Whether active or passive, the city is becoming our most dominant living space. Generations of people have been shaped by the city and shaped the city, examining life and being examined by life. 2020 is a year of forced grounding. No matter where we are, whether we are calm, irritable, at a loss, or with palpitations, it is a suitable opportunity for many people to re-examine their relationship with “a city”. Right now, the editorial team of “Living in the City” is once again opening a major essay contest. Record your story with the city you are living in or have lived in, record its answers to the questions we all ask about dreams, love and hope, record all the people and things you can’t forget here, and record its unique look that belongs to you only. The essay is valid for a long time, so send an email to [email protected] and mark “People in the City” in the title. We look forward to hearing from you.
1
When my mother took me back to my mother’s house in the Spring Festival of 2000, I met my brother-in-law who had returned from Guangzhou. At that time, my brother-in-law was young and lean, and reached out to hug me, but the smell of motor oil made me choke and cry. In the end, he smiled and gave me back to my mother, and turned around and went to the corner to smoke.
2 years ago, my brother-in-law went south with high school tuition and a group of friends, and a big man led them to a relative’s house for a meal and a sleep on the floor in the factory dormitory. Perhaps the relative was not as competent as the big man boasted, and several high school students did not get jobs, after which they spent a few nights in hostels and had no choice but to return home when the money was nearly squandered.
The next year, my brother-in-law went to Guangzhou without saying a word, carrying the tuition money his grandfather had raised by burning bricks.
“He still has no desire to study!” That day, the elder aunt’s voice came from inside the room. She told my brother-in-law to come back and help my grandfather plant cotton, and not to go to Guangzhou to fool around. When my mother stopped him, he threw his hands away rudely and then ran headlong into Grandpa, who came out.
Grandpa asked with a grimace, “Are you really not going to study anymore?”
Brother-in-law tilted his head to the side and said with carelessness, “I have a way out in Guangzhou.”
His big friend had already found a job as a porter with the help of his relatives and settled down in Guangzhou. The brother-in-law was unfamiliar with the city and found a job as an apprentice in a repair shop on his own, with food and housing included. Every day, he flexibly got into the bottom of the truck to dismantle and repair, thinking that after another three to five years of hard work, he could go out and open a garage alone – there are more and more private cars on the roads in Guangzhou, so there is no worry about not having work to do.
But the whole family questioned my brother-in-law’s idea, including my father. My father was the eldest brother-in-law, and he joined the elders in accusing my brother-in-law of “not knowing what to do”.
But a year later, the status of both of them changed dramatically, as my father, who graduated from college, was forced to be laid off from the state-run factory, while my brother-in-law, who had not even finished high school and was a child, had already started a service business with a friend in Guangzhou.
When I came home for New Year’s Eve that year, the smell of chemical furs on my brother-in-law’s body made my nose itch. After receiving the gifts, everyone was very happy, but only Grandpa was silent, he disliked the fancy clothes, and did not understand how the world outside had changed.
But from then on, Grandpa began to acquiesce to his brother-in-law going out to make a living – his son could afford to live in the big city, so he couldn’t work in the fields for the rest of his life like he did.
It was not until 10 years later that I came to Guangzhou for the first time.
He bought Grandpa a shiny motorcycle, rented a new warehouse in Guangzhou, and brought my depressed father to Guangzhou to do business with him.
On the day we arrived, my brother-in-law borrowed a friend’s SUV to pick us up and took us on a cruise on the Pearl River at night. I suppressed my excitement on the deck, timidly gazing out at the foggy skyscrapers and flowing traffic, imagining how white-collar workers would weave in and out of them – I was already chasing urban novels and had an endless yearning for the bustling city.
“I want to come to Guangzhou.” I thought to myself.
But in the next few days, the reality of life began to shatter my beautiful fantasies about Guangzhou, and I was even disappointed – the rental houses in the Sanyuanli urban village were only five or six stories high, and the aisles between the buildings flowed like a gutter with sewage all day long. Looking upward, there are knotted wires and dense clotheslines, like a large net that will fall before it falls.
