1
In Mr. Chen’s seventh year in the United States, the card finally fell into the palm of his hand: a hard-plastic, green-striped card with the immortal statue of Liberty on the left; On the right is Chen Huansheng’s face, full of his age.
This is his third year of birth.
For the first, his mind was still full of Contra, and his red cravat was wrapped round his forehead, and he was proud of himself in the mirror; Second, he was still standing in front of the mirror, his hair stiff with gel, when he was in love, and his conviction that he was in love with a girl had shocked the world. Later, I thought it was nothing more than holding hands and kissing, then hugging the dormitory bed sheets and going to the rented house to spend the night, running the procedure that millions of people have done.
Now what about the third? Chen Huansheng rubbed the small card. His face was covered with fingerprints. He didn’t want to look in the mirror, much less at his own face. He was alone, and this was his third year of birth.
For this little card, he has never returned home.
Consulted immigration lawyer, the somebody else say is not cannot answer, be afraid of visa formalities to go up an accident. Now that I’m out, I want to stay abroad and get this card. So seven years did not return home, there is no imagination in suffering.
The first thing to do when you get the card is to call home and book a flight home.
My father was silent for a moment on the other end of the line. “That’s good,” he said. “Hurry up and come back.
Chen Huansheng hung up the phone and measured the exact amount as he sucked on his coffee.
Flights back home can only go to provincial capitals at most. But the county where Chen Huansheng grew up is still the same as in the past. In the United States, I always hear news reports about how things are going at home, but it has nothing to do with his small town. There may be two “domestic” ones, one scaring Americans on the news and one dedicated to his native county.
As a student in the provincial capital, Mr. Chen used to book tickets at bus stops in advance and take a seven-hour bus ride home. But now that he was in America, he had to rely on acquaintances. The so-called acquaintances, in fact, are known in the United States, they aimed at the opportunity to return home for development, in the provincial capital fell.
When I asked, I replied to Chen Huansheng, “The bus to your county seat is not crowded. You don’t need to make a reservation. Just buy it now.”
The train left only once that day. Unwilling to spend the night near the bus station with his green card, Chen huansheng wanted to return to the county town early to visit his grandfather. But after all, the acquaintance is not familiar, not easy to urge.
When the provincial capital got off the plane, dazed and jet-lagged, Chen Huansheng was dragged to drink by acquaintances. He hadn’t seen each other for two years, and he wasn’t sure whether he should talk about the present in China or the past in the United States. Sit on the barbecue town, arrive a bit more, fight to pay the bill, then run to the passenger station in a panic. B: Ask at the window. I’m sorry, but the tickets are sold out. Acquaintance is anxious, want to follow window theory.
Chen Huansheng immediately found the driver and asked directly: “Eldest brother, I have to go this afternoon, what do you say?”
The driver was a very thin middle-aged man. He had a very thick gold chain around his neck. I don’t know whether it was the chain that made his neck appear thick or his neck collapsed under the weight of the chain.
“Two hundred.” The driver was smoking in the driver’s seat with his neck tilted. He didn’t even give Mr. Chen an eye.
It is difficult for an acquaintance to say he is sorry, but if he points at the bus, Chen Huansheng will have to intervene.
As soon as I got on the bus, I realized there were no seats. Look back and forth again, still no seats. His feet were sticky, and he had stepped on a piece of banana peel in the aisle.
The bus, which Chen Huansheng had taken countless times, was overloaded every year and festival, and the corridor was full of people. It lasted seven hours and its bottom could be tossed into eight petals. Now it was his turn to sit in the aisle, too.
“Why don’t you stay at my house tonight?” Acquaintance asked.
“It’s all right, just a few, pretty good.” Chen Huansheng was not willing to commit such a crime.
“Mother f * * k! If you can live in America, don’t come back.”
“Who said, you this development is quite good yao.” Chen Huansheng laughed.
The driver glanced back at Chen Huansheng, and the gold chain swung behind him: “Why are you back from America? There’s no seat for Mars! Just let you in.”
2
When Mr. Chen and a few Other Chinese took the bus back to his apartment after arriving in the United States, he was invariably greeted by a black buddy, braids and hip-hop pants, who never sat when there was an empty seat in the car but stood in the aisle, his underwear protrudingfrom his waist rubbing against the arm rest of the door. The Negro liked to puff his cheeks and eyes and stare at the yellow faces in the car without scruple. A few Chinese feel uncomfortable being stared at, want an eye for an eye, but never enough temper. Had to comfort themselves, “don’t bother with an old black dispute.”
Now home, Chen Huansheng can only comfort himself: it is not necessary.
“Hey, this car won’t let us sit in the aisle. It’s not safe.” ‘shouted the driver of the gold chain.
