It's been 21 years since I officially left the small county town where I was born.
In 2003, in order to provide better educational resources, my parents moved to Hohhot with me at the age of 7 and left my "Baicao Garden". Since then, I have only been able to go back during the winter and summer vacations. Later, the bungalows in the county town were demolished due to the widening of the road, and the grandparents moved back to the newly built buildings in the county. I lost my "Baicao Garden" and went back to the county seat less and less. Until now, I am working in Beijing, and the Spring Festival has almost become the only time to return home.
After 20 years of changes, my hometown in the sense of space is disappearing for me, and I am searching for familiar traces in my memory in the changes.
The passenger station in front of the old house is still there, but there are not many buses.
When I was a child, buses were the only mode of public transportation between the county and the provincial capital, and when the holidays began, I took the bus back to the county. At that time, the highway had not yet been repaired, the bus was moving very slowly, and passengers standing on the side of the road carrying large bags and small bags stopped as soon as they waved. Later, people in the county began to buy cars, and buses had fewer customers, and sometimes they would even drive into the village and solicit customers at people's doorsteps. The 100-kilometer road takes more than 4 hours to walk.
The young people of the county town gathered in front of the billiard hall to roast a "prosperous fire". Photo by Wang Xueer.
On the morning of the Chinese New Year's Eve this year, my mother drove me back to the county seat. The highway has been under construction for several years, and the route has been changing. After driving for a while, my mother was a little confused, so I opened the navigation and walked for a while, "I know the road", and got on the highway, she confidently shouted that I turned off the navigation until the next fork in the road without road signs, and the navigation showed going straight, but in my mother's memory, this road had to go around in a small circle, and she decided to follow the route in her memory.
After a detour and then back to the fork in the road, she muttered quietly, pretending to suddenly realize, "This road is open." Later, without stopping me from navigating, I walked through the tall buildings and stopped in front of my grandmother's community.
In 1977, when my mother was 7 years old, she moved from the village to the county seat, where she completed her studies, participated in work, got married and had children, and when she was in her 30s, she worked hard for me to go to school and transferred her job to Hohhot. Every time my mother goes back to her hometown, it is a big deal, she dresses herself carefully, and she has to spend a few days in advance thinking about what to bring to her relatives in the county, which used to be KFC, durian, cherries ......Later, hamburger restaurants, bubble tea shops, and supermarket chains were opened in the county, and the children in the family no longer rarely had fries and burgers. Until now, there is no shortage of things that can be bought in the city, and my mother went shopping for New Year's goods a few times, and only then did she buy some freeze-dried yogurt cubes, freeze-dried fruits, milk dates, almonds, and ...... from the chain of dried fruit stores that have opened in Hohhot in recent years
There really is nothing lacking in the county. Chinese New Year's Eve's Chinese New Year's Eve rice, on the coffee table, the cherries are 4j, and the "king crab" is impressively on the table, this is the first time I have eaten such high-end ingredients, and I tasted it carefully, it is really similar to the taste of the "crab **" I eat daily, and at this time I reconciled with my "working life" in Beijing for a moment - although I can't afford to eat good ingredients in "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou", but the taste of the original "Pingti" is not much different.
On the third day of the Lunar New Year, I swiped a short ** on social platforms, talking about "Beipiao consumption downgrade, county consumption upgrade", * The protagonist returned to Jiangxi County from Beijing for the New Year, "was laughed at by herself", she laughed at herself for having "the warmth of squeezing the subway after work, and the happiness of eating dumplings overtime", "I only dare to go to the boutique supermarket after 7 o'clock in the evening, because some food will be discounted", "The 45 yuan knitted sweater I wore even cost 100 gold coins and a coupon of 200 yuan minus 30 yuan" Not in the same style of Pinduoduo search brand is the last decency and dignity", on the other hand, friends who stay in the town to work and live, "some have opened BMWs, and some live in villas", "The coat of the town lady of more than 1,000 yuan is said to be bought", "The boutique supermarket ** is shipped back to the county Sam's rolls, roast chicken, and Boston lobster are sold at a higher price, and the supply exceeds demand". What they suffer most about in small towns is that "life is a little boring".
I deeply believe that compared to the wealthy small-town family, the life of "drifting" outside is really not happy. Before the start of construction on the ninth day of the Lunar New Year, some people on social platforms said that they "hid in a rental house in a big city and cried for a long time", and began to doubt whether the choice to give up life in a wealthy county was correct, some people gritted their teeth and insisted on being a "generation of immigrants" in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, they encouraged themselves to "just work hard in the first 10 years", some people said that ordinary people can only choose to repay their mortgages in the city or in the county, "those who can stay in the county to live are the hidden bosses".
