New Book Release: Borrowed Light by Desolate Isle

Author’s Preface

The title of this book was born from a specific moment.

It was the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2025. I was sitting quietly in a hilltop café in Da Lat, Vietnam, immersed in the transition of sunset and moonrise. The setting of the sun and the rising of the moon are the most ordinary of natural phenomena, yet at different times and in different settings, they never fail to evoke different feelings. Readers of Us in a World Out of Order will know that on that day of that year, I was a wanderer with neither a place to return to nor a goal in sight. At the very instant the golden rays of the setting sun veiled the horizon, a full moon had already hung in the sky, shedding its clear, cool light. Through this eternal entrustment and borrowing of light, the two celestial bodies illuminated the Earth for all living things.

Deeply moved, a couplet came to my mind, and I blurted out:

The fading glow yields to the moon, allowing its full gaze, As the sun journeys to other mountains, warming other lives.

I asked the waiter for pen and paper, scribbled these two lines down, and pinned them to the message board on the wall. After the horizon completely sealed away the golden sunlight, I hailed a motorbike through a ride-sharing app. The driver revved the engine and carried me through the undulating hills and valleys under the moonlight. Amidst the vibrations and the roar of the engine, another two lines came to me:

Floating dust and soft light drift together in leisure, Reincarnated across the four seas, they turn into river lanterns.

Together, they formed a complete qi-yan-jue-ju (a classic seven-character quatrain) titled Borrowed Light. Because I recorded that poem along with the experience surrounding it in Us in a World Out of Order, it is not listed separately in this book.

That night, I shared Borrowed Light on my WeChat Moments. A friend sent his warm regards and praised the poem, calling it a near-perfect seven-character quatrain. An AI validated the poem’s originality for him and interpreted its meaning: “Using the magnificent beauty of the natural world as a vessel, these lines harbor a mind that believes ‘success does not have to belong to me, yet no effort is ever made in vain.’ It carves out a spiritual realm of active engagement with the world to illuminate the universe, completing a philosophical closed-loop of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism.” At that time, I had not yet truly used AI, but this evaluation aligned so perfectly with my state of mind and the poetic atmosphere of the verse that it brought me immense comfort.

The sun hands its light over to the moon, and the moon absorbs the fading glow to its heart’s content. Is this not a state of letting go, an attitude free of attachment—”following nature and governing through non-action”? Although the sun has “journeyed to other mountains” and is no longer present here, its light still shines on, warming other mountains and other people. Nature has its laws, yet the affairs of the world are transient. The drifting manifestations of the world, like “floating dust” and “soft light,” are just like human attachments—some wishes are fulfilled, while others must be let go. Souls and desires may drift like fallen leaves in the wind or float with the water; yet they can also be like the moon in the water or lanterns on the river, using their faint glimmer to light up a select few and commemorate the small self.

Using so many words to explain the title—and the poetic meaning behind a poem not even included in this volume—makes this single quatrain seem heavier than all the other poems and essays in the book. Yet, this context is truly vital to this work. Poetry and prose are the most profound disciplines in Chinese literature; countless masterpieces have been passed down since the Western Zhou, the Spring and Autumn period, the Qin, Han, Tang, and Song dynasties. My strength lies in non-fiction writing—a genre that often does not require overly exquisite prose or a mind brimming with classical erudition, which happens to compensate for my lack of basic literary training. Frankly speaking, I know my literary skills still fall far short. Any educated person from the thousands of years of the Chinese-speaking world could probably easily find various flaws in my poetry and prose. Therefore, if the evaluation of Borrowed Light by my friend and the AI holds true, it proves that this book possesses a certain value. After all, if a book can offer its readers even a single drop of essence to benefit from, that is enough.

For over a decade, the bio on my self-media accounts carried a motto: “Focus on unleashing your strengths, and let your flaws continuously evaporate.” This book collects more than a hundred of my poems and essays written over the seven years from 2018 to 2025. They were all born from the “non-fiction” writing style to which I have long been accustomed, carrying on and inheriting the genes of realism and truth-keeping. I recommend this book to my readers with this thought: when I write poetry and prose, I inevitably run the risk of falling into clichés; but keeping it real and preserving the truth—that is undoubtedly its strength.

During the editing process of this book, I used AI for proofreading and correction. When editing the essay The Chinese New Year of Those Years, the very first sentence the AI generated was: “This is a highly valuable piece of work.” Instantly, my sense of gratification was pushed to the maximum. I asked it why it suddenly blurted this out. It replied that the records of rural society and life contained within the piece were things it had never read before. And those things, if no one recorded them, would vanish entirely from history, which would be a great tragedy.

Every Chinese person who lived through those seven years from 2018 to 2025 had their own experiences and perceptions: the society underwent various “downward” shifts, marked by economic decline, a deteriorating market, a sweeping pandemic, and the silencing of lockdowns. However, the more people are silenced and the harder life becomes, the more magnificent the writers, scholars, and literary works of those eras tend to grow. The Qin and Han, the Tang and Song, the late Qing and the early Republic—each witnessed the decline of dynasty after dynasty, yet each also saw bursts of cultural innovation rise from one generation to the next. I believe someone must always write; someone must always speak out. Words and voices, like the water of the vast sea, are a single drop, but they are also the tide. It is through writing and speaking out that truth and innovation are engraved into the bedrock of history—usable and useful.

