Chapter 20 Seventeen, what country are you from?

back view install: I also heard a Nicaraguan say this about Argentines: In a tavern, a Nicaraguan asked another Nicaraguan: "What is Ego?" Argentine." An Argentine next to him heard it, stood up and asked in a rough voice, "What do you mean by 'little' Argentine?" You don't have to apologize, I understand that I'm not the most important part of you.That stage has long passed.Parents, for a 20-year-old, I’m afraid it’s like an old house: you live in it, it shelters you from wind and rain, gives you warmth and security, but a house is a house, and you don’t go with it Speak, communicate, be considerate of it, and please it.You don't want to say "sorry" when you break a corner while moving furniture.Parents, it's just the old house you're used to living in without seeing it.

I guess you will have to wait for a full 20 years before you will look back and start staring at this old house with no sound, and find that it is dilapidated and weak, gradually moving towards the "nothingness" of life and the "destruction" of the universe; Only then will you turn your head and stare deeply. you graduated.Several scenes overlapped in front of my eyes: you graduated from kindergarten, because you didn't understand the meaning of "graduation", you still have to go to kindergarten the next day no matter what.When I got there, I saw that all the friends with new faces had disappeared.You stood blankly at the door, daring not to go in, and unwilling to leave, just standing at the door with a small face, confused and lost. "They," you say, "where are they?"

Then came the first day of elementary school.The teacher holds your hand, and you walk into the classroom amidst a bunch of brightly colored and chattering primary school students.I watched your back disappear behind the door; your back with a schoolbag on your back. In that fleeting moment, I already knew: the fate with you, in this life, will be watching you leave again and again, silently waving at your back.In the future, this kind of scene will be repeated repeatedly: you are in middle school, watching you rush into the queue, no longer shy; Without looking back, he boldly entered the pass and really disappeared into the vast crowd.

To graduate is to leave.Yes, you're leaving your friends, you're leaving the town, you're leaving the house and the pond you grew up in, you're leaving your parents at the same time, and you're leaving forever. Of course, you must "leave" in order to develop yourself. The so-called parents are those who keep looking at their backs with both joy and sadness, and who want to hug back but dare not say anything. land It is no accident that you have a "home" and that "home" is the small town of Kronborg, Andrei.It starts with your mother.If you google your mother's resume in English, you will find this line of description: "The daughter of a refugee, she was born in Taiwan in 1952." Refugee means "refugee" in English and "refugee" in German It is "Fluchling".The so-called "escape from disaster", Chinese emphasizes the word "difficulty", while German emphasizes the word "escape".In order to escape an immediate "difficulty", the "fugitives" actually entered a long-term and slow "difficulty". Language and cultural confidence and self-esteem. "Escape" is between "difficulty" and "difficulty".Your mother is the daughter of Diaspora in the 20th century.

So throughout her life, there was no small town that could be called "home".She went from one small town to another, and every time she came to a small town, she had to accept people's strange eyes; she finally made friends and became familiar with the smell of the town, but it was time to leave again.She is an eternal "transfer student", an eternal new kid on the block.Strangers, can quickly become friends, the problem is, friends, become strangers faster, because you keep leaving. The "fugitive" was cut off by the sword of the times to connect her with the land, tradition, and clan friends. She floats and hangs in mid-air.Therefore, she may have a particularly thorough view of the world, because she is not in the group of friends, and her sight is not blocked, but she is in a kind of loneliness of the soul.

She gave you a home, deeply rooted in the land, firmly wrapped in a small town, because she wants you to grow up on the soil; she hopes you have your own village before going global; she hopes you , on the wandering road in the future, there will always be an unchanging town waiting to accept you, and there will always be old friends who will embrace you without asking anything.She doesn't want you to be like her, to be a wanderer of the soul. That may be the beautiful state of literature, but it is the pain of life.No one wants her child to suffer, even though he may be a deeper artist because of his suffering.