In the urban village, there is another “net” that is invisible – in those years, there are constantly neighbors brought to Guangzhou by brother-in-law to make a living, they are scattered here and there, firmly linked, and go together to bargain with wool merchants, introduce each other to low-priced processing plants, and also together to intimidate the rivals who grabbed the layout ……
When I had time, my brother-in-law took me to visit these folks in turn. Most of them are also in the garment business, the layout of the room is much the same, you can see a few old computers when you enter, the shelves against the wall are stuffed with returned goods, there are tape measures, threads, and pieces of wash labels scattered on the floor.
On weekdays, if there is something lively, folks are always willing to crowd in my brother-in-law’s rented house, chewing on heavy greasy and spicy hometown dishes, drinking and cheering, with red faces.
At a party, my great uncle said, “Old Zhang’s batch of goods, the material can not ……”
The first uncle is an honest man in the family, but was the first to follow his brother-in-law to the sea, when he had already set up another front, specializing in ladies jackets.
“He sold the South American, no problem, I guarantee!” The uncle who made the leather goods took over.
He drank white wine alone, squinted at everyone, and made a happy gurgling sound in his throat, just like a small boss with a successful career.
Not long after, brother-in-law began to brag that he intended to set up a factory in partnership with his brothers. At that time, as a middleman, brother-in-law ordered from the factory and then sold to the stall to earn the difference in price. After making money, he was ambitious and wanted to get a few machines to process and produce clothes by himself. This proposal made everyone here excited, and some people even had thought of bringing out the women in the family to “be a female supervisor or cook or something”.
In those days in Guangzhou, my brother and I slept in the rental house during the day, and at 2 p.m., my brother-in-law went to the warehouse to pick up the goods after copying the list reported by the customer on QQ. Open the iron door, a smelly smell of dead rats floating out, I stood outside the door refused to enter, but my brother slipped like a loach into the pile of clothes more than two people high.
“Sins, do not step on!” My sister-in-law shouted from behind. But soon she was happy that her brother had understood and could shuttle back and forth to help her with the goods, becoming a helper.
In the peak season, my brother-in-law or aunt-in-law had to drive the van to XIII every afternoon to make deliveries. All the chairs in the back of the van were unloaded and piled with clothes of all colors dragged out of the warehouse. I also followed a few times, a floor of the building is divided into dense small compartments, stalls really look like an outward opening of the word “mouth”, very interesting. Some stalls are mainly online, some wholesale, some retail, a dozen square meters or even hundreds of square meters of stores full of green clothes, but no fitting rooms.
Many black people with pungent perfume and hot pants wearing schoolgirls will come here to find clothes. The owner’s wife always ignores such casual customers, “20 to 30 dollars for clothes, just buy what you like”. If the customer asks more questions, the boss lady will disdainfully turn her face away.
However, they are very enthusiastic about the young aunt and uncle who came to deliver the goods. After picking up the goods, the bosses pulled out red bills from their earthy yellow or dark green fanny packs, and the young aunts discreetly counted them again, and the deal was done.
I remember one day on the return trip, my brother and I bought glutinous rice chicken with change from my trouser pocket, and my brother ate it with great joy, while I walked close to my aunt. At that time, I already had a sporadic sense of “money”, and the streets of Guangzhou were full of expatriates like me, which made me feel uneasy.
2
At that time, the whole Guangzhou seemed to be filled with the sound of machines. This “boom” in the garment processing industry was actually related to weak copyright protection. Except for a few budding national brands, some garment processors copied the patterns of foreign brands in order to make a quick buck. They produce clothes all by a pair of eyes, a pen, from the finished product or photos down to pick up the plate sample.
