Chapter 59 What to ask for in life in Havana

What to ask for in life in Havana Feng Tang From childhood to adulthood, there are many things that I can't figure out. At different times, I am tempted and patient.Important examples: For example, why can I hear sounds tens of kilometers away when the radio is turned on?In the Children's Palace, I bought a copy of "How to Assemble a Transistor Radio" and a bag of pre-configured electronic components. Like pouring radish, cabbage, onion, ginger, and garlic into an iron pot, I followed the instructions to put all the electronic components into the emerald green plastic. shell.Then put in two AA batteries, unscrew it, and the plastic box actually rang.I still don't know why, I just burned my left hand and learned to weld.Another example is why the girl looks good?In high school, I sat in the back row and watched the girl Japanese solo dance at the New Year's party. She was wearing a bright red Japanese kimono, and the yellow paper umbrella in her hand was twisting around. Over the red, I saw the body wearing a vest.I felt that all the bright red plastic flowers on the stage suddenly gave off their fragrance, and I felt that my eyes were suddenly not nearsighted, and I felt that my cerebral cortex was undulating like a lump of yellow-white instant noodles boiled on an alcohol stove.Why, there must be a conspiracy in it.Another example is time.Why can time be so shallow?Five years passed with one foot, ten years pierced with one finger, the conductor auntie called me uncle overnight, the female classmate who danced Japanese dance had a child who could walk overnight, and had a kind expression close to the street aunt Wang .Why can time be so stubborn?I closed my eyes, thinking of the big red, my cerebral cortex could still remember it in an instant, sizzling like boiled instant noodles.

These unanswered things, whether important or not, were all forgotten later, as if they were afraid of affecting my outlook on life and the world, and delaying my benefit to the country and the people.But there are places like Cuba in the world, like fossils in the world, where time reverses, stagnates, or passes extremely slowly. The priorities of things are completely different from the order you arranged before, forcing you to rethink those unanswered questions. Question: Like how to deal with time?For another example, what do you want in your life? Havana, the capital of Cuba, was "discovered" by Columbus and his descendants as early as 1516, and has been a hub for Spanish "discovery" of the New World ever since.For four to five hundred years, all kinds of fashionable buildings at that time grew freely in the city, encroaching on each other, naturally decaying, and concentrated in the old urban area of ​​more than ten square kilometers.There are dozens of museums in the old city, it is recommended to buy a pass, at least three days to see, at least a dozen do not see regret, such as a museum called the struggle against the enemy, to teach you in detail the US imperialists trying to kill Castro There is another method called the Governor’s Palace Museum, which bribes the staff with 1/4 yuan foreign currency roll (equivalent to US dollars) or a bottle of Fengyoujing or two boxes of Longhu brand cooling oil, which can let you touch Spain in the seventeenth century. The flush toilet used by the governor: defecation on the second floor, the water is flushed to the first floor.There are many restaurants, the houses are all the same old, the windows are all the same Havana blue, and the food is all the same bad food, but the voice of the old man in the small band is as clear as a boy, singing the song "Maybe, Maybe" plagiarized by "In the Mood for Love" 》, the girls on the street walked by wearing pink leggings and pink tube tops, with long legs and a flat waist, buttocks and breasts effortlessly against the earth's attraction, and the importance of food suddenly became very low.

