Chapter 3 1. At the age of eighteen

Andre: You're panting on the phone and just scored from a football game.In the evening, go to the bar in the village with friends to chat.I have a driver's license test tomorrow.I will go to Italy in the autumn vacation and come to Asia to learn Chinese in the summer vacation.You've started browsing admissions data for American colleges. "But, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do in the future," you say, "M, what did you know when you were eighteen?" Andre, remember that girl we met in a Muslim restaurant in Xi'an last summer?She came to Xi'an from a small village in Gansu to work. She worked more than ten hours a day and earned more than 200 yuan a month, which was sent back to her parents to support her.The girl was ragged and looked tired, but from her eyes, you could tell that she was very immature, only sixteen years old.What does she know, what does she not know?Can you imagine?

What did I know at eighteen?don't know what? I live in a fishing village by the sea, and there is only one narrow road in the fishing village; when going to work and class, passenger buses, motorcycles, bicycles, and vegetable trolleys block the road in a haphazard manner, and then it becomes quiet, and the old yellow dog sleeps In the middle of the road, the sows in the alley were also crowded and brought a bunch of piglets out for a walk.The sea breeze carried a salty smell, and the broad leaves of the coconut trees rustled. I don't know what a highway is.Five years later, when I arrived in Los Angeles, on the expressway exiting the airport, I found that the line of oncoming cars was full of bright white lights, while I could see all the taillights of cars on my own lane, shining red.How can it be so neat?I was greatly surprised.At that time, I was already twenty-three years old, and I was still used to the concept of roads where people and vehicles trampled on and chickens and ducks competed for the road.

I don't know what a sewer is.Typhoons often strike at night, and tsunamis strike at the same time, and the sea water rolls towards the village like a pot of soup that has been overturned suddenly.At dawn, there is a vast ocean, people's pots and pans, bamboo stools The bamboo bed floated to the front of the temple, and the fish and shrimps in the fish pond also swam to the street in groups.After a few days, the water receded, and people lifted up their trousers to clean the gutter in front of the door.The greasy black and sticky mud was dug out from the ditch, and the corpses of dead chickens and dogs were mixed in the mud.The whole street was filled with a pungent rancid smell.The scorching sun shone on the gutted gutter, and it was hard to say whether it was a natural disinfection or an acceleration of the decay of the corpse.

I haven't been in a concert hall or an art gallery.The only experience related to "performance" is the Gezai Opera in front of the temple to reward the gods.Elderly people bring stools and fans to the square to watch plays, while young people memorize books at home, preparing for never-ending exams; singing comes from inferior loudspeakers, and there is no way to hide day and night like bombing. Otherwise, in the only movie theater in the fishing village, there is an occasional singer singing.In the movie theater, there was a smell of urine and the sour smell of human body sweat, the electric fan was rattling, the child kicked the back of the chair, the singer joked loudly and sang hard.The crowd below shouted from time to time, twisting and twisting.

swimming pool?No.You said, why do we need a swimming pool when we have the sea.But, Andrey, the sea is not for swimming.You know, our coastline is a military line, not a place to play.Besides, there are piles of rubbish on the beach.Fishing villages don't have garbage disposals, so people dump their trash on empty beaches.The wind picked up, and scattered things were flying all over the sky. I don't know, the trash goes to the science department. There is a river not far from the fishing village. Every day when I go to school, I can smell a dizzy strange smell. I don’t know what it is.Many years later, I realized that it was the abandoned cables that people burned on the river bank; that village gave birth to many brainless babies.

I don't know what environmental pollution and ecological destruction are. We wear white clothes and black dresses every day, and we go to school for such a long time, from waiting for the bus at six o’clock in the morning to returning home at seven or eight o’clock in the evening. .I don't know what fashion, makeup, hairstyles are.So I don't know what consumption is.yes i didn't shop Past the department store.There are only small shops run by fishermen in the village, and the glass cabinets are so full that you can't even see what's inside.Children's socks, schoolbags for students, panties for granny, bras for women and undershirts for men.There may also be a bamboo hat and plastic rain boots for sale.

My eighteen-year-old, Andre, was in Taiwan in 1969 and 1970.You may be taken aback and say, M, that year, Apollo went to the moon, how could you "know" nothing in such a complete way? Don't forget one thing, called the gap between urban and rural areas, Andre.The more impoverished and backward the country, the greater the gap between urban and rural areas.My experience was that of a rural fishing village in the south, which was very different from Taipei at that time.What's more, Taipei at that time was also a small closed city.The population of Taiwan is 14 million, and the average national income is only 258 US dollars.Taiwan still belongs to the so-called "Third World".

