[Translation Notes] “The Boy and the Cherry Tree”, Dreams and Perseverance…

 
 
Once, while chat­ting with a few friends in the book indus­try, I recount­ed how my found­ing of Red Mud was inspired by a child­hood dream of a book­worm. Naive­ly, I thought the beau­ty of a book­store was that even if the books did­n’t sell, I could always come back and read them myself. Unex­pect­ed­ly, this remark touched a woman at the table. She recount­ed her child­hood dream of becom­ing a doc­tor and own­ing her own clin­ic, a dream she still har­bors. Sur­prised, I blurt­ed out, “Why don’t you start pur­su­ing that dream now?” As soon as I said it, I real­ized how abrupt it was, and the inevitable hes­i­ta­tion and awk­ward­ness that fol­lowed. She was already a high­ly suc­cess­ful exec­u­tive in the indus­try, so such a far-reach­ing dream would like­ly become a fleet­ing, self-indul­gent thought.

 
 
Isn’t this the same sit­u­a­tion for most peo­ple? Once upon a time, the seed of a dream qui­et­ly nur­tured, even sprout­ed. But as we grew old­er, increas­ing­ly harsh real­i­ties loomed, forc­ing us to begin cal­cu­lat­ing and weigh­ing our options. A ratio­nal plan usu­al­ly goes some­thing like this: To achieve dream A, con­di­tion B must first be met; to achieve B, con­di­tion C must first be met; to achieve C, con­di­tion D must first be met; to achieve D, con­di­tion E must first be met… And so we set out on our jour­ney. The more for­tu­nate will begin at the clos­er points, E, F, and G; the less for­tu­nate will start fur­ther away. As we go, we seem to grad­u­al­ly become accus­tomed to it, and per­haps even achieve some suc­cess along path X or Y. Dream A becomes increas­ing­ly dis­tant, and look­ing back, per­haps it was just a child­ish fan­ta­sy, some­thing to enter­tain us occa­sion­al­ly in the future.

   
“The Boy and the Cher­ry Tree” offers a rather unusu­al sto­ry. Although seem­ing­ly a min­i­mal­ist pic­ture book, clear­ly intend­ed to delight chil­dren, upon repeat­ed reflec­tion, it reveals a resound­ing dec­la­ra­tion of dreams. The beau­ti­ful cher­ry tree is the boy’s dream, but between him and the tree lies a riv­er, a swift-flow­ing riv­er strewn with count­less twigs and rocks that could cause bumps and bruis­es. In short, the riv­er is fraught with unknown dan­gers, just like the real­i­ty that stands between him and his dreams. Unable to resist the allure of his dreams, the boy decides to swim across the riv­er. But as he reach­es the river’s edge, a bird appears. A kind and intel­li­gent bird, it explains the dan­gers of swim­ming across and offers safe and imag­i­na­tive alter­na­tives, such as build­ing a boat, a bridge, or a hot air bal­loon. Time and again, year after year, the boy gave up under the bird’s per­sua­sion and went back to try plan B, plan C, plan D in vain, while watch­ing the cher­ries fall into the riv­er, year after year… Until one day, he found that his cher­ry tree had fall­en! This time, he jumped into the riv­er with­out hes­i­ta­tion…

   
Unable to con­tain my curios­i­ty, I searched every­where for infor­ma­tion about the cre­ator of this sto­ry. My intu­ition told me that some­one who could write such a unique sto­ry must have a sto­ry of their own. It turns out this is a col­lab­o­ra­tive sto­ry by a New Zealand cou­ple, Mark and Lorne Som­er­set. Mark, born in 1968, pri­mar­i­ly han­dles the writ­ing; he has also worked as a graph­ic design­er, gar­den­er, and musi­cian. Lorne, sev­en years her hus­band’s junior, pri­mar­i­ly han­dles the illus­tra­tions and lay­out. Mark and Lorne own a home and stu­dio on Wai­heke Island, a scenic island in north­ern New Zealand. Their six-year-old son, Lin­den, loves climb­ing trees and swim­ming. Their home is only 150 meters from the beach, and row­ing the sea in their boat is a dai­ly rit­u­al for the three of them. A friend filmed their day and shared it online. The sim­plic­i­ty, romance, tran­quil­i­ty, and con­tent­ment of their time are tru­ly heav­en­ly.

   
Mark and Ron both affirmed that “The Boy and the Cher­ry Tree” was, in fact, their own sto­ry. It was the first book they had ever con­sid­ered col­lab­o­rat­ing on, but their sixth, com­plet­ed in 2013, span­ning a decade! Inter­est­ing­ly, this sto­ry could be con­sid­ered the cat­a­lyst for their con­nec­tion. Around 2002, Mark and Ron met through a mutu­al friend. They struck up a con­ver­sa­tion, but Mark remained silent until one day, when Ron found a man­u­script of Mark’s sto­ry, “The Boy and the Cher­ry Tree,” on a friend’s cof­fee table. For Mark, the sto­ry was an inner mono­logue, a reflec­tion of a then-unful­filled dream he had writ­ten with­out con­sid­er­ing pub­li­ca­tion. But for Ron, it res­onat­ed with her long-held dream of illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s books. Ron called Mark and told him she was eager to illus­trate the sto­ry, hop­ing for a deep­er con­nec­tion. These two, each with their own dreams, bond­ed through con­ver­sa­tion and became a cou­ple. That year, Mark was 34 and Ron was 27.


