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Her favorite Russian house is not to remind her of the old and old red brick buildings of the past, but the ornate Kremlin, the winter palace and summer palace full of legends and paintings, the old buildings of St. Petersburg that the Baroque style, years and wars have not destroyed. Looking across the banks from the Neva River cruise, those old baroque houses looked so beautiful that she regretted not being able to walk in.
Your brunette
□Woman
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On Sunday morning, she woke up early as usual. Go to the bathroom and come back, glance at your phone, and confirm that the time is still early and it is not yet light. Recline on the bed and look through the phone in the duvet. When the cold wave hit, most of the people in the community were not heated enough, and she saw several neighbors complaining about the heating company in the group. The COVID-19 pandemic has locked people in their homes, and if the heating is no longer hot, the days will be more difficult. The room temperature in her home is eighteen degrees, which meets the heating qualification standard, and it will be more comfortable to be three or four degrees higher. The temperature generated by the body of the nest made her comfortable for a night, and she was reluctant to leave immediately. She slept less and less and always woke up early. Is it because of the age and lack of awareness, or is it considering the jet lag and unconsciously pandering to the daughter's side? Not clear. She used to wake up early to read; now she used to look through her phone before she got up to pass the time, as if everything in the world that concerned her was contained in this little machine in the palm of her hand. Her daughter Feifei sent her a fifteen-second little video three hours ago — Judy was crying, stroking her hair with both hands, sobbing and swallowing, muttering, saying something she didn't understand, listening to it three times, really didn't understand, only knew that little Judy spoke English. Judy looked sad and sad, she was in pain, and the remaining sleepiness disappeared at once.
Fei Fei married Pete four years ago. Pete doesn't speak Chinese, and the couple has trouble communicating with their son-in-law. Pete speaks deliberately slower, and she can understand some words and sentences. Little Judy speaks fast, milky, will not cater to others, every time the video, she is difficult to immediately understand what the little girl on the other side is talking about, need Feifei translation. Fei Fei was about to give birth, just in time for the winter vacation of school, and she passed ahead of schedule according to the expected date. She was afraid of heights, reluctant to fly, and afraid to fly for long periods of time. There was no direct flight from Shenyang to Melbourne, and she transferred from Guangzhou. The plane crossed the equator and crossed the Pacific Ocean, flying in the air for more than nine hours, which was a torture for her, but she couldn't put her mind at ease without going - Pete's parents were old and old, they lived in New Zealand, and it was impossible to go to Melbourne to accompany their daughter-in-law; the most important thing was that she always thought that foreigners did not understand the custom of Chinese confinement, and she was afraid of flying in the confinement. She actually lacks experience with children, except for her newborn daughter Feifei, she has never held another child. The nurse delivered Judy to her, and the little life that had just come to the world was soft and soft, and every squirm made her heart flicker. She was nervous, her hands were shaking, and she was extra careful in holding the child, afraid of slipping away. She paid special attention to the child's hair for the first time—a bit like a tender corn whisker that had just been peeled off. The hair was dense, wet against the brain skin, and the amniotic fluid did not seem to be completely cleaned. Judging from the hair, the child's fetus is full of nutrients. Pitt's parents, who were unable to see the newborn in person, named their granddaughter Judy. Judy grew up day by day, better looking than When Fei Fei was a child. When Fei Fei was first born, the jaundice was heavy and the skin was dark, and the jaundice faded before it was better. After Fei Fei grew up, her skin was not as white as her mother's, between her and Lao Cheng. Judy is white and powdery, which is very compatible with "corn whiskers". Judy was distinctly like Pete.
Fei Feifei did not come back for more than two years, when she missed home, let her mother take a home-cooked meal, trouble her mother to go to the supermarket to shoot roast duck, smoked chicken rack, Jufeng grapes, Nanguo pear, she said that the sweet and sour in Melbourne is monotonous, there is no Jufeng grape sour and sweet taste rich, there is no Nanguo pear there. Fei Fei also said that she was hungry for the delicious food on the table during the Spring Festival in her hometown, and she also missed a large number of relatives; relatives said that they also missed Fei Fei, and everyone wanted to see what her doll looked like, but it was inconvenient to cross the ocean. Looking at photos and videos is not the same as looking at real people after all. Feifei said many times when she was on video that she would like to come back to see her parents, and she is sorry that it is too inconvenient to have an epidemic now. When the daughter decided to marry Pete, Lao Cheng had a solemn expression for quite some time. Fei Fei and Pete's wedding in New Zealand, Lao Cheng and she did not go. Originally planned to finish the wedding over there, the two children came back to hold a thank-you banquet, and met with relatives and friends, and then Lao Cheng changed his mind and said that he had done it over there. This side of the ceremony to report, how wide, to tell who not to tell whom, think hard. She also agreed that they didn't have to come back deliberately. She has always felt that Lao Cheng actually has a knot in his daughter's marriage to Pete. Once when they talked about Pete, Lao Cheng casually said "ghost guy", and she solemnly reminded him not to call Pete in the future, it was inappropriate to call him in front of his face and behind his back. But she could understand Lao Cheng's mood. After raising their precious daughter for so many years, and finally marrying Pete, who does not speak Chinese and is difficult to communicate in depth, they can't say a word.
When feifei took Judy out shopping for the Spring Festival in 2019, an old aunt asked Feifei: "How much does it cost to help foreigners take children?" Obviously, Fei Fei was treated as a babysitter with a child, and Fei Fei was crying and laughing at the time, not knowing how to answer, looking a little hurt. After giving birth to Judy, Feifei only returned to that time. Take Judy on a plane, the bottle, milk powder, diapers are not wet enough to fill a large bag, and there is a turn in the middle, too much trouble, can not afford toss. Fei Fei said when he left, when Judy is older, he must take her back more, come back to see you more, and it is better if you can come over when it is convenient. Suddenly, Judy was three years old and in kindergarten. It was not easy for the three of them to come back together. When Pete was on vacation, he also remembered to go back to New Zealand to see his parents. Fei Fei said that she actually wanted to take Pete back to China, and she joked with Pete that Pete was an "islander" - Pitt was born in England, new Zealand, where he grew up, are all islands, and Australia, where he now lives, is also an island. Fei Fei said that he had the opportunity to take Piter to see the ancient Oriental civilization, such as taking a look at the Great Wall of China and letting him know what the "Great Wall" looked like. Pete smiled and said yes, and then there was no follow-up. Pitt had only been in China once before his wedding, and that time they were also transiting in Guangzhou, because of the tight time, they did not even have time to go to Beijing to see the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.
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Melbourne's daylight saving time is three hours ahead of Beijing time, and it's almost noon there. She watched the video again, and once again confirmed that she did not understand what Judy was crying about, wanted to play the video immediately, and worried about whether Feifei was driving, or was swimming in the sea, and it was not necessarily convenient to pick up the video. Pete and Feifei both love the outdoors, driving to the mountains for long holidays to pitch tents and camping, and taking Judy to the beach on weekends to play in the water. In June 2020, melbourne's new crown epidemic broke out for the second time, adding hundreds of new confirmed cases a day, and after the lockdown, the curfew was upgraded, and the fourth-level blockade was imposed, stipulating that one person could go out alone to exercise, but it was not allowed to leave home more than five kilometers, camping, going to the beach became a luxury. Fei Fei said that when the city was locked down, the three members of their family really had enough to fight, especially Pete and Judy. Since she was a child, Judy likes to go outside and run wildly, make trouble at home, and be happy when she goes out. Fortunately, the city is now locked down, the curfew has been lifted, and there have been no new local cases for a while. It's just after New Year's Day 2021, melbourne is summer, catch the weekend, they must have taken Judy to the beach. She thought about it, and the voice message: "The big weekend makes Judy unhappy, what's wrong with the child?" "Fei Fei's heart is really big, Judy is crying and crying, she doesn't go to find out what is wrong with the child, what are the appeals, and the mood to record the video and send it out."
The message proved she was awake. Fei Fei quickly hit the video and came over: "Mom, are you up?" We're now at Williamstown Beach. You say pete and I who dare to provoke Judy? It was she herself who had dreamed of sleeping at night, running to our bedroom early in the morning, grinding and chattering, not to say that her hair had turned black, and it didn't make sense to explain it to her. You say that her hair is as light as Pete's, how can it be black? She didn't look like me at all. Judy, come over and say happy weekend to the Queen. Fei Fei, from the little ghost elf, saw early on that the leader of the family was his mother, and often deliberately called her queen in front of Lao Cheng, and she always smiled and agreed. Fei Fei began teaching Judy to speak Chinese when she first spoke, and Judy sometimes called her Grandma and sometimes called her Queen. Her daughter, Judy, called her that, and she was happy. The mobile phone screen changed, Feifei turned the lens to the sea, several white seabirds flashed through the lens, a little girl wearing a red swimsuit appeared in the small box, first a small person in the background of the sea and sky, the little person ran towards the camera, the figure became larger and larger, and soon a large close-up of a face broke into the camera. The near-midday light shone on Judy's face, the little face looked puffed, and the experience of crying in the morning had been blown away by the sea breeze, leaving no trace. When she heard Judy say "Happy Weekend" in Chinese, a complicated taste arose in her heart that was difficult to say. Happy, relieved, and a little awkward, like when she heard that her daughter had decided to marry Pete.
Pittby Feifei is eleven years old and works at ANZ Bank. Born in Manchester, England, he moved with his parents to a small town in New Zealand when he was in secondary school, returned to england for undergraduate and postgraduate studies, and worked in London for four years after graduation, before coming to Melbourne alone. Fei Fei graduated from graduate school and worked in a Chinese-owned trading company. Fei Fei said that it was Pete who was stalking her and pursuing her. When the daughter decides to marry Pete, she is flustered, uneasy, and worried. Two people who did not grow up in the same environment, the age difference is so large, the cultural background is different, the living habits are different, can Feifei handle all aspects of the relationship? With the Chinese, you can say whatever you want, a little bit through, no need for unnecessary explanation. With Pete, or with his parents, for example, you talk about which woman is like Lin Daiyu and which man is like Jia Baoyu, they can understand? How do you explain to them that Liu Bei's child is not only a child, but also a bribe? How to tell them that chinese cabbage is put in a vat and stained into sauerkraut, which tastes different than fresh cabbage, and stinky tofu smells smelly and smells fragrant? From Pete's side, when he casually quotes Shakespeare or Dickens, it may be just an ordinary text in his elementary or secondary school classroom, will it be like hearing the book of heaven for Fei Fei, who has not specifically studied English literature? She understands the differences in cultures that she cannot imagine and may encounter, including differences in diet, which are not clear in three words. She thinks of the international students in her class who are just learning Chinese, and the kind of words and sentences she communicates with them, racking their brains, usually seem to be very simple expressions, but those international students may be completely confused. If the three-year-olds understand it, they may have to take a detour of 18,000 miles to explain to the students. She worried about Fei Fei. Worried about her daughter. Pete was almost forty years old before getting married, and she didn't know how many times she had been in a relationship before, and her life experience would not be simple. What kind of women did he talk about? What if I live with HIV? Will Feifei be deceived? Fei Fei said that Pete must have been in love, but there was no marriage history, and there were no children, not as complicated as his parents imagined. No matter how Fei Fei explained it, she still couldn't understand why Pete had come up with the idea of marrying a brunette girl with a different cultural background to go home. She had all kinds of worries, but she didn't dare to show them in front of Lao Cheng. Men are actually more worried than women, and he is so stressed at work.