I heard that before the revolution in 1959, the corrupt government at that time planned to flatten the old city, and then build new high-rise hotels, casinos and brothels along the coast. At that time, the United States was still the era described in "Once Upon a Time in America", Prohibition of alcohol, for several years in a row, the annual gangster convention in the United States was held in Havana, there is a lot of demand for food, drinking, prostitution, gambling and smoking in this city. After the revolution in 1959, the new government didn’t like eating, drinking, prostitution, gambling, and smoking. It closed the country and had no money to do anything to the old city. It also had a basic taste for old things and a basic awe of time. It was a distance from the old city, and the new government’s building was repaired. Workspace.This old city was designated as a cultural heritage of humanity by the United Nations in 1982.I drank rum made from sugarcane in the "Two Worlds Hotel" where Hemingway often slept in the old city. I imagined that these four or five hundred years would be equivalent to the late Ming and Qing Dynasties in China. If Beijing was liberated in 1949, Beijing would not To demolish the city walls, not move within the second ring road, build a new government office area where Wangjing is now, and enclose Zhongnanhai, Beihai, and Shichahai into a huge urban park like Central Park in New York. Then our old city of Beijing should be a What kind of beauty?It must be comparable to what is in Havana now.

Other small towns in Cuba are much less populated than Havana, but they are just as old, slowly, and clean.There is a square in the middle of the city, and the center is a garden, where wild dogs roam. No one eats dog meat, and not many people have enough food to raise dogs.There were occasional slogans such as "Revolution or Death", "Socialism is Good, Capitalism is Bad", "Five Heroes Return".Around the square are museums or schools and tourist shops, selling to tourists the pictures of Che Guevara with flying beard and charming eyes, HAWANA ClUB rum and COHIBA cigars.A box of COHIBA SIGLO V, five sticks, 60 foreign exchange volumes, is three to four months' wages of ordinary Cubans.In the shops for Cuban people, the shelves are basically empty, and the goods are empty as soon as they are loaded, so there is no need to manage inventory.Brooms and mops and buckets are the fastest sellers, and all Cubans love to clean and have bright flowers on their balconies.

In small towns, the houses that ordinary people live in are generally hundreds of years old and haven’t been repaired since the revolution. The streets are generally hundreds of years old and basically haven’t been repaired since the revolution. There are also blue sky and sunshine and a beach a mile away. For many years, girls often bask in the sun under the blue sky on the beach. When the sun comes out, they take off their tops, and when the sun goes down, they put on their tops. It's the same before and after the revolution.At the dinner table, everyone eats the same food, red bean rice and vegetable salad, or roast pork and crayfish during festivals or guests.On the street, old people bask in the sun, usually in their eighties or nineties, smoking cigars they rolled themselves, eating and waiting to die, with a happy face, cars burning low-quality gasoline and emitting black smoke, usually in their fifties or sixties, in the 1940s Mercedes-Benz from the 1950s, Ford from the 1950s, if one crashes, there will be one less in the world, just like giant pandas.Public transportation is underdeveloped, and when I go out to do errands, I basically rely on stopping cars on the street, so I usually only make an appointment for one thing in the morning, and no one is surprised if I am late for an hour or two. People with bad faces, arms and legs are late for three or four Hours, no one is surprised.But girls and boys are fresh, they have their coming-of-age ceremony at the age of fifteen, and at the age of sixteen or seventeen, most of them can’t remember how many friends of the opposite sex they have made. Born with a devil's body, he danced the SALSA dance, saying that tonight there will be a New Year's carnival in the town, and we will go together, saying that besides the beach, the dance is fun.I went to that New Year's party, a broken four-speaker portable stereo, the music was played to the maximum, a few boxes of low-quality beer were sold out long ago, and a thousand beautiful girls and guys in costumes blocked three or four streets, dancing Until four or five in the morning.A few years ago, along Highway 80, I drove from the east to the west of the United States and back again. In a month, I met more beautiful girls and boys than I met in a small Cuban town in one night. .

Castro is seventy-nine years old this year. He quit smoking a few years ago. He recently fainted in public. His doctor said he would live to be at least one hundred and thirteen.Many people began to talk about what happened to Castro.No one can live forever. I know that after Castro, there must be more Cubans who can afford COHIBA.However, I don’t know whether the museums and old houses in the old city will be converted into eating, drinking, whoring and gambling. Will the Cubans feel really happy to drive the 2005 BMW 7 Series and complete five business meetings in one morning? . 2005/1/30