“What did you say?” Chen Huansheng took off the earplugs.
“Haven’t you just come back? Lie inside, sleep when sleepy. Jet lag. It’s like a sleeper.” The driver pulled back a curtain under the driver’s seat.
When Chen huansheng walked over, he saw that under the driver’s seat was a black trough, the size of a coffin, just big enough to be covered by a curtain.
“Lying down? Don’t lie down and get out!” The driver opened the door again.
Under the gaze of the public, Chen Huansheng dashed his head forward, put his body backward into the black trough. The driver lowered the curtain and the notch was covered. It was dark. The bus began to roar off, and he could only stretch out his legs into the darkness.
That little card meant his future in America, and this 120-mph stretch of the national highway was only a sideshow in his life. That little card meant his future in America, and this 120-mph stretch of the national highway was only a sideshow in his life.
As soon as he boarded the plane back to China, sentences like “Closer to home, more timid” would also run through Chen’s mind. The reality is that the black trough accumulated down the smell of sweat feet smoke, mixed into a smouldering smell. He felt sick when the bus bumped. When I pulled back the curtain, I could see nothing but the heels of the driver’s shoes, his pants, and the ankles wrapped in socks.
The driver was probably in a good mood, his ankles quivering and whistling to the beat.
He touched his chest. The hard card was still there. He understood, of course, that the coach was not allowed to travel without a seat, and that the driver was only afraid of being caught by the traffic police. In other words, with a green card, he was nothing more than a contraband worth 200 yuan.
Chen Huansheng couldn’t think of that much. He was just going home. The words justice, dignity, or respectability are far too abstract for a safe return home. Or rather, it’s not nearly as exciting as getting your green card home safely.
The gifts he leaves for friends and relatives in the baggage compartment can be stolen and robbed, but the green card can’t go wrong. That little card meant his future in America. The 120-mph national highway was only a sideline in his life.
On the day of the immigration fingerprinting, he had seen a Mexican with a playful moustache under his huge nose and two national flags, one striped with stars and the other with eagles, snakes and cactuses. The Mexicans first blew out their harmonicas and then snapped their mobile phones at themselves and their flags. Shouted the white baton-wielding security guard, driving out the Mexican and all his stuff.
The Americans present were amused, as if they were watching a dog chasing a cat in their own backyard. Chen huansheng could not smile because he knew how much the Mexicans had to pay to walk into the room and poke their fingerprints.
The black trough was too close to the ground and the jolt from the national highway was too much for him to absorb. One wave of dizziness followed by another wave of nausea. Before throwing up, he took off his earplugs and flung back the curtain: “Stop!” The driver didn’t hear you. Or pretend not to hear, the ankles still shaking.
Chen Huansheng had to reach out his hand from the black trough, clenched it into a fist, and touched the ankle.
‘Don’t move, danger! The driver’s seat stretched out a throbbing hand. The curtain was closed, and Chen Huansheng was again enveloped in darkness and stench.
Lifting the curtain again, he called the local accent: “Eldest brother, you this bus destination is our county, right?”
“Yes. How?”
“My family is in the county. My people are all in the county. Relatives in the police force, surname Chen.”
The driver was silent. Chen Huansheng lowered the curtain.
But the curtain was lifted by the driver. “Traffic police? Who? Which Chen?”
“Captain Chen, my Lord.”
“Not long ago?”
“Yes, long ago. It’s up to you.”
The other was silent. The curtain was again raised by the driver: “Little brother, as soon as you leave the provincial capital, stop and let you out, ok?”
Whether climbing into the black trough or sitting in the passenger seat, it was also because of his grandfather who was seriously ill. Later, Chen Huansheng was surprisingly comfortable sitting in the passenger seat.
3
It was late at night when the county got off the bus. The street, which he had known well since childhood, looked only pale and shabby under the streetlamps. New buildings have been put up, but like an old man being forced into new clothes.
Parents meet me at the station.
Seven years ago to go abroad is also parents station, from the county to the provincial capital, all the way to Beijing. Like millions of ordinary Chinese, three people took a picture in Tian ‘anmen Square. I do not know why in the end, like a charm, go to Beijing will have to go to Tian ‘anmen, go to Tian ‘anmen have to take a picture. The photos of the three of them are stored in Mr. Chen’s computer, printed out and pasted on the refrigerator of his apartment on the other side of the ocean. This autumn night, parents from the refrigerator to the figure of the county, walked to his eyes, hard to avoid the kind and sad.
He lived in a bungalow when he was a child, but it was torn down when he went to university in the provincial capital and moved to the family building built by his father’s unit. The family building was also demolished in the second year after he went abroad, as if the demolition plan of the whole county is designed around the three of them.
