Train tickets for this year’s Spring Festival seem harder to get than ever before. I also blame myself, the school had a holiday at the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, But I do not know which day is appropriate to go home. By the time the final decision was made, there were no tickets left online. I this just panic hands and feet, a row downloaded a few software to grab a ticket, but also added money, a few days down still no result. But in, I had to contact high school classmate Liang Bin.
Liang Bin made a decent salary as a product manager at a large Internet company in Beijing, and this year he not only paid a down payment on his house, but also bought a car. I texted him and asked if I could give him a lift home. He replied that he might not come back this year. Then he asked, you are not early in the school holiday, why not buy a ticket back earlier?
“A little reluctant to go home.” I tell you the truth.
Did not expect that he immediately like to find a bosom friend, said: “It is true brothers! I think so, too.”
I chased 1: “why, your village dog see stranger bite?”
“If it’s a dog, I’m just afraid to see my dad,” he said.
1
When I was a student, my longest summer vacation was more than three months after the end of the college entrance examination in 2006. Because my family is in the countryside, and no one goes out to travel, my classmates all stay at home, eating and sleeping, as if to make up for more than ten years of sleep. A lot of students are because of a relaxation, but physical discomfort, one after another sick. I also fell ill with a fever and was taken by my father on a tricycle to a clinic in a neighboring village to deliver water.
It was very hot that day. The cicada at the door was like a repeater, calling over and over again. I was pouring some liquid and the doctor and my father were chatting with each other. The doctor nearly banged his head on the table several times because he was sleepy, then turned on the TV behind him.
The news of our county was playing on the TV. At first, it was the leader of the county Party Committee. Later, a group of people suddenly appeared on the screen beating gongs and drums as a gift for the banner.
Liang Bin is my classmate. Because they didn’t have a telephone at that time, they lost contact after the college entrance examination. I quickly spotted his shy figure in the camera, more excited than he was, pointing to the screen and announcing this to my father and doctor, who could see. When I finished, they both became suddenly excited and kept asking if it was true — not everyone has the ability to score 655, after all.
After a while, the doctor suddenly asked me, “How many marks did you get?”
I was excited, a deflated gas, finally or my father for me first answered: “591, just past a line.”
As if to highlight the gap between Liang bin and me, my father deliberately bites the last sentence very hard, with a slight sigh. I pretended to be calm, but in fact I was very complicated, especially when I saw Liang Bin’s father giving an interview in front of the TV camera. I was full of shame for my father.
In the TV, Liang Bin’s thin, dark father sits on a lacquered bamboo chair, with holes in the wall behind him, broken awards and a star poster with its bottom corner splayed out. He stumbled and asked, “Are you proud of your son?” He smiled sheepishly and said, “That is.”
I could see in his eyes how proud he must have been.
“Have such a son, when the parents eat chaff swallow vegetables also worth.” After watching the news, the doctor sighed.
My father did not look at me, also just blandly said: “that is.”
Although Liang Bin was the top scorer in science in our county, he was not admitted by Peking University and Tsinghua University due to his conservative application. Instead, he enrolled in the Postgraduate program of Beijing Institute of Technology. For those of us who have not been able to “go out of the province” of the students, is to dare not to think of things, but for him, or some regret.
This kind of regret was not only on his mind. Later, when chatting online, he told me that almost every time when he went home for vacation, his father would tell people over the dinner table about the past when he was received by the county leaders. He would sigh repeatedly and say that it would be better if he had applied for Peking University.
Sometimes, anticipating that his father would bring up the old story again, Liang bin hurriedly moved on to other topics, but to no avail. Later he would not bother, after all, his father is in the rain to go mud son, the leader came home that time, for him, is probably the highest point in life.
Most of the children from the countryside can sympathize with their parents’ hardships and live frugally. I started to be a tutor when I was a freshman, while Liang Bin was more sensible. He took out student loans as soon as he entered the university. He also did many part-time jobs in his spare time, selling newspapers, distributing leaflets and acting as sales promoter, which could basically meet the daily expenses.
In order not to worry his parents, every time he called home, he said that the school had given scholarships or grants to poor students, so that they would not worry about him and save money for his brother to study.
Perhaps because his family really had limited knowledge of the outside world, his words always convinced his father. But when Liang returned home for the Spring Festival that year, he found that his father had a new topic of conversation — he always seemed to inadvertently mention how wonderful his son was, how easy it was to get a scholarship and how little money he had to worry about.
