Chapter 5 (End) 〈Revisiting Border Town〉

Before I left, I had an appointment with a relative at a Hong Kong hotel. At 7:30 in the evening, I made a pot of black tea in the lobby and ordered a plate of small cakes.We talked for a while, and it was only after eight o'clock when we came out.I have to buy some cheap gold jewelry to take home as a gift. I heard that there are many gold shops on the street behind. They are open until late, so I will stop by.Say goodbye at the entrance of the hotel, do not go to the Star Ferry Pier, you need □□.Uncle Biao was a little surprised when I said that I still had to buy something, but he obviously felt that I was considered an old Hong Kong, so he didn’t want to say anything, so he nodded slightly and disappeared in the dimly lit porch.

I walked along the porch and climbed up the sloping back street. It became even darker and there was no one in sight.Hong Kong is also like the United States. At night, the business district becomes a dead city, with no pedestrians and only cars passing by at speed.The slant of the Qingshiban mountain road is too steep, and there is no traffic, so it is dead silent. Why is it so dark in Central?It's not the first time I've discovered that I have night blindness, but I still don't understand why I haven't walked past a few doors, and my eyes are suddenly dark.When I was a child, I was still reading at dusk, and I always heard the maid yelling, "I'm going to be blind again!" "Isn't it okay to turn on the light?" "It's the same with the light on!" It seems to be a taboo hour.I only know that dogs have poor eyesight, but chickens can't see when it gets dark?Perhaps because of this, at night, "the chickens live in the nest", they must go back to the chicken coop.Reading in places with insufficient light will only lead to myopia.Reading at dusk will cause night blindness, that is a taboo hour, as if it is all based on wishful thinking and unscientific.But the fact is that I can't see the steps when I go down the steps in the evening, and wearing glasses doesn't help.But I didn’t pay attention to it all the time, now it’s all right—I was rushing at this time and dared not to think about the stories of too many road robberies in Hong Kong.

It's all my fault that I didn't want to make an extra trip, because I was afraid of crossing the sea, so I had to go shopping twice and once, so I went shopping so late.Why are you so sentimental, I said to myself.There is so much emotional luxury!If you are afraid of the feelings of the past and the present, don't be afraid of the road robbery.deserve it! There should be old-fashioned small shops along the road, although I haven't been here this time.The upstairs will not be full of people, why is there no light at all?It's also because I was a little flustered, and I only cared about the attacks that might come at any time under my feet, as well as the back and approaching sides, and ignored the overhead, and didn't check if there were any lights leaking from the windows, probably there were few, weak, and quiet voices None.

It is necessary to prevent people from escaping from the deeper shadows on the side of the street, so only the sound of footsteps on the stone road can be heard in the middle of the street.The ancient street has no arcades, is straight, slopes up evenly, and is quite wide, but it can be wide or narrow in the dark, a black alley.Expected punches, kicks, or collisions, a sap in the back of the head, all of them are gathering momentum and eager to try, seeming to be there in the dark, like the wind blowing the soft balloon surface, sometimes sticking to the face, and occasionally brushing past The hair brushed past him, only swaying back and forth.

Isn't this a street with silk stalls?Same direction, same slope.If yes, of course the stall has already been closed without leaving any trace.But how can there be such a hometown market in Hong Kong now?Now the only stalls on the street are calligraphy and paintings brought from mainland China and hung on the walls.Twenty years later, I never knew the road, and I forgot that the street was behind the entertainment theater and parallel to this street.But in the midst of this suspicion, the past has flowed like a tide, and the surroundings have become a noisy ghost market.The stalls are really crowded, and they all develop upwards. Tall poles are erected on the small cart cabinets, covered with clothes, blocking all the storefronts along the street.

Crowded in the crowd, dizzying.But I only set my sights on a kind of floral cloth, a kind of rose red with a red envelope, so bright that it makes people blind at first sight, with round single-petal light pink flowers on it.The shadows are represented by dense dots of darker pink.There are two small yellow-green leaves juxtaposed under the flower.The same flowers also have green ground seeds, the same pink flowers, yellow-green leaves; deep purple ground seeds, pink flowers, yellow-green leaves.That kind of color matching is only available among Chinese people.But of course, the original wilderness patterned fabrics worn by Africans actually come from textile mills in Manchester, England-but they are aimed at the old African market, and they like it.The Kangxi blue-and-white porcelain imitated by the British is almost like the real thing.But the flower cloth will not fade.A classmate who went with me dipped his index finger in saliva and tried it.It is earthen cloth.My mother used to like a kind of green cloth printed with white bamboo leaves, which was used to make cheongsams, but the white bamboo leaves were covered with gypsum that hadn’t faded away, and the navy blue ground faded with a little sweat, and a bruise on the skin looked like a scar. .As far as I know, the 1930's was the only type of calico left.Where did these homespun cloths in Hong Kong come from?If it is only available in Guangdong, it must be woven in Guangzhou or nearby towns.But who wears it?The women who cut firewood on the hills in Hong Kong were also dressed in black like all Cantonese women.Upper-middle-class women wear Tang suits, either in black fragrant cloud gauze shirts or hakamas, or in light-colored fine floral fabrics of summer dresses. □ There are no babies in the District and Central, so I can't think of it for a while.I bought three pieces of the same design and couldn’t choose one of the three colors—also at this stall, I also bought a white velvet cloth with a bright red and pink two-color Fangsheng pattern. It's baby swaddle material.It turns out that these bright homemade cloths are specially made for infants to wear clothes when they are older.