Dragging his luggage, he was taken by his parents into Mingshi Mansion, a completely strange high-rise.
“Why don’t you take the elevator when your luggage is so heavy?” He asked.
“The elevator broke down last month and the property management didn’t care about anything, so they just collected the money. You didn’t know someone jumped off a building the other day…” Mother chattered on and on.
“On the third floor, go up.” Father hoisted the checked baggage on his shoulder.
At the corner of the stairs, a bicycle with its wheels removed swung out. He and his father followed, each carrying a piece of luggage. My mother opened the door of Unit A, unit 2, on the third floor.
Is that home?
My father arranged the luggage and my mother cooked the noodles in muddy soup. Chen Huansheng took a shower and looked around the strange home as he ate.
“You’ve been moving from place to place these past few years, and you don’t even know what you’ve been moving about the house with? Some are not willing to throw away, all let your father wrapped cardboard box, put your house.” Mother was afraid that he would not like the noodles dry, into the bowl to fill two spoonfuls of soup.
“Your house”, as my mother called it, was nothing more than an unused bedroom. Chen Huansheng did not know him, of course.
The bed was the same one he had slept in. There were cardboard boxes at the head of the bed, and opposite was a desk he had used. On the top is the same glass block, pressed against the old photo from many years ago: my father, Chen Huansheng, with my father’s Phoenix brand bicycle in the middle. When Mr. Chen had just lost his front teeth, his father rode his newly bought Phoenix bicycle to pick him up from kindergarten, while his mother stir-fried cowpeas in the kitchen. Chen Huansheng rushed excitedly into the living room and went straight to the desk, on which lay an orange radio recorder with a brand of plum blossom.
He swallowed a pill of melatonin he had brought back from America and lay dazed on the bed. I was dizzy at three in the morning, but I couldn’t close my eyes. Staring at the strange walls in the dark for a while, he got up and turned on the light. He went to the kitchen to have a drink of water. With a fruit knife in his hand, he cut the tape from the cardboard box on his bedside table. When my father was very young, he bought two cassettes, the Best Stories, part 1 and Part 2.
“Can’t sleep? Jet lag?” “Asked the mother at the door.
“I’m all right, mom, go to sleep.” Chen Huansheng put down the record player of plum blossom card, turned off the light and lay on the bed with his eyes open.
4
A burst of firecrackers opened Chen Huansheng’s eyes. 6:30 a.m. He asked who fired the gun so early. My mother pointed to the tall building opposite the living room window. “Who else can have it? Your class that small gao!”
Xiao Gao was his high school classmate. He was so tall and big that everyone called him Xiao Gao, even the teacher and principal. small high home is not simple, although I did not participate in the college entrance examination, but in the provincial capital read the normal University, graduated back to the county to do real estate development, ten years from the numerous high-rise, soon to surround the whole county.
Cannon sound ceaseless, Chen Huansheng frowns: “how put so long?”
“When the new building is closed, it will be on the 24th floor, with lots of red, and the first floor with ten thousand noise, until noon at least. The environment has been ruined by these rich people.” Mother put on a mask and went out for morning exercise.
So the first breakfast at home is accompanied by endless red. He gulped down his polenta and asked, “Twenty-four? Let them keep out the light in our house?”
“Let alone the light. There are no flowers or trees, only buildings to hide them. Build a building again not make an object, stick so close to stem what!” His mother filled another bowl for him.
“The person who lives in our building doesn’t beg an explanation?”
“We live in this building? He even built this building. Who do you want to talk to?”
Chen Huansheng dropped his chopsticks. At 7:30 in the morning, the sky was blue outside the window, and the room was still lighted. The land was as red as rain. Mother was still nagging.
“The county housing prices are not so crazy, pick a good building to move again.” “My father advised.
There was no more youtiao or billiards, and instead there was an endless stream of rising buildings. There was no more youtiao or billiards, and instead there was an endless stream of rising buildings.
In fact, the whole county in the demolition are all under construction are moving, people’s hospital is no exception. Grandpa’s hospital room was temporarily moved to the county outskirts.
Grandpa was lying in his hospital bed, his eyelids fluttering, but he couldn’t open them. Mr. Chen wondered if his grandfather would realize it was him. He took his grandfather’s hand. Grandpa took his. The hand was thin and age – spotted, but warm.
Grandpa is over 80 years old, has diabetes for many years, his eyes have been hard to see, four or five meals a day, a small bowl of porridge, accompanied by several kinds of pills. Had also been able to go downstairs regularly every day to take a walk, do not want last Year’s Spring Festival firecracker shock, fell on the ice did not get up. 120 sent to the hospital, comminuted fracture, can only lie in bed.