Several Cousins admired his father’s good fortune and praised him for his ability to teach his son. Mr. Liang bowed his head and said nothing, his frostbitten toes stinging in his sneakers from a promotional trip outside xidan.
2
When I was a graduate student, I was also admitted to Beijing, and I had frequent contact with Liang Bin.
One year, xiao Meng, another old high school classmate, and I had a barbecue at a street market at night. Over a few drinks, we began to talk about our recent troubles. I and small sweet words more, seem to find a resonance from the complaint; At first, Liang was just absorbed in eating beef tendon. Then, out of nowhere, he suddenly said that he couldn’t figure it out. He was just reading a book in Beijing.
I and small meng leng, asked him: “what happened?”
He smiled wryly and said, “My father called me at noon and told me that my cousin was arrested by the public security bureau because my second aunts and neighbors were fighting over the homestead. I just asked who was the main culprit, and my dad lost his temper and said, ‘What time is it, and you don’t have time to ask? Hurry, hurry, go to the top and get your cousin out ‘.”
As we listened to Liang imitating his father’s voice, we couldn’t help but cover our mouths and laugh. “We’re both students,” I asked. “What makes your dad think you’re ‘up there’?”
Liang Bin mourned: “Yes, That’s what I said. As a result, he asked me aggressively: ‘Don’t you have a classmate whose father is from the Ministry of Public Security? Ask him for help! ‘I just remembered that I had mentioned to him that one of my roommates’ father worked in the Ministry of Public Security. But somebody else is an ordinary office worker, besides, this all where heel where, this kind of thing shouldn’t do by legal procedure!”
We were speechless for a moment. “Our parents are born in the soil, soil long, have not seen the world. They may have deified us in their hearts — especially you, who were the top scorer in our college entrance examination. In your father’s eyes, you are superman.”
Liang Bin hated to be mentioned as the top scorer in the college entrance examination. He cursed “X” and began to drink beer again.
Compared with Liang Bin, my parents have never made such a request in front of me. But I know in my heart that my parents in Shandong and Henan have a strong attachment to “being an official”, and my father is no exception.
According to him, he picked out the name from the list of delegates to the two sessions. And When I read primary school, the classmate name in contain “fierce” have 4. Chen Meng, Peng Meng, Wang Meng, Zhang Meng, behind each name stands a father with an eager heart.
During the summer vacation when I was a sophomore in graduate school, my father and I sat watching TV together — miraculously, this time it was related to TV — and the CCTV news broadcast showed a picture of the Chinese Embassy staff in Kyrgyzstan attending a celebration. I casually said, “That thin man is my senior fellow student.”
My father stared. “How did he get to the embassy?”
I say immediately: “that have what difficult, take an examination of officeholder ah. Our small language examination civil servant, and other major than the competition is much smaller. Some of us worked in the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Commerce last term. They were all stationed abroad.”
Say that finish I return some smug, my father however pat a thigh: “that return wait for what, you also take an examination of! Let’s examine the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It represents the face of our country, and when we say it out loud, our face will shine.”
As my dad gleefully imagined the future, I couldn’t help frowning, because none of my current options for a job include a “civil servant.”
Over the course of a few days, my dad broached the subject several times, imagining a future in which I would sit behind the chairman and ministers as an interpreter, passing in a few diversions — until I told him that divorce rates were high in foreign postings and he gradually dismissed the idea.
3
Liang bin’s younger brother, who is five years his junior, had poor grades and dropped out of high school. After working in Kunshan for two years, his family was in a hurry to find him a partner.
In recent years, the ratio of boys to girls in rural areas has become so unbalanced that many families with boys start looking for a son early in life, so that he won’t die alone. After overcoming a series of difficulties and obstacles, Liang bin’s younger brother finally got a blind date at the age of 21 and found a girl from a neighboring village who also worked in other cities to be his friend.
Communication for half a year, to talk about marriage on the stage of marriage, the other party unexpectedly put forward a rather surprising amount of betrothal gifts: ninety-nine thousand yuan.
At that time, Liang had already graduated, worked for a public institution for a year and a half, and still had student loans to repay. His father called and asked, “Your brother is getting married. How much will you give him?”
Liang bin thought about the balance in his card and the picture of his father pedaling his bicycle to the county town every day to work as a brickmason. He bit his lip and said, “I’ll take 20,000 yuan.”
His father paused and said, “Ok.” Liang Bin can clearly hear, the voice of “good” inside with a heavy disappointment.
