1
Shakespeare said, “The course of true love does not run smooth.” Jiang Xiaoxue told me that she had a deeper understanding of this sentence when she pushed the door and walked out of the “Green Silk” cafe after another blind date.
“Green silk” is hegang the border city of the few “get to” chain of coffee shops, located in the shopping center of the largest local “time square” on the right side, another Jiang Xiaoxue can call on the name to the cafe, is located in the crane, “slow” highway 13 kilometers, don’t drive, want to go there very difficult.
Before the “Green silk” opened, most of the matchmaking places for young people in this small town concentrated in the KFC beside the turntable road in the city center, and some men do not pay attention to “taste”, simply about the evening in the Northeast restaurant, eating and chatting. Feel appropriate, take advantage of the night to send the girl home, on the way to “further understanding”; Feel not suitable, a clap two spread directly, never meet again.
“Green silk” after the opening, those from other places to return to his hometown Hegang youth, and came to hegang youth outside, will be the main battlefield of blind date transferred here.
In fact, Jiang Xiaoxue did not have any special feelings about this cafe. The colorful collocation, the old small decorations I did not know where I got from, and the “fake literature and art” books placed on the shelf were just the background of a blind date. Her aim was clear: to find her soul mate in an environment she knew too well to know, with a quick eye for the one who would come from nowhere.
Since the cafe opened in 2016, Jiang has “met” a total of 13 men from a fixed seat near a roadside window. Each time she has ordered the same cappuccino, but each time she has met the person she has been looking for for years. Most men become strangers after meeting each other, and a few become “thumb up friends” in the circle of friends.
Jiang xiaoxue has asked her relatives, friends and classmates more than once whether her own vision is too high, whether she looks forward to love too beautiful, so that she always lingers on the road of love. But her peers, especially those who have been on blind dates as many times as she has, are always telling her: It may not be you.
This time, Jiang Xiaoxue satisfied with the “social conditions” is not blind date – and, of course, she also stressed that “conditions” good or bad is not choose their own partner “important standard”, let alone in hegang such economic decay, a border town, again good conditions also is not necessarily a real “good” – more important, still think this guy is a bit upon Chen (ugly), it is she absolutely can’t stand: The most basic requirement for Jiang’s ideal partner is that he or she should be “able to watch”. “After all, it is a person who will spend his or her whole life in front of others. The level of appearance is of course very important, and it is not about how handsome he or she is.
This blind date makes Jiang Xiaoxue very tired, “it seems to be the inflection point of the whole life”, now, exhausted in body and mind, she decided to pull the blind date out of her life.
2
Before returning to Hegang, Jiang Xiaoxue once had an unforgettable love experience. In 2012, she got together as a junior with a junior. Campus love is mostly pure and warm but fragile, in the third month after the university graduation, two people broke up.
In this case, she felt that she owed more to her younger brother. In July 2013, Jiang graduated from a junior college in Shenyang. However, she was unlucky and could not find a suitable job in Shenyang until September 20, when jiang decided to “go home”.
Jiang sees this day as a point in her life that she “will always remember”. If I hadn’t stayed at home for that long, I would have missed the recruiting test. Then I would have gone back to Shenyang for sure, and we probably wouldn’t have broken up.”
For Jiang Xiaoxue at that time, the decision to “go home” was far more relaxed and pleasant than that of her classmates who only spent a few years studying on campus in other places and then returned home after graduation. Back in 2006, Jiang Xiaoxue, who failed the high school entrance examination, came to Shenyang and enrolled in a technical secondary school.
From a small border town to a metropolis in northeast China, the span of life is not only extended in the distance of nearly a thousand kilometers, but more condensed in the quenching of fate. The city filled Jiang Xiaoxue’s whole youth and made her feel the splendor of the world for the first time.
Jiang Xiaoxue has an extraordinary love for Shenyang. After breaking up, she felt as if she had completely “finished” her life — not only the disillusionment of love makes her fall into a spiritual desolation, but also the boredom of life in the small city has put her into an inescapable prison. When she first returned home, she opened her mobile phone App to order a takeaway, but she suddenly found that the APP, which had been sweeping the country, had forgotten the town in northeast China. At that moment, Jiang looked at her phone and burst into tears.
The best way to tie a person to a place is to get married, have children, and settle down. Jiang xiaoxue’s father knew this well, so the road of blind dating began to open up in front of her slowly from the moment she started working. Only she did not expect the road to be so long and tortuous.