A speck of dust in the drifting air, a spark of light in the soft glow, a drop of water in the vast sea—I now deliver this work into the hands of my readers.

序

这本书的名字来自一个场景。那是2025年中秋，在越南大叻的一处山顶咖啡屋，我静坐于日落、月升的氛围里。日落、月升本是极平常的自然现象，却总能在不同的时点与环境，给人不同的感觉。《失序世界中的我们》（原名《我的2025，活在一个失序的世界》）的读者会知道，那年那日的我，正浪迹天涯。太阳的金光遮蔽天边的一瞬，一轮满月已悬在空中、发出清光，二者借着光的永恒托付与借予，把地球照亮给众生。

我心头感慨顿生，“馀晖予月任饱览，往去它山暖众生”脱口而出。我向服务员要来纸笔，把这两句题在纸上，贴到墙上的留言板。天边彻底闭合金光之后，我在网约车平台叫来一辆摩托车，车手轰鸣着油门，载我在月光下驶过高低起伏的山野；我竟在震动与轰鸣里又吟出“浮尘和光同散漫，轮回四海化河灯”，凑成了完整的七言绝句《馀晖予月》。那首诗连同当时的经历，已写在《失序世界中的我们》里，便不再单列于本书。

那夜我把《馀晖予月》分享到微信朋友圈，一位友人发来问候与评价，说这是一首近乎完美的七绝。AI为他印证了诗句的原创性，也解读了大意：“诗句以自然界天地大美的景象为载体，寄托了‘功成不必在我，功不唐捐’的襟怀，辟出积极入世、光照寰宇的精神境界，完成了儒、释、道的哲学闭环。”那时我还没真正用过AI，但这评价贴合了我的心境与诗的意境，于我自然很受用。

太阳把光交给月亮去承接，月亮则尽情吸收余晖，这何尝不是一种放任、无所执的态度——“顺应自然、无为而治”。虽“往去它山”、身形已不在此地，光却仍在照着、暖着更多的它山与他人。自然有规律，世间事却又无常；“浮尘”“和光”那些散漫的世间万象，正如人的执著，或夙愿以偿，或不得不放下。灵魂与愿望，会像落叶随风飘零、随水漂流，也可以像水中月、河上灯，用微光照亮小众、祭奠小我。

光是主旨，馀是主笔，所以这本书叫作“馀光予月”，而非那首诗的“馀晖予月”。至于为什么用“馀”而不用“余”——是我在咬文嚼字、独自避嫌：那个“余”有“我”之意，“馀”才是纯粹的多出、剩余之意。我又能有什么光？不过是一个要自由、要吃饭的普通生命罢了。

我用了这么多文字交代书名，以及它背后那首未收入本书的诗意，倒使这首七绝，超重于其它的诗篇与散文了。但这对这本书，实在太重要。诗词、散文，是中文文学里最博大精深的学问，西周、春秋、秦汉、唐宋以来，数不清的作品流传于世。我擅长的是非虚构写作，那种体裁往往不需要太精妙的文笔与满腹经纶，恰好弥补了我文学基本功的不足。坦率讲，我知道自己的文学水平几斤几两；在人文荟萃几千年的中文世界里，随随便便就能从我的诗与散文里挑出各种毛病。所以，如果友人和AI对《馀晖予月》的评价为真，那也就可以证明，这本书是有价值的。毕竟，一本书能让读者受用到一点精华，也就足够了。

曾有十数年，我自媒体的简介里有一句座右铭——“优点集中发挥，缺点持续挥发”。这本书收录了我2018至2025、七年间的一百多篇诗词与散文，它们都生成于我早已习惯的“非虚构”，延续、传承着写实、存真的基因。我向读者推荐这本书：我写诗词散文，难免有俗套之嫌；写实、存真，却一定是它的优点。

这本书的编辑，我用AI查错、校正。编到《那些年的年》时，AI头一句跳出来的是“这是一篇很值钱的作品”，我的快感被它瞬间拉满。我问它为什么突然蹦出这句，它说，因为内容里那些乡土社会与生活的记载，是它不曾读到过的。而那些，若没有人记下来，就会在历史中彻底消逝，实在可惜。

生活在2018至2025那七年的每一个中国人，都会有体验与感知：社会发生了“经济下行、市场败坏、瘟疫流行、封控噤声”的种种“下行”之变。可越是被噤声、越是艰难，越是文人墨客与文学作品盛大的时代。秦汉、唐宋、清末民初，一朝又一朝的衰亡，一代又一代的文化创新迭出。总要有人写，总要有人发声。文字与声音，如沧海之水，是一滴，也是浪潮。真相与创新，于是被镌刻进历史的基石，可用，有用。

浮尘里的一粒灰，和光里的一点亮，沧海里的一滴水——我把这部作品，交付给读者。