The sound of train wheels turning, like reggae music, relaxes people physically and mentally, so trains may cure people's insomnia and depression.The "Railway Guerrillas", "Walter Defends Sarajevo", and "Cassandra Bridge" that we watched when we were young are all stories about trains.The boys put nails on the rails, and by the time the train rolls by, you've got your very own little flying knife.The girls look forward to the train to take them to distant places, and they will never marry the neighbor's Xiao Erhei.We are in awe of such a big iron box, which can run so fiercely and for such a long time.

My home is in Tiexi District, which is the industrial center of Shenyang. The origin of the name "Tiexi" is because there is a railway bridge to the east of us.Every time I pass by there by bus, I have to stand on tiptoe to look at the bridge. There are often trains passing by there. The power and speed, as well as the distance it is going to, make a child excited and afraid. Later, I suffered from glaucoma, and my mother took me to the south to see a doctor. At that time, it took two days and one night from Shenyang to Shanghai, and it felt like a long journey.Many neighbors came to my house and asked my mother to help bring fashionable clothes, bubble gum, and cream biscuits from Shanghai. Many children even envied me and said that they also wanted to have eye diseases so that they could go to Shanghai.That was China in the 1970s.

On the train, the child's excitement was only for a while, followed by exhaustion and sleepiness, and my mother vacated her seat so that I could have a small bed and sleep in the dark.I was ignorant at the time, and I didn't know how my mother survived the night.When I was about to reach the Yangtze River, my mother woke me up and said that the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was in front of me. I had seen it on countless posters, and it was the majestic big guy on the 20 cents RMB. I was about to see it with my own eyes. At night, when I was crossing the bridge, it was dark and I only saw the bridge lights flashing backwards one by one. I imagined that there was a deep and wide river below, and the sound of the train was hollow and became less domineering.It lasted about ten minutes. At that time, I thought how long this bridge should be. It must be the longest bridge in the world. Just like I think China is the largest country in the world, and Shenyang is the largest city in China, except of course Beijing.

I am sixteen years old and a blind man who has been blind for seven years. To be precise, I am a good boy who is disabled but not disabled like Zhang Haidi.I can walk all over the street with a stick, dodge cars to cross the road, and go into the store to buy things. One day, I told my mother that I was going to stay at a classmate's house for a few days, and then secretly bought a train ticket to Tianjin.At that time, I already knew that Shenyang was just a backward worker's village, and there were Chengdu, Wuhan, Tianjin, and Beijing in the distance. I took the train from Jiamusi, because it was a passing train, there were no seats.I sat where the carriages connected, imagining the big city I was about to face.I finally faced the world alone, took out the beer and boiled eggs I bought in advance, took a couple of sips, and the world became my buddy, with me.

There was an old man sitting next to me, he swallowed and said, "Young man, can I have a sip?" I gave him the remaining half bottle of beer I drank.He said that I don't look like a mortal, and I must have a great future in the future.When I was happy, I gave him two more boiled eggs. When I arrived in Tianjin, I lived in a small hotel for two yuan a day.Walking on the street, listening to Tianjin dialect.Next, I took a two-hour train ride to Beijing, the capital of the great motherland. At that time, I worshiped culture so much, I went to Wangfujing Bookstore as soon as I got off the train, the one that hadn’t been demolished yet.In the evening, I went to Taoranting, because I had just listened to "Shi Pingmei Biography" broadcast on the radio, and wanted to pay homage to this distant talented woman.

Dad said, if you want to sing, you have to learn from Mao Ning and try to get on CCTV, he is from Shenyang.At this time, I had been selling singing in Beijing for a year, and I had saved a whole bag of dime tickets, which was earned by selling singing.I am going to Yunnan, to be precise Dali.From Beijing to Kunming, fifty hours of hard seats... In the first ten hours, I was looking forward to Yunnan, imagining those place names, as if rubbing pieces of warm jade in my pocket. After ten hours, the jade is also a little cloudy, how can I wait for the time?I began to pay attention to the conversations of the people around me.

The seats diagonally opposite were chatting about where the atomic bomb was hidden, the 38th Army, and Lin Biao.I listened to it for a while, then changed the channel, and a row behind me was doing MLM on the spot, talking about money, success, and the state of life.To change another one, a girl in the distance talked about her boyfriend she was about to meet, who seemed to be teaching in Kunming, and she bought a bucket of roses to see him.The girl was intoxicated as she said it, she didn't want the bucket to leak, and the water in the whole car was dripping. Twenty hours later, the surrounding voices became far away, a bit like the feeling of being drunk, and I began to recall a certain novel I had read, or to test myself, such as where I was today the year before last, what I was doing, and then increase the intensity. Difficulty, five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago... Sometimes, I feel like I disappeared for a certain period of time, and I can't remember what I lived during that period of time.So, the spirit came, slowly looking for clues, digging around, crawling towards the blind spot of memory.

