor of farmers everywhere, they see that the arrival of death is irresistible, so they have no choice but to write death chic and relaxed. I bought this pamphlet very cheaply. After dinner, I often read it to my friends. When my friends heard it, none of them asked without surprise, "is this true?" But the place names collected are indicated at the bottom of each inscription. I still remember several paragraphs, one of which reads as follows:

I was born on the bank of Borden Lake.

I died of stomachache.

There is also a primary school teacher:

I am a village teacher.

I have been flogging schoolchildren all my life.

Today's human beings are dying on a large scale. In front of the graves of countless dead, some are engraved with glorious words, some are said to be contemptible death, and some are ignored. But the mountains of Switzerland are still calm in the past, and I think the farmers there may continue to carve their funny tombstones. Sometimes I think of death for many things, and when I think of it most seriously, I would like to open that pamphlet and read it again, but like many of my favorite books, the dust is buried in my hometown in the far north.

1943, written in Kunming

Author: Feng Zhi