Uncle and aunt came to see both grandpa and Chen Huansheng. He cried in front of a large family. Not because of anything else, but suddenly to see illness and old age afflict a man in such a way that he cannot help crying. Of course, in front of his parents, uncles and aunts, this crying just makes him the eldest grandson. The scene was remarkable.
Grandpa closed his eyes, weak as he was, but by no means his last. What did father mean by “seriously ill”? Chen Huansheng was puzzled.
“Excuse me, patient draw fluid!” The door of the ward was pushed open, and a woman doctor in a white dress and a mask came in, pushing in a machine that smelled of disinfectant.
‘What kind of fluid? Chen Huansheng asked.
“Your grandpa this diabetes is already with inflammation, and lie so many days, chest accumulation of a lot of fluid, don’t quickly take out will affect breathing.”
My aunt and uncle helped my grandfather up. My father bent down and lifted his sick suit carefully. “Dad, I’m ready to take some liquid.”
Grandpa’s eyes were half open, he nodded, and he held out his shaking hand. Chen Huansheng came forward and held it.
The doctor didn’t say a word. He daubed iodine cotton on grandpa’s back and then opened a package of syringes. The needles were huge and frightening. The needle started peeking at grandpa’s back. Father smiled and asked: “director li, today before smoking not scan?”
The doctor took one look at my father and pointed to a yellow spot on my grandfather’s back. “Why sweep? Isn’t this where I drew the needle last time?”
“Maybe I ran out of this last time and couldn’t get anything out. Let director Li sweep it first.” The father continued to laugh.
“Our home B exceed the import of the United States, sweep one time reduce one life span, sweep many also have side effect, besides still have so many patient platoon number to wait!”
Grandpa’s eyes were closed again, his chest rising and falling, the pinprick visible in the middle of the yellow spot on his back. The woman quickly inserted the needle and pulled it out, but the syringe remained empty. Grandpa’s chest heaved even more and his eyes opened wide. My father whispered in my grandfather’s ear, “Dad, it’s all right. I’ll be all right soon.”
The female doctor has to pull out needle, “last time take out is quite thorough.”
“Yeah, it worked out so well last time. My dad didn’t gasp for breath.” “Echoed the father.
“Why don’t you smoke today and observe the patient again?”
“Still smoke li director, you see the don all pant into what kind.”
“Is… Oh, come on, let me give you a scan before I smoke. It only delays the other patients.”
“Thank you, Director, thank you!
The PORTABLE Ultrasound machine, imported from the United States, finally comes in handy. The screen shows a shadow. “You see, the effusion has shifted! I tell you to minimize the amount of unnecessary activity that the patient does, but you don’t listen.” The female doctor pulled off her mask and frowned at the screen.
She put on her mask again, smeared the iodine cotton swab on grandpa’s back in a different place, inserted the thick needle again, and drew out a full tube of yellowish pleural effusion. Grandpa closed his eyes, his chest no longer heaving.
“Let the Don rest for a while, for so many of his family members make things worse.”
The woman doctor went away. His mother told Him, “Your father, your aunt and uncle have been watching your father in the hospital for so long. They have to smile with him every day. Which of these doctors and nurses dares to offend him? A sin in the end is not your father suffer?”
“Your ye retires how many years from traffic police force, live old cadre ward, medicaments the country is full reimbursement, this thanked god.” After a busy morning, father put the quilt on grandpa, finally breathe a sigh of relief, slumped in the sick chair.
5
For lunch, Mr. Chen wanted something light, but instead went to a dog meat restaurant in the county because his uncle said his eldest nephew had not returned for years and needed to “produce some exciting local dishes.”
Take the dog skin off the meat and steam it in a pot? Chen huansheng thought of his American neighbor, an old white woman who lived alone, and went out for a walk every morning with a big white dog. The dog was lame for some reason, and did not howl or make any noise, but walked attentively with the crone, the dog before and the man behind. Is that exciting?
Knowing his uncle’s temper, he picked up a piece of fat white dog meat and dipped it in the red hot North Korean sauce.
“Big nephew, go one! Did your dad say he got the green card?” My uncle’s glass was at its bottom.
“I’ll take it.” He drank his beer, bitter and cold.
“You bring out the green card and we’ll see what it looks like. Wait for later za to also move a civilian, do a piece of false can let a person joke!” Uncle also see old, wine table is more lively, where there is the slightest bit of suffering from the appearance of divorce.
The little green-striped card passed from wine cup to meat plate, reminding him suddenly of the piece of psychic jade on Jia Baoyu’s neck.
“Here comes the green card. Time for personal considerations?” The aunt smiled at her mother.
“Yeah, you don’t even know you’re worried about me and his dad.” My mother laughed too.
“What’s the hurry? There’s the card. Drop it there. See if you can make it work!” Uncle took the green card, to the wine table a fall: pa!
