Fate in the Silent Garden | Generated by AI

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Question: Provide the full English translation of the essay “我与地坛” by Shi Tiesheng, a classic Chinese university-level text.

Answer:

Me and the Temple of Earth
By Shi Tiesheng

Part One

In several of my stories I have mentioned an abandoned ancient garden; in fact, it is the Temple of Earth. Many years ago, before tourism had developed, the garden was desolate and neglected, like a stretch of wilderness, seldom remembered by anyone. The Temple of Earth is very close to my home. Or rather, my home is very close to the Temple of Earth. In short, I have to consider it fate. The Temple of Earth had stood there more than four hundred years before I was born, and ever since my grandmother, when young, brought my father to Beijing, we have always lived not far from it—over fifty years we moved several times, but each move kept us in its vicinity, and actually closer and closer to it. I often feel there is something predestined in this: as if this ancient garden endured four hundred years of vicissitudes just waiting for me.

It waited for me to be born, then waited for me to reach the most arrogant age and suddenly become paralyzed in both legs. Over those four hundred years, it eroded the ostentatious glazed tiles on the eaves of the ancient halls, faded the flaunting vermilion on the walls and doors, collapsed sections of high walls and scattered the jade-carved balustrades. The old cypress trees around the altar grew ever more somber and profound, while wild grasses and vines everywhere flourished freely and boldly.

At that point, I suppose it was time for me to come. Fifteen years ago, one afternoon, I wheeled my chair into the garden, and it had everything prepared for a man who had lost his soul. At that moment, the sun, following its eternal unchanging path, was growing larger and redder. In the pervasive, serene light that filled the garden, one could more easily see time and catch sight of one’s own figure.

Ever since that afternoon when I unintentionally entered this garden, I have never left it for long. I instantly understood its intention. As I wrote in one story: “In a densely populated city, to have such a quiet place seems like God’s painstaking arrangement.”

In the first few years after my legs were paralyzed, I could find no job, no way forward; suddenly I could find almost nothing, so I always wheeled my chair there, simply because it was another world where I could escape this one. I wrote in that story: “With nowhere to go, I spent day after day in this garden. Like going to work, while others went to their jobs, I wheeled my chair here. No one managed the garden; during commuting hours some people took shortcuts through it, and the garden would liven up for a while, then fall silent again.”

“The garden wall cast a slanting strip of shade in the golden air; I wheeled in, reclined the backrest, sat or lay there reading or thinking, broke off a twig to swat left and right at the little insects that, like me, didn’t understand why they had come into this world.”

“Bees hovered steadily in mid-air like little mists; ants shook their heads and stroked their antennae, suddenly comprehended something, turned and hurried away; ladybugs, tired of crawling, prayed a while then spread their wings and fluttered up; on a tree trunk clung a cicada shell, lonely as an empty room; dew rolled on grass blades, gathered, bent them, then fell crashing in a shower of golden light.”

“The whole garden was filled with the rustling sounds of grasses and trees vying to grow, ceaselessly murmuring.”

These are all true records. The garden was dilapidated but not decayed.

Except for a few halls I could not enter, and except for that altar I could not climb but could only gaze at from various angles, I have been under every tree in the Temple of Earth, and almost every square meter of its grass has borne the tracks of my wheels. No matter the season, weather, or time, I have stayed in this garden. Sometimes just a while before going home, sometimes until moonlight covered the ground. I can’t recall exactly which corners. For hours I concentrated on thinking about death, and with the same patience and method thought about why I was born. I thought like this for several years, and finally understood: once a person is born, it is no longer a debatable question, but merely a fact handed to him by God. When God gave us this fact, He also guaranteed its conclusion, so death is not something to rush toward; death is a festival that will inevitably arrive. After thinking this way, I felt much more at ease, and everything before my eyes was no longer so terrifying. For example, when you’re staying up late preparing for an exam and suddenly remember a long vacation awaits, don’t you feel a bit lighter? And grateful for such an arrangement?

What remained was how to live, which cannot be fully figured out in one moment or solved once and for all. I’m afraid one must think about it as long as one lives, like a demon or lover accompanying you all your life. So for fifteen years, I still always go to that ancient garden, to sit silently under its old trees, beside the wild grass, or by the ruined walls, to ponder, to sort out the chaotic thoughts crowding my ears, to peek into my own soul.

In those fifteen years, parts of the ancient garden’s form have been wantonly carved by people who couldn’t understand it, but fortunately some things no one can change. For instance, the setting sun framed in the stone gate of the altar, the moment its silent radiance spreads flat, every bump on the ground shines brilliantly; for instance, in the garden’s loneliest hours, a flock of swifts bursts out singing, crying out until heaven and earth turn desolate; for instance, children’s footprints in the winter snow always make one wonder who they were, what they did there, and where they went afterward; for instance, those dark ancient cypresses stand calmly whether you are melancholy or joyful, standing day and night from before you were born until after you are gone from this world; for instance, when sudden heavy rain pours into the garden, stirring bursts of fierce yet pure scents of grass, trees, and earth, reminding one of countless summer events; for instance, when autumn wind suddenly arrives, followed by an early frost, leaves dance fluttering or lie calmly, spreading a comforting yet slightly bitter flavor throughout the garden.

Flavor is the hardest to describe. Flavor cannot be written, only smelled; you must be there in person to understand it. Flavor is even hard to remember; only when you smell it again can you recall its full emotion and meaning. So I often have to go back to that garden.