In the era of the "Thirteen Banks" in the early Qing Dynasty—thirteen foreign firms were limited to a small island, and only Guangzhou businessmen were allowed to trade on the island—it was the only city close to foreign countries. To this day, there is a Cantonese dish called fried ham sandwiches. certificate.Is this kind of earthen cloth unique to them, with dense dots to paint the shadows on the petals, influenced by Japan?I only know that the tight rings are commonly used in Japanese clothing design, and the dense points are not sure.If they are the same, it should have been passed down from China earlier, because traditional Japanese cotton cloth has always been washed and does not fade. China has learned the skills of drawing and will not fail to learn more advanced dyes.

It seems that this kind of floral cloth was brought by the refugees who moved to Guangdong in the Southern Song Dynasty. I once heard my aunt say, "It's disgusting for women in the countryside in Tianjin to wear scarlet hakamas!" The sandy loess plain, near the sea near Tianjin, must have been swept by the sea wind and become even more barren.People's desire for color can be imagined.But looking at the Zhulan, Zhumen, Honglou, Danxi, and red lacquered pillars of traditional buildings, it is obvious that Chinese people love red. ──Although it is said "big red and big green", green is just a foil, because of the emphasis on symmetry.There's almost never a single big piece of green—but because clothes are more personal than houses, scarlet is off-limits outside of brides.

At that time, there was an elderly maid in a relative's house, and she still wore the northern hakama in Shanghai. "Old lady Li's foot-pricked hakama smells like urine," my aunt also joked about it.The old people are sloppy, and their domestic life is also sloppy.There is a lack of water in the countryside in the north, and it is cold, so it is difficult to take a bath.The big red cotton hakama is easy to get dirty, and there will be dark and greasy marks.Perhaps it was the association of smelly urine and the provocative nature of the big red hakama that made my aunt sick.

Figure paintings of the Tang and Song dynasties often featured people wearing flowered clothes, most of which were simplified group flowers, which may not have faithfully reproduced the original patterns.Clothes are almost always light ochre, or light blue, azurite, or stone green.Of course, this is not to say that these watered down tones are not suitable for the style of Chinese painting.there has never been.Is there an unwritten law of self-restraint? The inherent silk and cotton cloth in China are all faded, so the vast majority of people wear faded clothes most of the time, just like the traditional Korean clothing is white, because the mountainous peninsula is not rich in products and cannot afford dyes.The characters in ancient Chinese paintings are limited to light ocher, stone blue, stone green, and light blue. They were originally realistic, but they are faded red, green, dark emerald blue.The most cherished color of the Chinese people is "blue comes from blue and is better than blue", "red men and green women" -- not only officials wear big red robes.Later generations stick to the rules when painting, so the people in the paintings wear that diluted color.