I am about to turn eighteen, Apollo landed on the moon, American and Vietnamese troops invaded Khmer, fierce anti-Vietnam War demonstrations broke out in the United States, and a college student in Ohio, where I went to study later, was shot to death; German Chancellor Brandt came to power, He knelt down in Warsaw and begged for the forgiveness of history; the Japanese Red Army hijacked a plane to North Korea and Yukio Mishima committed suicide.Also, China's Cultural Revolution is at a terrifying climax.I don't know much about these, because, Andre, our house doesn't even have a TV.Even if there is, I may not be able to read it, because that year, I was admitted to university; reading is everything, and the world does not exist.

I'm about to turn eighteen, and the section of the highway from Keelung to Yangmei has started construction.The Taiwan Independence Alliance was established in the United States, Chiang Ching-kuo was assassinated, Lei Chen, who had been imprisoned for nearly ten years, was released from prison, the US Information Office in Tainan was bombed, the "Communist case" broke out in the university I was going to be admitted to, and many students were arrested and sent to prison.The movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands began to surge in the United States. I know very little.Andre, that year, Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior announced that they seized 4.23 million publications.

Are you depicting a gloomy and oppressive society, an ignorant village, a wasted youth, M? It's not that simple, Andrea. For many people there, especially individuals with personalities and thoughts, such as Lei Zhen and Yin Haiguang—you will know who they are later, life is depressed and life is wasted.But the whole society, if we look at it over a long period of time, is gradually maturing in depression and gradually accumulating energy in waste.Because people who have experienced oppression are more aware of the fragility of freedom and cherish the rarity of freedom.Haven't you noticed that the Germans who have gone through the history of the Nazis are a little deeper than the Swiss who have always been peaceful?

Does that "ignorant" village deprive me or give me?Andre, left the fishing village at the age of eighteen. Thirty years later, I suddenly understood one thing, the relationship between me and this fishing village. I left the fishing village and went to the ends of the world. In the years that followed, I faced the reversal of black and white values, watched the change of power, witnessed the disintegration of empires and the collapse of walls, and participated in determining the rise and fall of city-states.When things are subverted, infiltrated, "modernized," "post-modernized," complicated, or manipulated to the point where it's impossible to tell what's true from what's not, and right from wrong, I think of the people in the fishing village: holding babies in the background Gezixi Huadan secretly breastfeeding in her arms, the grandmother who sold her daughter to a "vegetable shop", the fisherman next door who died at sea without seeing his body, the owner of the grocery store who always gave an extra piece of candy, and was arrested for borrowing tuition for his child while riding a bicycle. The rural policeman who was killed by a train, the veteran who went to the beach every evening to see the mainland, the Amis woman who smiled very happily but cried very sadly...these people exist in my mind in their most primitive and authentic appearance, making me feel I am awake, like an anchor, firmly anchoring my value. Yes, Andre, the "ignorant and ignorant" fishing village did not give me knowledge, but it gave me a kind of ability, the ability of compassion, the ability of sympathy, which made me face the arrogance of power and the disguise of desire in the future And the false times of various times, although it is difficult, it can still be penetrated, and the core concern of civilization can be seen.You understand, right? At the same time I see my flaws.It is not difficult to make up lessons about highways, sewers, environmental protection, government responsibility, political freedom, etc. that were unknown at the age of eighteen.But the art of living, which includes taste, cannot make up for it.Music and art still belong to the scope of knowledge in me, not inner self-cultivation.The beauty of life is something that I have to remind myself to maintain from time to time, like a bunch of keys that cannot be forgotten, a pot of beloved plants that must be watered every day, but the art of life should be an internalized temperament, like Breathing is like an unconscious gesture.I strongly feel my clumsiness in the art of living; the poverty of the fishing village makes me poor in beauty, but having knowledge without beauty is like having no tropical fish in the sea. And your generation, Andrei, what does it know and what does it not know?The Internet allows you to have a wide range of knowledge, the affluence of society makes you used to the pursuit and enjoyment of material things, and the influence of art and beauty is at your fingertips.Eighteen-year-olds of you will discuss the justice of the US invasion of Iraq, you are familiar with every fashion brand and car model, you may have heard Mozart's "Magic Flute", read Shakespeare's "King Lear", and visited New York City. Broadway, admired the "Water Moon" in Taipei, and also visited the British Museum and the Vatican Church.The cities you live in have their own concert halls, libraries, art galleries, galleries, newspapers, swimming pools, their own art festivals, music festivals, film festivals... You are simply colorful tropical fish in the sea.But what I think about is: growing up in an environment like yours - you know, most of the young people in Taiwan vote to admire and emulate rich entrepreneurs and powerful politicians, your generation "anchor" What would be the value of ?What will be the ultimate care?Is there a connection between you and that tired girl from Gansu?Do you think, my Andrei, that beautiful tropical fish also have direction in their swimming, or, would you say provocatively, that this is a pointless question, since tropical fish live for themselves? MM May 1, 2004