In the suburban fabric factories, hanging leather, wool, chemical fiber, cotton materials, recycled jeans in the doorway piled into a small mountain, regardless of style, quality, all sold by the pound; urban village garment processing plant is mostly through the private room, set up the machine, you can initially complete the cutting, sewing, embroidery …… then, women workers in the sewing machine sewing corners, cutting threads, labeling and bagging, a piece of ready-made clothes made.
The first time I saw a woman, I was a little bit of a girl. Earlier this way a lot of people get rich, they later opened their own processing plant or white wash to engage in the original brand, and then in the online shopping boom stood a firm footing.
Uncle also had such an opportunity, a salesman found him, said he wanted to do a batch of branded goods, “real and fake mixed sales out of the sea. But my brother-in-law was very cautious, because the brand logo was not negotiated and stopped. He only do the simplest and most classic version, always choose wool count higher fabric or more durable hardware, although much better than other imitation quality, but also did not explode, only by virtue of the contacts accumulated over the years, stable shipments every year.
“Down to earth to earn some money, some money do not dare to earn.” Brother-in-law said.
At the beginning, brother-in-law also had to go 3 kilometers away from the stall delivery, and then accumulated a little word of mouth, gradually there are salesmen looking to place large orders, and then he went to the factory processing.
The more smooth business, family conflicts arose – brother-in-law began to frequent chess rooms, KTV and hotel rooms. Even I did not avoid those days when I came to Guangzhou.
Such entertainment venues are usually hidden in the deeper alleys of urban villages, with LED lights of billiard rooms hanging outside. The air was filled with the smell of smoke, and the sound of yelling came from the rooms on either side of the room, and when the door was opened, red and green chips flew around the table.
During that time, my mother always received phone calls from my brother-in-law late at night, and she said that my brother-in-law had not come home again. The young aunt has a strong character, she finished processing the day’s orders, but also strong to tutor her daughter’s homework, until the child fell asleep, before she could open her mouth to complain to my mother. There were rumors out there that my brother-in-law had lost tens of thousands of dollars in goods overnight – of course, there were also deliberate losses to factory owners or downstream sellers.
My mother didn’t know what to do, but only advised her that it would be better when the child grew up, and exhorted over and over again, “Keep the money under tight control.”
Perhaps because she couldn’t stop her brother-in-law from gambling, her aunt became the first woman in her folks to buy a house in Guangzhou. She acted quickly and immediately took out the family’s savings to make a down payment and ordered a small three-bedroom house. She said, “Buy a house to collect the heart, the future life also has a head start.”
For the convenience of delivery, brother-in-law and brother-in-law still live in Sanyuan after buying a house, but some things have changed: brother-in-law’s poker game has deteriorated, gradually not on the table, not much gambling; after a few years, because they can not afford the high loan fees, folks have sent their children back home, and aunt’s daughter became the only child to stay in Guangzhou to study.
However, something happened in the city village – early followed his brother-in-law to Guangzhou to break into the old Li was caught on a delivery.
After that, everyone hid in the rented house for several days afraid to go out, brother-in-law went out to make connections, inquire about the news, came back to lament: “the money to earn, who are red. The good thing is not in the warehouse was caught.”
Because of the small amount of goods on the cart, the lawyer finally fought for Lao Li light sentence.
Peer jealousy is inevitable, after that brother-in-law acted more low-key, outsiders rarely know what he was doing big single, he also handed over the “financial power” to his aunt.
But one thing led to another, and something happened at the factory.
The factory was owned by someone from our neighboring village, and since he was an old-timer, my brother-in-law always paid first and then took the goods. That day, when he was unloading the goods at the warehouse, he found that the embroidery workmanship of the goods was so poor that not only were there a lot of threads, but they were also loosely woven and would fall apart with a slight tug, and when he took apart a few pieces, they were in the same condition.
Brother-in-law pulled the goods directly back to the factory, and the boss’s wife was still playing sloppy at the door, first saying that it was normal, and then saying that it could be changed, “but at present, we are catching up with other orders and have to reschedule”.
