"Wow, it's weird! The difficulty of Shu Road is yesterday. High-speed and high-speed rail, the road is cut through the sky! Chengdu and Chongqing meander for more than 1,000 miles, and now they are talking and laughing back and forth! ”
Here are a few words I wrote on the high-speed train from Chengdu to Chongqing last spring.
More than 30 years ago, when I went to university in Chengdu, I had to take an overnight "express train" from Chengdu Station along the 504-kilometer Chengdu-Chongqing Railway that winds around the valley to reach Chongqing Caiyuanba Railway Station the next morning.
Then, take a bus from Caiyuanba to Chaotianmen Wharf, take the Yangtze River passenger ferry that day, go down the river, and arrive at a small town in the evening. If you are lucky, you can catch the bus sent to Nanbin Town, the county seat of Shizhu Tujia Autonomous County. If you are unlucky, you have to spend 2 cents and 5 cents to live in Datongpu for one night, and the next day squeeze the morning bus to Nanbin Town.
If you are lucky, you can take a bus from the county seat to Xituo or Linxi at noon, get off at a place called "Xiakou", and then walk 8 kilometers to your home. If you are unlucky, you will spend 3 cents to live in Datongpu in the county seat for one night, and the next morning you will squeeze into the only bus that runs to Lichuan, Hubei Province every day, and arrive home at noon.
This link of traffic, from Chengdu back to hometown, takes 3 days when it is smooth, and more than four or five days when it is not smooth. In winter, the fog is heavy, and the Yangtze River is closed; In the summer, the water rises, and the Yangtze River is closed. One summer, the Yangtze River flooded, and it took me 10 days to return to my hometown from Chengdu.
Now, there is a direct high-speed rail from Chengdu to the hometown county, less than 3 hours; From Chengdu to Chongqing, the fastest high-speed rail is 1 hour and 17 minutes!
Isn't it: the difficulty of Shu Road, the difficulty is yesterday!
One. On the morning of Friday, March 31, 2023, at the invitation of the All-China Women's Federation, I plan to go to Chongqing to give a lecture on women's health entitled "Talking about the Palace of Life". I had a night clinic on Thursday, which ended at 7 p.m., and after that, I couldn't get to the capital airport anyway to take a flight to Chongqing at 8 p.m. The next flight was at 22:30, and it was already 1 o'clock in the morning on Friday when I landed in Chongqing, and it was more than 2 o'clock to get to the hotel.
This is unacceptable to me who has passed the age of "knowing the destiny of heaven", especially after the severe tinnitus that made people unloveable in November 2021 (which has been reconciled), I can no longer stay up late, I must ** before 23 o'clock, otherwise it will be difficult to fall asleep.
Actually, I was able to take the earliest flight to Chongqing on Friday morning. However, although the speed of the plane is fast, once it is delayed, when it arrives at the venue, the building is empty.
Wisdom comes from urgency! Is it possible to fly to Chengdu on Thursday night and take the high-speed train to Chongqing on Friday morning? It is said that the high-speed rail from Chengdu to Chongqing only takes more than 1 hour, which is reliable!
I'm not afraid that I can't do it, I'm afraid that I can't think of it, there is really a flight to Chengdu at 20:30.
Thus, the Beijing-Chengdu-Chongqing journey was officially started.
Two. Thursday, March 30, 2023. At 19 o'clock, the night clinic ended, and the subway was decisively chosen, and the capital airport arrived at 20:05. Three minutes before the gate closed, as the last passenger who had been urged to board several times, he took his seat apologetically in full view of everyone.
The flight took off on time and landed at Chengdu Shuangliu Airport at 23:30. Arrived at a hotel near Chengdu East Railway Station at 0:05 a.m. on Friday.
The little girl who checked in was the most beautiful Chengdu woman I had ever seen, not even one of them. Slender and graceful, naturally beautiful, with light makeup, with a light smile when speaking, the most cordial thing is a standard Chengdu-style Mandarin.
When I was in college, I didn't think Chengdu women spoke very well, and even felt angry. But on that night at the end of March 2023, the soft language of the Shudi woman sounded very comfortable.
Three. Friday, March 31. After eating a bowl of Chongqing noodles calmly at Chengdu East Railway Station, I boarded the high-speed train to Chongqing at 8:30.
Looking at the information on the ticket that you can arrive at Chongqing North Railway Station at 9:47, I felt a little emotional, so I wanted to write a copy of Li Bai's "Shu Road Difficulty".
However, just after pulling out five sentences, the wires of the train of thought have not yet been connected, and the high-speed rail has arrived at Chongqing North Railway Station.
Gather your thoughts and leave the station with regrets.
I arrived at the venue more than one hour ahead of schedule. The lectures are as passionate as ever, especially when I go back to my hometown to give lectures, and I work hard, and I use Chongqing dialect at the beginning and end.