Of course, the "small-town lady" is by no means the whole picture of life in the county. I have observed that many of my family and friends who live a good life here have the resources accumulated by their elders, have stable incomes, can resist risks, and have the ability to buy a house and a car.
These young people live in high-rise buildings with one ladder and two households, thinking about "leaping" again in the Year of the Dragon and changing to a big house.
The county has banned fireworks for many years, and there are people quietly putting them every year, but this year it has changed, and it is too lively, and the fireworks seem to be holding back a momentum. According to the tradition, everyone wore red and set off firecrackers, and on the evening of the thirtieth day of the lunar month, these young people gathered around the fire, holding fireworks "Gatling", wanting to be "prosperous" a little more in the coming year.
The fire ignited hope and hope, but several cars in the community were also killed, and after the night, only the frames were burned.
That night, the older generation in the county town watched the fireworks go off through the windows of the building, and they have now moved back into the building.
After the old man went upstairs, he seemed to suddenly get old. The old house was close to the passenger station, and before it was demolished, the grandparents opened a hotel, and more than a dozen bungalows in the courtyard were taken care of by two old people.
She said that she was "tired and sick", and now she is numb all day long, with low back pain and sore legs, and she can't climb to the fourth floor, and the amount of "downstairs" in a year is limited. In the winter of 2023, my grandfather had symptoms of cerebral vascular blockage, and he didn't go downstairs except to go to the hospital.
Grandma is tired, but she can't be idle, she treats the building as a yard of a bungalow, and the flowers on the whole balcony are to be taken care of.
When I entered the house, my grandmother was urging my grandfather to put up the window grille, and the 84-year-old grandfather walked to the window tremblingly, tiptoe to put a piece of glass glue on the window grille, and saw me enter the door, like seeing a "rescuer". "I can't do anything", Grandma began to count.
The two old people stayed upstairs, looking at each other for a lot of time, "noisy and yelling" is the norm, most of them are grandma talking and grandpa listening. During the Spring Festival, my grandmother seemed to have found an exit, and she poured "grievances" to me: "I never take any good things home, I give them all to his brothers and sisters". Grandma said that she was the one who took care of her three children and took care of the housework inside and outside, and her grandfather "didn't help at all".
Grandpa walked back to his room, slept all afternoon, and held my hand in the evening to tell me about his experience. From becoming the only accountant and auditor in the county, working in the Audit Bureau, to being transferred to the Supply and Marketing Cooperatives and the Commercial Bureau, and responding to the call for early retirement, ......"I also contributed to this family" - this is the conclusion and the conclusion.
I took a detour with my mother from behind the mountain to find an old house. Photo by Wang Xueer.
The grandparents' generation has to pull the brothers and sisters in the family to grow up together and support each other, and the "small family" in the "everyone" has often become the role of the victim, and the grandfather is the boss, so there seem to be more such "sacrifices". The old man in his old age is actually eager to prove his worth to the juniors.
On the other side of the room, a 7-year-old brother who goes to school in the county seat is holding a tablet to watch Tik Tok, watch skits and play games, his small eyes staring at the screen as if it were his whole world. His childhood was very different from mine, I lived in a bungalow, I could find Fa Xiao across the street, go down the creek to touch the loaches, and go up the mountain to dig wild vegetables. The younger brother lives in a gated building, everyone can only brush to the floor where they live, he is face-to-face with the neighbor's children but does not know each other, the road in the county is wider, there are more cars, the creek is planned as a deep "moat", and new houses are built on the mountains.
I suddenly understood that my hometown was no longer a space for me, but a childhood with the elderly—two fruit trees in the bungalow, lanterns made by my grandfather, and a prosperous fire ......My hometown is two old people living in a building at the moment, and they still remember what my hometown looks like.
Before leaving, my mother and I climbed the high stairs to see the newly renovated county history museum, which was built on the hill where I used to dig wild vegetables when I was a child. I heard that the museum is closed all year round, so we didn't see it this time. But from the back of the museum, you can go around to the old house of my grandmother's house, where my mother lived for 20 years.
Walking from the newly planned main street, it is difficult to find the old house, but from the back of the mountain, the appearance of the old house has not changed at all, "even the stinky ditch in front of the door is exactly the same". My mother walked ahead of me and told me who this family was and what gossip there was, which was the "native China" I saw in the book.
My mother's excited look in front reminded me of when I was a kid when she rode a scooter to my grandmother's house to pick me up.
Hometown is like a huge filter, filtering your knowledge, experience, your vanity, tiredness, and always giving you happy memories and traces of life from childhood. Mom found her hometown.
We took pictures of the old house and showed it to my aunt, who asked, "Are our two fruit trees still there?" ”
Mom said, "It doesn't seem to be there." ”
I zoomed in** and took a closer look, two fruit trees, one is gone, the other is pruned, but it's still there.
*: China Youth Daily.