Brother-in-law waved a slap at the door, reaching out with his index finger to poke the boss’s nose: “Chen, get your husband down, redo it all, I want it all redone, immediately! Now!”
The boss’s wife went with a white face to find her man. In the latter half of the night, my brother-in-law was squatting at the entrance of the factory building, smoking one cigarette after another. The sewing machine inside was stepping on and off, and when dawn came, he called the people who transported the goods with a dumb voice and watched the dozen sacks roll onto the car.
Waiting for the buyer to sign the account book, brother-in-law retracted his tyrannical gaze with a hint of fatigue after the sudden relaxation of the tense spirit. I can’t remember how much money my brother-in-law made that day, but I remember that night, my relatives gathered in my brother-in-law’s living room to eat lo mein and drink beer. My brother-in-law was a little drunk, and he said to me solemnly in his native language, “Wenwen, listen to your aunt and uncle, study hard, go to college in the future, and live in the college town.”
My brother-in-law, who had stolen away to Guangzhou with high school tuition money, seemed to have a sudden obsession with education, and he led me around the university town in his spare time. My academic performance was only mid-range, but I was envious of the big lawn of Sun Yat-sen University, and my brother-in-law nodded his head with a satisfied smile, “Wenwen, you’ll take the exam here in the future.”
3
Since my father left for Guangzhou with my brother-in-law, my mother sometimes cried behind closed doors or comforted each other with the women who also stayed behind in their hometown. They didn’t know how rich Guangzhou was, with the red tickets going in and out of the poker room and the smoky people talking about business; nor did they know how barren Guangzhou was, with the “dong dong dong” sound of sewing machines and small trailers for deliveries going three or four kilometers up the road. I was caught in the middle and didn’t know how to respond, so I became extraordinarily well-behaved and buried my face in a thick math problem.
At the end of the year, my father came back and paid off some of the debts he owed from his previous business venture, and my mother begged him not to go south to Guangzhou anymore, but my father waved his hand and joined my great-uncle at their poker table. My brother-in-law’s smoking addiction was getting worse, and his blackened teeth and waxy face made him look like a drug addict.
The distant Guangzhou changed the appearance of people who went out.
My mother continued to stay at home and was relieved to see that I was well on my way to school, but this brief moment of smoothness was interrupted by my father’s bone injury accident – my father stumbled and fell to his knees while carrying fabric, too painful to scream, and my brother-in-law and great-uncle drove him home overnight. Mother sat in her bedroom and suddenly burst into tears when she turned around.
Father did not bring back much money this time, because in Guangzhou caught the habit of gambling and spending big, his money came and went quickly. After his leg recovered, he went to work in a local business, and our family kept our mouths shut about Guangzhou until my mother received another phone call from my brother-in-law.
“We now stay at home every day, do not dare to go to the stall, it is said that there are plainclothes.”
“Old Zhang was caught in the warehouse, he was arrested as soon as he showed up ……”
It seems that overnight, brother-in-law brought back all the young people in the village, but only the old Zhang was missing.
Old Zhang’s woman was panicked and grabbed the money tightly, or brother-in-law stepped in to help facilitate relations and up and down activities. But this time, unlike the previous peer jealousy, the money raised by everyone was returned. After a few days, brother-in-law also returned home, he hid in his room smoking, shaking his head when he saw people.
The folks were depressed like rats stuck in a hole, but remembered to send living expenses on time to the daughter born to Old Zhang’s ex-wife. The first time they visited the prison, they sent clothes and promised to grab a lawyer, then the defeat and verdict came down.
Zhang was sentenced to 2 years, his old mother cried twice, and the woman he brought back from Guangzhou went back to her mother’s house.
The “honeymoon time” between them and Guangzhou was so short.
After the “three strikes and two constructions” (which refers to the fight against bullying, counterfeiting, commercial bribery, building social credit system, building market supervision system), folks were forced to return to their hometown or change their profession. Great-uncle opened a long-distance transport in Guangdong, sister-in-law came back to find a company to work, and brother-in-law, who was burdened with the pressure of mortgage, could only return to Guangzhou after the wind had passed.