Comfortable and comfortable!
Four. After the lecture, I was supposed to visit a high-tech enterprise, but I took a leave of absence.
I have always been enthusiastic about lecturing in Chongqing, mainly because I can take the opportunity to return to my hometown. The house I helped my second brother build in my hometown is also time to buy furniture.
The eldest brother's children came to the hotel and pulled me to a civilian furniture city. Chongqing's furniture is much cheaper than Beijing's, and solid wood furniture is the latter's plate furniture. I told the clerk that their store name "Tianyi Sunshine" is very particular, "I Ching" has "the sky is born of water, the earth is sixty percent", furniture and books, the most afraid is fire, and water can overcome fire, there is a library building in Zhejiang, it is called "Tianyi Pavilion".
The clerk connected the boss **, and the boss said that no one had ever explained the name of the store so much, and he was happy to give a 7% discount directly, and gave me a delicate small stool for me to take back to Beijing.
The stool is too good-looking, and it attracts a lot of attention during the journey.
It seems that "knowledge" is really valuable, even if it is a little bit of skin.
Five. In the evening, my nephew and niece pulled me to a street shop where I ate skewers, and I posted a Chongqing fireworks ** in the circle of friends, which received countless likes.
Eat skewers in Chongqing.
In the process of scalding skewers, a pair of young men and women had a little dispute over ordering food, and the man was helpless by the clever Yuzhou girl. The people around him will laugh knowingly, and the men in Sichuan and Chongqing who are afraid of their wives are called "rake ears" - in fact, it is an implicit praise and a manifestation of caring for women.
What is also surprising is that the checkout is not about the number of skewers, but about the weight of the skewers themselves where the ingredients are removed. The shopkeeper explained that it was troublesome to count and weigh it (simple).
Sure enough, it is a native of Chongqing - a northeasterner from the south!
Six. Saturday, April 1. In the morning, my nephew took me to Chongqing North Railway Station, and we took the high-speed train to Shizhu together, arriving at the county seat in 1 hour and 30 minutes, and returning to our hometown after more than 40 minutes.
Back to his hometown. At that time, my hometown was in full bloom of peach blossoms and rape. The altitude of the hometown is more than 1,200 meters, and the season is slightly later than that of the Yangtze River, which has the meaning of "the world is full of fragrant flowers in April, and the peach blossoms in the mountain temple are in full bloom".
As always, my eldest brother received me at the highest standard of family dinner.
The table is full of dishes, showing the flavor of the Tujia family.
A family banquet full of nostalgia.
An uncle and a few cousins who stayed behind in my hometown came to eat and chat with me, talking about my father and grandfather. The older I get, the more I want to know the stories of the elderly.
Every time I go back to my hometown, I sleep soundly. What's even more amazing is that my tinnitus has been alleviated a lot after I arrived in Chongqing, and it has disappeared temporarily after returning to my hometown, which is estimated to be related to the high humidity of the air in the south (please read this article, don't mention tinnitus again when we meet in the future - I have reconciled with her, I forgot not to mention it, and I will remember it again when I mention it).
Uncle said, your tinnitus, teasing (just) homesick!
Seven. Sunday, April 2. After all, it was time to go back to Beijing. My uncle insisted on going to my eldest brother's house on crutches to see me off. Actually, we would drive past his doorstep.
My nephew sent me to the county seat, and I took the high-speed train from Shizhu County Station to Chongqing North Railway Station, and then transferred to the light rail of Line 10, and arrived at Jiangbei Airport in more than 10 minutes.
At 16:30, the flight from Chongqing to Beijing took off on time and landed at the capital airport more than 2 hours later.
On the plane, I sighed again about this trip, so I flipped out "Shu Dao Difficulty" from the memo on my mobile phone and continued to fill in the words sentence by sentence.
Although the artistic conception and magnificence are vastly different from the original poem, the number of words in each sentence is the same, and the rhyme is basically the same. Maybe this song "Shu Road is No Longer Difficult" will make Li Bai so angry that he pats the board above his head, but it is my true feeling.
After filling out the "poems", I "collected" the cleaning bags of the other two passengers in the same row and wrote them down on the bumpy plane.
An editor teacher commented: "What you wrote is not whether Shu Dao is difficult or not, but full of nostalgia!" ”
About author:Tan Xianjie, MD, Tujia. "Concord Scholar" Distinguished Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, presided over the completion of a number of national, provincial and ministerial scientific research projects. In 2003, he was selected as a "rising star of science and technology" in Beijing, and in 2004 and 2006, he won the first prize of Beijing Science and Technology Award and the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award respectively, and in 2022, he won the first prize of Beijing Science and Technology Progress Award as the first finisher.