Thirty hours later, when I arrived in Guizhou, I was so sleepy that I couldn't stand it, so I simply let go of my reserve and lay down on the aisle of the carriage, with my head tilted and my legs curled up.However, the person who pushes the cart and sells things will get up immediately when he comes, and lie down after leaving, and the person who uses the toilet will step over you... At that time, my hair had grown long and I had lived for half my life. I didn't expect that hair can also be stepped on. The plum wine in Kunming is so delicious, and the small restaurants are too cheap. Once I indulge, I will spend hundreds of dollars.Then I went around looking for bars to sing, but failed, and if I didn't leave, I really had to beg for food.It happened that a friend in Changsha was willing to take me in, so I bought a ticket to Huaihua.There is still most of the time when I can only evade the fare.For the first time in his life, he broke the law and was very nervous.

The car passed Huaihua, and the ticket had expired. I was afraid to come to check the ticket, but I didn't come, so I frightened you in my imagination.Later, I thought that the most dangerous place was the safest, so I took the initiative to find the conductor, asked the weather conditions, asked him what time it was, asked what fun things to do in Hunan, and asked him what music he liked. The conductor got impatient and avoided me several times. , I finally learned to use "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and fled to Changsha. Not long after, I ran into the law again on another trip.By the way, I went to Tai'an with a friend who is a fan of world famous novels and rock music.

Along the way, he and I discussed Márquez, Bob Dylan, the Absurd, Existentialism, drawing sideways glances.When we got out of the car, a plainclothes suddenly stopped my friend, saying that he would be searched, and he was not allowed to get out of the car.They started arguing at the door of the carriage. My friend rushed to the platform, and the police pulled him onto the carriage. Later, several policemen came and finally pulled him into the carriage.At this time, the driving time had been delayed for more than half an hour, and finally the train took him away. I was left on the platform and the station police took me to the waiting room.In my luggage, they found an unfamiliar instrument full of knobs, their voices changed with excitement, and they asked what it was.I said it was an effect device for guitar, but they didn't believe it, so I explained to them what the button was for on the spot, and I even plugged in the guitar for a while, and they didn't doubt it anymore.