Jiang xiaoxue’s first blind date was in December. It was dark at 4pm. She sat in a window seat on the second floor of the KFC, looking out at the scattered lights. She felt a little dazed, the noise of the crowd getting together and the smell of fried chicken and burgers made her want to throw up.
The opposite boy had just graduated from an ordinary university in Harbin and was admitted to the municipal Electric power bureau. Employees working in monopoly state-owned enterprises usually have a high status in Hegang because of their handsome income, generous welfare and easy work. This boy of course “hold one’s head high”, half an hour, one question after another question to pass. Jiang xiaoxue thinks he is a “heavy chatterbox”. What annoys her more is that he is always making oblique inquiries about her privacy. At last, jiang xiaoxue, who was upset, threw out her salary figure. The boy was stunned. She skipped away with her bag in hand.
Jiang Xiaoxue did not lie, for I don’t like boys, it is no necessary to lie – though then she went into the city authority unit work, say, are “WeiBanJu” daily visited, making is “decent man”, in fact, is “broken”, because she is just “irregular”, netizen mouth “temporary”, only four risk treatment, no accumulation fund, a month of wages, a hard 1100 yuan.
It was a weak spot, but Jiang found it surprisingly useful. Later, whenever she met a blind date that disgusted her, she would throw out her salary figures to discourage him.
3
“If you don’t know what to do, flip a coin, not because it will give you the right answer, but because you will know what you really want the minute it goes up in the air.”
Jiang Xiaoxue at first saw this sentence, feel very reasonable, but when she tried to apply to your own dating this truth, found the problem – in an instant by a lot of times, life for their own is not a choice of options, but more complicated, “when you choose face choose 8, 16, is even more a commonplace, no matter how to throw the steel COINS into the sky, you can’t figure out what you really want, because you’ve had a messy, confused, in the heart before setting the standard in the impact of the countless, breaking down”.
In her cognition, love is based on feelings, while blind date is based on “conditions”. Although the ultimate goal is to get married, there are always some differences between the two. In other words, for blind date, she is always unwilling.
Back in northeast China, she was always on blind dates
She did not know what kind of person she wanted, or what kind of person she could find. This muddle-headed state made her lack a clear understanding of her position in the dating market when she just returned to Hegang. At that time, Jiang xiaoxue never felt that she was at the bottom of the dating chain. She always believed that, “The world must be a ‘leftover man without a woman’. As long as a woman is not crazy or stupid, she will always get married.
But in 2015, Fang Ming’s appearance shattered her imagination about herself.
Fang Ming is a native of Jiamusi, which is considered a “big city” even though it is close to Hegang. With the swagge of a “big city” and the support of a “civil servant”, Fang Ming left a proud impression on Jiang at the beginning of the meeting — not impolite, but too polite. During the conversation, Fang Ming deliberately showed the “masculinity” and “manners” that a man in northeast China should have, which made Jiang feel uncomfortable. “He seemed to glance at me with his eyes all the time, and I was annoyed by his condescending attitude and his sense of superiority, which was so strong that he wanted to explode”.
When Jiang said that she was just a “temporary worker”, Fang Ming’s face showed undisguised surprise — though only for a moment, which was soon covered by a polite smile — but it was the first time That Jiang realized the embarrassment of her “identity”. So in the middle of the conversation, Jiang made an excuse and ran away.
As soon as he started work, the leaders and his father often advised Jiang to “work hard and get a civil servant”. But she had never taken it to heart until Fang Ming appeared with a slight look of contempt.
“I told myself, Jiang Xiaoxue, you can’t go on messing around any longer!”
Therefore, in the second year after returning to Hegang, Jiang Xiaoxue took the civil service examination for the first time in her life. As the “frontier” of the old, the young, the frontier, and the poor, Hegang is open to the public every year with relatively low conditions, so people like Jiang Xiaoxue from “specialized” background still have the chance to jump into the “system” in this “small eighteen-year city”.
Although “city” as the modifier “system” is like is not as imagined to be popular, but this is Jiang Xiaoxue could only dream of the “heaven”, in addition to the stable work, wages will have a greatly ascend, real let Jiang Xiaoxue want to enter the cause of the “system”, she is in the dating process is too much like shirakawa “contempt”.