More than once, she wondered if they could go to their daughter's side and live with her when they were old, like she guarded her parents. Can't be with Fei Fei, where do they go to spend their old age? How do you get along with Pete? She did not find a successful example to refer to. She knows friends and also has children outside, and most of the girls are still married to Chinese. The daughter should at least marry someone who can speak Chinese. Maybe a Chinese son-in-law is more receptive to living with the previous generation? After all, this has traditionally been the case. Maybe. Can only say maybe. But when she let her daughter out, who can predict who her daughter will decide to marry in the end? They should have been mentally prepared long ago. Fei Fei said that they would not live with Pitt's parents in the future. Pitt's parents did not live with their two daughters, but instead lived in a nursing home near Auckland. Pete doesn't live with his parents, is he willing to live with his wife and parents? No way. Waiting for the confinement to return, Teacher Zeng and Teacher Song of the Study Abroad Center asked her to have dinner together, and she brought red wine with her - it was the wine that Pete specially bought for Lao Cheng, and Pitt said that this wine was made by a local winery in Victoria and was of good quality. While drinking, everyone was half joking and half seriously discussing: our generation may be going to be in a group pension in the future, and from now on we will have to touch the place. She went to her heart and nodded seriously. The idea of retiring with juniors is really outdated. She looks at the young people around her, most of them live alone after marriage, and they are not willing to live with the elderly. Not to mention that the daughter also married a "ghost guy". Don't even think about it. Occasionally go over and see if it's okay. The daughter is doing well, and she and Lao Cheng are not selfish. But now they just want to see it. There is no citizenship or permanent residence status, and it is not allowed to enter. Fei Fei can come back, she did not change her nationality, with a nucleic acid test double negative certificate can get on the plane, but Pete and Judy can not. Fortunately, it is now possible to contact by video. When the epidemic in Melbourne became serious in 2020 and the curfew began, Feifei sent a circle of friends to say: "The world pressed the pause button, and when it restarts, I hope we are all better." "Feifei is always happy, the writing is good, and it is a pity to issue invoices every day in the company." She passed the tenth grade piano exam in junior high school, and she also played a band with her classmates in college. Fei Fei sings with a dumb voice, singing popular songs has characteristics, and when she sings Luo Dayou's songs, there is really a little bit of Luo Dayou's vicissitudes in her voice. The graduate major was chosen by FeiFei herself, and she said that studying accounting is easy to find a job. The child now is much more realistic than when she was younger. When she took the college entrance examination in the 1980s, the classmates around her, regardless of their academic performance, said at the class meeting that their ideal was to be a scientist, as if the world was made up of countless scientists. Before junior high school, she hadn't heard much about the word scientist, and the "News and Newspaper Digest" was played every day in the semiconductor, and the words she was deeply impressed with were quite abstract--"batch forest and hole, preparation for war, Asian and African brothers, she did not understand what those words meant. Scientists were hot words when she was preparing to go to college, and like college students and modernists, they could enter the annual hot word list at that time, of course, no one took the time to rank popular words at that time. She once dreamed of being a female scientist like Marie Curie, but she could not imagine that she would become a teacher in the future, specializing in teaching international students to speak Chinese. She couldn't imagine seeing so many foreigners with her own eyes. When I was in elementary school, the school organized students to watch movies, and before the main film, a documentary was played. She had seen two foreigners on the big screen, one named Prince Sihanouk, the kind smile on the prince's face that she seemed to have never seen on the face of any acquaintance in real life; and the other foreigner, Princess Monique, the Prince's Wife. Prince Sihanoukville looks really strange, with deep eye sockets, high nose bridges, curly hair, and the clothes she wears are so different from her mother and the aunts around her, every time she sees this graceful prince and lady on the screen, she is still a schoolboy, and she is inexplicably a little uneasy in her heart.
Judy can speak in Chinese about grandma, grandpa, queen, eating, and "happy weekend" is newly learned. When Judy says "Happy Weekend", "End" says "Grind", "Fast" says "( )", "Happy" says "stack", only the word "Week" is pronounced correctly, the next three words are like being blown by the sea breeze around her, and when she hears it, she is just getting started learning Chinese, like her zero-based students. In the matter of teaching Judy to speak Chinese in a systematic and scientific way earlier, she was a bit broken, and repeatedly urged Feifei to teach Judy to start from an early age, the earlier the language was learned, the easier it was, and it was difficult to correct it when she learned to be crooked when she was a child. Her father and mother, one child spoke Cantonese, the other when he was a child, although they lived in Beijing for four years, and lived in the northeast for more than half of their lives, they could never get rid of the rural pronunciation, there were several vowels, rhyme mothers, and now they could not meet the standard of Mandarin, and the dialect seemed to be the mark and homecoming certificate of their hometown imprinted on their tongues, preventing them from returning to the place of birth one day without being recognized. She was anxious for Judy, but Feifei explained: "Mom, I am busy at work, and I have to do housework when I come home from work, where is the time to teach her?" She was chattering with Pete, born pro-English. Mainly there is no Chinese environment, she goes to kindergarten, teachers and children speak English, I speak Chinese Pitt can not understand, everyone can only make up together. The hard task is up to you, wait for the Queen to come and teach her. "Let her teach Judy that is a person, she is a professor with a senior title, give her time, she can even teach Pete, who has zero foundation and is an adult, but she can't get by now." Putting aside the epidemic and visa reasons, she has not yet retired, her father and mother cannot do without her now, and she cannot leave Lao Cheng alone. Can she pass in the future? Who's right. Whether Pete wanted Judy to speak Chinese, she didn't know. She couldn't ask Pete. Ask not clearly. She didn't speak English enough to communicate with Pete in depth. In the college entrance examination that year, her English score was the lowest among all subjects. Dad said that Mao Ya learned dumb English. Mom and Dad studied Russian in college and couldn't tutor her. She began to learn English in junior high school, and Ms. Guan, who taught English, studied Russian at the undergraduate level, and English was two foreign. Teacher Guan said: "Sorry everyone, I speak English and have a Russian accent, I am catching ducks on the shelves, everyone mainly learns grammar, fortunately, the college entrance examination does not test spoken language." While waiting for Fei Fei Yuezi, she and Pete spent a short time together, and she found that most of the time they were communicating in simple English and gestures, and if they didn't understand each other, they could only communicate with Fei Fei as an interpreter. Pete is really not as good as the international students she teaches, most of the international students will speak a few simple Chinese words when they come, and the most important thing is that people want to learn. She didn't see that Pete had a sense of what she wanted to learn. She had to persuade Fei Fei to teach Pete when she taught Judy Chinese, at least for now, a simple conversation that could teach him.
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In terms of teaching children language, the daughter is not as attentive as her. When Fei Fei went to kindergarten, she found an English class with foreign teachers for her daughter, and squeezed in time every week to take her to the English corner of Zhongshan Square, looking for an opportunity to push Fei Fei into the pile of people, otherwise she could learn English so smoothly later? The English corner is near the statue of Chairman Mao in Zhongshan Square, and the crowd in that area is thick, both adults and children. At first, Feifei did not dare to open his mouth, slowly became bold, dared to take the initiative to find a topic to chat, encountered words that could not be said, and even said with comparison. Later, teaching Chinese students, near the water tower, she let Feifei play with several students who did not leave China during the holidays, Feifei's listening and speaking skills improved by leaps and bounds, and those international students also benefited, and in the next semester class, she could hear their obvious accents like Feifei. Fei Fei stays with the child every day, just talk to her more, Judy learning Chinese after all has an advantage over other people's children. Fei Fei pushed this matter on her, obviously lazy.
"Happy weekend!" She waved to Judy and her daughter. Judy's hair was lighter in the sun, and the two of them were head-to-head, contrasting. She had stared at Judy and Feifei in her sleep, lamenting the infinite mystery of life - this little elf who had been in Feifei's womb for ten months had a hair color that was not at all the same as the mother who had conceived her, but it was very similar to Pete, and her genetics were really mysterious. Repeatedly comparing her daughter with Judy, trying to remember what her daughter looked like when she was a child, she slowly began to accept Judy. Black hair and corn whiskers are good-looking, and it is good to match the facial features in harmony. Now, the little video of Judy's crying makes her curious, the little girl is so anxious that her hair will turn black, is it Feifei and Pete who inadvertently talk about her hair color when they talk together, or what did the kindergarten teacher or children say? Judy is keen to observe, she has discovered the secret of her hair, and is already thinking about her hair color different from her mother? If so, this personality is not like a big grin flying, a bit like her grandmother. Sensitive traits are also inherited from generation to generation? She initially suspected that she was not born to her mother, because her hair color was different from her parents. Her hair was not black, it was brown, with a faint red, not like Daddy, not like Mommy. Mom and Dad are both black haired. Her facial features looked like they had been plucked from her father's face, but her hair color was different from her father's. Dad's hair was thick and dark, and when she went to college, Dad was fifty years old, and he had just sporadically sprouted a few white hairs. Why isn't her hair black? She could only suspect that she was not born to her mother. She was not like her mother. Mom double eyelids, her single eyelids. Mom has a high nose bridge, she is a short nose. Mom is white, her skin is dark, more like Dad. Mom had long black hair, and Liu Hai carried a little natural curl, which was very conspicuous among the short-haired aunts around her. When she was in elementary school, she was nicknamed by her classmates, she wiped her tears at home, her mother figured out why she was crying, she didn't say anything at the time, and it took several days to explain to her that her daughter's brown hair may be missing trace elements. She didn't believe it. Mom wasn't a doctor, she didn't test her hair, so why did she say she lacked trace elements? What are trace elements? Trace elements can't be seen or touched, and such a simple and abstract explanation can't make sense in her heart.
She doubted her origins, and there were other reasons - her neighbors, every family had two or three children, some parents even had four, why was her parents the only one? Don't use family planning to explain, she was allowed to have two children when she was a child, all her classmates have siblings, and she is the only child among her classmates. Mom explained that mom and dad are foreigners, and no one can help them raise and take care of them when they have children, and they don't have elderly people who have local families to help. When they first started working, they didn't earn much money, they had limited income, they felt that it was enough to have one, and they wanted to give all their love to this one child. She was skeptical. Why don't other people's parents think it's enough to have one? People don't make much money, do they? There were very few photos of her as a child, the earliest of which was the black-and-white birthday photo of her first birthday, and what she looked like before, what she looked like when she was first born, she herself never knew. Parents have jobs and salaries, since they decided to have only one child, they want to give all their love to this one child, and they are reluctant to spend money to take more photos? After getting pregnant after marriage, she deliberately asked Lao Cheng to take a lot of photos, at least once a month, and put them in a special photo album. She told Lao Cheng that these photos will be shown to children in the future, so that children know what their mothers look like when they are in their mother's belly. She regretted not seeing pictures of her mother when she was pregnant. The mother said that in the era when she gave birth to the child, no one went to take pictures when women were pregnant, women did not need to be publicized when pregnant, and some women tucked and hidden after pregnancy, and did not show their stomachs and would not take the initiative to tell others that they were pregnant with a child. Some women do not show their arms, and they are about to give birth to neighbors to know. She didn't believe it. What's so embarrassing about pregnancy? When she was six months pregnant, she went with Lao Cheng to the Wuli River Stadium to watch the serie A powerhouse Sampdoria team, to see her favorite football stars Dutchman Gullit, Rijkaard, van Basten, cheering and shouting with the young people, she did not feel that the young people around her who cheered loudly looked at her differently. While cheering with the fans, she also thought that her mother said that she felt embarrassed to be pregnant when she was young, so what was going on? She didn't understand it when she was a child, and she still can't understand it when she grows up. Women are not pregnant, where did the child come from? Where did generation after generation come from? It's ridiculous.