After a while, the police on the train called and said that they had investigated and that no one had lost anything in the train.I asked the surrounding passengers what we said in the car, and everyone said that they were all foreigners' names, and they didn't understand.So the police educated me: "Although the suspicion that you are thieves has been ruled out, it is wrong to talk nonsense in public places. Seeing that you have a good attitude, let's forget it this time." It took one stop to get kicked out of the car. Beijing is a "big pot", boiling many art lovers from other places. After cooking for a long time, they want to jump out to cool off.But the outside of the "pot" is desolate and barren, and there are no weird exchanges of the same kind, so jump back again. In 2001, I was almost suffocated by cooking, so I went to the train ticket office. I asked many places and there were no tickets. When I went to Yinchuan, the window said there was one, so I bought one.About 43 times, Beijing drove to Jiayuguan, far enough and desolate.After getting on the bus, I found that there were very few people. In the end, I could lie on the seat and sleep.I sang in Guangming Square in Yinchuan, earning a lot of money, and continued westward to Lanzhou, where I sang at Northwest Normal University. I met a young man with homosexual tendencies. I polished my shoes and invited me to eat pineapple fried rice. Then I found out that I was not of the same kind, and suddenly disappeared again. Take the train to Xining.It was midnight, and the waiting room of Xining Railway Station was empty. I was thinking about where to go next. A girl sat down next to me and sighed in a very directional way. ? At that time, there was always such a story circulating on the train: On a long-distance train, a certain girl sat next to you. She was so sleepy that she subconsciously fell asleep leaning on your shoulder. The girl can sleep well, keep sitting still all day and night, and when the girl wakes up, she will immediately decide to marry you. Back in my reality, I asked her if she was having any trouble and needed help.She said that she was working in Xining, and her boss was in arrears of wages. Now she is penniless and wants to go home.I quickly took out the biscuits and bread that others had stuffed into my bag during the singing, and shared them with her. The next day, we got on the train to Qinghai Lake. People chanting scriptures can already be seen in the car, and the altitude is getting higher and higher, and the temperature of the "cauldron" behind them can hardly be felt. We got off the bus at Hargay.Next to the Hargai Railway Station, there is only a restaurant, a hotel, and a small post office.During the meal, I drank two glasses of highland barley wine to strengthen my courage and asked her if she could be my girlfriend.She said that she has a boyfriend and is studying in Lanzhou.She asked me if I asked her to come to Qinghai Lake just to let her be my girlfriend, I nodded in my heart and said no. In the evening, we stayed in a double room in that small hotel. The door could not be locked inside, and we had to use a table to cover it.In the middle of the night, a drunk person knocked on the room. I was so worried that I couldn't sleep all night, thinking that I was staying in a black shop. Get up early, she said, since you have explained everything, it would be too embarrassing for the two of you to walk together again.She was also afraid of feeling sorry for her boyfriend.I said, where are you going?She said she wanted to go back to Lanzhou. Hargai only has trains in two directions. If she goes to Lanzhou, then I have to go to Golmud.We bought tickets, and I got on the bus first. I wanted to hug her one last time and say some words of blessing, but when I got on the bus, it was crowded, and as soon as she pushed me into the car, the door slammed shut. Golmud, that is the road to Tibet, and there are more people passing by in the carriage.The smell of buttered tea, the unfamiliar station name, the coldness in the car at night, and the vast salt lake like Mars outside, I felt extremely lonely.Regret, why let her be your girlfriend, isn't it happy to just talk all the way? Arriving in Golmud, China's railway has come to an end. Going forward, it is a long-distance bus for a few days and nights, the road of yaks, the Daxue Mountain, and the Nagqu Grassland... At this time, I miss that distant "big pot" again. It is warm and skin-to-skin. , secular, with human fireworks. My current residence in Beijing is less than 100 meters away from the train track, and the trains are coming and going on time in my hearing.The sound was low and gentle, like the sound of wind or trees in nature.For me, they are not noise, they have a calming effect. For a period of time, I would often dream of a small station, which seemed to be a certain city in the north, and I would transfer trains there in the dream.The platform is clean and tidy, as if it had just rained, and there are basically no staff members. Two rows of iron fences enclose a road out of the station.Sometimes I dream that I have to wait there for half an hour, the train leaves, and the platform is so quiet that I want to yawn. Sometimes the dream is like this: because the waiting time for the train is too long, I go out of the station and go around the city. There is a river not far from the station, similar to the Haihe River in Tianjin.There are a few minibuses on the road to attract customers, leading to the suburbs, where there is a not-so-good university.The tone of the whole city is that kind of light gray, and people on the street rarely speak.Sometimes the dream changed again. I bought a ticket in the ticket hall of that city, and there was a long queue, and the ground was covered with sticky sawdust. After waking up, I wonder why I keep dreaming about the same place. Is it a certain city I passed by?But in real life, I have never been to this place.Sometimes I look up the map of the north and think it should be in a small town in Henan and Shandong. There's also a lot of gore and death about the train.In my childhood memory, the railway track was an extremely dangerous place, where murders often occurred, or so-and-so was run over to death again.There is even a legend that when you walk somewhere on the train track, your feet suddenly move It's over, when the train comes, it's like an invisible hand is holding you tightly underground...Of course, the people who tell these stories are those who escaped in the end and were not killed. When I was in elementary school, a young hero who sacrificed himself to save others appeared in Liaoyang, Liaoning. It seemed that his name was Zhou Yuncheng, which was one word different from my name, so I remember it very clearly.As the train was approaching, he pushed two panicked children from the track to the side of the road, and was run over by the train to death.It was an era when heroes and role models were born in large numbers. I remember that the teacher assigned us homework and wrote a thought report on learning from Zhou Yuncheng, as if he was only eighteen or nineteen years old when he died.But after a few years, he was completely forgotten.I only vaguely thought of him today when I wanted to write about trains.There was also an earlier girl named Dai Birong who also lost her left arm and leg because she was saving someone from a train. In 1997, I sang in a bar in Changsha, and I overheard her interview on the radio. At that time, she was already in her forties, and she seemed to be an ordinary factory worker.Losing her left arm and leg brought a lot of pain and inconvenience throughout her life. Finally, let’s talk about the poet Haizi.He chose to lie on the track on March 26, 1989, and ended his life. It has been twenty years since now.If he was still alive, he would probably have become a celebrity in the poetry world, and would start to gain weight, drink heavily, get married, and probably write TV dramas.Standing at the gate of the noisy and impetuous 1990s, Haizi said, otherwise I would not go in, you can play by yourself.He sent his own "Complete Collection of Haizi's Poems"—a large hardcover, thick and hard collection of poems—to walk alone through the 1990s and the millennium, one bookstore after another, and a study room A study, a desk, a desk into the new century. Kunming, February 27, 2009