When the pink pointed buds unfurl on bare thin branches alongside the leaves stenciled with a paler green around the edges quirk, it heralds the onset of a vibrant spring. WHU’s lush cherry blossom has become the centerpiece of this long tradition of celebrating the fleeting splendor of the flowers. Thousands of visitors flock into its sprawling premises to experience the ephemeral blooming of cherry trees or “sakura”.These cherry blossoms also recognize the fragility and transience of life, besides turning drab days into lasting cheerful memories. WHU’s architecture is a natural supplement to the ineffable vigor and youthful sentimentality of the cherry blossoms. The slopes of the Luojia Hill are dyed pink from the fallen mounds of cheery petals. The influx of such a large number of tourists manifests the appreciation of this rarefied atmosphere, which is stifled with sweet fragrance and vivid floral parade, and with the bursts of pink and white flowers. The pink-white blossoms spill over into the air, fluttering in the breeze from the luxuriantly flowering canopy of cherry trees, and baffling visitors with a “cherry fall”.
As human beings, the escape from society and the life we had chosen for ourselves, has been a recurrent motif to lead a life of nature and solitude- listening attentively to the voices of birds, the whistle of the wind and peering into the color of clouds. The powerful symphony of colors, sounds, and aromas in cherry blossom easily supersedes the stereotypical contexts and the seemingly thoughtful elegies. It seems naive to catch all the wonderful colors of life. The presentiments of the spring bring the inevitable discovery of harmony implied in nature of the eternal novelty and the joy of existence. It also reflects the expectations of a generation that have overcome the darkness of oblivion and chosen freedom of spirit and happiness of the creative work. Sitting quietly in the midst of a cherry glove in full bloom sets a sanguine mood to appreciate the surpassing beauty of cherry blossom with vague reminiscences of the past.
Nature has its own portrayal of the foibles and eccentricities of life and like a cherry blossom, it must fall, be scattered and disappear. To nature, history is irrelevant and it never mattered even if it was sordid or pleasant, what has mattered is the loss of history and the amnesia of this loss deeply ingrained in human mind. Human life is idiosyncratic and complex, but nature reflects upon the stasis of things in the past locked in amber and thus haunting in its opacity with the gaze of a loving and nostalgic admirer. The youth is paradoxically persuaded to be rather more than less, himself for having foresworn the world kindred to his own benign pretense.
Nature is eternally in motion but humans always indulge in the passive contemplation of nature, unaware of the circulation and fluctuation of things. During spring, nature rejoices with humans but nature is immortal and will inevitably outlast humans. The heavenly menacing power of nature seems to mock the transient human existence. Though nature is immortal, the cherry tree is mortal. The tree, lonely in its persistence, fearlessly weathers the storms and therefore its persistence is tragic. Human attempts to describe nature are fraught with perpetual errors, because we have not been able to perceive the whole beauty of nature with intense empathy without falling into the poetic trance. True wisdom is not in fruitless meditations and sorrows but in the pleasures of life and nature. The natural destiny of all human life is to transform and merge with the phenomena of external world, not abnegate them.
The cherry blossom in WHU ended with much fanfare from boisterous crowd of visitors and wonderful display of the bloom, along with every promise of an iconic springtime blossom next year. Here below are the ending stanzas of Robert Frost’s poem “Rose Pogonias” who, by a quirk of rhyme, has captured the brevity of the flower blossom:
We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the spot,
That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot;
Or if not all so favored,
Obtain such grace of hours,
that none should mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.
(Raju Maskey is a Nepalese student at Wuhan University）
(Edited by Siying Wu, Mark and Sijia Hu)