With his low education and age, brother-in-law was rejected by almost all companies and had no choice but to take over a painting studio in his own neighborhood to provide care services for busy parents. My brother-in-law’s move to buy a house more than a decade ago became another retreat.
I played well in the college entrance exam, the score was much higher than the score line of Sun Yat-sen University, went to study in a 985 university in the east, and after graduation came to Guangzhou for work, temporarily living in my brother-in-law’s house. Once inside, or two old computers, the floor is thread, the goods are being boxed, with an English single number on it, is the address of Canada.
Unlike in the past, when she sold labeled and imitation goods, my brother-in-law’s wish is to one day create her own brand to deal with Amazon’s increasingly stringent copyright protection.
“It’s not good these days, there are too many peers, and it’s not clear what Americans and Europeans really want.” Little aunt said, last year when the mermaid blanket hot sale, the price soared from a few dollars all the way to twenty to thirty dollars, still snatched up, the domestic factory rushed to ship, resulting in a hoard of more than a million goods, half in the domestic, half backlog in the overseas warehouse.
A thought, big sellers hurt, small sellers bankruptcy and collapse. The person reached middle age, unemployment, mortgage, children’s education, these difficulties small aunt encountered, but she grabbed a little hope to struggle to make a living – first put their children in school, and borrowed money to maintain the mortgage payments continue to pay, and finally resolutely ran to Shenzhen, from scratch to learn cross-border e-commerce.
“The whole six months, only came back once, because the cost of travel is also money.” Little aunt said, every night she video with the child, hear a “mother” feel heartbroken, the most unbearable is to be asked when to come back.
When she first joined the industry, the pile of handouts also marked with English notes, the initial problems are more, she can only adapt to the time difference, late at night and Amazon customer service telephone communication, but also had to ask each other again and again to reduce the speed of speech. Store operation at its best, the product was sent to the first page of the search, but encountered peers malicious price pressure, a product forced to no profit margin, only to be taken off the shelves …… so and so, she has survived.
That night, my aunt dished to me about the platform’s second half of the promotion, while my brother-in-law greeted a young man passing by and chatted about live streaming with goods. Their mutual friend opened a Netflix brokerage company, but it didn’t start early, and competition was fierce and traffic was hard to find.
“Only the ‘through train’ (sellers buy this service, the store will be in the keyword search results in the top) burned hundreds of thousands of dollars.” The man laughed bitterly, “but sales still can not go up.”
The ups and downs of life have made the brother-in-law no longer sharp, and even some calm, he handed a cigarette and lit it, said slowly in the smoke, “It’s not good, it’s not good.” Then he looked at the man’s short and sturdy figure and said, “Take your time, take your time.”
When people reach middle age, they believe more and more in “luck of the draw”.
Today, my aunt’s phone has more than a dozen Amazon sellers group, one of which was then the training course level group, the group members are active, often interchangeable.
“Lao Luo’s Japanese station is doing very big, but he actually doesn’t know any Japanese at all.” My aunt laughed about the successful classmate, as if she believed that this little miracle would also happen to her diligent self.
4
At some point, the identities of my brother-in-law and sister-in-law switched.
When my aunt was busy replying to customer messages, my brother-in-law would take my daughter for a walk in the square; when my aunt was in a hurry to deliver the goods, my brother-in-law would take the initiative to pack a bowl of hot rice and wait for her to have time to eat again. Sometimes my brother-in-law also comes to play, but he has a bit of a headache with words like “traffic”, “exposure”, “conversion”, and those coupons, pre-sales, and postage by region seem There are heavy traps that make him even more uncomfortable.
His brother-in-law was completely ignorant, and he refused his brother-in-law’s kindness to take him into the business and continued to run long-distance transportation to make ends meet. In front of the high loan fees in Guangzhou, the great uncle chose to exchange his more than ten years of hard work for a set of school houses in his home county and send his son back to study. After two more years, he also wants to go back and settle down completely: “Running long-distance transport, where is not running it?”