Judy was anxious about hair color at such a young age, and it seemed that the little girl was precocious than her. Her sensitivity to hair color was a few years later than Judy's, after elementary school. A few mischievous male classmates gave her nicknames, which made her feel uncomfortable, depressed and buried in her heart for many years - they called her "red haired", and some people called "fire fox". More than ten years ago, at the primary school reunion, some people recalled the nicknames of that year, not only her, but all the nicknames of all her classmates were repeated one by one: torn pants, yellow nose, big heads, skinny monkeys... Nicknames seem to be a joy for elementary school students, one of the fun things in school, and there must always be a place to vent the excess energy. Those nicknames are not abstract, the imagination is seriously insufficient, and most of them have something to do with looks and clothing. She doesn't care now that she is called "red hair" and "fire fox", although the brown-red hair color is not mainstream now, it may be fashionable, she knows that someone deliberately baked red hair is not the right color, but she did care back then, secretly cried - it is the kind of crying, depressed in the heart, there is a long fermentation time. Classmates mixed their mouths, and people gently threw out a sentence of "red hair" or "fire fox", which made her suddenly dumb and speechless, and her heart hurt more than a needle. Why is my classmate having black hair and her hair color so different? When she was in elementary school, her classmates wore blue and gray clothes, and some of them wore old green military uniforms, which was the fashion and nobility of that era. Most girls also wear gray or blue, and flower clothes are rare. Of course, no one baked hair, or rather, these elementary school students, did not know that there was such a thing as baking hair in the world. Everyone has a natural hair color, young people have green hair on their heads, and older people have gray hair. At that time, a person's age can be roughly judged by hair. When the school does recess exercises, if you have the opportunity to stand on the stage, you can see the rows of black oil and oil below the rows of small brain melons, only the kind of three hairs may have a slightly different hair color, but you can't see it if you don't go close. She had seen the two three-haired men and their parents, whose hair was flax and some people called brown, not as obviously red as she was. Born in the first few years of the 1960s, most elementary school students who line up on the playground to do broadcast gymnastics lack nutrition in their wombs, and their parents, hungry, still succeed in giving birth to the next generation. The children born in those years, everyone had a little congenital lack of nutrition, right? They suck on breast milk, and mothers with insufficient breast milk will find ways to find dried cake powder or milk powder, and few children can drink fresh milk, let alone imported milk. At that time, children who ate a hard-boiled egg could bring happiness to their birthdays, and in their childhood, they rarely could eat or even know that they could eat cakes for birthdays. It was under such living conditions that most of the students' hair was still black and oily. On campus, in the crowd, she was the only one like a dressed fire fox. A lonely person. They called her "Red Haired" and "Firefox." The mischievous boy made a surprise attack on her back, tearing her hair without measure. It hurts. The heart hurts more than the scalp. The reason why she cried was also because she already knew that the word fox was not a good word if they were associated with women. Isn't that what fox spirits mean? Is the fox spirit a good word? Isn't the fox spirit a curse word? When she heard the downstairs neighbor Aunt Chen and Aunt Guan scolding, she loudly accused the other party of being a fox spirit. The expression on the face of the lively adult who watched the lively was complicated, and although she could not understand the exact meaning of the fox spirit, she knew that it was definitely not a good word. Ugly to die of.
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In the photo album at home, there are several black-and-white photos of her before she went to junior high school. She didn't know what color her hair was when she was younger. Black and white photos can't be seen. When she was a child, she didn't look in the mirror either. Was there a mirror in the nursery when I was a kid? She doesn't remember. Not at all impressive. The nursery she went to didn't even have a sign to write at the door, but all the parents and children would not mistakenly enter the other door. The other adjacent door was too spacious and iconic, and there was always a man in a green uniform standing majestically at the door, and that person could reach out and stop all cars and pedestrians coming in and out. On both sides of the gate, unlike ordinary units, there are writing signs, and adults who enter the gate every day have to show a mysterious ID to the doorman. Dad said that the unit name was a three-digit Arabic numeral, and only those who worked there understood what that number represented. What does Dad do at work? She didn't know. Dad said that the work can not be told to the family, the family should not ask. Doesn't Mom know either? Does the Aunt Wang's family who lives opposite know it? Aunt Wang's husband, Uncle Xing, and her father seem to be in the same unit, otherwise how can both families live in a living area and a building?
Before junior high school, their family shared the kitchen with Aunt Wang's house. What the two families eat in the last meal, what they are going to do in the next meal, how many rice and noodles are in the grain pocket, how many squares of oil are left in the glass bottle, drink porridge or cook noodles in the morning, the staple food is cornmeal nest, sorghum rice or white rice, and there is no meat when stir-frying, everyone can see at a glance. Mom loves to eat chili peppers, but at that time there was no range hood, the kitchen was not convenient to open the window to put air in winter, and the smell of fried peppers would even go into the bedroom, so my mother always restrained herself and rarely fried peppers to eat. The two families also shared delicious food. Aunt Wang's family wrapped pork sauerkraut stuffed dumplings and left a plate for her every time. During the Lantern Festival, my mother wrapped tangyuan with glutinous rice noodles and tangyuan cores sent by her grandmother from Chengdu, and would send a large bowl of cooked tangyuan to Aunt Wang's family. Xiaomei, the sister of the opposite house, praised the tangyuan as better than the Lantern and could drink all the soup in the bowl to the bottom. Mom is not likely to make pasta. Her mother, a native of Chengdu, said that she had not returned to her hometown for many years, and she returned to her hometown by train for three days and three nights to go to Beijing to transfer trains. If the unit has a chance to travel on business, she must fight for it, she is not afraid to take the train for a long time. Chengdu's grandfather and grandmother seemed like legends to her. They haven't been to the Northeast. She had read her grandfather's letters and eaten rice balls made of glutinous rice flour and tangyuan cores sent by her grandmother. Many years later, during the winter vacation of her sophomore year, her mother bought her a train ticket, sent her to Sichuan for the New Year, visited her elderly grandfather and traveled, she saw her black and white photos embedded in a special frame in the old house near Du Fu Caotang that only saw her grandfather and could not see her grandmother herself, and she also saw her parents' wedding photos in the frame. The black-and-white wedding photo was painted in color, and Mom's lips and cheeks had a little bit of red, giving the black-and-white photo a little bit of joy. The photo of a family of three appeared in this distant place, giving her a sense of crossing, as if she had once been separated and had come to this southwest city. That winter vacation, when accompanying her grandfather out to drink tea and bask in the sun, she paid special attention to the grass and trees that entered her eyes. Around the Spring Festival, the northeast is icy and snowy, and the snow is white outside; although Chengdu is also cold, it is rare to see the sun outcrop, and the indoor without heating is not as warm as her home in the northeast, but the green and vitality of the plants make people feel different. When they came to Chengdu, the train passed through the Qinling Tunnel, and Sichuan college students who had returned home from the north for the winter vacation began to cheer - green vegetable fields and trees appeared outside the window, marking the beginning of the train approaching the country of Tianfu. Chengdu's hometown can eat green vegetables in all seasons, no wonder my mother is thinking about it. Mom is not used to eating only sauerkraut and radish and potatoes in winter, and in the autumn she asked her father to buy a large bundle of snow and go home to pickle, she said that the green of the snow can make her feel the winter in her hometown. My mother went to school in Beijing at the age of eighteen and has been getting farther and farther away from home ever since. Grandpa said that after graduating from college, her daughter returned to her hometown three times, once after graduating from college, once when she returned to her hometown with the object of marriage to let her grandfather and grandmother look at each other, and once when her grandmother was critically ill. In many parts of her hometown, when her mother was young, she did not have time to go, and she did not even go to Mount Emei and Leshan. The time my mother took my father to Chengdu, they went to Qingcheng Mountain and Dujiangyan. During the winter vacation of her sophomore year, she took ten color photographs with her father's newly bought Seagull camera and Kodak film generously stuffed into her backpack. There is a kind of person who travels outside every time she puts her own figure into the camera, but she takes a lot of photos of her grandfather's old house and her grandfather's life outside basking in the sun and drinking tea, taking a lot of empty shots, and she is ready to take these photos home to show her mother. She meditated in her heart: "Mom, I'm back for you." The playful cousin laughed and encouraged her: "I heard that there are some villages in Aba that have a very good scenery, do you want to take a ride over there to play a trick?" Grandpa and uncle strongly objected: "The road to Aba often landslides and collapses, which is too dangerous, and there are car accidents every year, so you absolutely do not go." We are responsible for The Hairy Mother. Years later, acquaintances around her met to travel to Jiuzhaigou, and Chengdu went to Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong to pass the plane. She took her retired parents from Chengdu to Jiuhuang Airport, and her mother sighed: "Alas, when I was young, I never heard that there was such a beautiful place in my hometown." ”
When the two families lived opposite each other, they shared a toilet with Aunt Wang's family. The toilet is next to the kitchen, and a concrete step is stepped up to open the door, which has a squat urinal and a water storage tank hanging on the wall. There is no hand paper in the toilet shared by the two families, and whoever goes to the toilet brings it in by himself. The toilet is often used, and knocking on the door makes the people inside the toilet nervous. Mom found a piece of white cardboard and dug a hole in the middle. White cardboard hanging on the toilet door handle, both sides are painted with red and green, and people outside see the red logo, indicating that there is someone inside the toilet; if it is a green sign, you can enter without knocking. She praised her mother for being smart, and her mother said: "We want to invent in the unit, this kind of small idea is nothing." ”
There is no mirror in the two shared toilets, unlike the bathroom wash basin now, which is convenient for washing the face and shaving the beard, drawing eyebrows, and applying lipstick. There are so many places to look in the mirror now, and there are everywhere in the mall. She hadn't visited the mall when she was a child, and she couldn't remember if there were mirrors in the mall at that time. Middle Street and Taiyuan Street are very far away, and my mother has not taken her there. Mom and Dad have one day off a week, and on weekends they have to wash clothes and do housework. In the summer they go paddling in Beiling Park. The black-and-white group photo of the family of three in the frame of Grandma's house was taken on the water surface of Beiling Park. She remembered that her mother had a small round mirror with pink plastic edges that could be held in the palm of her hand, and that she had to look in the mirror every day before going out, and she guessed that her mother was looking at Liu Hai to see if she was neatly combed. Mom didn't say she couldn't look in the mirror, but she didn't get a chance to. Time was so tight that every morning she slept confused and was shouted out by her mother to get up. On winter mornings, cotton sleeves and cotton pants are cold, and the arms and legs are stretched in to fight the Cold War for a while. At a young age, she learned to put cotton jackets and cotton pants under the feet of the quilt, and when she got up in the morning, she would not be cold and excited. In the winter, they usually leave the house before dawn, earlier than when she is now lying in the bed. Mom's unit is in Dongta Airport, and her mother first sent her to the nursery, and she rode for more than forty minutes to the unit. She doesn't sleep so much now, but she doesn't have to get up early as often. In the summer she can go to the park to exercise, it is winter, too cold, it is best not to go out in the morning, low temperature is not good for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. When you are older, you have to grasp the time and temperature when you go out. Why did my mother go to work so early? When she was a child, she felt that she always didn't sleep enough, and she had to get dressed and go out with her mother before dawn. On snowy days, the snowflakes hit her face with cool silk, and she would occasionally naughtily stick out her tongue to taste the snowflakes. Sitting in the back seat of the bike, although Mom's body blocked some wind in front, the cold wind came from all directions, blowing the back of her hand and face, hurting. Mom bought clam oil for her to rub. In winter, when the mother rode to the nursery after work, it was dark, if it snowed, the mother pedaled the bicycle all the way is very difficult, the snow is too thick or the road is slippery, the mother pushes the car away, often does not have the strength to cook after returning home, to drink a cup of hot water in the hot water bottle to slow down. Mom told her that if Dad didn't work the night shift, if Dad had time to send Mao Ya to the nursery, Mom could save some effort. Mom cherished her bike, and Dad polished it. Mom said that it cost her three months' salary to buy the White Mountain bicycle, and she actually wanted to buy a permanent license, but she wanted a bicycle ticket to buy a permanent license, and she had to queue for two years, and she couldn't buy it for a while. She heard her father say, "Isn't it bad that the White Mountains are?" The car is often maintained and is as durable as it is. She knew that her mother's little round mirror was on the top of the chest of drawers by the window, but she couldn't reach it on tiptoeing.