“Hwan, how do you say your sister is getting married next month?” “Asked her aunt, smiling.
“Invite him and his wife to travel to America for a honeymoon?”
“What’s so good about a honeymoon? Besides, they are busier than each other in Shenzhen, so they have no time to spare. Why don’t you go back to America, make a video and send it over?”
The purpose of my aunt’s video is very clear: show it to my cousin’s in-laws. Lao Chen’s family also has relatives in America.
My cousin went to Shenzhen after graduation. He studied for a master’s degree in the provincial capital and then went abroad. I haven’t seen him for at least ten years. He wouldn’t even know what his cousin looks like today if it weren’t for a few photos from WeChat’s circle of friends over the Chinese New Year. Now I’m going to record a video for her. How? According to what my aunt said, “choose a place with American characteristics to record”, and also get a blessing, it would be better to “English and Chinese bilingual”…
“Ok, or should I take out my green card when I record it?” “Said Chen Huansheng suddenly.
My aunt and uncle laughed.
6
Alcohol and jet lag made him sleep late into the night. When I open my eyes, my throat burns. I was about to get up to drink when I saw light through the door of my bedroom, and then footsteps. It was father’s night again. He heard the footsteps at least three times last night. The pace is very slow, also do not know is father old, still afraid of waking him, step by step toward the toilet.
Before returning home, he asked his father what nutrition he needed, but he only asked for lycopene. When he asked what lycopene was for, he said nothing. Look back on the Internet, it is to improve the prostate. His heart sank for a moment, but all he could do was order a few boxes of lycopene online.
My father spent months in the hospital with my grandfather, alternating nights with my aunt and uncle. According to my mother, my father’s sleep in the hospital was getting worse and worse. His face was dark and thin. His mother had to boil some Chinese medicine for him and send him to the hospital. So that’s how my father marched through the sanitizing hallway on those nights when he nursed my grandfather?
And, since it wasn’t the last time, what did father mean when he said grandpa was “seriously ill”? He tossed and turned, becoming more and more confused.
Grandpa “seriously ill”, and his father, and aunt uncle. But what if my father was “seriously ill”? What if my father is “seriously ill” and in the process of applying for a green card? Can Chen Huansheng afford to spend four or four months slumping in a hospital room that floats and dies?
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe in the dark, so he sat up, turned on the light again, and swallowed two melatonin.
The double dose of melatonin had finally taken hold, and his schedule began to follow the beat of the county seat. For several mornings, he accompanied his mother out for morning exercises.
Happily, my mother took out two pairs of masks. One was an old, unusual-looking one that she often wore. A new one, in the style of a gas mask, bought especially for my son.
Since his childhood, Chen Huansheng has had an instinctive rejection of maternal love. For example, his mother used to knit him a skating cap, as soon as he left home was stuffed into a schoolbag. But now it was the third year of his life and he had not been home for seven years, so he had to put on a mask. It was so tight and tight that it made his ears ache. There was a valve in the middle that seemed to be blocked, making it hard for him to breathe. In his eyes, the streets of the county had been specious, and his breathing had become heavy again.
“Mom, I’m only going to be in the county for a few days. There’s no need to wear this.” He took off his mask after all, he muttered. My mother was busy saying hello.
“Shu Zhen, just got back from the market?”
“Oh, Sister Zhang, look at your spirit! Is your son back?”
‘Back!
As a result, some parts of Mr. Chen’s American life have been turned upside down, from salary to a green card, from an apartment to when to marry.
Mother said that she would come out every morning and never miss the rain. So every morning during his seven years in the United States, his mother met such a shu Zhen and had a conversation like this: My son got a raise, my son bought a house, my son got a green card, my son is no better than your son, he just doesn’t look for a wife!
Chen Huansheng felt that he had become an abstract existence in the dialogue between his mother and Shu Zhen.
Finally play understand this valve, Chen Huansheng and put on a mask. It’s not without its benefits, at least not all the time.
7
After half an hour’s stop-and-go, he and his mother set foot on the concrete stage of the county people’s cinema. This is where mother does her morning exercises. It is morning exercise, nothing more than a dozen and mother or shu Zhen age if similar figure of women lined up on the stage, wearing colorful sportswear, wearing a variety of styles of masks, and loudspeaker in the electronic music, like a group of bright red and green pear, do some half like gymnastics half like dance movements.
“White clouds in the blue sky/Under white clouds the horses run…”
In her circle of friends, her mother has posted photos of them exercising in the morning. Chen huansheng is not impressed. But when he stood on the concrete platform, standing in the exaggerated electronic music, suddenly understand that this is probably the mother and Shu Zhen people’s youth, sealed in their enough grandmother’s age, sealed in their hypertension diabetes body.
