Someone asked him if he was lonely, and he said lonely fart. My sister was afraid that he would always be alone, so she gave him movie tickets, "I said I don't watch." He said he was so happy to be able to skate every day, "happy and lucky." "And Shasliff (счастлив) you understand?" "Happiness" in Russian."
Wen | Yang Zhou
Interview | Yang Zhou Yu Jingjing
Edited | The Golden Turn
Photography | Yin Xiyuan
Video | ZeuChan
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Mr. Lawrence always likes to be at the ice rink at 11 a.m.
Many employees of the International Trade Ice Rink know this - although he arrived an hour ago and changed his skates, but at that time, looking around, it was sparse, the audience did not come enough, he would sit down first, and then wait.
There is an audience to have emotions. Mr. Lawrence needs an audience.
In the efficient and busy Beijing CBD, the underground ice rink in the first phase of Guomao is a rare place to empty, and the 800-square-meter ice surface is like a huge whirlpool, which can briefly inhale people's spirits. When the lunch break came, those who had been empty gathered and became Mr. Lawrence's audience.
His prelude is to freely roll along the field line, practicing a few times before turning three inside and bracketing steps, and warming up. It doesn't matter if the background music is too loud, he will go off the field for a few minutes, pull out a small mp3 from his bag, an old headphone, put it on, follow the rhythm of the Russian song, stretch his hands and feet, and slide on the ice.
Mr. Lawrence is 75 years old. The International Trade Ice Rink has been open for 21 years, and he has been here for 21 years.
But no matter how you look at it, he's not the one who skates best on the ice rink. Figure skating pays attention to jumping, pace and rotation, Mr. Lawrence jump is not able to jump up, rotate, turn for half a week is enough to choke, the pace sounds simple, really practice to know, this is a need to precisely control the body of the movement, standing on the ice knife about 4 mm thick, pay attention to the control of the center of gravity, the force is slightly off the point of not doing.
His movements, instead of being coherent and fluid, were somewhat clumsy, and when he switched, because of insufficient control, he could see his trembling legs. Even after 20 years of practice, he is still no better than the beginner figure skaters on the ice rink who can easily turn in circles at the age of three or four.
But that doesn't stop Mr. Lawrence from being respected and loved by many. From the underground of the first phase of The International Trade Center to the subway station, the office workers who pass by the ice rink every day must have seen him, and a young man who came here to skate when he was 4 years old also remembers him, and now he is 21 years old. The ice rink hosts figure skating competitions, where the watcher throws plush dolls at his favorite players from upstairs, and he always receives the most. A while ago, someone posted a video of him skating on Weibo, and in the background music of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", he waved his hands, sometimes looked up at the sky, sometimes turned around, and flew on the ice, as if into no man's land. The person who posted the tweet gave him a name, "International Trade Lawrence." He didn't know, no one in the ice rink called him that, his surname was Ji, his name was Ji Kaifeng—"We only have Uncle Ji here."
Mr. Lawrence has a foundation. He started practicing short track speed skating at the age of 8, and in the winter in Wild Lake, at the head with a 500-meter track, he skated very smoothly, in the words of the ice rink coach, he had a sense of ice, "there are roots in the soles of his feet."
In 1999, he was fascinated by the first time he saw foreign children practicing figure skating at the newly opened Guomao Ice Rink. But the partition knife is like a mountain, the short track speed skating is fast and direct, it is a contest of speed, and figure skating is spinning, jumping, beauty, and art.
He longed for beauty, and the next day, he appeared directly on a double figure skate ice knife at the ice rink. At that time, he was more than 50 years old, he did not obey the old, his heart was higher than the sky, he did not like to use the small trailer of the uncles and aunts to buy vegetables, all of them were a bag of 10 pounds of rice in each of his left hand and right hand, and he took it and left. Old Li, Lao Zhang, and Lao Sun, who were as old as him, were also sliding, but when he wanted to ask the coach for more professional training, no one dared to teach - he couldn't afford to wait when he was older.
The ice rink was finally moved by him, arranged the best coach for him, he learned diligently, the same action every day to the coach to show new progress, love to ask himself if there is progress, a question, "oh pedal to the office to find the coach." He knew that the limits of life were there, that he wouldn't jump higher and turn faster, but that didn't stop him from trying to learn something new. The bracket step, which was taught by Coach Xiao Yuhong, who caught the ice rink a while ago, seemed to simply draw a number "3" on the ice surface, he understood it, went back to practice, but practiced for a long time, and finally failed to get his hands on it.
He even wanted to learn to spin and jump. Coach Li Yan started teaching him 10 years ago, and as soon as he came up, he wanted the feeling of taking off. Li Yan told him that there is only 0.3 to 0.5 seconds to take off in the air, testing your explosive power in an instant, you have to practice, you can't do it in one step. He listened and nodded. But occasionally, Li Yan could still see himself on the flat ground, hooking his feet, turning around, or jumping up on one foot and jumping in the air.