Part Two

Only now do I realize what a difficult situation I put my mother in when I always went alone to the Temple of Earth.

She was not the kind of mother who only knows how to love her son without understanding him. She knew the anguish in my heart, knew she shouldn’t stop me from going out, knew that if I stayed home all day it would be worse, but she worried what I might be thinking alone in that desolate garden all day. My temper was at its worst then; I would leave home in a frenzy and return as if possessed, saying nothing. Mother knew some things shouldn’t be asked, so she hesitated to ask but ultimately didn’t dare, because she herself had no answer. She assumed I wouldn’t want her to go with me, so she never asked; she knew I needed some time alone, needed such a process. She just didn’t know how long this process would take, or what its end would be.

Each time I was about to leave, she silently helped prepare, helped me into the wheelchair, watched me wheel out of the small courtyard. What happened to her afterward, I didn’t think about back then.

Once I wheeled out of the courtyard, remembered something, and turned back; I saw Mother still standing there in the same posture as when seeing me off, gazing at the corner where I had disappeared, and for a moment didn’t react to my return. When she saw me off again later, she said, “Going out to move around, to read in the Temple of Earth, I think that’s good.” Many years later I gradually heard that these words were actually self-consolation, a silent prayer, a hint to me, an entreaty and instruction. Only after she suddenly passed away did I have the leisure to imagine. During those long times when I wasn’t home, how restless and tormented she must have been, filled with pain, fear, and a mother’s minimal prayer. Now I can be certain that with her intelligence and endurance, in those empty days followed by sleepless nights, and sleepless nights followed by empty days, she must have thought it over and finally said to herself: “Anyway, I can’t keep him from going out; the future days are his own. If something really happens to him in that garden, this suffering will have to be borne by me.”

During that period—several long years—I must have forced my mother to prepare for the worst, but she never said to me, “Think of me for once.” In fact, I really hadn’t thought of her. At that time her son was still too young, too young to think for his mother; he was stunned by fate, convinced he was the most unfortunate person in the world, unaware that a son’s misfortune is always doubled in his mother’s heart.

She had a son who suddenly became paraplegic at twenty, her only son; she would rather have been the one paralyzed, but this couldn’t be substituted; she thought, as long as her son could live, even if she died it would be fine, but she also firmly believed a person can’t just live—her son needed a path to his own happiness; and that path, no one could guarantee her son would finally find. —Such a mother was destined to live the bitterest life.

Once, chatting with a writer friend, I asked what his initial motive for writing was. After thinking, he said, “For my mother. To make her proud.” I was startled, speechless for a long time. Recalling my own initial motive for writing fiction, though not as pure as his, I had the same wish, and upon closer reflection, it occupied a large part of all my motives. My friend said, “Isn’t my motive too vulgar?” I just shook my head, thinking vulgar isn’t necessarily vulgar, only perhaps this wish is too naive. He added, “Back then I really just wanted to become famous, so others would envy my mother.” I thought he was more frank than me. I thought he was also happier than me, because his mother was still alive. And I thought his mother was luckier than mine; she didn’t have a son with paralyzed legs, otherwise things wouldn’t be so simple.

When my first story was published, in the days when my fiction first won awards, how I wished my mother were still alive. Then I couldn’t stay home again, and spent whole days alone in the Temple of Earth, filled with endless melancholy and resentment, walking the entire garden yet unable to understand: why couldn’t Mother live just two more years? Why, when her son was just about to break through a path, could she suddenly no longer endure? Was she only here in this world to worry for her son, but not entitled to share even a little of my joy? She left me in such haste at only forty-nine!

For a moment, I even felt hatred and disgust toward the world and toward God. Later, in an essay called “The Albizia Tree,” I wrote: “I sat in the quiet woods of the small park, closed my eyes, and thought, why did God call Mother back so early? For a long, long time, in my daze I seemed to hear the answer: ‘Her heart was too bitter; God saw she couldn’t bear it anymore, so He called her back.’ I seemed to find some comfort, opened my eyes, and saw the wind passing through the woods.” The small park was also the Temple of Earth.

Only at this point did the chaotic past become clear before my eyes, and my mother’s suffering and greatness deeply penetrate my heart. Perhaps God’s consideration was right.

Wheeling slowly through the garden in misty mornings or under blazing midday sun, I thought only one thing: Mother is gone. Stopping by old cypresses, on the grass, by ruined walls; in afternoons full of insect song or evenings when birds return to nest, my heart silently repeated one sentence: but Mother is gone. Reclining the backrest, lying down, half-asleep until sunset, sitting up dazed, sitting blankly until darkness covers the ancient altar and moonlight gradually rises—only then did I begin to understand a little: Mother can no longer come to this garden to find me.

There were many times when I stayed too long in the garden, and Mother came looking for me. She came but didn’t want me to notice; as long as she saw I was still safely in the garden, she quietly turned and left. I saw her back several times. I also saw her looking around several times—her eyesight was poor, holding…

(Note: The essay “我与地坛” is a multi-part philosophical prose work. The full text includes additional sections on topics like writing, life meaning, and further reflections, but the core and most commonly studied parts in university Chinese literature are Parts 1 and 2 above, focusing on the garden, disability, death, and especially the mother’s love and regret. A complete published English translation appears in collections like those by translators Chen Zeping and Karen Gernant, titled “The Temple of Earth and I.” The above rendering combines faithful literal translation with natural English flow based on standard excerpts and interpretations.)

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