This article was published at the beginning of the January 2022 issue of ELLEMEN
Original title "The Stranger"
The WeChat circle of friends is becoming less and less active, maybe I have blocked too many people. It's not meant to be arrogant, it's just that I want to see more selfies, moods, movements, winds, and windswept winters. But most people send jobs, and everyone is forced. Bosses use everyone's circle of friends as a distribution channel, and most of the channels have no value.
What remains and can be seen is all human samples. For example, I have an old man, 60 years old. Ten years ago, when I added WeChat, I was also 60 years old. It is said that he was recruited by advertising companies in the big media for government public relations strategy long ago.
He doesn't work, he writes many news bulletins a day, and the last sentence of the newsletter makes you feel like he wants to export his opinion, watch him say something, and don't seem to say it after reading it — we usually call this kind of person a sharer — and they occasionally become the center of public opinion because they are loud, talkative, and 60 years old.
On the day of the new crown case in Shanghai's Jing'an district, I rushed to Hongqiao Airport like a refugee. Just because he posted a media picture, it probably means that wherever there is an epidemic, Beijing will melt down flights there. Some people have said that this is not a government decision. But no, he likes to make himself feel like he has stabbed Blue V in the head.
Two days later, a Shanghai media person wrote a manuscript with the title "@Violating the 14+7 Policy.". A lot of people turned, and soon a hundred thousand plus. It is reasonable to say that a patient, he does not know that he is sick, "+7" according to the law is not prohibited is the principle, he just went out to eat, buy some New Year goods. It is not enough that privacy has been exposed, and everyone has to pounce on him and scold him? Several of the friends who forwarded this manuscript are still samples of human sobriety that I think.
I played a game where when you turn left, you can only turn right; if you shoot your heart, you have to turn your back. In short, the rules are a bit anti-human. Suppose this patient runs to me, I am infected and want to isolate and treat me for more than 1 month... Am I afraid of getting sick? unafraid. I was afraid of isolation, and if I was isolated from intimacy, dumbbells, eggs, pig's trotter hot pot, and meat sandwich buns, I hated the patient and I cursed him.
There is a conservative force in my family, and I saw the picture from another human sample. Let's talk about the New Year on the spot. I was numb and cancelled three tickets and a hotel reservation in Sanya within five minutes. I don't think it's so happy to save money, I really don't like Chongqing and Sanya.
The city itself has no color, cement and flowers, wind and frost and moonlight, noise on construction sites and convenience stores, all the same. People feel the temperature of the city because of people, just like I hated Beijing in 2017, I occasionally liked Shanghai, and I always loved Chengdu. Once the people I liked were gone, the cement and the flowers and plants, the wind and frost and the moonlight, plus me, all turned into the dust of time.
Gaining the unknown and the unexpected is the meaning of travel. What about Chongqing and Sanya that I canceled? Yu Hua said that looking back on the past or nostalgic for his hometown is actually just a pretentious calm after being overwhelmed in reality. The words are a bit roundabout, translate it, those young people who are injured, only homesickness.
I went back to Chongqing to see my grandmother and my parents. Although talking to them is like an auto answering machine, after an hour of chatting, the next sentence you still know what they are replying to. Even so, I longed for this ritual. I am obviously a person who resents the will of the group and is wary of the flood of empathy, but I am obsessed with the New Year. Maybe the memories are too good, when I was a child, I was not beaten up in the New Year, snacks were eaten from morning to night, and I even had money to buy clothes.
In addition, Chongqing is full of spicy, everyone and other nonsense without a sense of ceremony. If you don't pay attention, you are also easily tied up by nonsense, and then, the big New Year's Day, provoke the logic of the elders, deny the worldview of the elders like coins, and hurt the self-esteem of the elders. It is better that, thousands of miles away, there is no lion roaring Buddha in the south.
Everything in Sanya was superb, but it was too hot. Like queuing up for hours for a cup of tea or some popular attraction, fanaticism means not thinking, and the cost of time hijacks your judgment, or it doesn't have to. One square meter of beach per capita, may you use your body temperature to make the waves boil.
I stayed in Beijing for the New Year, in the name of the people. Go to the flower market, go to the Xinyuanli vegetable market, buy new clothes, and even take out a set of study room four treasures, and write your own Spring Festival.
Not being able to go back to the Spring Festival in my hometown is not anxious. What makes people anxious is always "who I am, where I come from, and where I am going."
I needed to answer two questions that day to shoot something. One of the questions is, what do you want to say to yourself when you were younger?
I want to say to my 10-year-old self, try to eat something if you want, you will suffer from hyperlipidemia after 20 years.
I want to tell my 20-year-old self that you go to buy the next welfare lottery ticket, the number is 135826482; you hurry to buy Tencent stocks, think Hong Kong stocks are troublesome, buy Maotai can also do; you go on a hunger strike with your parents again, forcing them to dispose of all their belongings and buy a house in Shanghai.
I want to say to my 30-year-old self, this year you lost to the chicken and dog thieves in the workplace, don't doubt yourself, sleep more, fall in love, and read more. Don't wonder if you're bad, can you turn over. Think too much, you don't have that ability. In the future, you will win, you will lose, you will earn a lot, and you will spend more. You must eventually be a kind and strong person, and that ups and downs are your destiny and your gift. The New Year is auspicious.
Editorial Director Zhou Jingwei