He took out his phone and stepped back, intending to take a panorama: the sky was gray, the ground was gray, the theater was gray, and the stage was red and dancing with excitement. Then zoom out, and an excavator appears behind the theater.
The excavator gave out a whir, like a giant animal waking up in the morning, moving slowly. The construction site has started and the morning exercise is about to break up. The sun was soft at 7 a.m. and the picture was sent to my mother, with the excavator blocked out.
He went around to the back of the theater and found that most of it had been torn down, leaving the auditorium a sea of bricks on which excavators were desperately digging. He left a WeChat for his mother and walked north alone.
From the People’s Cinema along the Victory Avenue to the north, you will certainly come to beishan, if the foot of the county or his memory of the county.
But back home these days, he’s becoming more suspicious of his memory. The victory Street, for example, is a dark, wide, solid asphalt in my memory, but now it is just a concrete road, gray and bare. Excavators have been running over it, opening several large holes in it, and the dust has filled the air with endless whinings.
There was a row of willows on either side of the street, and now and then a few shops, and the dough sticks and the billiard balls, all gone, either dug up or covered with dust, but all gone. In its place were the buildings, the ones being built, the endless ones, the ones rushing up one by one.
Looking back at the world, chang ‘an see dust and fog. Looking back at the world, chang ‘an see dust and fog.
Through the dust, beishan suddenly became clear. Go to the foot of the mountain, the first eye is the county civil affairs bureau of the brand. I do not know when the mountain was used to be buried alive. Zhang Wang, Li Zhao, Hu Qin, Meng Tian, one by one engraved in the marble tablets in front of the name. He took off his mask, dusted, breathed, and looked around. There were no trees. There were no birch trees, pine trees, maple trees that had been so colorful in October.
Beishan itself is not that tall, just a few steps up the mountainside, where a semicircular cement bale might have been built by the Japanese as a bunker or as a defense built when “Old MAO Zi” was nervous on the other side. When he was a boy he used to go in, and in the summer the smell of the damp was so foul that in the winter he could pick out a frozen mass of snakes with a stick. Occasionally will fly up out of a fox, the snow in a fiery red.
Standing on the top of the mountain, Chen Huansheng could not lift his eyes to look around, but he saw that the shade of the mountain was full of bare rocks.
He had heard that someone in the county to develop graphite ore, want to be to blow up the mountain, but there was nothing black, only the yellowish brown rock, like a knife cut into the flesh, but not blood.
There had been a hole, maybe half a hole, in the shade, and they had never drilled through the whole hole. There is a passage of ice in the cave, which does not melt every year. In summer, if you step on it with bare feet, the cool energy can Pierce your head. Every time they climb the North Mountain, they drill this hole as if it were a ritual.
That year, high school students in two counties, bored during their summer vacation, stopped a young girl on the street from “Old MAO zi”, grabbed her blonde hair, and dragged her into a hole and onto the ice road. Later, someone used a torch to illuminate the ice passage, which was said to have blood stains on it. The two high school students in the county were in Chen Huansheng’s class, one with good grades and the other with poor ones. He got good grades and spent two weeks in the precinct. There was nothing wrong with his poor grades because he was nicknamed xiao Gao.
That was the first time That Chen realized the relationship between women and blood. He never went through the hole again.
When his cell phone rang, his mother hurried him home for dinner. Looking back to the south, I can only see a big cloud of dust and fog, that is the county town. Only one tall building emerges, which must be xiao Gao’s twenty-fourth floor.
And his home in the county town, where his parents live, “Mingshi Mansion”, naturally close to the 24 floors, covered in dust and fog.
“Looking back at the world, see chang ‘an dust fog.” He gave a loud shout and went down the hill.
8
Seven years do not return to China, save a lot of relatives and friends to see. Every day, Chen Huansheng sat on the floor of a liquor store in the county town, pushing the glass to change, half drunk. The first two days are still greedy, but soon eat out of the restaurant those dishes, in addition to oil, is salt, or is heavy mouth fierce material.
He dispenses perfume, handbags, silk scarves, chocolates and nutritional supplements to relatives and friends in two suitcases packed with American goods on sale. By the time we leave, we’ll be jet lagged.
In that college town in the American Midwest, Chen Huansheng works alone. He cooks by day, reads and writes by night, and plays soccer twice a week. He felt his waist, which was filled with wine and meat, and felt more and more sorry for his quiet life in America. Determined to run out of a smelly sweat, he put on his sneakers and went to the teaching building of the County high school.
Two or three o ‘clock in the afternoon, the best view of the autumn sun. The teaching building has many Windows open, the sound of reading down the autumn wind.