 
 
How­ev­er, they did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly pur­sue their dream; the tur­bu­lent cur­rents of real­i­ty proved dif­fi­cult to over­come. They began by col­lab­o­rat­ing on design, and after near­ly three years of hard work, they had accu­mu­lat­ed some sav­ings. Then one day, Mark told Ron, “I don’t want to look back.” Ron hap­pi­ly replied, “Great!” and pushed him for­ward. Indeed, Mark recalled, the bird in the sto­ry was actu­al­ly him, and every time the bird jumped out, Ron would push Mark for­ward. That year, they used their sav­ings of 90,000 New Zealand dol­lars (approx­i­mate­ly 360,000 RMB) to plan their wed­ding and then used the remain­ing funds to write and pub­lish their first book. Their ini­tial stu­dio was so cramped, bare­ly enough for a mat to rest on. When their first pic­ture book, “Musekok Swims the Sea,” was pub­lished in 2006, Mark had to bor­row 15,000 RMB from his fam­i­ly to pay for the print­ing. The new­ly­weds decid­ed to take the chal­leng­ing (but also the most lib­er­at­ing) path of inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing: writ­ing, pub­lish­ing, and sell­ing the book them­selves. They named their com­pa­ny “Dream­boat.”
Books).

 
 
The launch of this small ship car­ry­ing their dreams was­n’t smooth. The sailors were inex­pe­ri­enced, and the New Zealand book mar­ket they were oper­at­ing in was too lim­it­ed. To sur­vive, they had to reach the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket. To broad­en their hori­zons, they maxed out their cred­it card to finance a flight to the Frank­furt Book Fair—a move that utter­ly destroyed their “dreamship.” For­tu­nate­ly, the trip allowed them to meet sev­er­al inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing vet­er­ans, and their book attract­ed the atten­tion of major inter­na­tion­al pub­lish­ers, giv­ing Mark and Lorne the con­fi­dence to per­se­vere. How­ev­er, the real turn­ing point came with their third book, Baa Baa Sheep­’s Smart Pills. It’s a hilar­i­ous yet some­what unusu­al sto­ry. Ran­dom House, their then-part­ner, was unsure and unwill­ing to invest in the book. The cou­ple was strug­gling finan­cial­ly, hav­ing just paid off their debts. They already had a child, and Mark was work­ing part-time as a gar­den­er to make ends meet. But they felt their book had the poten­tial to win awards, so they decid­ed to bor­row the mon­ey they had just paid back and self-pub­lish it again. Sure enough, the book won the “Chil­dren’s Choice” award at the 2011 New Zealand Book­sellers Asso­ci­a­tion Chil­dren’s Book Awards. This led to the copy­right being sold to sev­er­al coun­tries in Europe, Amer­i­ca, and Asia. From then on, the dream ship could final­ly sail freely and smooth­ly.

 
 
After over­com­ing their finan­cial cri­sis, they moved their dream­boat home and stu­dio to the par­adise-like island. Their stu­dio had room for a crib and a play area in the mid­dle, allow­ing the cou­ple to play with their son dur­ing breaks. Their con­fi­dence grew, and their work became increas­ing­ly suc­cess­ful. Only then did they free up their time to ful­ly ded­i­cate them­selves to “The Boy and the Cher­ry Tree.” The rea­son they held off on start­ing was prob­a­bly because they knew it was­n’t strict­ly a chil­dren’s sto­ry, mak­ing it more chal­leng­ing to mar­ket. But as their idol, Mau­rice Sendak, observed, the bound­aries and age-speci­fici­ties of chil­dren’s books can be con­fus­ing, not only for adults but also for chil­dren. For an artist, it’s sim­ply about cre­at­ing a book. Ron, a tal­ent­ed painter and design­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ues sim­plic­i­ty. One of her great­est admir­ers is the Japan­ese artist Kat­su­mi Koma­ga­ta. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the renowned design­er also has a pic­ture book titled “Lit­tle Tree,” which shares a sim­i­lar pur­suit of whim­sy and bound­less poet­ry with­in sim­plic­i­ty. Mark hap­pened to meet Mr. Kat­su­mi Koma­ga­ta while on a pro­mo­tion­al trip to Japan. He was struck by Ron’s paint­ing “Boy and Cher­ry Tree” and praised it high­ly, show­ing a strong sense of mutu­al admi­ra­tion. This goes to show that the lan­guage of art knows no bor­ders.

 
 
Ron and Mark added a unique touch to their dream book. It’s sim­ple: shiny hot stamp­ing strips on the end­pa­pers. It’s not just for show; the stripes on the brown back­ground feel like the tex­ture of cher­ry tree trunks. Imag­ine fol­low­ing the boy into the riv­er, strug­gling, tum­bling, and drift­ing, final­ly reach­ing the oth­er side of our dreams. There, we see not just a few cher­ries or a sin­gle cher­ry tree, but an entire cher­ry for­est! When the boy embraces that beau­ti­ful cher­ry tree, don’t you want to touch it too?


   
Yes, real­i­ty has tex­ture, and so do dreams. Of course, if you want to touch your dreams, you must take action, and you must also learn to per­se­vere.

Writ­ten in Bei­jing on July 27, 2015