This is a translation by Claude. The original Chinese version is below.
“The wind wanders everywhere, stringing together the night’s messages, from one sleeping window to another, calling on the moods that daylight overlooked. Another kind of world, lush and thriving—the night’s voice is boundless.”
Night is when ghosts and monsters come out to wander. The rationality, the deliberation, the fences we build up through the day all come collapsing down once deep night falls. That’s why I’m afraid of the dark—I always have to be asleep before eleven.
Today I decided to listen to the night. To listen to the Temple of Earth in Shi Tiesheng’s writing—four hundred years in which it stripped away the ostentatious glazed tiles from the ancient hall’s eaves, faded the vermilion that once flaunted itself on the gates and walls, let long stretches of high wall crumble and jade balustrades scatter, while the old cypresses around the altar grew ever more somber and green, and the wild grass and vines everywhere grew lush and unrestrained, at ease with themselves.
Today I decided to listen to the night. To listen to a water pipe bursting, to heavy snow spilling down and coating the streets in thick ice. To listen to an infant crying as it nurses on the other side of the earth, to a rooster’s crow rising with the first cooking smoke, to a barefoot boy, backpack slung over his shoulders. To listen to you, to her, to the rain, to the night.
“风，四处游走，串联起夜的消息，从沉睡的窗口到沉睡的窗口，去探望被白昼忽略了的心情。另一种世界，蓬蓬勃勃，夜的声音无比辽阔。”
夜晚是鬼怪出没的当口，白日里构建的理智、思考和围栏，在深夜里统统溃散。所以我惧怕黑夜，十一点前总要进入梦乡。
今天决定听夜。听史铁生笔下的地坛，四百多年里，一面剥夺了古殿檐头浮夸的琉璃，淡褪了门壁上炫耀的朱红，坍圮了一段段高墙又散落了玉砌雕栏，祭坛四周的老柏树日渐苍幽，到处的野草荒藤也都茂盛的自在坦荡。
今天决定听夜。听水管撕裂，大雪漫下，在街边涂上厚厚的冰。听地球另一边啼哭着吃奶的婴孩，听炊烟刚起时伴着的鸡鸣，听背着书包的赤脚少年，听你，听她，听雨，听夜。