If there are no such “lofty” labels as “civil servant”, “enterprise”, “petrochina”, “Cnooc”, “Electric Power Administration” and “tobacco Company”, men and women will be despised in the blind date market. The ideal of “love” can be beyond the setting of identity, but once it is put into practice in “marriage”, all the things that can be surpassed will suddenly become an abacus for calculating gains and losses. Everyone is playing with the abacus in his or her heart. After a crackling, whether “suitable” or not, they will know each other clearly.
But the road to the “system” has not been easy, and it is even too difficult for Ms Jiang. “I also want to learn, but learn not to go down”, every time spread out review material, she will feel very boring, do not know what the meaning is, “those graphics of what seem to be ghost sign, how do I know what the law is between them?
Later, as time went by and she failed one exam after another, Jiang xiaoxue calmly said, “I’d rather let nature take its course because I can’t go on studying. In fact, when I think about it later, I can also understand Fang Ming. In my previous blind dates, I didn’t want to see him because he was not from the ‘system’. This may be the answer to the old saying: come out and get mixed up, sooner or later you will have to pay back.”
4
Of all the seasons, Jiang Xiaoxue likes spring least. Life, or the revival of life, is no more than the toppling of hegang’s temperature, the melting ground is soon frozen, and the warm spring breeze is always driven away by cold currents. It is a somewhat chaotic and tiresome season.
In the spring of 2016, Jiang’s mother died of worsening lung cancer. Send mother to go that day, the sky blue gas is clear, in the sadness of the early morning, she saw her mother was pushed into the crematorium, before long, a puff of blue smoke, then silently dissipated.
At that moment, she suddenly realized why she had chosen to return to Hegang two and a half years ago.
Jiang Xiaoxue has always attributed the factors affecting her life node choice to her father’s conservatism and selfishness — for example, she has been longing for the army since childhood. In her junior year, she had already stepped into the army with one foot, but her father in Hegang made a phone call and gave up her choice. After graduation, when she wanted to “struggle” again in Shenyang without a job or financial support, her father, who was also in Hegang, called her back to her hometown, which she had thought she would never come back.
But at her mother’s funeral, Ms. Jiang suddenly realized that it was not her father who pulled her back to Hegang so much as she had chosen him, or that she herself had chosen him between “a possible life” and “her father living alone in a border town.”
When Jiang was 7 years old, her parents went their separate ways due to emotional problems, and she was sentenced to her father by a court. After the divorce, her mother went to Shenyang to work alone. For the next nine years, her father was her only support. It was not until she graduated from junior high school that she left Hegang under her mother’s guidance and stepped out of her father’s shelter.
Therefore, when she wanted to be a soldier and wanted to make a journey in Shenyang, the only sentence left by her father on the phone was “Go home”. Deep down, she felt soft and involuntarily chose to obey.
It takes time to appreciate the depth of emotion, and there are practical reasons for returning to Hegang at that time.
Before Jiang Xiaoxue graduated in 2013, her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her mother, who had spent most of her life alone, could no longer take care of her in Shenyang, so her father became her last refuge. “Girl, don’t run around blindly outside.
In the last years of her mother’s life, though no longer a husband and wife, her father remained by her side. For two and a half years, my father took my mother to the hospital without any complaints. From the soup to the medicine, to the urine and feces after my mother was admitted to the hospital, my father took care of everything. In that busy time, Jiang Xiaoxue felt the long-lost tranquility and calmness in her family. She felt that the most important thing in life is generally like this.
My father, who had been working in the coal mine all his life, did not have any hobbies, but liked to sip loose white wine made from pure grain produced in Hegang after work, with peanuts and mixed vegetables. Jiang xiaoxue was also a “wine putty” herself. She often had two glasses of wine with her father in the evening. The two of them talked endlessly about the things that happened in the day, and then fell into a dizzy sleep.
Although it was her father who pushed her to the blind date at the beginning, he was really afraid that Jiang would abandon herself and deal with the important affairs of life carelessly. He always grumbled, “Only when you are really good to you can you hurry this kind of thing”.
As a matter of fact, Jiang xiaoxue secretly took her father’s opinion as the standard. Her father did his best before her mother died, making her get to know this man again and regard him as the template for her future husband. “I think I should find such a man with responsibility and kindness”.
But it seemed that the more she thought about it, the less she really believed in the utility of dating. “It was during that period that I began to think again, should I go on blind dates?” She sometimes believes that “marriages are made in heaven,” but she knows that it is impossible to “put everything in prison” — “Can it be that love really knocks on the door? I still have to see you one by one.