In the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Mao Bijiang wrote in his memoirs that Dong Xiaowan watched the tide "clothed with red shirts", and everyone looked up to him like Lingbo Fairy.I always thought that "retired red" was the lightest pink, but in fact it was probably light ochre, but as a famous courtesan, of course she only wore new clothes, which were dyed light ochre red, which made her look more graceful in the painting. It is not the influence of painting, but the entry of the Manchus into the Customs. The Manchus were not a red-loving nation. The architecture and interior decoration of the Qing Palace tended to be paler. ".There is a proverb in the past ten years: "If you are safe, you must be filial." If the white lady is not a new widow, it is impossible for her to be white, which has become her signature.Most of the prostitutes here wear the color of the lake, and some wear fish-belly white or "bamboo root green" (light yellowish brown with a broad back); Xiaojiabiyu Zhao Erbao and her brother both wear moon white.In the book, the funeral arrangement uses the color of the lake and the moonlight.Apparently, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, these taboos no longer existed in brothels in Shanghai and small households in the vicinity. Bright colors are only favored by conservative peasants, and they have been reduced to an unrecorded subculture.In addition, big red and big green only exist in weddings, and weddings have always been the wastebasket of ancient customs. The textual research on Anzhi Festival in "Children□□□□" is also a festival that had been lost at that time. The term "bridal chamber" even dates back to the cave dwelling era. Presumably later, a house was built, and a new couple was still given away according to the custom of the previous generation.Spend the night in a cave.The bridal chamber is also known as "green house". Presumably, in the Han Dynasty, there were too many safe and quiet caves due to dense population, so we built a hut with green branches in the courtyard, imitating the temporary houses of the ancients for summer or hunting and grazing. Since when, even the peasants have abandoned bright colors, and only wear the red hakama of Tianjin country women for babies.There is a place nearby where women paint erotic palaces as a side job—although I only know Yang Liuqing’s New Year paintings—they are all old habits and are regarded as vulgar customs.Perhaps the reason is the irresistible force of fashion. Even in the countryside, the bright colors are finally out of date and too rustic.But before that, Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties had also penetrated into the grassroots of society. Women had to guard against leisure everywhere, so they had to hide their strengths and bide their time. The precious colors could only be reserved for children to wear.In Hong Kong in 1940, even poor children wore Western-style children's clothes, and those who wore traditional floral cloth were even shrunk down to nursing children. At that time, I didn't expect so much, I just felt ecstasy, the first time I touched the texture of history - warm and thick, not as crisp as foreign cloth - but not like an antique, cool and smooth, unable to touch it Leave a personal trace; it has its own complete and eternal existence, you have no part, and it has been abandoned when you caress it.And I am a collector who writes inscriptions on ancient paintings. Only when there is more "no successor" -- the material is cut into clothes, it can no longer belong to others.I compared it to the mirror with my hand, as if I was wearing a famous painting.It is impossible to test when it disappeared in the Central Plains and the north and south of the Yangtze River.After the Hong Kong War, I brought it back to Shanghai, made clothes and wore it. Other than finding it strange, most people didn’t pay attention to it. Only occasionally, I saw the hawker as if I had known each other. I stared at it for a moment, and if I realized something, a slight sneer appeared on my face.Probably seen similar rags in the country.Of course it didn't take long for it to fade away.It's like grabbing the hem of an ancient man's clothes, and after a while, it disappears again. After the Communist Party came, I received two ration cloths.One was lake-colored, as rough and heavy as homespun. I made a Tang suit with bell-sleeved blouse, and the other made a snow-green foreign gauze hakama.That was the last time I was reluctant to part with someone from the past. Queue to register account.A veteran cadre who looked like the Eighth Route Army was setting up a yellow lacquer desk for a primary school at the street corner. When it was my turn to step up, he saw that he was a fellow villager. I nodded, feeling very proud.Obviously not an intellectual. And now, after all these years, I suddenly found myself on that magical street of silk stalls again, but in Hong Kong today there will be no such kind of street vendors in the country market.Isn't this exactly what I try to avoid, the feeling of revisiting old places?I can't help but feel wronged.I'd rather risk my body and skin to hide from it, but meet on a narrow road, and in this dark and dead empty street, it's like being sealed together in an iron bucket, no matter how beloved the cat is, it will tear your face and scratch your eyes blind Eye.Fortunately, I was absent-minded and a little numb because of the fear of being robbed at any time. And I am starting to wonder, will I go the wrong way?Why is there no one on the side street leading to the gold shop in the night market?Of course, it is more difficult to go uphill, and it is even more difficult to walk in the dark.It's like walking for half a day.Just as he was patient, he pushed forward step by step, when he suddenly looked up and saw a row of sunny bungalows high above, like a lacquered scroll, but it was only platinum, hanging alone in the darkness.Because it is a small storefront house, not a building.There are no houses on the opposite side of the street, just like "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", which is even more suspicious and surprising. It’s not a disadvantage to shop around. When I walked to the other one, the young and mature young clerk behind the counter was wearing a rare robe—I don’t know if it’s to attract tourists—sleeping and smiling. In their undefended city, it seems to be the Northern Song Dynasty. of peace and prosperity.Except for the gold ornaments in the glass case, one can tell at a glance that it is not ancient China.The goods are all the same, maybe it's my hallucination, even the shop assistants are exactly the same. I bought two little blessing necklaces to be strung on thin gold chains.The way home was still in the dark, somehow it seemed a little safer.In fact, their tacit understanding of the undefended city - if there is any - will not extend a hundred paces away.I didn't meet him when I came here just now, but a figure can appear at any time.But after all, I feel a little relieved, and my eyes are more used to the darkness.Only then did I see a wooden gate blocking the street, but it was wide open, and there were only 30-foot-high crosses on both sides.Probably the door is set but always open.Legend has it that Jia Baoyu was reduced to a street soldier, wasn't he just a watchman to guard the street gate?How can there be relics of the era when the curfew was encouraged, outside Lukang?Why didn't I see it when I bought cloth before?Then it's still not this street. I really didn't expect this new discovery before leaving. Of course, it may be ancient, not historical sites.But how can it be preserved until now, especially when the whole island is being demolished?Hong Kong is like that, maybe.Suddenly, a smell of excrement floated in the air, especially strong in the darkness.It's not pouring the toilet, there is no sound of flushing the toilet.Evening is not the time to empty the toilet.It's not that someone is defecating on the street, the open air is more open, and it won't be so hot.Could it be that when the toilet seat above the store is opened, it smells so bad?Moreover, it is the world of Marco Polo, full of color, fragrance and taste.I think it's Hong Kong's long-awaited glances, with a hint of comfort, if it's for my reminiscence's sake.A smile moved around my lips in the dark, but I couldn't smile because the suspicion was saying goodbye to it.