River from Tanggula Mountains

The first tear of the melting snow line awakens in the folds of the Tanggula Mountains. This drop of water will not know that when it gathers into a stream with tens of millions of compatriots, it is destined to become the golden blood that runs through the backbone of China. The Yangtze River, the mother river that marks the coordinates of civilization with milk, is writing the epic of 6,300 kilometers in the rhyme of every wave.

The spring flood is the softest rhetoric of the river. The wild cherry trees on both sides of Kuimen are trembling with water vapor, and when the pink and white petals fall, they always dance the last waltz in the whirlpool. The boatman's song has long solidified into a dent on the stone wall, but the new fishing net can still salvage the gifts of the entire flood season - those pebbles rounded by waves are like ancient characters that have been patinated by time. Behind the waves plowed by cargo ships, there are always porpoises jumping up and sinking, and their silver-gray backs are the most agile punctuation marks of the spring river.

The river flow in midsummer will be bloody. When the turbid waves of Qutang Gorge beat the cliffs into war drums, the whole waterway will echo with the roar of bronze chimes. Fishermen's children dip their feet in the boiling river water and count the rusty red waterline of the passing barges. In a backwater somewhere, last year's dragon boats are still lying on their sides in the reeds. On the side of the ship with peeling paint, the drum beats of the Dragon Boat Festival and the fragrance of mugwort are quietly fermenting. At the hottest noon, the river water will evaporate into blue-gray mist, turning the eaves of the stilt houses into ships waiting to sail in the mist.

When the autumn frost falls, the river water begins to express emotions in slow tempo. In the reed marshes of the Nanjing section, egrets use their long legs to measure the gradually thinning riverbed. At a foggy dawn, on the deck of the dredging ship moored at night, the night watchman heard the major rivers' water and the moon exchanging secret whispers. All tributaries become transparent at this moment, transporting the last autumn flood to the main trunk like capillaries. The ice cracks on the water surface where the water chestnut-picking girl's wooden basin passes by are the most vivid blank spaces in the thousand-year-old ink painting.

The river flow in winter is the most philosophical. The river surface of Sanduping in Yichang is covered with broken ice, like scattered prehistoric oracle bone fragments. The scales on the iron pole of the hydrological station record the tug-of-war between the river and time. On a snowy night, the navigation light cast a circle of pale yellow halo in the middle of the river, which overlapped with the reflection of Li Bai fishing for the moon in a trance. On the coldest midnight, the river water will suddenly be silent - that is not solidification, but accumulating metaphors for the next spring's rush.