5
Jiang Xiaoxue’s blind dates over the years have been extensive: police, judges, doctors, teachers, private employers, workers, you name it — especially policemen. She has dealt with almost all kinds of police, narcotics, Interpol, traffic police, bailiffs, prison guards, iron police. From the geographical point of view, Hegang city, Luobei Suibin two counties, Baoquanling farm, and even the adjacent cities, all are in her “network”.
There was a wide net, but the desired fish was never caught. Such a large area of “fishing”, Jiang Xiaoxue’s spirit in a little bit exhausted, for the other half of the expectation is getting lower and lower, to later, some family arrangement of blind date, she directly refused to meet. However, in the society of acquaintances in the town, many blind dates are set up by colleagues, friends and leaders. In order to maintain the interpersonal relationship, she really has no courage to refuse, so she has to “obey the orders respectfully”.
Among the numerous blind dates, it is not that no one can touch Jiang Xiaoxue’s heartstrings.
In May 2017, soon after spring came to Hegang, a gust of cold wind hurriedly drove away the leaves before they had time to sprout and shrink back in the branches. Jiang xiaoxue went out and sat in the window seat of Green Silk. She folded the crimson woollen coat on the ground and put it behind her back.
Sitting opposite her was Wang Jiahe, 27, a railway policeman, a blind date introduced by a friend.
Jiang Xiaoxue is the kind of person who believes in love at first sight. From the moment she enters the “Green Silk” door, her eyes are firmly fixed on Wangjiahe. The man had a very white complexion and was different from the dark railway policeman he usually saw on the train. Looking from a distance, he had regular features and a dashing spirit. Although he was sitting, he could still see that he was tall.
Earlier, when the friend tried to give her the man’s basic information, she stopped him unequivocally. She told her friends to simply tell them where and when they would meet, and to keep everything else to herself so she wouldn’t lose the ‘mystery.’
Jiang Xiaoxue said so in her mouth, but in her heart she did not think so. She had suffered too much from “introducing people”. Her trust in the introducer is clearly hierarchical: friends of the same age are the highest; Then came my father; Then there are leaders and colleagues; Finally, relatives. When a man is introduced from multiple connections, she usually turns him down — not necessarily because he’s not nice, but because several references distort the truth as they go along.
Before one is, the other is her “sister-in-law’s friend’s friend’s friend’s relative’s child”, sister-in-law has not seen, sister-in-law’s friend has not seen, sister-in-law’s friend’s friend has not seen, but after the person said, the other 1.9 meters big head, looks handsome uncommon, in the city two hospital to do a doctor, the condition is very good. Jiang xiaoxue wanted to add a WeChat first.
WeChat passed quickly, she went through each other’s circle of friends at the first time, and saw that there was always a selfie of a little fat man in the circle, whose head was no more than 1.75 meters, so she cut straight and asked each other: is this you? The other side very readily admit: yes. Jiang thought to herself, “If you don’t have the right head, will you be able to work?” Can chat for a while, the young man said he was doing equipment maintenance in the hospital. When Jiang xiaoxue heard this, he said that the maintenance man was also wearing a white coat and that there was nothing wrong with him.
Therefore, Jiang xiaoxue began to go on blind dates without knowing anything. Her family and friends all felt that she was “abnormal”, and her father said that she was just like a fly with its head cut off. But Jiang has her own considerations: this can minimize the “sense of ceremony” of dating, or, no matter how good the man is, she will always feel “almost”.
Two months later, Jiang xiaoxue and Wang Jiahe ended their brief love affair in an unseemly way. First, Jiang Xiaoxue proposed to part company unilaterally, but Wang Jiahe did not agree. He went to Jiang Xiaoxue’s house and made a big scene. After venting, he cried and said, “Jiang Xiaoxue, what are you? !”
Jiang xiaoxue just stood by and watched him coldly, unmoved.
He is too male chauvinists. He talks in the same way as Huang Xiaoming in Chinese Restaurant now. All the decisions have to be made by him. As for such an episode — Jiang didn’t even want to call it “love” — she later reflected: “It was mainly because I was too hasty at that time. Who could have thought that such a beautiful face could contain such a frightening personality?”
