I walked in the fog, chasing Zhang Ailing's footsteps.My soul walks in the sky, in Shanghai in the 1920s.I pushed aside the mist, looked down at the courtyard through a gap in the clouds, smelled the faint fragrance of flowers, and heard a girl's clear reading. This is Shanghai in 1928. Little Zhang Ailing, who was still called Zhang Ying at that time, held her brother’s hand and sat reading under the flower tree in the yard—I would like it to be a peach blossom, because I like Hu’s There is a saying "peach blossom is difficult to paint, because it needs to be painted quietly"; as for the book, maybe it is, it is a book that she has read over and over again all her life, and she said that she read it for the first time when she was eight years old.

They hugged the toys their mother sent from England, and the boy was still wearing the imported straw hat. The two children, one eight years old and the other seven years old, raised their innocent and childish faces under a peach tree, like angels. I listen heartily. ——If God passes by in the sky at this time, he will probably stop and listen. She is not as beautiful as her younger brother, and her expression is a little dull, not as cute and sweet as her younger brother.But her voice is cadenced, with a natural perception and comprehension of words, permeated with spirituality. The younger brother Zhang Zijing was somewhat inattentive, thinking about what kind of dinner the nanny Zhang Gan had prepared for him, and also wondering when his mother would come back—he could no longer remember what his mother looked like, or even "mother" The specific meaning represented by this word—but it is a good word and a good thing after all, otherwise the whole family would not come back to Shanghai in such high spirits, waiting for their mother to return home like a car.

Even the servants are more diligent than before, because they know that their mistress is coming back, Xiaoying's nanny, He Gan, and Zijing's nanny, Zhang Gan, have prepared the clothes for the two siblings to wear on the day of their meeting. The quilts were also taken out to dry.Long poles and short poles are pulled all over the yard, and the silk and satin with gold and silver threads are drying in the sun, exuding the fragrance of the sun, and there is a kind of prosperity and festive energy.The forehead is pasted on the gold-woven flower embroidery, and the sun's light can be clearly felt, which is a slender and warm strip.

Everything at home in Tianjin has become a thing of the past—the lingering smell of opium, the quarrels between father and aunt, all kinds of comments and disdainful eyes from relatives about the small mansion...all of these are left in Tianjin, separated by an ocean Throw it far away.When they came to Shanghai from Tianjin, the ship passed the green sea and the black sea all the way. They traveled for a long time, and left all their unhappiness and light on the other side of the sea, and they could never catch up. From Tianjin to Shanghai, fate has turned a corner here, and it seems to be turning for the better, at least it was full of hope for a turnaround at one time.

People always like fresh.Variation is always good.When the mother comes back, everything will be better. The younger brother flickered his big eyes with long eyelashes, interrupted his sister's reading aloud, and asked for hundreds of times: "Is mother good-looking?" "It's not like you haven't seen it before." The older sister looked at the younger brother impatiently, "You were three years old when mom left, don't you remember anything?" She remembers it very clearly.I remember the shrugged shoulders when my mother cried bitterly on the bamboo bed the day she got on the boat, and I remembered the green dress and skirt she wore with small twitching and glowing patches nailed to it. Twinkling, it's the endless tossing and mourning of the ocean.The green of the vast ocean will blind the eyes if you look at it for a long time, and you can't forget it even if you want to.

That year, she was four years old. A precocious child is likely to be unhappy.Sensitive, as if always twinned with sad. Her mother took many photos of her. In the photos, she was mostly not smiling, with a round head and suspicious eyes.The only one with a bright smile was colored by my mother with great care. In the photo, she was lumpy, wearing a blue-green chiffon dress, with thin red lips—but she clearly remembered that it was a light blue dress with a T-shaped white silk collar, with a fluffy print on it. The white mist-blue-green is the later coloring of the mother, which is the blue-green period of the mother.

After many, many years, she will still clearly remember that it was a cloudy afternoon in the north, and it was quite dark. Mother put a small desk on the narrow small balcony with glass windows, and took great care to replace it. Colorize this photo.There are black iron watercolor paint boxes on the messy table, a thin black iron pipe brush, and a glass of clear water—she remembers it so clearly because it is a rare treasure of maternal love in memory. My mother was stylish and beautiful, and not always happy.In the morning, He Gan carried Xiaoying to her big four-legged copper bed. She always showed a slightly stunned look, as if she couldn't remember where this little child came from for a while, and she watched the child crawling patiently. Reciting Tang poems incomprehensibly on the checkered green brocade quilt, it takes a while to wake up slowly - as if the soul is wandering in the sky, seeing my body in the secular world, somewhat reluctant, had no choice but to return the soul ——So she showed a little joy, and earnestly taught her daughter to recognize the characters and recite Tang poems. After recognizing two characters, she gave her two pieces of mung bean cake.

——The memory of mother is all related to "green". "Do you still remember mung bean cake?" Xiaoying reminded persuasively, "Every time my mother gives me two pieces of mung bean cake, I always give one to you." "I want to eat mung bean cake." Zijing immediately turned her mind away, but changed her mind suddenly, "No, I prefer pine nut candy." As he spoke, a sweet smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, as if he had already eaten pine nut candy. It is sugar made by pounding pine nuts into powder and adding rock sugar crumbs.He really likes it, as if all the sweetness of life is condensed and implemented there.When he was a child, because he was weak and sick, he had to eat without food. People once tried to add coptis juice to pine nut candy and feed him, which made him give up.So they put Coptis chinensis juice on his fists again, and he sucked his fists, crying even worse—if he wanted to eat sweet pine nut candy, he had to accept extremely bitter Coptis chinensis juice at the same time, which he had learned since he was a child The most direct education about the true taste of life.

