Lu Xun's Fine Writing: 'Snow'
Author: Lu Xun
The rain in Warm Country has never changed—cold and hard, or brilliant snowflakes. Learned people found him monotonous, and he himself thought it was misfortune. The snow in Jiangnan was moist and beautiful; it was the news of lingering youth, the skin of a robust youth. In the snowfield, there were blood-red Pearl Mountain teas, white with hidden-blue single-petaled plum blossoms, and deep yellow, fluted waxberry blossoms. Below the snow, there was also cold-green weeds. Butterflies were certainly absent; did the bees come to collect honey from the mountain teas and plum blossoms? I clearly remember it. But it seems I can see winter flowers blooming in the snowfield, many bees busy flying, and their buzzing sounds.
The children clutched their frozen hands, red as preserved ginger, seven or eight of them together molding snow men. Because it wasn't successful, whose father didn't come to help. The monk was molded much taller than the children; although just a pile of top and bottom, it was finally indistinguishable between a pot-shaped Lu and a monk; but it was very white and very vibrant, bonding with its own moisturizing properties, and shining brightly all over. The children made him eye-dots with hawthorn seeds and smeared rouge from someone's mother's powder box on his lips. This time it was a great monk. He sat there with bright eyes and flushed lips in the snow.
The next day, several more children visited him; he clapped his hands, nodded, and giggled. But he finally sat alone. The clear sky dispelled his skin, the cold night made him form a layer of ice, melting into an invisible crystal shape; continuous sunny days made him no longer know what he was, and the rouge on his lips had faded.
However, the snowflakes in the north were like powder and sand after falling; they never connected, scattered on the roofs, the ground, and dry grass; just like that. The snow on the roof was already digested because the indoor dwellers' warmth of the fire. Otherwise, under the clear sky, a whirlwind suddenly came and vigorously flew; in the sunlight, it shone brightly, like a large fog hidden with flames, rotating and rising, permeating the sky, making the sky rotate and rise, flashing and shimmering.
In the boundless wilderness, under the biting sky, spinning and rising were the souls of rain…
Yes, it was lonely snow, dead rain, the soul of rain.
January 18, 1925.