Liang bin promised his father to transfer the money at dinner time. In fact, he didn’t have so much money in his card, so he had to borrow it from his classmates. The classmate transferred the money to “pay treasure” inside, he also did not think much, then directly transferred the money to the younger brother. As the amount of the single transfer set before was 5,000 yuan, he needed to make four transfers before he could complete the transfer. Unexpectedly, just transferred to the second time, my brother’s phone came, picked up, the other end of the phone is his father’s voice:
“Have you no money? If you don’t have money, don’t do it. It’s not easy for you to make money.”
It seems to be a very intimate words, but that tone he is no longer familiar, dad’s real meaning is: you turn a little bit by bit, is it to send beggars?
Liang Binjiang presses grievance, frowning voice says: “rich, network speed is slow, this arrived zhang.”
In fact, he understood his father’s situation very well — working from dawn to dusk, saving money penny by penny, he had already overdrawn himself, but even so, relying on his own ability, it is not realistic to earn the bride price — plus the car money, catering money, Liang Bin would not even think about it.
Liang Bin’s father is like a exhausted survivor who has been swimming in the dark sea for a long time. When he saw his son, a small stake floating on the sea, he immediately kindled a strong hope that he could get on the ground and get a new life. He did not want to believe that it was difficult enough for the stake to save itself.
Back home in the winter vacation, Liang Bin found that the home not only bought a new car, in the backyard on a vacant lot, but also more than a two-storey building. His parents happily show him the new house, he looked around, some can not believe that their parents still have the power to build such a building. Following his father, he could not resist asking, “The height of each floor is too high. How much material must be wasted?”
“High? Only 3 meters 2, somebody else still whole into 3 meters 5! The floors are tall and imposing.” “His father said proudly.
But what about the senseless waste? How much more will it cost? “There is no need to build so many rooms,” Nunu said thoughtfully. “How many people are there in our family? Where can we live?”
“Why not? You won’t come back to live in the future?” His father stared at him.
“Me? I live a few days a year…”
“What, are you going to retire and not go home?” “His father said sulkily, his mouth drooping as if in disbelief.
Liang Bin realized that his father had always thought that he would retire in his hometown. When he retired, he said goodbye to the city, and his son and grandson would also return to their hometown. The thought saddened Liang, who knew that the life his father expected of four generations living together with grandchildren would not happen, at least not in his hometown.
4
It wasn’t long before Liang’s sympathy for his father was dissipated. The younger brother got married after the Spring Festival. On the second night of the wedding, the whole family sat down to have dinner in the living room of the old house. Happy, his father took out a bottle of white wine left over from the wedding. Liang bin was not a very good drinker. His brother had to drive out to run errands after dinner, and his father almost finished the whole bottle by himself.
Under the light, his father’s face became red and bright, he staggered on a small stool, and he talked a lot. He suddenly pointed a chopstick at Liang Bin and said unhappily:
“You don’t look like a brother!”
Liang Bin suddenly very embarrassed, especially the side also sat just married his sister-in-law. With a forced smile, he went up to him and asked, “What’s wrong with me?”
“Do you know what I did to your uncles? Your grandpa left early. I’m so worried about this family. If they marry a wife, which one is not my plan? Look at you. Your brother got married, and you don’t come back till the end of the day. And your money, I borrowed it from your mother, and don’t think anyone’s trying to take advantage of you…”
Liang Bin’s heart immediately fire up. But before he could retort, his mother and brother stopped his father. His mother angrily say: “still is not a family? You can say that after a couple of horse piss.”
His father muttered, “Who’s talking nonsense, I’m not drunk…” Liang Bin bowed his head and did not speak. His mother helped him with some food and looked very sad. Maybe, he thought, there was a little emotion in mother’s heart.
After a while, his father looked at Liang Bin with infatuating eyes, and said earnestly: “I tell you, you are the eldest brother, later I and your mother are not, this home are you carry, in front of them two,” he used chopsticks to brother and sister-in-law’s direction waved, “you are not the elder brother, is the father, is the father you know? You went to college, and you’re doing well. Your brother and his family have a difficult life because of their low education. You must help them in the future!”
His father bit the word “must” very hard. The table was silent. Liang bin nodded, trying not to show his anger.
Lying in bed at night, Liang Bin tossed and turned several times but did not fall asleep. He just couldn’t figure out his father’s logic: why should he be responsible for his younger brother’s poor grades and failure to find a good job?