- 5 -
Before going to elementary school, her mother brushed her hair in the morning, and her hair hurt, and she grinned at the air and cried, not daring to cry. Morning time is precious, and the mother does not like to cry before going out, so that she is in a bad mood and her work will be affected. When she grew up, she recalled, why did the nursery aunt never call her "red hair"? Is it that her hair is not obvious red when she goes to the nursery, or is the aunts kind and unwilling to remind this child that her hair color is different from others? Did your mother tell me? Years later, once passing by the place, she found that the two-story building and yard of the nursery had been turned into an auto repair shop. On a whim, she drove the car into the yard and saw two young workers in gray overalls painting a car, and the smell of paint filled her childhood memories. She remembered that there was a simple slide in the corner of the nursery yard, and now there were several rows of accident cars waiting to be repaired in the yard, and she couldn't tell which corner the slide had been. If it weren't for the familiar gate in the vicinity, where the guard still stood guard solemnly, she wouldn't have been able to confirm that this was where she used to come and go six days a week. Is there still such a thing as a nursery? Fei Fei didn't seem to have heard of it when he was a child. The nurse aunt who took care of her, they have long since retired home, right? She couldn't remember any of her aunts, and she couldn't recognize them even when she met them when she walked down the street. They couldn't recognize the child they had brought. A young worker stopped what she was doing and asked her enthusiastically what business she was doing, and she was stunned for a moment, shaking her head like a slow motion, speechless, and got into the car and left.
She suspected that she was not her mother's own child, and she was wronged at school, but she did not dare to open her mouth when she returned home. She seems to have known since she was a child that words should be kept half a sentence on her lips. Who taught her? Where did you learn it? She didn't know. She didn't even know that her instinct not to say much easily made her mouth leave half a sentence. Could it be because of Mom and Dad? They were always careful in their speech, often behind her back, and when they found out that their daughter might hear, they suddenly stopped talking, as if they were always talking about things that needed to be kept secret. Why do mom and dad have so many secrets? She didn't know. She had heard that there was a kind of child in the world called an orphan - that is, the kind of child abandoned by her relatives, if the child did not have parents, or disobedient, the parents did not want you, they would go to the place called the orphanage, and they would become orphans, how tragic, just like the little foreign girl whose mother told her about selling matches but was frozen to death. She is reluctant to confirm that she is a child without parents, but she continues to struggle with why her hair color is different from her parents and classmates. She didn't know who to ask and where to ask. She has no brothers and sisters, her grandfather and grandmother are in Foshan, her grandfather and grandmother are in Chengdu, she has cousins and cousins, she did not see them when she was a child, and those relatives who are related to her by blood are just photos in the photo album and the thoughts of her parents for her. Before going to college, she had never been to the so-called hometown that her parents had longed for. Mom and Dad said that they were assigned to work in the northeast after graduating from college, and they would go wherever they went, and they obeyed the assignment. At that time, college students obeyed the assignment. They didn't expect to come to the northeast for a lifetime. A lifetime of blinking eyes, very quickly. The four seasons in the northeast are dry, and the strong winds in spring and the ice and snow in winter make them depressed, and they want to transfer back to their hometowns, but then they know and get married, and they have daughters, and they can't go back. Moving jobs is cumbersome. Where to adjust? Go back to Foshan or chengdu? Go to one of the places, the other person is still far away from home, and there is no suitable unit in the hometown, unless you do not work. How can someone who went to college not work? How to eat and make a living without working? Mom said that the factories in the northeast have successively gone to Sichuan to support the construction of new factories on the third line, some to Chengdu, and some to Panzhihua and other places, but those new factories do not have the right counterpart work for mothers. How nice it would be if there was. Mom said that some northeasterners and their families are actually reluctant to go to the third line, and people are inseparable from their homeland. Fortunately, although it is cold outside in the winter in tohoku, there is heating in the house. There is no heating in the southern houses, and it is difficult to survive in winter. The climate is different, and it will slowly adapt to it over a long period of time. At that time, it was in the same city, my parents were in different units, and it was not easy to transfer together. Mom said that if she could transfer to a unit with her father, she would be much closer to work, so she wouldn't have to get up so early and be greedy. Mom worked in her unit until retirement. Mom said that she had only worked in one unit in her life.
She is very envious of the fact that today's children can open their mobile phones to access the Internet, have a variety of popular science books to read, and know more than she did when she was a child. Today's children know that genetics, IVF is normal, you can see a lot of star surrogacy gossip on the Internet, and know that there are many ways to have children. She really didn't know when she was a child. The same table substituted the army until the end of elementary school, insisting that her parents had picked it up from under the Hunhe Bridge on Youth Street; the girl in the row behind them, Feng Nina, said that she had been picked up by her grandmother from the forest in Beiling Park. Students have various opinions about how the children came to be. Of course, most of my classmates still heard that they were born in the hospital. The mother said she was born at the provincial maternity and infant hospital, and when the father arrived at the hospital after work, the daughter had been born for six hours. Mom went to work normally that morning, and went directly from the unit to the hospital. Mom can say so many details, it looks like it may really be a mother. But she didn't understand, why didn't she look like her mother? Mom was obviously better looking than the moms of many of her classmates. She remembered Aunt Wang saying, "Your mother is white, her hair is curly, and she is very foreign." "Is it a mom's idea to have only one child?" Want to have a few children, the woman has the final say? She always thought she wasn't as good looking as her mother. Will there be a mother who thinks she is ugly and throws her away, and then this mother who looks good and looks foreign because she can't have children, or maybe she can't bear to be orphaned, and kindly carries her home as her daughter to raise?
It's rare to hear that she also has a place like her mother. When she was in elementary school, Aunt Wang said, "Mao Yatou, you laugh exactly like your mother, and your tone of voice is like that of a little adult." You will be my daughter-in-law in the future, and I see that you are tolerant of Yufeng. "Aunt Wang has two children, her son Yufeng and her daughter Xiaomei. Every time she went into the toilet, if she saw urine marks on the cement floor of the urinal and the urinal was not flushed, yufeng must have come. When Yu Feng was in a hurry to go out, even the toilet door might forget to close. Aunt Wang nagged her son many times, but Yufeng just wouldn't change. She did not complain about Yu Feng's sloppiness, and silently helped him flush the water and clean the battlefield. It was not because she listened to Aunt Wang's words that she could be Yu Feng's daughter-in-law in the future. She could already understand that Aunt Wang was joking. When boys and girls' mothers whisper together, they are willing to make such jokes, when they are not true. In school, if anyone dares to bully themselves too much, like some girls who are often angry, maybe she can shout Yufeng for support. Yu Feng never called her "Red Haired" or "Firefox". He was different from some of the naughty boys at school. At home, Yu Feng called her Mao Ya or Mao Ya to Aunt Wang; when he met her at school, he called her mao ying. Once, when she forgot to wear a red scarf at school, her father asked Yufeng, who went out late, to send her to the class. When Yu Feng appeared at the door of her class, some boys remembered to coax, and saw Yu Feng's expression was frightened, no one dared to open their mouths, and since then they have been more restrained when they call her nickname. Yu Feng is famous in the school. One winter, he made a bet with a few boys in the class to see who dared to lick the big iron gate of the school with his tongue, everyone else was deserters, only Yu Fengtian was not afraid, his tongue was covered with a layer of skin by the big iron gate that was frozen in the winter, and when he returned home, he was beaten by Uncle Xing fat, and he did not eat a good meal for several days, but since then no one in the school has dared to provoke him. Yu Feng is half a head taller than her peers, has a long black face, has a fierce face, and can calm people, fortunately she is not afraid of him. Aunt Wang may not be completely joking, she may indeed laugh a bit like her mother, but can she conclude that she is her mother's own daughter based on the similarity of mother and daughter? She didn't know. At the moment, she looked at Judy and Feifei, who were smiling and waving at her, their hair colors were different, and their looks really looked a little alike. I can't say where the specific image is, but it feels a little bit like a god. People who have lived together for a long time may imitate each other, right? This includes a walking posture and a raised hand. Yu Feng's walking posture is the same as Uncle Xing's, walking on the street, she can recognize them from afar. It's often said who is married to whom – Pete and Feifei may be more and more husband and wife? She couldn't imagine it. Thinking about this kind of thing was a lot of brains, she didn't bother to think about it. I don't want to.
6
"Is there a lot of people at the beach now?" Although the ban has been lifted, you still have to be careful, don't stick into the pile of people, don't be careless. You're getting vaccinated there? Vaccines still strained? Still not in line? Masks should always be worn. The Australian Open is playing, people around the world are flocking to it, will it bring the virus? Are quarantine measures strict? Are masks enough? Do I mail some more? "In the spring of 2020, Feifei sent them masks back. She said she didn't have to send it, and Feifei mailed it without telling her. Later, there was also an epidemic in Melbourne, and the local masks were tight, so she mailed it there. She specially mailed children's masks. Fei Fei said that Judy does not like to wear masks, feel stuffy, and then say that the city is closed, curfew, everyone stays at home, children can not wear. She strongly objected: "That can't work, when you go out to exercise, you have to put it on your child." She saw Fei Fei and Judy's faces next to each other disappear, and Pete suddenly appeared in the video. The red-faced Pete waved to her, said "Haro", and immediately disappeared again, before she could finish saying "Haro". Judy's hair color is really similar to Pete's. There are hairs of all colors over there in Melbourne. That year she went to Melbourne to wait for Fei Fei Yuezi, Pete took her to buy daily necessities, the hair of various colors on the street constantly broke into the curtain, many people's hair is not the true color, obviously baked, such as the kind of dyeing, she can recognize it at a glance. Fei Fei was fine at this point, and never dyed my hair bright and distinctive. Fei Fei only picked the ends of his hair once in his freshman year, and soon cut off the purple ends again. Young people, toss a few times to know what you like or what suits you best. Fei Fei has always been quite confident. She was glad that Feifei's hair color was not like hers, like Lao Cheng. When she was pregnant with Feifei, she tried to eat scientifically and nutritiously. She ate a variety of fruits, let Lao Cheng buy bird's nest several times, and heard that the fetus skin was white when she ate these things. She often puts black sesame seeds when mixing cold vegetables, and the book says that eating black sesame seeds is good for hair. She has been worried about whether her hair color will be inherited to her soon-to-be-born child. If the hair color is different from others, it will be embarrassing, and even affect the temperament to some extent - if the elementary school classmates do not understand things, the nickname she casually raised makes her secretly depressed for many years, and the head blow of the high school class teacher Wu teacher makes her, who does not like to talk to people, become a taciturn girl who does not want to say more to any classmates. After writing her homework, she sullenly read extracurricular books. In the whole high school era, she never went out with her classmates.
