Chapter 14 Part Two: Reflections on the "Prestige School Complex" Celebrating the New Year in Cambridge

January 21, 2004, New Year's Eve. This is the first time in the 24 years of my life that I have left my parents and relatives and spent the Spring Festival in a foreign land: 6:30 am I got up early, opened the phone book, and called a few friends in China.I really feel that the Chinese are a very temperamental nation, lively and cheerful, and so many festivals are just excuses for giving people joy and blessings.Like a prank child, I called some people I hadn’t contacted for a long time. Listening to the surprised but cheerful voice of the other party, I felt the joy of regaining each other—others are saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, and me, it’s pity. Let the old welcome the new.

8:00 am I remember that when I was a child, I always had to clean up at home years ago, and walked into the New Year cleanly.I also tidied up my cottage in Cambridge.On the wall, I hang Monet's "Water Lilies" that I like very much.I am a person who is sensitive and picky about colors, disharmonious color matching will make me feel uncomfortable, and I have the desire to escape from these colors.I often stare at Monet's "Water Lilies" for a long time, and feel a kind of peace in the fresh tones, as calm as the state of mind here. Watered the potted flowers on the desk.Some time ago, I left Cambridge for a few days and gave the flowers I raised to a Chinese classmate to take care of them for me.Tired from the journey, when he came back, he found the flowers on the table extraordinarily beautiful and delicate, and he was very grateful to him.When I woke up the next day, I was much more sober, no, why did it turn white when it was a potted red flower?Knocking on his door, my little red friend has quietly withered on the desk.

I often feel that I am happy. I have been cared and cared for by many people since I was a child. The warm and touching details in my life have nourished my growth.In the process of caring for a person or a pot of flowers, you will have more experience of kindness and sharing.What is kindness?A very cute four-year-old boy, Xiao Shitou, said: Kindness, oh, that is to make others happy.How nice! 10:30 am Prepare a thesis, do a literature review (literature review), in a rather theoretical book, I actually read this passage: To human beings, wanting a place one feels a sense of belonging is natural. Some people who travel widely are actually local at heart, often reluctant to leave home. We may therefore, be led to attending to matters of global concern or to venture outside our local setting by need to more efficiently and effectively achieve a task or to protect our self-interest, a desire to learn, or just plain personal preference or curiosity. However, to a great majority of the world population, the importance, significance and Relevance of the global do not come near to that of the local.

(A place that can make people feel a sense of belonging is the most natural desire of human beings. Some people who have traveled all over the world have a sense of nostalgia in their hearts. We can't help but pay attention to the outside world In order to achieve career, to pursue fame, to learn and improve, or just because of personal preference or even curiosity, we leave our hometown and travel abroad. But for most people in the world, the word "nostalgia" , no matter in terms of value, meaning or close relationship, it is more intimate than "Huanyu") The softness deep in my heart was hit like this. On this day, this kind of reading made me feel moved by being understood.On the land at the other end of the earth, I have the deepest and most lingering thoughts, and this kind of thoughts makes me no longer alone.

11:00 am Val comes to clean up.I told her that tonight is the most important night of the year for us Chinese, because tomorrow is the Chinese New Year, and my family is having a New Year's Eve dinner.I took out a red coaster with the Chinese word "Xi" printed on it and gave it to Val, telling her that it was my favorite color and it was very lively.She put her arms around me, gave me a soft kiss on the cheek, and told me that was her favorite too. 12:30 noon When I first came here, I mostly ate in the cafeteria of the college, but after eating too much foreign food, I missed Chinese food very much, so I started to cook for myself seriously.Scrambled eggs with tomatoes, stir-fried broccoli, hot and sour soup, pork ribs and other ordinary home-cooked dishes all reflect the miss of home and mother.I also invented a Chinese-style curry rice with my Chinese classmates in the same room: cook various vegetables and rice together, and add curry sauce when it is almost ready. It is very fragrant and nutritious.Although the dishes I cook are far less delicious than those made by my mother, they are still more satisfying to my Chinese stomach than pizza, pasta, bread and butter.On such a cold winter afternoon, drinking a bowl of hot and sour soup, a feeling of warmth permeates the internal organs, and the limbs feel stretched.Although I don’t like foreign food very much, desserts are still my most loyal lover. A piece of chocolate mousse has to linger in my mouth for a long time before I reluctantly eat it.I sometimes tell myself that I can only eat half, but after half, I tell myself to eat half again. In the end, the lovely chocolate mousse filled with cream has completely entered my stomach.He licked his lips with guilt and contentment, and the same sentence: it's good to be young, it's good to be young and full of appetite!

