White Olive Tree

Epilogue

This book was originally named “Eastern Country Floating Century”, which originated from my trip to the Eastern Country six years ago. It was conceived six years ago, written four years ago, and published today. I would like to thank Mr. Luo Junfeng, the planner and editor, for his unswerving support.

    The title of the book was changed from “Eastern Country’s Floating Century” to “White Olive Tree” for two reasons: first, I believed that although I tried my best to travel to various cities in the Eastern Country and record the social conditions during the war, what I saw and recorded was only a corner of the “floating world”, which was far less grand than the real world; second, because of my husband, Captain Li.

    One year, on the way from Garo to Hapo, he and I saw white olive trees in the desert. The details are already written in the book, so I won’t go into details here.

    I have been writing for four years, but I have not been very meticulous about it, simply because life took up too much of my time, and more importantly, I have never been able to remain calm and observe. Every time I look for information before picking up the pen, scenes of memories emerge clearly, and I feel sad in my heart, which causes me to write slowly.

    War is never an easy topic. I have tried my best to avoid subjective feelings in this article, and only want to present the most ordinary and objective records to readers. Even so, war is not something that can be taken lightly.

    It is still the greatest tragedy in human history. Unfortunately, such tragedy is repeated again and again.

    I studied history in college, but the pain of wars in books and written records is not even one ten-thousandth of what I actually saw with my own eyes. Before I went to the East, I could probably talk about history, saying that war is the inevitable path when social contradictions accumulate to a certain level and cannot be reconciled, and that war and bloodshed are necessary processes in human development.

    As a result, innocent people became victims of the rolling wheels of history.

    But even if I were given a million reasons, I still couldn’t understand why humans would kill their own kind. I couldn’t forgive them.

    There is a question that I always ask myself: Is our world lacking in sympathy, kindness and love? Whenever I see people getting hurt, I feel pain, but I don’t understand why some people don’t feel pain.

    After staying on the battlefield for a long time, I began to doubt whether rationality and civilization are just illusions; whether there is no so-called reasonable solution to all human problems, only extremes, confrontation and hatred, and the only solution is killing; whether history always falls into a vicious circle of reincarnation, disorder always defeats system, and barbarism always defeats civilization.

    And the ultimate dream of human peace is just the white olive trees in the desert.

    Gorgeous, beautiful, pure and grand.

    Once you see it, you will never forget it and pursue it for the rest of your life.

    But it is also illusory, ethereal, far away in the sky and ungraspable.

    Or even, it doesn’t exist at all.

    It’s just a fleeting mirage, just the ultimate fantasy of people when they are deep in the quagmire.