Around to the playground behind the building, the playground in the end and lying on the two excavators, an east and west, the middle is a big pit, half a football field as big, in which the water of the marsh, reflecting the blue sky and white clouds and teeth and claws of excavators. A group of men in orange construction hats are sitting on the tracks and big steel claws of an excavator, smoking, laughing, eating lunch boxes and playing with mobile phones. Chen Huansheng stood at the edge of the pit, dazed, and his reflection looked at him.
When the bell rang, the students emerged from the classroom building like ants from their nests.
After running four laps, Chen Huansheng sat beside the pit, breathing heavily. A hand rested on his shoulder. “Chen Huansheng? I looked just like you from upstairs!”
I did not expect to meet high school students here, Chen Huansheng face hurriedly put enthusiasm.
“These two days our class some people heard you come back, dead or alive can’t contact you.”
“What are you… Working in high school?”
“Yes, Chinese is taught in high school.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s pretty good, wife and child white picket fence, two orioles Ming green willow.”
Both of them laughed and had nothing to say. Chinese teacher took out smoke, two people squatted down and smoked while watching the two excavators how to turn the river in the pit.
“Not been back to the county for years?”
“Years.”
“How do you feel?”
“It feels good.”
“Just fine.”
The smoke was gone, and the cigarette butts were bounced into the pit. Chen Huansheng asks: “How does this high school say dig to dig?”
“Someone bought the land, build a building, the highest building, break our county record, just dig this old cock big, this old cock deep.” Chinese teacher stretch out an arm, toward that big pit gesture.
“What about the students? And your teacher?”
“Who knows? The county promised to grant a good piece of land to the high school again, but where there is a good! After this semester, the whole school will have to move to the building under the North Hill where the troops were stationed.”
“Beishan? Is it convenient for teachers and students?”
“A small dilapidated county, what is convenient? Have you been in America too long to keep up with the state of the union?”
Chen Huansheng dropped a stone into the pit, and soon it disappeared into the rolling mud.
“Do you know who bought high school?”
“Where shall I know?”
“Xiao Gao! Who else could it be? You really are out in America!”
“HMMM, Xiao Gao, Xiao Gao.” Chen Huansheng nodded and smiled.
“You come back just in time, catch tomorrow night our class party, be there or be square!” The student patted his shoulder and went back to class.
9
Chen huansheng is a nerd. He doesn’t know anything about old schoolmate relationships, and he knows nothing about networking, so he eschews schoolmate parties. But the next day someone in class called him at home. He went to the hospital in the morning to see grandpa, and had to deal with two tables of relatives at noon. In the evening, he hurried to the so-called party.
It is restaurant, it is private room. Many people came, men and women. Her figure and face had not changed much, and though she did not look like a girl, she could still be recognized. The man is dead alive can not recognize.
A large table of food and drinks, with a heart-shaped birthday cake in the middle, was filled with electronic candles, and names poured out of red strawberry jam. The name escaped him for a moment; it was a tall character. He scanned the room: Yes, Xiao Gao didn’t come.
Some of his classmates said that Mr. Chen had gained weight; others said that he had lost weight. They asked him whether he had found an American wife, whether he had watched the military parade in Beijing in the United States, and whether he was an American or A Chinese. He had to go over the same old phrases he used against his relatives.
The male classmate advised him to drink, but he said no. Change female classmate to persuade, say a girl you must give point face? He smiled, give the girl face, have a pot of tea.
The atmosphere was awkward, but they soon lost interest in him and went on drinking and telling their jokes. He listened, thinking that he was leaving tomorrow. Next time he would come back, and it would be grandpa who was really “seriously ill”.
He wondered where he had come back to this time. But there didn’t seem to be anywhere for him to go back. A few days before he boarded the plane, he remembered seeing a cat, out of nowhere, standing on his lawn, its eyes glinting from the headlights.
He had never seen a stray cat or dog in America. He thought the cat might be lost, so he prepared a small bowl of milk to feed it. But as soon as they got close, the cat turned and went away. The next evening the cat appeared again, standing in the same position on the lawn. He left the milk in front of the garage and entered the house. The cat walked slowly over, lapped the milk, and stood on the lawn again.
For several nights in a row, he got on the plane and left. I wonder if the cat will still be standing on his lawn and drinking milk. Maybe it had found its way home, or maybe it really was a stray cat.
I have to hit the road tomorrow and go to bed early tonight. He indulged in wild speculations and simply left without saying goodbye. He entered the House, climbed the stairs in the dark, and rang the bell of Unit A, unit 2, on the third floor.
10
The bus left at 9 a.m., and Chen Huansheng got up after 5.
He stared at his face in the bathroom mirror: puffy, bleary-eyed, hardly encouraging.