2:30pm Someone knocked on my door, Simon and his Japanese girlfriend Yumi poked their heads in and asked me very curiously: what happened?Probably the sound of "hey ha" in the room scared them.I was covered in sweat, my cheeks were flushed, and I said: Hi!The fist in his hand was still waving. "I'm boxing." I winked at them and showed them a nice side kick. I insisted on exercising every day in Cambridge: in the morning, I jumped out of bed and stretched a big stretch in the warm sunshine.Then choose a CD you like, press the play button, and stretch your body to the fullest in the melodious melody. At that moment, I can hear the gentle but powerful voice from my fingertips and even my toes.In the evening, I would run along Queen's Road, listening to the BBC broadcast, while admiring the winter scenery of Cambridge.Playing badminton on the weekends is compulsory for me (I'm part of the college women's badminton team, bracket-sub-bracket).Recently, my Taiwanese girlfriend Xiaoyao, who loves sports, brought me a set of teaching tapes for boxing. I fell in love with this kind of cool exercise. violent tendencies".Fortunately, my room is not small enough to accommodate my "fancy fist and embroidered legs".In this quiet small town in England, exercise makes me feel energetic—not only my body is healthy, but also my mind is relaxed.Hey ha - in the new year, I want to be more flying.Youth is a kind of tension, life lies in movement!

3:30 pm Open the closet and choose a new year's dress.There is a weight limit for bringing luggage from the country, and I gave most of the allowance to my clothes.A full wardrobe satisfies the simplest joy of being a girl.I like red very much, and it is the most red in clothing.Such warm and high-spirited colors often make my heart churn.Perhaps this is the interpretation of my indomitable love for the colors of life. I really miss when I was a child, before the Chinese New Year, my mother would buy new clothes for herself and put them in the big closet, and I would not be able to wear them until the morning of the first day of the new year.The best thing is the mood of anticipation. In my little head, I have imagined the appearance of wearing new clothes countless times.I forget when I started to buy clothes by myself, I can wear them when I want, and I don’t need to reserve a piece of clothes for any occasion.The happiness that can be enjoyed immediately, without the torment of waiting, can also reduce the pleasure of waiting.

Today I'm going to wear a red coat and I'm going to be beaming. I usually don't like makeup, but today I put on lip gloss and rouge, I want to look beautiful. 4:30 in the evening At this time, Cambridge has gradually become quiet, and occasionally passing by are people returning home in a hurry.For the British, this is just another ordinary and ordinary day, they will not know my joy - today is our festival, Chinese festival.I looked at my watch. At this time, the country should have entered a new year.I miss everyone, but I am not sad, because I know that there are some things that cross time zones and space, that is, love.I know that someone will miss me, this kind of miss will not fade away because of my absence, but may become more intense, so I am at ease.

A man walked by me and suddenly said to me: Lovely, Hi! I don't know if he was referring to me or the weather, I just smiled: Hi! 4:45pm In the evening, I made an appointment with a few Chinese classmates in my class to have dinner together to celebrate the festive season. We met at the entrance of the Sainsbury supermarket, and then made a lot of purchases.In today's supermarkets, there are so many faces from the East. Only then did I realize that the Spring Festival is not only a festival for Chinese people, but also a festival for some Southeast Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

The abundance of food in the basket reminded me of the delicious Chinese food on the dinner table, and my stomach began to sing happily. The title of the song was "Do you know I'm waiting for you". 7:00pm New Year's Eve Dinner Dinner place: the restaurant of the dormitory of a male student in Chongqing, Queens College Attendance: 5 people (two women and three men, all classmates) Chef: Sister Pingping (a woman who is outstanding in work and study, is also excellent in the kitchen, look up!) To start with: Xiaoyu (a hard-working woman at work and school, she is also easy to learn in the kitchen, a stupid bird is hardworking, not bad!)