That’s Jiang xiaoxue’s problem, and it’s a common feature of most young people in small towns who keep dating. They are like in a frantic haste, as the company’s HR (human resources management), hope that through rapid information screening and combination, immediately tell each other whether appropriate, if satisfied, quickly determine the relationship, start the next process, if not very suitable, can instantly into the next unknown “match”, has no feeling.
6
On April 15, 2019, house prices in Hegang became a hot search on Weibo, and overnight, the originally obscure border town became popular all over the country. People were surprised to find such a magical place hidden in the far northeast of the northeast, where the “cabbage price” and “11-case set” stimulated public curiosity and sparked a series of discussions about hegang’s economic decline.
Seeing the hot searches and the overwhelming news, as well as the multiple inquiries from classmates and friends from other places on WeChat, jiang xiaoxue had the feeling of being in the center of the storm for the first time, and also re-examined his own town for the first time.
The housing misinformation was soon cleared up, but the loss of population was once again brought up. From 2001 to 2017, hegang’s registered population fell by about 100,000, a figure that should be even higher once the city’s population is included.
The main force of the population loss is young people. “Generally speaking, young people will not consider returning to Hegang after they have gone to college, because there are too few young people,” said Jiang xiaoxue, who gave herself a reason after many failed blind dates.
On weekends, she would occasionally shop in Times Square, looking at the empty malls, and she would suddenly feel hopeless about her future, not knowing where her partner was “cat” or whether she was going to walk alone for the rest of her life.
More often than not, she would miss her days in Shenyang. She would walk into a shopping mall and be filled with young people, youthful faces and fresh and surging vitality. She would feel that everything was full of hope.
Jiang’s argument is plausible to some extent, but a study of dating reports from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen shows no positive correlation between population and success rates, and data analysis that has worked well in other fields seems to have lost its power in the world of relationships.
But when she is not affected by her emotions, Jiang admits that there are signs of an increase in the number of young people in Hegang. In recent years, the town “gold crane post back” is put forward, increase the intensity of the talent introduction, through the policy tilt to attract a large number of hegang and other provinces and cities of university graduates, this spring, hegang municipal public security bureau issued the hegang about 2019 ZhaoJing preferential policies, the optimal condition has reached “a car a room”.
But Jiang decided not to go on blind dates. “It was like digging out a big tumor,” she said. “I felt relaxed.”
She wanted to put all her energy into life itself. She usually worked in the company and had to do some work. Although the salary was still too low, she could at least make a “proper living”. After work, I would chat with my father at home, take a walk, play mahjong games with my mobile phone, or dance zheng Duoyan weight loss exercise. At the weekend, or with two or three friends together to baoquanling, Old man ditch, famous mountains and other scenic spots around, or shopping, watching movies, no anxiety, no anxiety.
However, there will also be a moment that will make Jiang Xiaoxue a little uncomfortable. She likes watching idol dramas, no matter what type they are. Every time she watches them, she will feel a little disappointed and lost. The love in the show is sweet enough to give her a “blow”, always reminding her of the situation of being alone, although not “miserable”, but also can’t always console herself that it’s ok to be alone.
In the era of mobile Internet, it seems that no corner can be forgotten by the world. Those new things may come a little later, but they will come eventually. The economy of this small town in the border area is still in the downturn, and its transformation is difficult and difficult, but it seems to be gradually recovering at a visible speed. The take-out business is booming. Cafes, gyms, cinemas and even game rooms such as the Secret Escape have popped up in the streets, albeit sportively, which is better than nothing. The young people who kept coming back brought back some new ideas and gave birth to a new atmosphere in the town.
And the town also seems to have an incredible power to allow people floating in the air to gradually take root, appreciate the true nature of life. Here is the root, is the home, there is always someone deeply love it, sentimentally attached to it, there is always someone willing to stay, there is always someone will come back. As long as you are here, you are living your life seriously and diligently. As to whether you will continue to sink, no one can give an answer and no one can think about it.
Jiang Xiaoxue is not dissatisfied with her current state of life.
“If you admit it, I think this is a paradise”, there is no big city lights, there is no big city war chaos, “in a big city to bear too much pressure, but Hegang low housing prices, low prices, sky blue water clear, relaxed. What’s more, no matter how far away it is, it is also a city. So what’s wrong with being able to live comfortably here?”
“One day I was walking on the road and suddenly I had an idea. I just started to think that the problems I was having — dating and not being able to find someone — had nothing to do with which city I was in.”
(The characters are not real names.)
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