Mr. Lawrence quietly prepared himself a pair of skates that were different from ordinary people. The secret is on the serrated teeth in front of the ice blade, ordinary people are 5 teeth, only the coach wears 7 teeth, he thinks, 7 teeth can point the ice jump, even day he can jump a meter high, half a meter high.
Mr. Lawrence is also keen to talk about beauty. The display in those figure skating competitions implied his aesthetic: Russian songs, to wear cardinal performance clothes, had to be the kind of Cossack style in the Don River Valley, free-spirited; as for "Liang Zhu", it must be changed to "a circle and a circle, a little wrinkled kind", a white butterfly, he thought, "I want to fly."
In fact, in the past professional experience, his work can only be regarded as the edge of "beauty". He first worked in the army, then worked as a cultural relics photographer for several years at the Palace Museum, then went to the aerospace agency, and the last stop was the foreign trade company.
Being a photographer requires beauty, but he laughs at himself as a heritage photographer, event and conference photographer. The cultural relics were unearthed, exhibited, and he used to "click, click" a few times, and most of the photos should be turned in confidentially after taking photos, which has nothing to do with him. Later, the unit was changed, it was almost the same, the conference was held, the signing ceremony was held, the rocket was launched, and he used to "click, click" a few times.
He strives to pull out a little beauty in these daily lives. In the past, when photographing cultural relics in the Forbidden City, the cultural relics were reflected by the glass across them, and he was alone in the darkroom, shelving a little chemical and soap, and the light and shadow were successfully removed. When skating, he would occasionally carry the Nikon on his back, pass by the window of Guomao, see several huge models on the poster, he wanted to take pictures, the glass was also reflective, he held the camera, the cat moved around the waist, and finally found a position without light, photographed, just like a real person.
Photographs were occasionally taken to joint exhibitions, and he thought thoughtfully, and white photographs of snow scenes, easily mixed with posted white walls, framed along the edges of the photographs with black markers and rulers, were satisfied, and did not care about the traces of shaking hands on the black frames.
In the International Trade Ice Rink, the cbD area looks the most light and free place, the time is also calculated in minutes and seconds, a class half an hour, two hundred pieces; a card, 900 minutes, three hundred pieces; an hour and a half of a single card, 30 pieces. At the summer holiday ticket window, there are long queues on the weekend, and parents quarrel over rushing their children to class. Mr. Lawrence slipped away, put on his headphones, and slid back into his own world.
There are always so many people on the ice rink in the summer, and they can't stretch freely. But Mr. Lawrence can always walk around on his own and find his own piece of the world. The midday sun was just right, and few people noticed that a small shed was missing from the dome on the eastern half, and if Mr. Lawrence could squeeze in, slide into the middle of the ice rink, and go a little further to the middle, he would just fall into the light that had accidentally entered, and become the protagonist of the whole audience.
Whether on or under the ice, he was by himself most of the time. The phone at home doesn't ring once a week. Occasionally he would put on a skateboard on his back, drive a red smart, extremely fast, and run to Daxing Nanyuan to paint, which was where he used to live, and the trees were forested. In the past, there were also many painting friends, and there was no less than one phone number, but he just didn't contact, "all of them have their own families."
With no one at home, he had some freedom. He received more than 10,000 yuan a month, skating, asking coaches to practice, buying wine, drinking wine in the summer, and replacing it with a second pot head in the winter, and he spent not a single child left. It doesn't matter what you eat, walk to the wet market twice a week, buy a bunch of vegetables, meat, steamed buns, flower rolls, stuff them in the refrigerator, and eat them for a week. The family has three rooms and a living room, empty, no children, no cats and dogs, just right, every day back as if no one has lived in the same clean, a week also accumulated a layer of ash, mound a drag.
As he grew older, although there was never much wrong with his body, Mr. Lawrence had more things out of his control. He usually does not go out at night, his eyes are not so good, and he cannot see clearly at night. His teeth were gone, his dentures were resting at home, and he never ate outside. He had always wanted to spin and jump on the ice, but to do it like a standard move, he had to land on one foot, he couldn't support himself on one leg, he could only land on his feet, clumsy but satisfied.
Also, perhaps without even himself noticing, his memory was gradually being lost. Last year, he was in the middle of the race and he forgot the action, and for a few seconds he was stunned and dazed on the ice rink where he was alone, and the music continued. There were so many people who came that day, and he apologized sadly, "You saw one of my worst performances."
He longed for crowds. Seeing the little girl practicing her steps, he stepped forward, hunched over, and wanted to talk a few words, but the little girl was taken away by the instructor in class. The kids he played with were getting younger and younger, and once he was on the roster with a two-year-old girl, the oldest of them. He always wanted to talk to the coaches on the ice rink and show the new progress of his "7-piece set", but the coach was busy from morning to night, one class next to the other.