She began to love to read in elementary school, but unfortunately there were too few books that she thought were interesting. The same table soldier said that he had a copy of "One Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" at home and asked her if she wanted to read it. Dai Jun did not call out her nickname, and she is only in contact with Dai Jun now, a male classmate in elementary school. Daijun University majored in cars, and later resigned to sell cars, and she and Lao Cheng's cars were bought from The Daijun shop. She borrowed dai jun's books, and her father gave her a medium notebook with red plastic skin and a fur printed on the title page," which she copied down a week, including the notes under each poem. Years later, she was able to memorize the hundred Tang poems she had copied without thinking, but the ones she had learned in the university poetry class were not so clearly remembered, and not many could be memorized. When she was in elementary school, she had frequent extracurricular activities, and every semester the school organized them to learn to work and farm. They went to Tiexi's factory to visit, she remembered going to an asbestos factory, into a factory's pharmaceutical workshop to help pack pills, in the winter Xuejun went to Beiling Park, they crawled on the snow, looking for notes, catching spies. Few students read books, and she was one of the few who developed the habit of reading. There were her parents' college textbooks at home, abstract figures and unfamiliar terms like the Book of Heaven, which she really couldn't understand. Mom borrowed books from the unit reading room, when the children in the living area gathered outside to play, Yu Feng and boys of similar age went to the forest of Beiling Park to play slingshots, catch birds, pick wild fruits, Xiaomei and the girls jumped on the leather band downstairs, and she was locked at home to recite "One Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty". In the summer, the window was open, and the girls sang the leather band song and ballad, and she still remembered the words: "Traitors Lin Biao and Kong Lao'er, are all bad things, talk about benevolence and righteousness in their mouths, hide tricks in their stomachs, advocate self-denial and revenge, and are bent on restoration." Red soldiers, rise up together, everyone comes to criticize..." The song of the a cappella girl spread down the poplar trees upstairs, but she did not want to go downstairs to play with them. She reads Sunny Days, Boiling Mountains, and How Steel is Made. She shuts up in her room talking to Paul and Tonya, and develops the habit of quietly talking to the characters in the book, thinking that the characters in the book are indeed human, and may still be living somewhere described by the writer, and she talks to the characters in the book, thinking that they may be able to understand her words. The mother suggested that her daughter go to learn ethnic dance with the aunt of the amateur literary and art propaganda team of the unit during the holidays, and several aunts danced Korean dance and Xinjiang dance at a very high level, participated in the provincial and municipal literary and artistic performances, and the central leaders who came to visit watched their performances. My mother said to my father, "If Mao Ya can enter the literary and artistic troupe in the future, or find a way to become a literary and artistic soldier, he will not have to go to the countryside to become a young man." "Girls going to the countryside to farm must be bitter, and my mother listened to her colleagues who had Zhiqing in her unit say that those Who went to Panjin Farm were too tired to straighten up when planting seedlings in the spring, and they couldn't eat green vegetables in the summer." Panjin is more salty and alkaline, green vegetables are not good, fish and shrimp are quite a lot, and there are crabs and rice that have been brought back by The Spring Festival. It is convenient to eat rice over there, unlike when they have to take the grain book to the grain store to buy according to the ration, and the fine grain is not enough to eat. Eating rice alone, without greens and meat, that day was also bitter. The only child can now stay in the city and not go to the countryside, in case the policy changes in the future, it is necessary to be prepared. Girls can dance and have multiple ways out. Mom said that her uncle worked in the armed forces department of a local area in Sichuan, responsible for recruiting new soldiers, and when Mao Ya graduated from middle school, she wrote a letter to her uncle and grandfather to see if she could let her daughter become a female soldier. The mother said that she could not go back to her hometown by herself, and her daughter could also go back to the army. The mother did not understand why her daughter did not want to learn to dance and refused to learn to sing model plays. The daughter thought that her voice was not good, she didn't look good, she couldn't play a white-haired girl, and she couldn't play Li Tiemei, who held up a red light. There are stills of "Red Lantern" on the wall of the home, and the Li Tiemei who holds up the red light is really black and bright. The daughter was afraid to appear on a high stage. The daughter only thinks in her heart, not to her mother.
- 7 -
When she was in junior high school, the college entrance examination was resumed. Mom and Dad smiled and smiled, happy for their daughter, they originally thought that their daughter would definitely go to the countryside to become a young man in the future, worried that it was not safe for girls to go to the strange countryside, they had heard some not-so-good legends. That year, Dad was assigned another house from the unit. The new home is still in the living area, it is a second-hand house poured out of someone else's house, the bedroom is larger than the original, and her father uses a bookshelf to separate a corner for her, and a simple desk with a lamp is installed next to the bed. The kitchen and toilet of the new home are used by the family alone, and there is no need to hang cardboard in the toilet door. Dad began to move books into the house, and the new books gradually filled the shelves that used as a wall. The bookshelf has two sides, her books are placed on this side of her bed, and on the other side of the double bed are her parents' books. The bookshelf was nailed by Dad, originally a wooden box containing metal tools, tucked under the iron bed to contain miscellaneous items, and Dad once said: "If Mao Ya goes to the countryside to be a young man, this box will be brought to her for clothes." "The college entrance examination was restored, and it was determined that the daughter no longer had to go to the countryside to be a young man, and the father took down the box and changed it into a bookshelf." Dad was an engineer with a clever hand.
High school is no longer attended in pieces and requires admission by exam. She was admitted to a key high school near Changjiang Street. On the first day of school, The class teacher, Mr. Wu, stood on the podium and said: "Students, there are still two years to go to the college entrance examination, these two years will determine the fate of your life, think about what you can do in the future, do you want to be a scientist, a doctor, or a worker in a factory?" I want you to put all your mind into your studies. Everyone should often read ye Shuai's poem: Siege of the city is not afraid of hardship, attacking books is not afraid of difficulties. Science has dangers and obstacles, and hard battles can pass. Opportunities are always left to those who are prepared. Once again, I reiterated the discipline: boys are not allowed to have long hair, girls are not allowed to perm or dye their hair, and they are not allowed to perm the sea. Flared pants and jeans are not allowed to be worn to school, understand? ”
Of course I got it. She felt that she would not make any of the mistakes that Teacher Wu said, she did not have flared pants and jeans at all, and she had never burned the sea, let alone thought of perming her hair. She couldn't imagine that she would be the first student wu to find an office conversation in the new semester. On the first day of school, when I was leaving after school, in front of my classmates, Teacher Wu stopped her and said, "Classmate Mao Ying, you come with me to the office." In full view of everyone, she followed Teacher Wu. Teacher Wu is tall and has a thick shoulder, like the kind of female athlete who throws discus or shot put. The grade teacher's office was a large classroom with more than twenty desks, each of which sat in front of the teacher. Teacher Wu asked her sternly, "What's going on with your hair?" Go home and dye your hair back. Only you in the class are different from others, in front of your classmates, I did not name you, to save face for you. Children who can be admitted to our school should have good grades, and I hope that you will continue to work hard, spend your mind on studying, and enter a good university in the future. ”
She heard a buzz in her head, like the sound of the Wenzhou couple who were playing cotton in the courtyard of her family's living area during the summer vacation. Before moving to a new home, her mother Zhang Luo played the cotton tire of the old futon at home, and re-played the quilt of the cotton tire, which was as soft as new cotton. Mom went to work during the day and asked her to go downstairs and watch the couple work, wondering if they would sneak out of the old cotton strips. She watched the couple work, listened to them speak in dialects she didn't understand, felt uncomfortable, and complained about why her mother couldn't trust the couple who played cotton. Who would steal an old black and hard cotton tire? Teacher Wu's words made her aggrieved, and she felt that she was a Wenzhou couple or an old cotton tire under surveillance, allowing people to be suspicious and beaten, unable to resist with words. The Wenzhou couple's dialogue, she couldn't understand a word, it was really more difficult to understand than the English she had just learned. Tears were in the circles of his eyes. She told herself that her daughter had tears that did not flick. She said in the smallest voice, "Teacher, my hair is indeed born, it has never been dyed." Nothing else, can I go? She didn't turn her head back out of the office. More than a decade later, standing on the podium, she saw a girl in the black hair of the lecture hall boldly dyed her hair yellow, and she glanced at the girl without saying a word about her hair. As long as you do your homework well and pass the final exam, how about your hair is different. Later, she went to teach international students, and the classroom sat with students with small curly black hair piled on their heads, students with brown, golden hair color that could not be described in one sentence, and Asian students who looked like the pedestrians on the street around her but were also unlikely to speak Chinese. She didn't care about hair color and concentrated on lecturing. As a teacher of Chinese as a foreign language class, she should explain grammar well, explain the vowels, vowels, and four voices clearly, so that young people from afar can learn to speak, write, and compose as soon as possible. Start with simple words and phrases that seem simple, but are actually complex. The Chinese we use every day in our lives, because it is a mother tongue, we do not find it difficult, children learn to speak. Teach to students who are not native speakers, and it will be difficult to say a word. In later classes, what made her even more curious and concerned was the smell. The most fragrant smell she ever smelled when she was a child came from flower dew, and on summer nights, after a shower, her mother dusted flower dew on her, and her mother said that flower dew water was anti-mosquito. In the classroom where she lectures, she can always smell perfume. Different aroma types, different dosages, plus the body odor of each person, is like a smell expo. When she reads a book on the blackboard with her back to the student, a student who is late sneaks into the classroom without having to turn back, just by the smell wafting behind her, she can roughly tell which student has just passed behind her. The first time she saw Pete and smelled the perfume on Pete's body, she didn't feel strange. The smell emanating from Pete's body resembled that of a student from New Zealand many years ago. Maybe they used the same perfume? She didn't know the brand and scent of that perfume. She didn't study perfumes, she only knew flower lotion when she was a child.
On the first day of high school, when she came home from school, she looked at her mother, who was choosing green vegetables, and said in a casual tone, "Mom, I dyed my hair black." "She knew mom had bought hair dye. Mom grew gray hair. At first, her mother asked her to pull down some of the white hair that was obviously protruding, but then she felt that it hurt and changed it to dyeing her hair. Her mother, who had used hair dye, had black hair again, and the black hair made her not look old at all.
