Chapter 19 16. The town hidden in your heart

graduate MM: I graduated. I was sitting on the balcony, and the late afternoon sun was shining through the trees, casting long shadows on the ground.It had just rained, and it was still wet everywhere.I lit a cigarette, poured myself a glass of red wine, and looked at the blue sky.The smoke slowly lingered and disappeared, and I began to think about the past days. Do all graduates feel a kind of slow nostalgia and reluctance?I'm leaving, my "home" in this small town where I've lived my whole life.I began to think, what is my "home"?The most important thing is not my parents (MM, don't be angry), but my friends.How could I forget those Sunday afternoons, lingering until the last moment, pretending not to remember that there was homework to do.On dark, snowy nights, we squeeze into small town cafes for hot tea.On bright summer afternoons, we would sneak out to the lawn of the small town park to play football, lie by the pond and talk until dark, sometimes as teals swooped over our heads.

Kronborg, a small town with a population of only 20,000, sounds like it will bore you to death, especially for us young people, but I think it is "home", and I feel a special nostalgia.People might think that the culture of such a small town must be very monotonous, and the residents in it are probably the most typical, most impersonal, and conservative Turks.In fact, on the contrary, Kronborg International is very good.Take my three best friends, you may remember them? Munir, who is of mixed German and Tunisian descent, was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Dubai and Tunisia.Freddy, my buddy who "wears a pair of pants" with me, is of German-Brazilian descent and speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French and English in addition to German.As soon as David saw his name, you knew he was a Jew.David's mother is German and his father is Israeli, so he also speaks Yiddish.Then there is myself, who is of mixed German and Taiwanese descent.When our four buddies took to the streets, we were simply a "mixed party".But you know, we are not special at all in Kronborg, our background is almost "typical" for the small town of Kronborg.Among the good friends in the circle outside the best friend, I can count them with my fingers: Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Spaniards, French, British, Americans, Koreans...Of course, different cultural backgrounds do sometimes It will cause disputes, but most of the time, the "half-race" and "half-race" get along very well and have a tacit understanding.

For example, we randomly go to an empty football field and prepare to play.Whether they recognize each other or not, as soon as the number is enough, the team will start to compete.Almost every time, there will be a natural split into two teams: the German team and the international team.Anyone with an international background will automatically be assigned to the international team.It has nothing to do with racism, it's just fun.I myself have never been discriminated against because of my Chinese ancestry.And, we often make jokes about racial differences. Yesterday I was at a football game with Feridi and Feridi's blond girlfriend.It happened to be Brazil's two sworn feuds against Argentina.Freddy was of course excited to cheer for his Brazil team, so I deliberately cheered for Argentina.Soccer matches are bound to spark political and cultural clashes, and soon we're really arguing about whether the Brazilians or the Argentines are more arrogant, stupid, ugly, etc.Halfway through the quarrel, Freddy's girlfriend asked curiously, "What would happen if both of you were pure Germans?"

We froze for a moment, and then the two of them said almost simultaneously: "Then we will suffocate to death, forget about jumping off the building." Multinational cultures are like spices in soup, adding flavor to life. I'm going to Hong Kong soon, what a different world it is.My worry is, how do I say goodbye to my Kronborg friends?How can I say goodbye to a friend who has been the core of my life for 10 years, and know in my heart that life has many forks, and this goodbye is likely to be forever?Even those people you don't know very well, but you like very much, you haven't had a chance to tell them how much you like them, and in the future, they will completely disappear from your life.I feel a kind of regret.You might say, Andre, life is like this, if you move forward on the same line, there is nothing to regret.I know, but I still feel regretful and sad.

So I'm sitting here on this balcony, thinking back to the good times we had together, holding the memories in my heart, and moving forward, but knowing where I came from. Andre