Dishes: many.A roast duck (brought from China, I snatched a wing); steamed sausage (brought from China, was divided by men who lack oil and water); scrambled eggs with tomatoes (mainly in my stomach); fried vermicelli with fungus; Stir-fried broccoli; stir-fried lettuce; shiitake mushrooms and Chinese cabbage; shredded pork with chilli; grilled pork ribs; fried fish cakes; and hot and sour tofu soup.The red wine was excellent, very full-bodied.There are also desserts and fruits after dinner, so I won’t count them one by one. Accident: There were not enough plates, so I asked foreigners to borrow them, but it was still not enough. In the end, we had to eat with the lid of the lunch box and drink the soup directly from the pot. The atmosphere of eating is very good, you fight over each other, and there is basically no time to talk.This seems not to be in line with etiquette, but as international students who have been short of Chinese food for a long time, we understand each other very well and are considerate.My stomach is fighting with all my might, while singing, the title of the song is - "I can't stop loving you". 8:00pm Chatting and talking about New Year's wishes. "Little girl, what is your wish?" I thought about it seriously: First, I want to survive here, decently (survive this year of Cambridge, of course academically) - everyone nodded in approval. Second, I want to keep fit and wear a cheongsam in summer to make those foreign girls "ashamed" - everyone laughed. Third, and most importantly, I hope that I can make the people I love and those who love me feel more love in the new year-when I was young, I always hoped for this and that; when I grow up, Only then did I realize that being willing to give and being able to let my giving bring joy to others is a greater happiness. I'm not a greedy person, three, just fine. 9:30 p.m. We went out and came home together, I lived the farthest and said the most "goodbyes". The winter night is silent, the wind is filling my chest, my breath is condensed in the refreshing air, my steps fall on the fine gravel road in Cambridge, and I can clearly distinguish my own footsteps. Today is really fulfilling.A person is not necessarily alone.I said to myself: Happy Chinese New Year! At the end of the year, I am used to cleaning up the files in the computer and sorting out my mood by the way.On the silent New Year's Eve in Cambridge, I found the following two texts, which were written at the invitation of a newspaper when I was in college.At that time, I was wandering in Fudan Garden in my youth, typing on the keyboard on the broken computer in the broken computer room, and wrote these two short texts, and the manuscript fee in exchange was probably donated to the East District Food stalls at the door. Time is really fast. Life has given me more and more choices, whether it is academic, career or emotional.But what about happiness? "That depends on what kind of happiness you're talking about." Sometimes we don't want to admit our unhappiness, so we justify it.But when we start trying to define happiness, happiness is already far away from us. "That's because you have too many choices, so you are confused." Someone hit the nail on the head. The fact is: the choice itself does not make us unhappy, the culprit of trouble is the inner worry about gains and losses. Don't be afraid of too many options.Temptation has always been for people to appreciate, not to force us to submit, let alone chase us.A world without temptation is monotonous, beauties disappear, wealth is not good at generating, and the scenery is the same, how scary!Perceived temptation proves that we have a mind that is not rigid, just don't be driven by it, we have our own way to go. So I often remind myself: You have to live according to your thoughts, otherwise, sooner or later you have to think according to your life, because life always unknowingly lures you out of the original track.So I began to learn to step out of the expectations of others and listen to my inner voice more seriously.So I started to make a lot of choices that others were not optimistic about, just because this is my life, and I have to be responsible for her.So I also started the process of constantly bumping into walls and falling down. I encouraged myself to say that in a long life, there will always be overlapping highs and lows.When I am honest with myself, the highs will never get me carried away, and the lows will never make me depressed, because I believe that being more mature than yesterday is a real nobility. I sometimes think: how happy I am at the age of 20, so heartless and happy.It wasn't until I re-read this article that I realized that I also had a lot of troubles at that time.Suffering is impossible to avoid, no matter what age you are, no matter how successful you seem to outsiders, all we can do is to understand the distress, and then stride forward.There is no need to envy your past or future self.Do it well now, it is beautiful!