Mom had a look of surprise in her eyes and whispered to her, "Does the school allow hair dyeing?" ”
"Teacher Wu asked me to dye my hair back black."
"I'll go to school tomorrow and talk to the teacher." Mom was very careful when she replied to her. Why was mom always so careful when talking to her? Why can't mom tell her more about what she thinks?
The next morning, mom didn't go to school with her. Mom said she would go to work first and then take a leave of absence. She didn't know when her mother had come to school and how she had talked to Teacher Wu. Teacher Wu never mentioned her hair again. When she returned from the National Day, a girl secretly dyed the ends of her hair brown, and when Teacher Wu criticized the girl by name at the class meeting, she did not set her eyes on her, she knew that she was temporarily safe in the class. But what about at school? In the eyes or hearts of classmates? She didn't know. She hadn't talked to any of her classmates about hair. Except for practicing speaking and listening between english classes at the same table, she hardly speaks to her classmates. Some classmates called her "silent dog" behind her back, and that "dog" is the consonant of the English word girl, and the nickname of high school students is obviously more literate than elementary school students. She was a strange girl, alone, always tucking a hat in her bag. She cut her hair so much that it couldn't be shorter, it was shorter like a boy's. As soon as she left the school, she put on her hat and pressed her hair. On occasions where hats are allowed, she wears them all year round. In the summer, she wears a yarn hat that can be folded, a beige fisherman's hat in spring and autumn, and a thread hat in several colors in winter, all of which are hand-knitted by her mother. Her mother supported her in wearing a hat, which she understood as a tacit understanding between the two of them. Dad nailed her hat rack to the bedside wall. They used their actions to express their understanding of the only daughter, but they could not explain the doubts about whether she was biological. She had never actually asked them, not even if it was a little euphemistic or joking. As parents and daughters, they don't communicate. She didn't understand why. A family of three, living together for many years, until she went to college and left, why can't she sit down and talk about her heart? She didn't know if that was the case in someone else's house. She couldn't open her mouth. Doubts were buried in the bottom of her heart, and occasionally accidentally popped up, and she quickly pressed down. When she has a daughter herself, Feifei still can't speak, she always goes out of her way to talk to her daughter, and what often hangs on her lips is the classic question: "Feifei, what are you thinking?" Tell your mom what you're thinking? What seemed like a simple question actually contained the thoughts she had been holding back for many years. After FeiFei could talk, he always ran to her side without thinking, without thinking, without heart or lungs, telling his mother what he was thinking, and Feifei even just farted when he was a child, he ran over to tell her. Fei Fei grew up a little longer, and she slowly told her daughter that if she talked to outsiders, some words could be said more subtly. She was very happy that Feifei had something not to hide from her, she told her daughter early what menarche was, and when Feifei was ten years old, she put a sanitary napkin in her daughter's school bag and told her daughter how to deal with the situation. Before her daughter went abroad, she repeatedly told Feifei, boyfriend and girlfriend together, if not married, decided to have children, must pay attention to contraception. She stuffed a condom into her daughter's suitcase. The only thing Fei Fei let her know later was that she fell in love and decided to marry Pete. Fei Fei decided to tell them. Daughter in love, she did not find a hint, she thinks the responsibility should be on herself, she is too careless, her parents are not in good health, she is distracted by them. She also comforted herself, because her daughter was too far away from her, they lived in different hemispheres, and they usually communicated by phone and video, and it was always easier to find clues than to be around. Fortunately, the daughter got married, the wedding was formal and solemn, and the beautiful doll Judy was born, and it seemed that the life was OK.
- 8 -
Commemorating the thirty years of university enrollment, the reunion of classmates, after drinking and eating, the rare gathering of classmates Zhang Luo went to sing. She didn't bother to go first, and went to the song hall with the big stream. Several classmates sang Luo Dayou's songs, and everyone sang "Childhood", "Pearl of the Orient", "Love Song 1990", "The Story of Time" ... We have witnessed each other's classmates who looked like they were young and middle-aged, and when they went to college, there was no song hall in society, and they didn't hear anyone say that they would sing karaoke. At that time, dancing in the school's large dining room was already fashionable, and the school occasionally put on open-air movies, becoming a couple of classmates of the couple, that is, from watching open-air movies. Years later, the students had wrinkles and vicissitudes on their faces, except for two boys who changed their professions to do administrative work in the organs, most of the students worked as teachers in middle schools, and one boy became the principal of a key school. When they were admitted to college, most of the teachers were students with ordinary families and average scores, and few people would have thought that after they graduated, they would become more and more popular as teachers. She later went on to graduate school and graduated to teach international students. She still said little, did not take the initiative to contact her classmates, did not talk in groups, but that time she told herself that she still went into the song hall with everyone, not too different, only once in thirty years, and she may not attend the party again, just like she never participated in the activities of her elementary school classmates later. She had only participated in that one occasion—reminding her of the time when she was called "Red Haired" or "Firefox" by male classmates. The college classmates who had drunk alcohol grabbed Mike and sang loudly, and everyone sang the old songs that they had heard and sung in the past, and also sang the new songs that had just come out. Solo, duet, chorus. Some people held Mike, and some male classmates gathered in the corner to smoke and drink beer. In the fruit bowl was a half-cut cigarette butt that had not been completely extinguished. She didn't sing with them, she sat in the corner and listened in silence. She originally studied science in high school, and then found that her physics scores were getting worse and worse, so bad that she was afraid of physics exams, and she saw the headache of physics homework, and she sounded confused about the basic principles that Teacher Wu was talking about, but her father said that physics was not difficult to learn. Unfortunately, dad couldn't go to classes and exams for her, and didn't have the energy to tutor her. Dad's time off work became more and more irregular. Dad has a big problem, he is tackling it. Mom said she was ok with math and physics in general. Mom couldn't help her. Mom is also busy, getting up early and getting dark, still riding to work. At the beginning of the second year of high school, Teacher Wu said that the school has added a liberal arts class, and students who are willing to transfer to liberal arts can consider that this is the last chance, go back to discuss with parents, and register tomorrow. She was the first to raise her hand, not even wanting to go home and ask her parents for advice. The physics papers of last semester's final exams made her sure she couldn't be Marie Curie, but she never thought that she would be admitted to the Teachers' College in the future and eventually become a teacher. But she has always been reluctant to speak when there are many people. At the end of the college entrance examination, the first few volunteers were missed, and she was admitted to the Teachers College. Eight girls live in a dormitory, and after the lights go out, everyone often talks excitedly at night. After listening to her roommate's night talk, she learned that most of her classmates in the city did not have a pipe gas at home, and not all of them had water flushing the toilet. At that time, there were still pieces of bungalows in the city, and the people who lived in the bungalows relied on burning coal for heating, and usually used public dry toilets, and it was even more impossible for rural students to have central heating facilities in winter. Compared with the two families sharing a toilet that can flush water, the winter in the northeast, the cold winter waxing moon on the outside on the four sides of the leaking dry toilet, the north wind cold fluttering frozen buttocks, summer to smell the stench of the dry toilet, think about the heart is cold, it is uncomfortable. She found that although she had never had a separate bedroom, of all her classmates, only her family lived in a house with wooden floors. When I heard about where her family lived, the local classmates were quite envious. Dad's living area, that large red three-story building, far away looks really grand, there is a beautiful slope roof, between the building is a green belt, flower beds, the balcony before and after the Spring Festival is hung with red lanterns, the living area is decorated with emotion, it looks very beautiful. There was running water in the building, gas, heating. The family with a large population or senior parents has two bedrooms and has a separate kitchen and toilet; her family and Aunt Wang's family, which are small in population, have only one bedroom each, and two families share a kitchen and toilet. Many years later, she heard that the old house of the Red Chamber had been included in the demolition plan and could disappear at any time, and looking for relevant information, she knew that the Red Chamber had been published in many newspapers at the beginning of its construction, which was once the pride of their city. That summer, Feifei University had not yet graduated, the two of them followed the tour group to Russia, passing through a place in Moscow, she found that there was a red brick covered old house very similar to the red chamber where she had lived before, she suddenly realized that the design drawings of the house she lived in as a child may be from distant Moscow. Because of this discovery, she suddenly drew closer to the Russian city that she thought she had only seen in novels, movie screens, and travel brochures. The familiarity of the strange place, even if it is only a little bit, but because people are in a foreign land, the feeling of intimacy is infinitely magnified. She remembered what her father had said after he retired that he had Soviet experts in his work unit, and that when he graduated from college and joined the work, Soviet experts had just been withdrawn. Dad had never seen the Soviet experts in person, and had heard some of their legends. When she saw the Red Chamber in Moscow, she and Feifei were sitting on a tourist bus. The red old house outside the car window flashed by, reminding her of many things when she was a child. She regrets that she doesn't speak Russian and that tours don't have free time. I really wanted to find the building and go inside to see if the layout of the building was the same as the house her family had lived in before. That flash of thought on the car was quickly diluted by the richer itinerary behind. Her favorite Russian house is not to remind her of the old and old red brick buildings of the past, but the ornate Kremlin, the winter palace and summer palace full of legends and paintings, the old buildings of St. Petersburg that the Baroque style, years and wars have not destroyed. Looking across the banks from the Neva River cruise, those old baroque houses looked so beautiful that she regretted not being able to walk in. Having experienced bloody rain and wind, heard about the wind and snow, the place where Anna Karenina and Tonya live, is the living facilities backward, will it be like the name of Wang Shuo's novel: it looks beautiful; will it be like her family's old house in the Red Chamber, the appearance is quite literary, but the inside is actually old and unsuitable for living? Beautiful Russian houses, of course, are also farmhouses looming behind the forest. She regretted that she had only gone to Moscow and St. Petersburg, not knowing what the Russian countryside looked like now. Walking through the vast land described by Tolstoy and Turgenev, from Moscow to St. Petersburg, she took a night train and looked at the dark forests and skyline, and her thoughts were endless. She wanted to tell Xiaomei about her feelings about coming to Russia, and let Xiaomei accompany Aunt Wang to come here to see. Shortly after Aunt Wang retired, Uncle Xing died. Aunt Wang first went to Shenzhen to help Yufeng with a pair of twin sons, and then came back to help Xiaomei with her daughter. Xiaomei is a filial daughter who takes her mother out to travel when she has time, and they should not have been to Russia yet.
Singing in the song hall with her classmates that night, she stared at the rolling subtitles and wondered why no one sang "My Hand Through Your Black Hair." She went to the playlist and programmed the song, excitedly waiting for the familiar melody to appear. She was going to pick up Mike and sing it herself once. That time, she suddenly realized that she actually began to pay attention to and like popular songs because of this song. It's really not because of Teresa Teresa. Some people she knows like popular songs, some people start from Su Xiaoming - "Night of the Military Port" is sung in many dormitories in her college years; some people start from Teresa Teng, when she was in college, the soft and sweet singing voice flowing from the brick tape recorder makes them think and move like young students who have been accustomed to listening to slogans and cheering since childhood; and the first song that touched her came from Luo Dayou - through your black haired my hand, through your mood of my eyes... She went to the boys' dormitory building and gave a male classmate a copy of the book "Book of Swords and Enmity", which was borrowed by the classmate from an individual small bookstore near Changjiang Street, and everyone took turns to read it and paid the rent on a daily basis. At that time, Jin Yong's novels had just begun to attract their attention, and Xinhua Bookstore did not have Jin Yong's books for sale, and even if she did, she could not afford to buy them. The singing came from inside the door of a dormitory, and she was captivated by only the first two sentences. The lyrics and melody are so strange — it turns out that the lyrics can not strictly follow the grammar, such as black hair can be passed through the palm of the hand, but how can the eyes pass through the mood? It turned out that the black hair could be sung, it could be sung in such a non-exciting, very somber way, and she suddenly wanted to cry when she heard that song. She stood in the corridor of the boys' dormitory and listened to the song, and has been fascinated by Luo Dayou's broken gong voice ever since. She began to collect Records of Luo Dayou and became an enthusiast of Luo Dayou, which has not changed for many years. Luo Dayou was in her heart. She didn't know why she liked the desolation in his lyrics and melodies, and wondered if she was born with the desolate gene in her bones.
