Chapter 3 back to those days

I used to exist in a micro-dot on the map, and I was an educated youth who jumped in line for six years, and only entered other micro-dots, such as universities and cities, until the end of the "Cultural Revolution".I was suddenly bruised in a tinier building and a tinier apartment and a tinier room. Some people call my village "Maqiao".In fact, "Maqiao" is a fictitious place name I wrote in a certain novel, and it is also a common place name in rural China, so it has nothing to do with my whereabouts.Some reporters also said that I moved to the countryside out of disappointment with the literary world—this means that I was involved in an ideological conflict in the 1990s. ﹡Actually, this reporter didn't know that long before the turmoil happened, I had already set off a homestead and built a house on the Shanli, which had nothing to do with revenge.Even as early as the 1980s, not long after I entered the city, my wife revealed in an article: "We have a little secret that we will not tell now."——That secret is actually the plan to return home in the future.

It has been planned for a long time. I am born with few people rather than many people, and I like to be quiet rather than noisy.Even when I was an educated youth, apart from poverty that made people deeply anxious, the vastness and cleanliness of nature never bothered me, and it has always been the excitement in my heart in many later literary works.Since entering the city, one of the scenes I have dreamed more often is the train station. I am late and miss the train again and again, and I am so anxious and embarrassed after chasing the rear of the car-but I don’t know why I have to take this trip car.I guess this is nothing more than a reminder that fate is calling me to an unknown place.

When I lived in Changsha or Haikou, I always chose the suburbs, as if the city was a huge vortex, throwing me to the edge time and time again, as long as the city full of tall buildings rotates faster, as long as I hold the keychain As soon as I let go of my hand, I will fly away from the doors that no longer belong to me, soar into the sky in the hula-la storm, and be thrown to a distant place by centrifugal force. On Lunar New Year's Eve in 1971, I was determined to escape the countryside.The fire was dying in the middle of the night, and several educated youths who had returned from various places to visit relatives in the city gathered around the fire, silent for a long time, only heaving and sighing.A daring underground circle, once devoted to poetry, philosophy and debates about Mao Zedong, has cooled.I don't know who it is, but he still made a grand statement in the tone of a revolutionist: Go to the fucking countryside!We should all go to town and be intellectuals!Only the intellectuals, not the peasants, are the locomotives of the revolution!

We young middle school students are ashamed to complain about the hardships of the countryside and the depression of youth, but we are happy to exaggerate our historical responsibilities.Since feeding pigs is no longer fun, farmers’ night school is no longer fun, and violin and performance teams are no longer fun, then the word “intellectual” is really fascinating.We overwhelmed ourselves and made quick decisions: who would go into philosophy, who would go into history, who would go into foreign languages, and who would go into economics... As for me, the youngest, I don’t know much about anything, so I took up the symbolic and simple job of literature , like throwing stones at the beginning of the total attack.

Thirty years have passed, and I think back to that romantic New Year's Eve that year, and I recall everyone's hilarious handshake and code words: "Destroy fascism!" Passionate political movies come back to banal real life.One word turned out to be a prophecy: Most of the partygoers on that New Year's Eve turned out to be professors, painters, or writers, completing the tasks assigned by the underground gang.However, the times have changed drastically, and the trend of marketization is only to quickly convert knowledge into benefits, into good income, big houses, Japanese cars, American green cards, and the gradual estrangement after everyone forgets each other, including inappropriate words when meeting.

If it wasn't for the banquet, some people would yawn again and again, and they couldn't even find an excuse to meet. Where is the "revolution"? Have "elimination of fascism" and "freedom belongs to the people" been just a joke? Another old educated youth passed away. He died young because he lost his job and had no money for medical treatment.Including the previous two, three companions have already left me.This is something outside the circle of successful people.More workers are unemployed, more farmers are losing their land, and more garbage villages and blood selling villages are multiplying in the shadow of tall buildings. You can't cause even a second of serious complexion at the banquet.But what about heavy?Have you stopped speculating on properties, collecting antiques, going abroad for vacations, and curtly catering to all the important people in your network of interests after you have a heavy face?No, life is still like this, history is still like this.A timely moral look is good for mental skin care, but it doesn't add or take anything away from the world.

I felt my heart beating fast, and suddenly I had the urge to flee again-although this time there was no one to meet.Maybe I should go a little farther and go back to the starting point of the last escape, to see the place where I bid farewell in a hurry, to see a window with lights in my memory, or a shade of a tree when I was resting under the scorching sun—— Did things go wrong from there?Life has passed the halfway point, leaving behind a pile of irreparable resumes, but am I still fanciful and want to start all over again with an eraser? An old French woman in a vineyard once muttered to me: "To be close to nature is to be close to God." The question is: Do I believe in God?Believe in a God who never diverts suffering but never eliminates it?Believe in a God who never transforms injustice but never undoes it?Believe in the God who for centuries has pushed us to flee but never let us know why and where?

I love the distance, the sky and the land, just some personal preferences.I hate the heartlessness or sentimentality of too many so-called upper-class people, and I can't stand the more and more common speechlessness in frequent exchanges, and it's just some personal eccentricities.I'm an unlikable person, not even myself at times.I also know that if I dare to say everything in my heart, I will be hated or even hated by you - I am willing to love, respect and love you.In this way, I can only shut up now, and I can only go to a place where everyone has left, in an empty theater where the actors have left, and be a guardian of sets and props.

I would like to walk there like a shadow, with the sound of kicking a stone out of nothing. This has nothing to do with God. After burying the parents and bringing up the kids, maybe it's time.My wife and I took a dog and walked the path we walked many years ago.