When in a good mood, Lawrence would bring with him a painting or photography he had just finished. On this day, he painted the sun in the backlight, the river and the willow trees, and the oars reflected in the river. He casually gave it to a new friend at the ice rink. In the photo album is his work for more than 30 years, a bear, snow falling on the branches, a moon in the snow, colorful shared bicycles on the side of the road... The cover is inscribed with blue ballpoint pen "1972-2019".
None of them were family members.
The wife died last year, and the people around her who had always been good were gone, and Lawrence adapted for half a year; the mother was two years earlier, and no one expected that she would go earlier than her sick father.
The son left in 1990, at the age of 15, he grew up with a heart attack, and on the day he left, Lawrence and his lover went to work, returned home, and took him to the hospital for rescue, which could not be kept. After his son's death, he had a dream for 10 years, in which his son always looked like a 15-year-old, sometimes sitting in the bathtub as a child, and the whole family bathed him.
The old father who used to oppose Lawrence skating was also lying in the hospital, stroke, heart failure, 97 years old, full of illness, awake for a while, confused for a while, and could not care about what he was doing. His only sister supported him in continuing to skate, occasionally driving him to the ice rink to see what he was doing.
Over the years, there have been fewer photo albums in Lawrence's home. In the past, he had taken more than 500 copies of his Nikon and placed them in a cupboard, as tall as his head.
In 1990, the album was reduced by half.
In 2017, the album was reduced by half.
In 2019, there are few books left.
He said that every time there was a person in the house, he cut out all the pictures of that person. It's all a law of nature, there's nothing to complain about, in the past he hurt his wife and hurt his children, and the days he hurt were all in the shadow of his wife in the kitchen, in the laughter of his son on the boat in the Summer Palace—in those old photos. Each time, he would spend half a year, a year, or even a long, long time, cutting them out one by one.
In his mind, there seemed to be nothing eternal. Between people, meeting and separating, can never last, "feelings also have a temporality."
A piece of ice blade 4 mm, Mr. Lawrence's best life, stands on it.
Every year, he has more important things to accomplish. In the autumn, there are still half a year before the Beijing Asia Skating Invitational Tournament held by the International Trade Ice Rink the following year, and he and coach Li Yantian have to ponder the music of the competition, the best part of a song, and find a way to cut it into the 1-minute repertoire. Too much divergent music can't work, and after listening to it in the office, it has to be put out on the ice rink to listen. Sometimes he liked two songs at once, and he had to trouble Li Yan to take apart the fragments of the songs one by one and re-form a perfect song that "the judges could not hear two songs".
In the winter, he specially invited the dance teacher outside to choreograph a dance on the ground, and then he used his brain to choreograph his footsteps on the ice. Of course, it is also necessary to design a good skating route on the ice, 800 square meters of International Trade Ice Rink, the competition regulations have to slide all corners, he does not want everyone to think that he is physically weak, can only be a small piece of the fart in the area of the blind.
Spring is coming, and Master Li, who does fashion design, will come to discuss with him for half a day and design clothes for the new year's competition. The next time he wants to dance "Dashing Walk Around", it is almost time to spend some time to prepare.
The ice rink is still the same old ice rink, only people are chased forward by time.
Where Lawrence wandered, where there used to be LV, Häagen-Dazs, now all of them. In 2016, the third phase of Guomao was more than 300 meters, becoming the tallest building in Beijing, and in the blink of an eye, it was surpassed by the 528-meter Chinese zun next door.
Coach Xiao Li, 19 years old 20 years ago, is 39 years old, and this year they have to prepare a new performance song "Dashing Walk Back". In the past, the partners who played together did not know where to go, the remaining few, Lao Zhang punched boxing, Lao Li played table tennis, and the old grandson who appeared in the ice rink a few days ago also ran to play ice hockey elsewhere because the ice rink was forbidden to wear ice hockey shoes in August. Even the bears, puppies, and piglets who came back from the game and lived in the glass cabinet for many years were all carried away by their sister's 3-year-old granddaughter, "I don't want any of them."
Mr. Lawrence came alone and went alone. I don't have a cell phone, I never keep my landline number, and I haven't been friends off the field with anyone on the ice rink in 20 years. Packing up his old skates, stuffing them into an old towel, he was leaving with his bag. The ice rink is out of the gate, the right-hand side of the turn, downstairs can directly lead to the underground parking lot, I am afraid that no one knows better than him. No, as soon as he came out of the stairwell, the little red smart was just parked on the opposite side waiting for him.
"But don't worry—" he said at the farewell, "every day at 11 o'clock at the Guomao Ice Rink, my old ji is here on time."
「Happy!」