It was probably his father’s strong feudal voice that made him feel uncomfortable. For the remaining two days at home, Liang Bin always avoided him. But his father is very calm appearance, have a meal time even hum play opera, it seems to be to suppress the words for a long time after coming out, the heart is comfortable.
‘It did make me feel very wronged,’ Mr. Liang told us over dinner after his return, but he couldn’t hate his parents for raising him. He swore secretly that he would not let his parents worry about his life in the future, so as not to give his father the impression that he could not stand on his own feet as the eldest son.
In 2015, Liang Bin met a Beijing girl from his company. Liang Bin occasionally went to the girl’s home to sponge a meal. Her parents were very warm and called him “Xiao Bin” just like his parents. Liang Bin felt confident.
His parents back home were pleased to hear that their son had found a girlfriend — she was a Beijing girl, after all, and it sounded good to say so. The only thing they worry about is the dowry. Liang Bin brother that wave just past, the home like just been a robbery, owe a buttock debt just began to pay.
Liang Bin and his girlfriend to discuss, the other side quietly said: “the bride price or more, let my parents feel that no use raising my daughter.” She took out the 100, 000 yuan she had saved and gave it to Liang bin. “Anyway,” she said with a smile, “we turned around and around, and finally fell into our own hands.”
Moved by the incident, Liang transferred the money to his family and explained what had happened. His father was also shocked, and his voice broke as he spoke over the phone.
At the time of booking, the family took an eight-hour train ride to Liang bin’s hometown. This is in our face-oriented rural areas, it is really the most glorious thing: people from other cities can go to the countryside to book for her daughter, that is how much money can not buy it! Neighbors all sighed liang Bin’s parents: “live style”, “too worth it.”
During the three days of his girlfriend’s family living in his hometown, Liang Bin was always in fear. He knew how poor his family was, that his parents were not very talktive, that they could not speak Mandarin, and that the economic and cultural difference made unpleasant things possible. In this, of course, he was on the side of his parents, fearing that their pride would be hurt by the woman’s bad behavior.
However, his future mother-in-law and father-in-law were remarkably reasonable, with a smile on her face all day long, squeezing into their low-slung kitchen and promising to help Liang bin’s mother. Liang Bin all see in the eye, several times the nose is sour.
On the morning of the last day, his brother drove his girlfriend’s family to a nearby scenic spot, while Liang stayed behind to pack with his parents. As usual, a neighbor dropped in to give his opinion of the “wife in town” and his future in-laws.
Liang Bin saw his father sitting in the living room, his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette, showing off the context of the bride price. When the other side kua here daughter-in-law understanding, his father actually took some pride to say: “That she is taken a fancy to the future of small bin. Otherwise, as an undergraduate in an ordinary university, I wouldn’t look up to her!”
Liang Bin never forgot the image. He could not have imagined that his father’s pride and conceit should be so close together, that he himself had no capital to be proud of, and where did his father’s “confidence” come from?
5
After several years of work, Liang Bin and his father’s communication is much less, every time to call home, he would subconsciously dial the phone number of his mother, the content of the chat is nothing more than parents, but the phone that bits and pieces of chatter let him feel at ease; Sometimes something important was happening in the family — a cousin was getting married and someone in the village had died — and his father would suddenly interrupt and say, “Let me tell him.” Then he grabbed the phone and, without calling out his name, said at the top of his voice, “Hey, I’ll tell you –“
But when money is needed, there will always be disagreements. For example, when he returned home for the Spring Festival last year, his father called in advance and said, “Give 1000 yuan to each of your nieces and nephews.”
Liang Bin has some meng: what he prepares at the beginning is 200. In his understanding, lucky money is to ask for a happy occasion, he did not know why to give so much to children.
‘If you don’t have the money, your mother and I will pay you. You are working outside, don’t show 300, 500 people joke. Yanling gave them each 500 last time.”
Yan Ling was Liang Bin’s cousin, separated in his father’s eyes by a layer of closeness.
Liang Bin took a breath, “MMM” agreed. He remembered an example that his father often gave at the dinner table when he was a child: He stayed in the city after graduation from Erlin University in the village. Once, when he was giving his father money for the Spring Festival, he took out a wad of banknotes from his wallet, counted them one by one, and handed them to his father, who slapped him in the face.