I feel the melancholy and reluctance expressed in your letter.Don't you already know that "graduation" hides a deep metaphor?Don't you already know that you are not only leaving your small town and your friends, but you are also leaving almost the only pure and carefree life in your life, leaving yourself as an ignorant teenager, and leaving forever?Those good friends who got along with each other day and night, Andre, went their separate ways from then on, and the dust and sand of the years rolled on their faces, and when they met again, they were no longer the original teenagers.

I remembered the scene where you stood at the gate of the kindergarten and wandered. Where are you from Yes, I remember Kronborg's neighborhood being international and mixed.So I'm glad you're not special at all.Also because of the diversity of races and cultures in the town, my "foreign mother" insists on speaking Chinese with you on any occasion, without attracting attention at all, and Germans envy you for growing up in a bilingual or even trilingual environment.And because of this, you know, Andre, in Taiwan, one out of every 8 newborn babies is born to "foreign mothers", but many Taiwanese don't respect the culture and language of these "foreign mothers" Vietnamese, Malay, Filipino... In the minds of many people, these are inferior cultures and languages, and these "foreign mothers" are required to "integrate" into Taiwan and become Taiwanese with a strong cultural attitude.I think, if the Germans ask me not to speak Chinese with my children with a high profile of a strong culture, and ask me to "integrate" and become a German, how do you think I will react?

It really takes a long time to learn to respect a different culture.You just grew up in a relatively good period in Germany. The Germans before 1950, I believe, were not as tolerant as they are now.Not to mention the Nazi period, the attitude towards the Turks in the 1950s was also very bad.But internationalization can really be learned, and perhaps for Taiwanese, it is only a matter of time.However, that was a long time, and now the "foreign mothers" who raise their children there are having a hard time, and their children are also deprived of a diverse environment that is proud of their mother tongue.

I have also met some "strange" people recently. The "strange" is that their identities are so complicated that you can't introduce them.We are still used to say that he is Japanese, he is French, he is Indian and so on, but what do you do with Ilya.We are all judges of the Berlin International Literary Prize. The 10 judges come from 10 language regions, and I am in charge of the Chinese region.Ilya sat next to me, and I asked him, "Where are you from?" It's a standard greeting, but he pondered for a long time, and then said, "I have a German passport." "Oh." I know, trouble up.He himself didn't know how to answer the ancient and primitive question "Where are you from?"

Ilya was born in Bulgaria and speaks Bulgarian, a Slavic language. When he was 6 years old, his parents fled to Germany with him and obtained a German passport for him as protection.Then they moved to Kenya, Africa, where he attended English school, so he can speak English and African Swahili fluently.After graduating from high school, he went back to Munich to study at the university and obtained a doctorate, so German became the language of his writing.After that, he went to Mumbai to live for 6 years, and lived in Arabia for a few years, and he believed in Islam... "Where are you from?" This question is becoming more and more difficult to answer in the 21st century of great mobility.Then I came across "soft" in Hong Kong. "Soft" is an Indian name, and he also looks like an Indian, with very soft eyes.If he is walking on a certain street in a certain city, people may intuitively think that he is from India or Pakistan.But no, he is an "indigenous person" in Hong Kong, and his family has been born in Hong Kong for several generations, and he is much more Hong Kong than the Hong Kong Chinese who are all over the street.He speaks English and holds a British passport, but he is from Hong Kong, but because of his blood, he is not recognized as a "Chinese" person; he looks like an Indian, but he has no deep relationship with India... "Where are you from?" How do you want him to answer? So I am thinking, with the rapid trend of globalization, do we gradually have to abandon the old concept that "everyone must belong to one country"?More and more people may only have culture and language, but no country; it is very likely that the country he holds a passport is not the home of his heart, and the country he is willing to serve refuses to grant him nationality; or, more and more There is no such thing as the concept of "loyalty" at all? But no matter what fundamental changes have taken place in this unit of the country, whether it exists or disappears, prospers or perishes, becomes larger or smaller, Andrei, the town will not change.Dirt and memory don't change. I'm glad you had a small town in your heart before you sailed off to sea. MM