Chapter 218 Recalling Yantai

As soon as Yantai is mentioned, my memories and feelings come from all directions... But what else can I say about Yantai? The Yantai of my childhood, the desolate and lonely Yantai seventy years ago, has disappeared from the eyes of modern people.Today's Yantai is a large port extending in all directions on the east coast of the Bohai Sea. It is full of vigor and radiance and is busy welcoming guests from all over the world.It will not remember that seventy years ago there was a lonely child who wandered on a corner of the beach and spent eight years in the ebb and flow of the tide. A friend from Yantai told me that a very luxurious hotel had been built on the former site of the Dongshan Naval Academy, and she even invited me to stay there for a while.My imagination is too weak to dare to build a majestic pavilion of seven treasures on my deserted beach!

I left Yantai Dongshan in 1911, and went back once in 1917, and not much has changed in between.When I went there again in 1935, the Dongshan Naval Academy had already stationed troops, and all I could see from outside the wall was the small, dilapidated building jutting out from the top of the wall.At this time, I also noticed that on the road from Kazimen on the mountain to Dongshan Haixiao, this piece of land belongs to Jingou Village. On the tombstones of the cluster mounds in the fields on both sides, there are many words of "virgin" and "virtuous woman".I suddenly recalled that when I was young, there were clusters of mounds in the fields outside the wall of my study, and I often heard the sad voice of women crying "Master" beside the tombs. It was the wronged widow who vented her sorrow and sorrow!The feudal society's oppression of women, I still can't understand when I was a child.

The naval training camp in the north of the village and the naval academy in the south of the village no longer exist, but the village of Jingouzhai in the middle must still rest peacefully in the mountains and seas.This is a village house that I am familiar with, and I feel kind when I think about it. There are more than a hundred cottages nestled against each other. My simple and brave folks live and work in it.They must now be as progressive and prosperous as the peasants across the country.Please accept the blessings I send from thousands of miles away!November 15, 1984