Revisiting Cambridge Town

After several years, I set foot again in Cambridge Town, stepping onto its streets once more. This time, there is no hurried, first-time dazzling—only the gentle calm that time has settled into everything. This university town has no surrounding walls. It weaves eight hundred years of scholarly fragrance into the flowing streets and alleys. With every step forward, it feels as though I am meeting the wise minds of past and present across the air.

The town isn’t large, and bicycles are the most fitting sight for moving through here. Narrow lanes of pale stone wind and cross each other. Along both sides are Victorian red-brick cottages, their window sills crowded with hydrangeas and roses. At every turn stands a stone gatehouse of a century-old college. Unlike the buzz that other places manufacture for tourists, Cambridge’s everyday life and academia blend seamlessly: students in school uniforms ride by with books in hand; the display windows of old bookstores hold out yellowed philosophical manuscripts; at street-corner cafés, the scent of baking drifts out. A white-haired professor leans against a riverbank bench, reading papers. Amid ordinary life, there is a refined spirit seldom found by outsiders.

The River Cam remains the soul of the whole town, and it is also where my heart longed to return. I rent a pole-and-hold small boat. The boatman holds a long pole, lightly taps the water’s surface, and the little craft glides slowly into the emerald waves. Golden willows hang along the riverbank; their tender branches brush against the clear water. Aquatic plants gently unfurl beneath the waves—like the soft poetic grace that has lingered for centuries in Xu Zhimo’s writing. Along the way, college gardens appear one after another: the King’s College chapel, with its Gothic needle-like spire piercing the clouds; the stone carvings and patterns like finely made lace—solemn yet romantic. St John’s College’s “Bridge of Sighs” rests over the water; it is said that students, before exams, passing through it often fall into quiet reflection. The Queen’s College mathematics bridge makes people stop even more. Its clamped wooden structure has no nails, relying on mechanics to lock into place; simple lines hide the mysteries of mathematics. It is a scene Newton once stood to ponder. Ducks trail behind the boat, waterbirds skim across the lawns. Ripples spread, breaking and blending the ancient buildings on both banks with cloud shadows. Time seems to slow its pace here.

Leave the boat and step onto the shore, then stroll along the riverbank lawns. Broad stretches of green extend up to the colleges’ high walls. Groups of visitors sit quietly under trees—some flipping through books and chatting, others watching the water. Cambridge has never drawn a strict boundary: the campus is the town, and the town is the campus. The thirty-one colleges are scattered throughout the city; each has its own courtyards, chapels, and libraries. Blue bricks climb with ivy, old trees shade the cloisters. Every brick and tile holds the story and lineage of years gone by. Here, more than a hundred Nobel Prize winners have emerged. Newton worked out the law of universal gravitation; Darwin stewed over the theory of evolution; Hawking pondered the universe’s ultimate questions. Countless ideas that changed the world once quietly sprouted along this riverbank.

In the afternoon, I walk into the town’s old streets. In old bookstores, countless out-of-print volumes are kept. Stationery shops display college crests and vintage fountain pens. Street-side craftsmen plane and polish wooden boat poles, speaking in low voices about stories the town has carried for more than a hundred years. As evening approaches, the setting sun gilds the church spires. On the surface of the River Cam, a layer of warm gold appears. The evening breeze carries the fragrance of grasses and trees, drifting through the alleys and streets.

When I first came to Cambridge, I was astonished by the beauty of its scenery. When I revisited Cambridge, only then did I truly read the depth of its core. Other towns chase prosperity and noise; this one keeps its own composure. Water carries poetic meaning; ancient colleges hold true knowledge; the everyday marketplace preserves gentleness. It does not deliberately flaunt the aura of a famous institution. Instead, it embraces every traveler who comes seeking quiet, seeking knowledge, and seeking poetry—with water, old bridges, and book fragrance.

As I bid farewell to the River Cam at dusk, I did not take away even a single cloud. Yet I have kept this town’s calm and poetic spirit stored in my heart for a long time.