- 9 -
By the time she graduated from graduate school, she had black hair on her head. Of course, it was dyed.
Her natural hair color is unique among her classmates, how can those specially baked hair be compared. She has short hair and is still used to wearing a hat. She dyed her hair black, not because of red hair, she actually didn't care so much about the red hair, what about red hair, fashionable people have dyed black hair, red hair is very prominent, very eye-catching. She dyed her hair black and found herself gray. The white hair crept out, growing more and more the more it was pulled. Some classmates said that she was a little whitehead. The school doctor said that you may have lacked nutrition since childhood, and then you are now staying up so late with your brain. Supplementing with more nutrition may improve. Thinking that she had longed for black hair for many years, she simply dyed it. When I came home on the weekend, my mother smiled and said, "You see we both have black hair." "Mom's hair is jet black and lacks natural shine. After she colored her own hair, she began to think that it was not good for her mother to dye her hair so black. The color number that mom used was pure black, and she herself used natural black, which was closer to the natural hair color. The biggest disadvantage of pure black is that when the new white hair grows out, the ends and white hair roots are black and white, which makes people see that it is false at once, and the real age is ruthlessly exposed by the hair roots. More and more white stubble appeared from the roots of the mother's hair. After my mother retired, she was too lazy to dye her hair often, and only when she needed to appear on a very important occasion, she went to the barbershop to take care of it seriously. Dad also had gray hair, but Dad didn't dye it. She later slowly realized that the so-called black hair is actually just a general statement, in the sun, black hair is also deep and shallow, straight and curved. Naturally black is quite dark.
After going to college, she occasionally saw Aunt Wang on campus. After studying for graduate school, she and Aunt Wang became peers. Aunt Wang is in the physics department, and she is in the Chinese department. I remember the first time I met on campus, she said to Aunt Wang: "My family will not move away, you take time to help me make up physics, maybe I can get into a better university." She also remembered that she wanted to be Marie Curie, at least to go to a university in Beijing like her parents, and unfortunately neither of these two wishes came true. Aunt Wang smiled and said, "If you go to another university, we won't be able to see each other very often." "She remembered that when she was a neighbor, Aunt Wang said that she would be a daughter-in-law in the future, and her heart was once warm." Is Yu Feng over there okay? She heard Xiaomei say that after graduating from Yufeng Military Academy, he went to fight in Guangxi, became a scout, made several meritorious achievements, and heard that he went to Shenzhen to start a company after transferring from the army. Aunt Wang said, "It's okay." He was from the caution wild and did not want to come back. It's not easy over there either, starting from scratch and starting from scratch. He himself is willing to toss and turn, and the good boy is determined to be in all directions. Your parents and our generation, everyone is home from all over the world. ”
She didn't fall in love when she was in college. The rich collection of books in the library made her feel like a fish, she borrowed five books at a time, and then went to replace new books as soon as she finished reading. She is the student with the highest utilization of library cards, and many of the world's famous book cards have her borrowing records on them. When she graduated from college, she felt that she had not read enough books and wanted to continue to stay on campus. She was the only undergraduate student who took the graduate school exam and did not directly participate in the work. Lao Cheng was introduced to her by Aunt Wang after she worked. Lao Cheng was the son of Aunt Wang's sister, and she did not become Aunt Wang's daughter-in-law, but the daughter-in-law of Aunt Wang's nephew. Is marriage also predestined in the dark? When she first met Lao Cheng, she was not very satisfied. She felt that the old Cheng looked old, although he was only three years older than her, and looked like he was quite old. Mom and Dad were quite satisfied. The descendants of the military workers looked steady, honest, and reliable. Lao Cheng and his cousin Yu Feng are both dark-skinned and have beards. Mom said that the boy's skin was dark and looked mature. Lao Cheng is the eldest in the family, with three brothers and a pair of twin brothers below. Marrying the family, she began to feel that the brothers in the family were very good, and when she encountered things, it seemed that there was a battle of righteousness at once, a bit like when she was in elementary school, as soon as she thought of Yufeng in school, she no longer worried about being bullied on campus. Lao Cheng's brother is, of course, her brother. After getting married, the feeling of being an orphan gradually disappeared. During the Spring Festival, the in-laws are always full of a room full of people, she is alone outside, in the in-laws' home is not more lively, the relatives at home are very good, usually everyone has their own days, every New Year's Festival gets together, lively and interesting. When flying for the New Year, he always went to grandma's house early. The grandchildren of the Cheng family, only Fei Fei, this one girl, the whole family spoiled her, Fei Fei is the little princess of the Cheng family. Every year, feifei always gives it to his mother for the first time. She put away the red envelope and joked with her daughter that the piano at home was bought in the red packet.
Fei Fei's nickname was given to her father. The father solemnly said to his daughter and son-in-law: "I would like to make a small suggestion, this child in our family, whether it is a boy or a girl, the nickname is called Feifei, which is a special experience to commemorate the elders of ours." "Dad is nearly retired, has long been a professor-level senior engineer, she already knows that Dad has never mentioned a word of mysterious work after so many years of home is actually related to airplanes, Dad worked in the unit door hung with a conspicuous big sign, now the name of the unit is open to the public." After Fei Fei was born, she learned that when she went to college, her father's unit sent some people to a newly formed factory in Chengdu, and her father and mother discussed whether it was possible that her father would first transfer to Chengdu, and then her mother would find a way to transfer there? Later, after many inquiries and many discussions, it was regrettably proved that the mother could not be reconciled. Mom's unit belongs to another system, and she still can't find a suitable counterpart in her hometown. If it is not a special need for work, what is the point of Dad going there alone? It is actually my mother who has always wanted to return to Chengdu. If Dad went alone, the two places were separated, like some families in the family home in the living area, a lot of trouble. Later, my mother said, "In a few years I will retire, and I will not toss." Besides, even if we can both go to Chengdu, what will Mao Ya do? Did she follow us or not? She's not necessarily used to the climate over there, and you're not necessarily used to it over there. My mom is gone, and there's little point in going back. Let's all still be here. For so many years, cold and dry I am also used to, I really want to go home, after retirement have time, often go back to see the line. ”
When I knew that my father and mother had moved to work in Chengdu and could not make the trip, my father and mother retired. When they retire, like migratory birds, they will go to the South once every three or two years. A large part of their pensions were donated to the Ministry of Railways and airlines. In the summer, when they went back to Foshan to bid farewell to their father's uncle, they came back and said it was too hot there; when they went back to Chengdu for the Spring Festival in the winter, they said that it was too cold indoors. Later, they told her: "There is no good in our house, we are warm in winter and cool in summer, and the northeast rice is still delicious." "Living here for many years, they have become accustomed to the climate of the northeast, and their hometown is actually just a kind of thought in their hearts - the parents who gave them life and raised them are gone, and the blood-related peers have also begun to leave." Remember a variety of hometown specialties, now the supermarket can almost buy, a few supermarkets can not buy, on the Internet is also easy to find, express delivery three or two days to arrive. What they are hungry for is actually the food made by their relatives, and the feeling and atmosphere when their relatives eat reunion dinner together. When their loved ones are gone, what are they going to do? Later, Fei fei flew abroad to study, found a job there, had her own small home, her father, mother, legs and feet are not good, if it is not her daughter to take time to accompany, they themselves dare not go to the south, she does not dare to let them travel alone. In order to make it easier to take care of them, she installed her small home in a new neighborhood not too far from the old house in the Red Chamber. Mom and Dad insisted on living in the old living area. The last time they were divided into a three-story two-bedroom apartment in their old life, with a separate kitchen and bathroom, the same old house that she had when she lived with Aunt Wang's neighbors when she was a child, and her father and mother finally had their own bedrooms in their old age. Their bedrooms double as office use, and everyone has their own habits. Mom accused Dad of sleeping too loudly, which seriously affected the rhythm of her life, but Dad did not admit to snoring. She mobilized them to move out of there, she could buy them a house with two bathrooms, so that they would no longer have to talk about the conflict of time on the toilet, Lao Cheng had long agreed, but the old couple said that they were used to living in the old house, surrounded by old neighbors, old colleagues, it was interesting to go downstairs to talk to old neighbors, only those old neighbors knew the meaning of their lives. They are accustomed to listening to the roar of the aircraft engine test, accustomed to watching the ups and downs of the aircraft test flight, and those huge sounds are full of their life's hard work. Strangers who hear that deafening sound will of course think it is noise, and only old guys and professionals like them who have listened to it for decades can hear the differences and differences, just as Fei Fei said that she could tell whether the melody of Chopin entering her ear drum came from Fu Cong or Lang Lang's fingertips.
- 10 -
Feifei graduated from college and decided to study abroad, and grandpa and grandma cling to it. She defused their sadness with a joke: "You named her Fei Fei, fei fei is not allowed to fly farther?" ”
Dad looked at her and said, "Flying is an Airbus." ”
After the age of eighty, Dad became more and more like a three-year-old child, often saying unreasonable things. If you don't take the Airbus, do you take the fighter plane and cross the ocean? There was an idea buried in her heart that she hadn't spoken. She felt that Feifei's departure was in a sense a kind of fate, as if she was destined to teach Chinese to international students. The residents of the Red Mansion living area, the neighbors of her family, everyone is really from all over the world, she carefully listens to the accent of who speaks, it is easy to distinguish where the speaker is coming from. Not many people speak the local dialect of Northeast China. Aunt Wang is from Tangshan, Hebei, Uncle Xing is from Luoyang, Henan, her father is from Foshan, Guangdong, and her mother is from Chengdu, Sichuan, and the two aunts who have spoken loudly downstairs are actually from Shandong, one from Jinan and one from Qingdao. Everyone's accent has traces of hometown, influencing each other and accommodating together, and everyone tries to speak the dialect of their hometown as little as possible when they talk, afraid that the other party will not understand. Like some military compounds, the residents of the Red Mansion living area, when they speak together, not only retain the stubborn imprint of their hometowns, but also be immersed in the local Northeast vernacular, forming a special language field over time, when they talk to people outside the living area, they know very well that their pronunciation is not exactly the same as the local Northeast dialect, they are foreigners living in the local area, and they have their own small circles. The children of military engineers who grew up in the living area, many years later, the appearance of the child may change, saying one or two keywords of the living area, you can evoke the common memories of everyone, as if to find a special key to the old time. In the process of growing up day by day, she was particularly sensitive to how the pronunciation of everyone around her was different from others, often comparing her parents' pronunciation with the voice of the Central People's Radio, and she knew from a very young age which vowels were not standard in her parents' pronunciation, and which vowels would lose her scores if she wrote pinyin according to her parents' pronunciation during the exam. Can be transferred to the study abroad center to teach Chinese students, in addition to academic qualifications, teaching experience, but also because of her strong hearing, Mandarin spoken Language is the most standard among the teachers in the entire College of Literature, the local Northeast people are easy to confuse with their tongues, she cannot make this mistake. If she hadn't let Feifei accompany her students on the holidays to have conversations and exchanges, and earlier took her to Zhongshan Square to practice dialogue with foreigners, Feifei's hearing and speaking might not be so good, and she might have been afraid to communicate boldly with foreigners. Feifei wants to go out to study after graduating from university, and it is very likely that she has the idea of going far away when she studied with international students during the holidays. Fei Fei and Pete are in love and married, will it be because she has been accustomed to dealing with people of different skin colors since she was a child, and the psychological barrier is smaller? And isn't all this because my parents came to the Great Northeast from their distant hometowns when they were young and finally came together? And wasn't the earlier cause because they chose a major that might have to work in a secrecy unit when they went to college? Everyone is actually walking on the path of their predecessors, and even stepping on the footprints of their predecessors. Fei Fei can go wherever she wants, it is impossible to stop, give her freedom, and wish her well.
