Even if I fail, I want to know how far away I fall from the end.
This sentence comes from the mouth of the protagonist of Ma Boyong's novel "Litchi of Chang'an".
Some people know it is Lychee
At a horse raising red dust the imperial concubine smiled;
No one knew it was for the Lychee it had brought.
Everyone in China should be very familiar with this poem, but we often focus on "imperial concubine smiled". Few people have thought carefully about how this lychee was transported from Lingnan to Yang's hands at that time.
The novel tells a story of a man named Li Shande, an inferior officer who worked in Chang'an City, the capital of Tang Dynasty.
He had just bought a house in Chang'an and had a lot of mortgages to pay. He was coaxed by his boss to take on the next tricky task: to transport fresh lychees from Guangdong to Chang'an to celebrate the magnificent Concubine, Yang Yuhuan's birthday.
In the Tang Dynasty, the taste of fresh lychees changed in three days, with following the path of Guangdong and Chang'an, this was simply an impossible task. In order to save his life and his family, Li could only give it a go.
Fortunately, Li was an excellent project manager. With precise calculations, trials and errors, he finally calculated an optimal route.
At the same time, he also used various methods to extend the time for lychees to stay fresh for 11 days.
In the process of execution, the deceit of officialdom, the unreasonable demand of superiors, the repeated distress during transportation... The process was wonderful.
He finally mobilized all kinds of resources, the entire lychee garden was cut down, the brigade set out from Guangdong, and when they arrived in Chang'an, only one horse of red dust and two altars of lychees remained.
Yang Yuhuan was indeed happy and gave him a small reward. At the end of this process, Li's mentality had changed like Lychee.
He risked being beheaded and raised his questions to his superiors - Why did we spend so much manpower, materials and financial resources, just for the sake of Yang to smile?
Offended the big man, his whole family was sent to Guangdong. Later years, he was told that there was no need to transport lychees this year, the king and concubines had suffered riots.
Why you say No Way so easily?
Does the protagonist of the story look like us today? Busy with our house, borrowed money, owed loans, under pressure, but we still felt that we finally had our own place in the big city.
For the sake of work troubles, but leaders and colleagues may not have so much understanding, and even are still fighting, treating you, which is annoying.
At work, you often face one seemingly impossible task after another, do you want to give up?
What I didn't expect was that the spirit-shocking thing in the book, and the dialogue woke up the protagonist, but it was from the great poet Du Fu.
"Have you been to Guangdong? Have you ever seen a fresh lychee?"
"Never."
"You haven't been there, why you say No Way so easily?"
What attracted me to this novel was that the author saw an ordinary person in the grand historical narrative. The difficult rush and various bizarre experiences of small people in the context of big history make history not strange, but can make me empathize with me now.
At the end of the story, the protagonist chooses to follow his heart, and although he is assigned Lingnan, he can live peacefully with his family.
It is his story and also ours. I hope that we can all be like Li Shande, even as an ordinary person, standing in the torrent of history and facing various challenges, we will not forget to stick to our hearts and go all out.