“Fill what big ye, in front of oneself Lao Tze return so have no rules.” Liang Bin’s father each time finished speaking, will give such conclusion with full justice. Liang Bin secretly mutter, er Lin exactly where did wrong? Do you need to put the money in a red envelope with both hands in advance? Does his family still want to see outside like this?
Liang Bin clearly knew that his father was not a man who loved money. On the contrary, every time he gave money to his parents during his working years, his father refused to take it. If you buy clothes for your parents, they will criticize you. But his father was vain and would encourage him to do some window-dressing to match his image as “the pride of the whole village.”
For several years, Liang had been trying to save up to buy a house in Beijing — the rent had been rising, and every time he handed over the money, he was distressed. But people kept coming back to borrow money, sometimes from younger brothers, Cousins, and sometimes from farther away, through his father. He dare not tell his father his monthly salary of more than 30,000, just tell him, or the original 10,000 yuan.
The monthly rent and daily expenses in the big city, the pressure of buying a house and a car, were not on his father’s mind. In his father’s opinion, 10,000 yuan a month is a good income, so Liang has the obligation to help his family.
“We college graduates from the countryside have a much harder time compared to urban kids.” Liang Bin complained to me once. “There are generations of people helping a child, and they have their own pension, their own pension, and they have no worries; As for us, we’ll carry our whole family on our shoulders.”
I did not know how to console him, but said to him: “It cannot be without my own life. You must tell your father you have a home to feed, too.”
“What’s yours and mine?” ‘In my father’s eyes, it’s all his,’ Mr. Liang sneered. He said, without him, we wouldn’t be alive. As a family, there is no distinction between you and me.”
As for myself, Since I haven’t started working to earn money, I haven’t faced liang Bin’s tough situation yet.
However, as I get older, I do have less incentive to go home during the Spring Festival. I spent most of the few days greeting people I didn’t know well and actually sitting down with my family and having some personal talk.
And my dad started thinking big for me and for himself.
Every time before going home, he would call me and tell me: “when you come back, you must buy two packs of cigarettes. When you meet people at the end of the village, you must give them cigarettes. You mustn’t seem to have gone out and put on AIRS. That’s what country people do. You think highly of them when you have a cigarette.”
Because I do not smoke, I often forget this matter, every time he severely criticized a few words, and then out of the drawer others gave him cigarettes to me.
My father also had his own “secret joke” : Chu Angge at the back of our home was out doing business, only to come back once a few years, and once a year when he came home to see people love to ignore, “wearing brighter than the dung beetle”. Then his father died, and when he came back from the outside, there was no one in the village to help him, and the mourning hall was empty, so he had to invite all the men in the village to eat, and put two boxes of good cigarettes into each coffin bearers to finish the funeral.
Listening to my dad tell this joke so much, I began to feel a little sad: he is really old, has begun to plan for their “that day”. At the same time, It occurred to me that I was so far away in his heart, and that what I could do for him was so insignificant.
6
When I was waiting for the train ticket, I happened to read a poem by Hai Sang. It was so good that I wrote out my feelings about my hometown without revealing the mountains.
Those closest to me, they don’t know me
I don’t know them either
They and I just love and care for each other
But can’t get into each other’s heart
When one of them gets sick and one of them dies
I’m just a little hurt
And my hometown, which brought me up,
I will fly
When I come back to see it, I can’t love it anymore
My hometown is no longer mine
The trees and people in its land are no longer my concern
It doesn’t want me back
And the crops in that field
And the grave surrounded by the crops
I don’t deserve them anymore
I am already a foreigner.
I couldn’t help sending the poem to Liang Bin. After a while, he sent a mournful expression and said, “My father will probably ignore me for half a year now, alas!”
‘What’s the matter? I asked.
“My daughter-in-law is pregnant and it is inconvenient for me to go home. After discussing it, we decided to bring my parents to Beijing for the Spring Festival. It was nice when my dad suddenly said he was taking my brother’s two kids with him. I said, we rent a small house, together in my father-in-law’s home for the Spring Festival, so many people inconvenient, my father did not wait for me to finish, immediately put the phone down.
“Ah, this New Year’s Day.” I accompany him to sigh together, “that this year how pass, let him there sulk?”
He was silent for a moment, probably holding his head in his hands and feeling morose. “I don’t agree with the second half of the poem,” he replied abruptly.
When I asked why, he said, “I don’t think he could be comfortable being a foreigner. What’s your hometown? It’s where you come from, your hair, the lines on your palms. There’s so much going on here. Do you really think you can get away with it?”
Recent Comments