After my father and mother were eighty years old, they could not climb the third floor of the old house. She bought a two-bedroom apartment on the first floor in her neighborhood, went to see them before going to work every day, and went to her parents' house on the first floor to make a stop when she came home from work. She was ready to hire them an hourly worker or a nanny, but her parents firmly disagreed, saying that they were OKAY - the part-time workers did the work, what did they do? The old house in the living area, my parents resolutely did not sell. The old house was filled with all kinds of old things they had accumulated, and when they remembered something, they asked Mao Ya to go back to the other side to find it. The house was already in the relocation plan, and she no longer urged them to sell it. The red brick building has been built for nearly seventy years, and no one buys that kind of old house to live unless they want to earn the difference by moving or waiting to move back in place. The red brick house looks ok on the outside, the red brick wall is full of age, the autumn wall climbing tiger blooms like a flower, and there are often photography enthusiasts walking around to take pictures in that area. There was gas, heating and running water in the building, but the wooden floors of her two bedrooms had long since decayed, and the toilet was so small that it could not accommodate a bath water heater, let alone a washing machine. She was occasionally instructed to go back to find old things, never using the toilet there, she was no longer used to using the old-fashioned squat urinal, and the bathroom of her new house had a smart toilet cover installed. When seven people used to share a toilet, my mother hung cardboard with red and green logos on the door of the toilet, and people at that time could really bear it. At that time, every morning before getting up until going out, there was a queue to go to the toilet. In the summer, parents are used to taking a shower to relieve the heat, there is no suitable shower space in the cramped house, and the two families consciously do not take a shower in the toilet. She remembers that before going to bed in the summer, the family of three would take turns to use a large aluminum basin to receive water, carry the basin to the bedroom, and scrub their bodies with a towel. There is a public bathhouse in the living area, and with the bath ticket issued by her father's unit, she will enter it, and her mother will take her to wash carefully once a week. The bathhouse is very crowded, especially around the Spring Festival, there is a queue to go into the bathhouse to take a bath, and you can't find a cabinet to put off and change clothes when you go late.
One day, her mother had a whim, so she had to go back to the old house to get the big aluminum basin. Mom said that the large aluminum basin was placed under the iron bed in her bedroom. She asked her mother, "What do you do with the big aluminum basin?" "She wasn't feeling well that day and was a little too lazy to move. The old mother replied to her: "It's almost the New Year, I want to remove the quilt and the mattress, boil some hot water, and let your father wash the sheets together." Mom's words made her eye sockets wet. Mom was really confused. When she was young, when she was a child, her mother would carry out a big cleaning, tie a rag on the broom, sweep the dust on the roof of the shed and the corner of the wall, and remove the quilt and mattress cover used by the three people; at night, dad sat on a small bench and scrubbed the quilt cover and sheets in the large aluminum basin. Mom praised Dad for washing it clean. Dad was serious about doing housework. At that time, they had never heard of a washing machine, and Dad and Mom's hands were washing machines. After listening to her mother's instructions, she did not immediately tell her mother again that there was a washing machine at home, the big aluminum basin was useless, and now who still uses the large aluminum basin to wash the sheets? If there is a museum to collect old objects, she can donate the large basin. She remembered that the big aluminum basin that her mother still remembered was cast aluminum, and she had bathed in it when she was a child, and that large basin was really a bit heavy, and if you didn't drive over, it was very inconvenient to carry it by hand. She once again decided that her mother was on a whim, and would soon forget this remark, just as she had forgotten many of the things she had said. Dad and Mom talk now, and sometimes she just listens, not too much to her heart. Mom and Dad are old and often talk stupidly.
Mom and Dad's old house, the relocation is sooner or later. I heard that Dad's unit has been planned to relocate. The area around the Red Chamber was once a wilderness, far from the city; now it is located between the second and third ring roads, the existence of the airport runway seriously affects the development of the surrounding area, aircraft take-off and landing test flights, inconvenient and unsafe in the urban area. The sound of aircraft engines is too loud to be overstated by noise. The buildings in the west of the living area are close to the Yellow River Street, and the Yellow River Street is connected to Metro Line 2, and the plots through the subway are valuable, and in the future, whether commercial houses or office buildings are built, there is a lot of room for appreciation. Since dad and mom are reluctant to sell, the house is so idle.
She thought about the old house in her heart, and heard her daughter say to her: "Mom, I don't think you are very energetic, are you not too awake?" If you don't squint for a while, we'll find a place to eat and talk again in the evening. Judy came over and said goodbye to the Queen. Judy waved her hand at her, and she waved at Judy: "See you in the evening, have a good meal at noon." Feifei you take a few more photos and send them over, Grandma and Grandpa said to see Judy's new photos. "She didn't tell her daughter that she would do a nucleic acid test this morning, and for her daughter, she is used to reporting good news and not worry."
- 11 -
The phone video went offline, and she didn't want to get up right away. It's really early. The community informed that a third nucleic acid test would be done today. A big sister Yin who returned from abroad, the hotel went home after fourteen days of isolation, and the onset was diagnosed a few days later, and some close contacts were recruited one after another, resulting in the closure of the relevant communities, and the residents of the city had to do at least three nucleic acid tests. Her parents were not flexible, she made an appointment with the community to go to the house for testing, and she also borrowed light without having to queue up outside. It was really cold outside, minus twenty degrees, and the cold wave came. Mom and Dad basically can't leave home this winter, because of the epidemic, she let them stay at home and don't go out, she thinks that they don't do testing, in fact, it's okay, but mom and dad oppose it in unison: "That's not OK, we have to listen to the unified arrangement of the community." Let the test be measured, let the test be measured a few times. The way they opened their mouths and waited for the cotton swabs to reach into her mouth reminded her of when they were young and they worked together to pry open her mouth and pour her chicken bile. When she was a child, her trachea was not good, and the coldest days of the year must have been sick, and they did not know where to hear a folk remedy, saying that eating fresh chicken bitter bile can cure tracheitis, and at the New Year, she contracted the fresh chicken bile of everyone in the living area at a young age. Fortunately, there were not many people who could kill chickens for the New Year at that time. A few days ago, my father and mother heard from neighbors that it is best not to eat or drink water two hours before doing nucleic acid testing, so they repeatedly reminded her last night: "Tomorrow morning you don't come over to make breakfast, we will eat after the test." ”
She looked at the time, and it wasn't yet eight o'clock. She also wants to eat breakfast after the test, so she really doesn't rush to get up. There is a sound of kicking and stomping outside the bedroom door, and it is the old cheng who gets up to go to the toilet or drink water. Since Fei Fei went to college, she also began to live separately from Lao Cheng, and she began to believe that her mother said that her father snored when she slept, and Lao Cheng also began to snore, interfering with her poor sleep. She now always slept with one ear on her side every night, although she didn't live in a bedroom, she wanted to know if Lao Cheng was okay and what he was doing. She had installed an electric button at the head of his bed, and if there was an emergency, Lao Cheng could ring the bell. When he first got married, he didn't snore. Now she lives alone in a separate bedroom, alone in a bathroom, without anyone disturbing, and she often tosses and turns around after turning off the lights. The house is getting bigger and bigger, and the deep sleep is getting less and less, why is this?
She heard Lao Cheng coughing outside. Lao Cheng walked to the door of her bedroom. She turned off the lamp and waited for Lao Cheng to come in. The bedroom curtains were not tightly drawn, and a ray of morning light came through the sewing of the curtains. Turning off the lights was because he didn't want Lao Cheng to see the white hair roots that she had exposed. After meeting Luo Dayou for many years, she heard a singer named Jiang Yuheng also singing "My Hand Through Your Black Hair", which is more ethereal and ethereal than Luo Dayou. Maybe everyone's life can't avoid heaviness and desolation, but we can make ourselves less heavy and fly once in a while, just like the song sings - if the cold world we live in is still difficult to change, at least I still have your face to dissolve the ice and snow... Luo Dayou sang, Jacky Cheung sang, Jiang Yuheng sang, Mao Ning sang, and she herself sang countless times in her heart. Remembering Fei Fei and Judy's kind faces, her mood was much more relaxed. Close your eyes and let the kind melody slowly echo in your heart again. The bedroom door swung open and the man who had accompanied her for half her life walked in. Lao Cheng's footsteps were noticeably heavier than in the first few years. People old before old legs. Last night, when she was having dinner with her parents on the first floor, she looked up and saw that Lao Cheng's hair was much whiter, and she didn't remind him. What about gray hair? Dad's and mom's hair was already white. Living to this age, what can make her feel heavy is not a few gray hairs. If she had stepped back in time, she would no longer let the red hair torment herself. Fei Fei told her about pianist Fu Cong, who died in england last month. Remembering the "Fu Lei Family Letter" she had read, she once envied Fu Cong for having a father who could write a family letter for him and speak from his heart, and the father and man who wrote the family letter later hung up with his wife. Years later, his son, who had read family letters, died of COVID-19 in a foreign land. There is always one death. The year of Gengzi is really ugly. In the last video, Fei Fei said that Lang Lang's wife, Gina, was about to give birth. Lang Lang Primary School alma mater is also FeiFei's alma mater, Lang Lang is a famous pianist, Lang Lang flying around the world to perform, and Fei Fei now has a rare time to play the piano, Fei Fei can never be a pianist. What about improper pianists? Isn't it good to be an ordinary person and live healthy and happy? Some people are dead, but many more are alive.
Her hair was scattered on the pillow, inadvertently pressed by Lao Cheng's elbow, and she couldn't help but whisper, "This big brother, you hurt my hair!" ”
—END—
Yangtze River Literature and Art, No. 4, 2022
Responsible Editor | Chu Feng
▲Jurchen |
Jurchen, real name Zhang Ying, is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, an editor and a first-class writer. He has written novels, essays, reviews and other genres, and has won many awards such as the China Book Award, the Annual Excellent Work Award of "Novel Selection", and the Liaoning Literature Award. He currently lives in Shenyang.