巴金鸟的天堂.docVIP

巴金鸟的天堂 A Paradise of the Birds Ba Jin After we finished dinner at Chen’s little school, the heat of the day had already diminished. The sun retreated behind the hills, leaving brightly colored clouds hanging in the sky, over the hills and trees. “Let’s go boating!” Chen proposed, as we watched the mountain view by the pond in front of the school gate. “Great,” the rest of the group answered enthusiastically. We walked through a gravel path, and before long we reached the bank, where a pavilion stood made of straw. Filing through the pavilion, we found several small boats anchored under two big trees along the bank. One after another, we hopped into one of the boats. One friend loosened the rope, pushed the bamboo pole against the bank, which moved the boat to the center of the river. Three friends were rowing; Ye and I were sitting in the middle, enjoying ourselves in the scenery surrounding us. In the distance a pagoda was erected on the top of a hill, surrounded by many green trees. It was rare to see such a pagoda, and over there it was the hometown of my friend Ye. The river was wide, the water glistening without a ripple. The boat was steadily floating on the water, the three oars pulling in rhythm. Then the river narrowed at a certain point. Clusters of leaves stretched out touching the water’s surface. The leaves were in a lovely green color. There seemed to be many lush banyan trees, but I couldn’t make out where the main trunks of the trees were. My friends immediately corrected me as I referred to them as being many banyan trees. One of them said it was only one banyan, and another said there were two. I had seen many enormous banyans before, but it was the first time I saw such a gigantic one. As the boat drew nearer to the banyan, I finally got a good look at it. This was a huge tree, with countless branches, on which grew aerial prop roots. Many of the roots were dangling to the ground, some all the way into the soil. There were branches hangin