【Years】An old watch

■ Yao Jinsong

When I went back to my hometown to sort out the drawers, I accidentally found a watch, the West Lake brand mechanical watch produced by the Hangzhou Watch Factory, there is no strap, only the watch body. Manually wound up, the watch actually made a crisp ticking sound, oh my God, it can still go. At that moment, the floodgates of memory opened instantly.

Reform and opening up, in the early 1980s, everything was changing rapidly. The watch sewing machine bicycle radio, that is, "three turns and one ring", was the standard for a happy life for a family at that time. Materials are supplied by tickets, and it is impossible to buy "three turns and one ring" without tickets alone. For a junior high school student, there is an old bicycle to and from school, riding in the narrow streets of the county town, just like people driving a second-hand BMW car. In the 1980s, "time is money, efficiency is life", the spring breeze of reform in the south continued to blow to my county, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, which is the forefront of reform and opening up, which made people yearn and opened their eyes. Tape recorders, color TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines began to enter the families that became rich first, and even families that were not rich had to punch their faces and become fat, and buy an electrical appliance to appear rich. Young people's minds are constantly emancipated, and even active like mushrooms, wearing flared pants and electronic watches on the street, and the tape recorder in their hands is playing Hong Kong and Taiwan songs loudly, echoing the times.

I longed for an electronic watch, rode to and from school every day, had lunch at the factory where my parents worked at noon, and needed a watch to calculate the time to hurry. I envy others who have electronic watches, digital displays, fashion trends, and are brought from the south. Finally one day, my father came back and took out a box from his pocket and said that he had bought a watch for me, so that I had time to look at it, I thought it was a digital watch, but I didn't expect it to be a mechanical watch, the West Lake brand. Ordinary adults wear mechanical watches, which shows that my father's thoughts did not keep up with the beat of the times, or only kept up with half a beat, but despite this, I was very happy and carefully wore the watch to school.

Wearing a mechanical watch to school, it feels a bit awkward like wearing a tweed suit. Mechanical watches make a crisp ticking sound that can be heard in quiet classes or exams. From the student's point of view, it is good to have a fashionable electronic watch. After a while, I still put my watch in the drawer at home so that I didn't look like a little adult.

The years passed in a hurry, and then he left the county town to go out to study and work, and the West Lake brand watch was completely forgotten in the drawer of his hometown. The years passed mercilessly, and now that my father was admitted to a rehabilitation hospital due to illness, I could only go back to visit occasionally with guilt.

When people reach middle age, they find a watch forgotten in a drawer, evoke the memories of the passing years, experience the vicissitudes of life and the ruthlessness of the years, and finally read their father's thoughts in a watch. I put the strap on the watch, refueled it, and carefully put it on again. The accurate, crisp ticking sound of the watch when walking seems to urge me to forge ahead and bravely overcome all the difficulties on the way forward.

(Author Affilications:Equipment and Assets Division, ShanghaiTech University)

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