Blog Post 4

The section that interested me the most were pages 125-130, The Wu River chapter. This weeks reading selection focused a lot on the land that made up Fuling and around it. I chose this selection because it fascinated me how the Wu and the Yangtze river met with such contrast. At the beginning of the section, a retired fisherman kind of sets the scene for the Wu River and continues to add things in throughout the section. What interested me the most about this section is that the Wu River has it's own identity compared to the Yangtze. "At the river's mouth even the great Yangtze appears to stand still, its muddy water sluggish in comparison to the quick-moving tributary...the Yangtze is brown, the Wu is green, and they meet like two slivers of painted glass that have been pressed neatly together below the rough-brown peak of White Flat Mountain" (125). I could imagine how beautiful it would be to actually see how the rivers meet. My favorite part in the section is where Peter shows the Chinese symbol for Wu and illustrates how it's shape reflects that of a bird. As you read this, you begin to witness the very words that Peter has written. The mystery of where the name has come from is unknown, but that mystery adds to its unique beauty. It was also interesting to me how the fisherman knows river so well that the beauty he used to see is no longer there. That little observation is unmistakably true and it is something we all have witnessed either one way or another. If you stare at something you love for so long, you begin to get used to its' beauty and it slowly fades into just another feature.