My mother was preparing breakfast in the kitchen, and my father was packing his bags with local specialties: vermicellias, bean paste, fungus and hazel mushrooms squeezed into sous-vate bags. Condensing home into packets of dried fungus? That’s a good idea.
The plum-card recorder and the plate of The Best Stories were shuffled around on the desk. He tried to reconstruct where they had been in his childhood and take pictures of them on his mobile phone, but cassette tapes, cassette recorders and writing desks were shrinking into the holes. Beishan, high school, parents, People’s Cinema… Everything was shrinking, indented in his memory.
Why should he expect the county to remain the same for him, when he himself had retreated into it?
After breakfast, he checked his bag again: his ticket from Beijing to Chicago, his domestic ID card, his domestic passport, his American driver’s license, his American green card. My parents sent me to the station together. Mother would cry. He didn’t know what to say. He just looked forward to getting to the terminal, leaving and leaving early. Fortunately, a few more relatives came, and the three of them were not without words. Her mother, wearing a mask, chatted enthusiastically with them, as if she did not mind that he was leaving.
The bus to the provincial capital was parked in the back yard of the bus station, the same skinny black driver with a big gold chain around his neck. The mother continued to chat with relatives outside the window. My father actually talked with the driver: “This point is not too fast to get on the bus, is it?”
“The car is not much, is on both sides of the road there are old farmers burning corn poles, smoke and fire influence the line of sight, sooner or later cause trouble.
“And no one to take care of it?”
“I can’t help it! Besides, it’s not easy for old farmers to plant crops all the year round… Big brother, is this your child?”
“It’s my son.”
‘From abroad?
“Not for seven years.”
“Good for you!
“What good, even a home can not come back.”
My father was smiling as he spoke, his hands behind his back. Chen Huansheng shook through the window: he had not seen his father smile like that in many years. It was full of folds, like wrung out.
“Elder brother, is your surname Chen? What is the former captain Chen of the traffic police?”
“It’s my dad, what?”
“No, the don used to take good care of our gang on long trips.”
“The body is failing. It’s all finished. I’ve been in hospital for a long time.” My father stopped smiling.
A black SUV pulled into the back yard of the station and parked next to the bus. Porsche, an unremarkable brand in America, is hard not to notice when you get to the county seat, complete with an exaggerated number of license plates.
A big, white-faced man emerged from the SUV and there was a moment of silence. Looking at this reaction, Chen Huansheng knew he was right: it was his classmate Xiaogao.
Xiao Gao got on the bus and reached out his hand. “What do you mean? Is that it?”
“Yes, to catch tomorrow’s plane in Beijing.” He stood up and shook hands with Xiao Gao.
“Last night I went to the city to talk about something, delayed, hurried back to the county with you drink two cups, the results of our class classmates said you go first?”
“Yes, I was a little drunk last night, and I have to drive today.”
“This all doesn’t matter, I now three tall, also drink not to move.”
Speechless for a moment. He thought of the 240, 000 loud red, the cake with red strawberry jam, the pit in the high school playground. He looked out of the window at his parents and tried to mention the dark corridor of the Famous Mansion. But I’ll give it up.
Xiao Gao laughed and punched him. “Just now I looked just like you downstairs, so I hurried to catch up with you,” xiao Gao said.
Chen Huansheng laughed too.
“Is your old lady ok in that building?”
“Not bad.”
“Are you going to the provincial capital first?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you take our car?” Xiao Gao tapped on the bus window, where the SUV stopped like a tank.
“Don’t. I can take the bus easily.”
“Really?”
“Don’t! Why am I being polite?”
“Well, I’ve got business to do. We two keep in touch.” Xiao Gao punched him again and got out of the bus.
Outside, a few guys in station uniforms gathered around to shake Xiao Gao’s hand. Xiaogao bends down and shakes one by one, along with the driver of the gold chain, along with his parents and relatives. Everyone was smiling, especially Xiao Gao. His smile and handshake were repeated many times. His tall figure was matched with a suit without a tie, like a leader on TV news, more like a star on an entertainment program.
Neither did the parents mention the dark stairwell they had to climb every day, and the two old men just smiled nervously. The dashing Xiao Gao waved to the bus and rode away in a tank-like SUV.
The end of the
The conductor began to check in, and the driver got on the bus, caught fire and shivered under his feet, and set off. His father stared back at the bus, his mother wiped her face mask off and several relatives waved to him.
“I fuck, you heel za county that gao yuting also be brother?” “The driver asked over his shoulder.
“From high school.”
Chen Huansheng glanced back out of the window: his parents and the county seat had been left out of sight. The speed is constantly extending, like an infinite chain, being cut all the way by the bus.
(I am Chen Huansheng. All the characters in this article are pseudonyms.)
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