However, over the years, he still has not changed his original intention. "I want to eat pine nut candies." He declared again, very seriously. "Then you'd better go find Zhang Qian." Xiaoying finally got impatient, left her younger brother and went to find her father on the balcony. My father sat alone on the balcony, with a wet towel on his head, looking straight at him, not knowing what he was looking at—maybe he was imagining the future, maybe he was facing death—because of the excessive morphine injections, he had already He was very close to death, only thirty-two years old, yet he seemed to be dying.

Xiaoying stood at the door of the balcony and tentatively called, "Second Uncle." Because her uncle had no daughter, she was verbally adopted to her uncle since she was a child, so she always called her biological parents "Second Uncle" and "Second Aunt".Her younger brother was very envious of her having such a special title, so she followed him in calling her uncle and parents "uncle" and "aunt" instead of "father" and "mother".This seems to be a prophecy - there is no "father" or "mother" in her dictionary, so she is doomed to not be able to experience normal family love for the rest of her life.

Zhang Tingzhong, who was called "Second Uncle", turned his head slowly. When he saw his daughter, a gleam of joy appeared on his frozen face, and asked, "What are you doing? Where's your brother?" "He's hungry, so he went to Zhang Gan for something to eat." Xiaoying moved closer, "What is Second Uncle looking at?" Zhang Tingzhong shook his head, but asked back: "Do you miss your mother?" "I don't know." Xiaoying answered honestly.In her mind, "mother" or "second aunt" is more like a symbol than a person, noble, mysterious and unattainable. She is the recipient of the photos that her family asks her to send overseas every year. The delivery person who often mails gifts to China during the Chinese New Year - because her father married his concubine and smoked opium, she excused that her sister-in-law needed a female companion to study abroad and went to England together.One to four years.Since then, people have been waiting for her to come back, and they regard waiting as the first major event in their lives. After coming to Shanghai, the most talked about topic from morning to night every day is "the wife is coming back".She was faintly happy, but when she thought that the noble and distant mother would really come back and stand in front of her alive, not just a photo, but a real person, she was somewhat strange and uncomfortable. Xiaoying asked her father, "Is Second Aunt really coming back?" "She may still leave when she comes back." The father answered irrelevantly, and sighed again, not knowing whether he was sighing to himself or to his wife. It was he who wrote one letter after another begging his wife to come back, and she finally agreed when he promised to quit smoking and drove away his concubine.Of course he is happy, but he also feels frustrated to some extent, and he is not fully sure whether he can really quit smoking in the future. Opium is a good thing, no matter how big the troubles are or how much pain there is, just roll a few cigarette bubbles, and all diseases will disappear naturally, and all worries will be eliminated.The family situation is not as good as the previous generation, the world is not as good as the current situation, and the situation is getting worse every year. If there is no more opium, can life be called life? Everyone has some hobbies they can't quit, right?People have to have a mind to feel that life is good.His addiction is opium, Xiaoying's is books, Zijing's is pine nut candy, and where is his wife Huang Yifan?Probably school. Speaking of it, Yifan is really a standard lady in the old era, and she still had her feet bound since she was a child.The once prominent big family like the Zhang family didn't pay much attention to those after the Republic of China. My younger sister Zhang Maoyuan also has a pair of heavenly feet, but Yifan has a three-inch golden lotus.But such a demure lady actually crossed the ocean with a pair of tiny feet and went to study in the UK. I heard that she and Maoyuan went skiing in the Alps, and they were not bad at skiing - just like this day after day Far away, flew away from his side, flew away from his family, they gradually lived in two worlds. I remember that when they got married that year, they were both only nineteen years old, a golden boy and a jade girl, a pair of Bi people.The man is romantic and unrestrained, the woman is delicate and sweet, and they are all descendants of famous families. They are evenly matched, and they are so enviable.At that time, they were all thankful that they had obtained the legendary golden and jade marriage, which was far better than their ancestors. ——Zhang Tingzhong's father is Zhang Peilun, a famous general of the Qing Dynasty, and his mother is Li Hongzhang's youngest daughter, Li Juhou. There is a full eighteen-year age difference between the two of them, and they are not considered long-lived.Zhang Maoyuan once criticized his grandfather very unfilially, saying: "This grandfather is really -- two daughters marry one who is 20 years older than her to fill the house, and the other is married to someone who is six years younger than her. I think she is old all my life." ——Huang Yifan's background is not as brilliant as Zhang Tingzhong's, but he is also a famous lady-the daughter of Huang Junmen, the admiral of the Nanjing Yangtze River Navy in the late Qing Dynasty.Her mother is a peasant girl who married the son of a general as a concubine. Equality and freedom are out of the question, and she also has a short lifespan. It is said that there is nothing dissatisfied when two people with similar backgrounds and ages are married as husband and wife.In fact, when they were newly married, they were indeed happy, loving, sweet and beautiful, but then, how did they get to this point? It probably started when he smoked opium, became an actor, and raised his concubine. Zhang Tingzhong sighed again, narrowed his eyes slightly, and saw more profoundly. This time, what he saw was the past.