Chapter 23 1. Going out of Shanghai

One day in September 1962, a train departed from Shanghai for Beijing.This is a train temporarily added to transport students. It often stops on the way to give way to other trains. Sometimes it stops for an hour or two, so it is surprisingly slow. The whole journey took two days and three nights.The crowded and stuffy carriages, and the stop and go of the train, made people very impatient, and people often sighed.However, a teenager sitting on the window seat was always calm. During the whole journey, he didn't say a word and slept very little. Most of the time he stared sideways out of the car window.

I really don't feel bored.I had just turned seventeen, and it was my first time traveling away from home. I felt melancholy, but more excited.Before that, I had never been out of Shanghai, except for a short car outing, and I had never taken a train.The outing was organized by the class shortly before graduating from middle school, to Sheshan in Songjiang County.Shanghai is so pitiful, there is not a real mountain in sight, and Sheshan, which is known as the highest peak, is only more than 100 meters high.I am so pitiful, I have never seen a mountain since I was born, and I am very excited when I see this mountain with a height of more than 100 meters.It was early summer, and the slopes were full of green bamboos. I flew up to the top of the mountain where a small Catholic church was built.Looking around at the horizon, I made up my mind at that time that I must get out of this big circle, climb higher mountains, and see a bigger world.Now I'm really out, and the train takes me to a strange world.It was my first time on a long-distance train, and any scenery passing by the window made me feel fresh, so I felt as if the longer the journey, the better.What's more, waiting for me in front of me is the capital that I have only seen in pictures, the highest university that was once out of reach, and the university life shrouded in dreams.I don't know what the future holds, but I realized that this trip was a turning point, and that my childhood was forever behind me.

Judging from the photos taken at that time, the person I was sitting on the Shanghai-Beijing train looked like a typical young scholar. Glasses.A few years later, a girl who liked me confessed to me like this: "I think glasses fit your face perfectly, as if you were born wearing glasses." Occasionally, a face appeared in the crowd, gentle and sensitive , Childish yet young and mature, I felt a twitch in my heart, as if I saw the former me, and all the codes of today's me are hidden in him.A boy grows in ignorance, the skin of childhood sheds layer by layer, and he gradually grows into an adult. That is to say, his personality is basically formed.He himself does not understand the inner spiritual structure that has formed, but it roughly determines the way he behaves in the world throughout his life.Compared with the road traveled, the road ahead is much longer, but the posture of walking in a lifetime is finalized in the first part of the journey.

Later facts showed that my first trip out of Shanghai was almost permanent, and after that I only went back to live temporarily, and it was no longer my place of residence.However, I have never regretted it.In the first semester of university, I was very homesick, but not the city of Shanghai.Many Shanghainese have a strong nostalgia for Shanghai, and believe that there is no better place in China than Shanghai. I don't have this kind of Shanghai complex at all.I was born and raised here, but Shanghai has never given me a sense of hometown that I can take root in.I lacked contrast at the time, but I must have vaguely sensed some sort of flaw in Shanghai.For example, the passengers around me were talking enthusiastically in Shanghainese, and what I felt was not kindness but alienation.Although I have spoken Shanghainese for seventeen years, I feel more and more awkward in this dialect, far less comfortable than speaking Mandarin.Whenever I try to express my inner experience or philosophical speculation in Shanghai dialect, I stutter because I can't express my words.Shanghai dialect is a market language, suitable only for talking about basic necessities of life, not suitable for expressing spiritual content.So, sitting on the train to Beijing, I am even happy that I don't have to speak Shanghainese often in the future.This is of course not just a matter of language.Advanced spiritual activities need a corresponding field, but Shanghai lacks this field, and language is only one aspect of expression.After the sweep of the revolution, the commercial spirit cultivated by the old ten-mile foreign farm has no broad scope for use, so it has to display its skills in the field of daily life, manifested as a small shrewdness.Shanghainese pay attention to material benefits in material life, are good at using and displaying their intelligence in this aspect, and are proud of it. They look down on foreigners, and I look down on Shanghainese precisely because of this.Later I also discovered that even in terms of learning, most of the people in Shanghai are smart, quick-witted, good at making stunts and showing off, but they lack grandeur.What I'm talking about is the general characteristics of regional culture. Of course, no matter where, there are big minds and generosity beyond geographical limitations.

In the middle of the night, the train stopped for a long time at an unknown small station, standing on a solitary lamppost, next to a solitary acacia tree, under the dim light, the pink flower velvet looked like drooping long eyelashes .The girl sitting next to me also has long eyelashes, and a pair of black pupils behind the eyelashes.She has been dozing off, and her head often leans against me involuntarily.Although it made me hot and tired, I couldn't bear to wake her up and kept as still as possible.We didn't speak a word until the end of the trip.Later, I often met her on campus, knew that she was in the Chinese Department, and knew her name, but we still didn't speak a word.The reason why I remember this beautiful traveling companion is because she committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

However, when the train arrived at Beijing Railway Station in the early morning of the third day, no one could know what happened five years later.My beautiful traveling companion, like me, went out of the station without hesitation, found the banner of Peking University among the banners of various colleges and universities in front of the station, and then jumped on the truck to pick up the freshmen.As the truck drove through Chang'an Avenue, I was slightly surprised that Tiananmen Square was not as majestic as I had imagined.Driving from the urban area to the suburbs, Beijing looks refreshing, quiet, and solemn everywhere. I immediately fell in love with this magnificent city.After arriving at the school, the freshmen are taken away by the old students of each department and sent to the designated dormitory.The dormitory of the Department of Philosophy is on the 38th floor, and my dormitory is Room 120.There are four bunk beds and four simple desks in the room, which accommodates eight people and is packed full.I put down my luggage, unroll the bedding, and sit down on my own bed.The running all the way stops here, the dream all the way ends here, and the days of studying hard in the cold window will start here.