The young uncle plans to “die” Guangzhou, and then struggle for a few years to change a school district house.
“Huazhong is hard to get.” Brother-in-law asked his aunt, “Is it better to go to Guangwai or Guangya?”
“I want to go to Guangwai!” My sister’s sweet voice speaks fluent Mandarin.
When I think about it, the price paid by my brother-in-law’s generation to go to the city is even more profound.
Unlike my brother-in-law’s foresight, most of my relatives chose to keep their children back home. Lacking parental discipline, a distant cousin mixed with social youths, skipped classes, fell in love early, and disappeared before the midterm; my great-uncle’s son’s personality changed drastically after returning to his hometown, and he was preoccupied and even a little bit hostile, and stole the old man’s cell phone to charge his game account ……
Even if we bring our children around to raise them, brother-in-law had to “sacrifice” the life of the previous generation – grandmother was brought to Guangzhou to help with the household chores, but she had a strong native accent, and at first she communicated with the grandmother of the neighbors all by “um, ah” kind of intonation, but later found that she could not integrate, so she simply devoted herself to the daily chores of washing and drying clothes, choosing vegetables and cooking.
During the time I lived at my brother-in-law’s house, I found that my grandmother would make video calls with my grandfather at night, asking in detail: “How is the food? Have you cut the grape seedlings? Have you taken your antihypertensive medicine?”
After Grandma came to Guangzhou, the burden of taking care of Grandpa and Grandpa Tai fell on Grandma alone. Grandma instructed Grandpa, “Don’t let Mom do the laundry, put it in the washing machine upstairs and stir it up together.” The washing machine was purchased by my brother-in-law for my grandmother, who always resented the high cost of electricity and insisted on washing by hand.
One day before I left Guangzhou, my aunt took me to deliver dinner to my brother-in-law, and when I passed by a building, she suddenly stopped in her tracks, pulled me close and said, “The cheapest house in these buildings was only a down payment of a hundred thousand or so.”
My aunt, who was always calm, was a bit excited, thinking that if my great uncle or my father had kept their money bags and purchased a house here, they might not have left Guangzhou sadly.
And as long as they stay in Guangzhou, there is a chance to come back again.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law worked hard and gradually paid off their debts, and their family really put down roots in Guangzhou. One more thing will be gradually forgotten with time – that year, when Zhang was imprisoned, brother-in-law borrowed money for “activities” in his name, and the other party returned the large amount, but the activities still cost some money. After Zhang was released from prison, his woman came back from her mother’s house, and instigated him to “unclear accounts” as a reason to refuse to pay back the money.
Not long after, the old Zhang family’s home base to build a beautiful three-storey villa. Since then, the two families have been at loggerheads, and brother-in-law rarely returns to his hometown. When the foreign country to fight, mutual support, the end is so embarrassing.
Guangzhou took too much, and gave too much, far more than the young man who stole tuition to go to the sea imagined.
There is no shortage of young people who aspire to the big city: similar to the path of my brother-in-law 20 years ago, he left the village and I left the small town; he went to Guangzhou and my resume was cast in Guangzhou and Shenzhen; he caught the wave of the era of the rise of light industry and the processing of service trade, and I hurriedly threw myself into the arms of the information age; he faltered in the “three hits and two builds” and was eliminated by the industrial transformation and upgrading, and I was always worried about the arrival of the Internet bubble.
The end of my father’s generation has become the starting point of the next generation. After watching the ups and downs of the elders, when it was my turn to fight, I suddenly became both strong and vulnerable – Guangzhou to me, has long been different from the novel written 10 years ago as decent and shiny. It is a mixture of sweat and madness, dreams and bitterness, despair and hope, and a giant hand of the times quietly stirring everything in an invisible place.
How I would like to follow the tone of my brother-in-law back then and say, “I have a way out in Guangzhou.”
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