The footsteps of the Beijing Winter Olympics are getting closer and closer. At this moment, I was on the banks of the Chanba River in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an, looking in the direction of Beijing, and I couldn't help but think of the memories of ice and snow in Beijing in winter.
Data chart Wang Jinhui Drawing
When the child is young, most people ask the mother, where did I come from? Many mothers tend to say, "Well, you picked it up from a ditch." Today, as we enter middle age, if you ask me where I came from, the object of my counsel is not my mother, but you are answering yourself. It's like seeing a snowflake for the first time as a child, and when we see it melt little by little in the palm of your hand in the chase, you ask from the bottom of your heart: Why did the snowflake come from the sky? Why hexagonal? Finding the answer today doesn't seem like a problem, just search the Internet and know the answer in a second. However, I instinctively rejected such a standard answer, because it would limit my imagination.
Children's thinking is full of fantasy and naturally creative. In elementary school, in the winter, students would look for discarded tables and chairs in the corners of the school. Note that we are not trying to learn lei feng to repair the old tables and chairs into usable ones, but to disassemble the iron frame, go home and smash it into a single or double knife shape, and then embed it in two wooden boards, and tie four thick ropes on both sides. In this way, a simple pair of skates is completed. In addition, we also make our own ice sports equipment such as ice cars and gyroscopes. As for the ice rink, there are fish ponds and ditches in the suburbs, and although the ice surface is not as exquisite as the professional ice rink, it is enough for us rural children to play a dashing and happy. I remember once skating in the small river ditch in front of my house, although the ice surface was only two meters wide and twenty or thirty meters long, I could still skate alternately with one foot and two feet, and even a few rotational movements. After sliding a few times, I couldn't help but feel a little proud, and I was eager to call my friends to appreciate it. There is a way that happiness is bliss and sorrow. Once, just after I had completed a one-foot rotation, one accidentally, the ice knife slammed into a bare brick, instantly knocking me on all fours, and I didn't know anything with a bang in my head. When I woke up a few minutes later, I looked at the blue sky and touched the back of my head again, and there was a large bag that was already obviously bulging, but fortunately there was no bleeding. I got up slowly, walked over to the brick, chopped it with an ice knife, and went home sadly.
Snow seems a little more romantic than ice, but snow in the south and north is obviously different. Mr. Lu Xun described it in "Snow": "The snow in Jiangnan is moist and beautiful; it is the news of youth that is still looming, and it is the skin of a very strong virgin." There are blood-red baozhu camellias in the snowy fields, single-petaled plum blossoms in white and hidden green, plum blossoms with deep yellow chimes; and cold green weeds under the snow. The butterfly does not; whether the bees come to collect the honey of camellias and plum blossoms, I don't really remember. In Zhang Xianliang's pen, "the snow of the Loess Plateau is incomparable." It is more noble, graceful, magnificent, and magnificent than the snow in the south; the snow in the south makes people feel that winter is indeed coming, and the snow in the north reminds people of the beautiful spring. Snow is the real spring flower on the Loess Plateau. "In fact, in my opinion, no matter what form of snow, it is concrete and abstract, and it is determined by people's mood.
In November 2009, female writer Hu Jian and others were invited to Xibaipo to participate in an award ceremony for red prose. The high-speed train, which was originally scheduled to reach 3:30 p.m., takes just over an hour to reach Shijiazhuang. Unexpectedly, when the ticket was about to be checked, the radio suddenly sent a message, saying that because the train from the south was delayed, our train would also depart an hour late. Reluctantly, we had to pass the time in the chat. During the conversation, Hu Jian told me that her father, Hu Ke, fought guerrilla warfare in the Jizhong area when he was young, and later he combined the land reform life in the liberated areas of the base area to create a drama and movie "Huai Shu Zhuang" in 1962, in which her mother Hu Peng played the heroine Guo Da Niang. I said to Hu Jian, after we go to Xibaipo to participate in the activities this time, we can stop by the Locust Tree Village to have a look. Hu Jian said that she also had this intention. Hu Jian and I are also friends and have a friendship of 30 years. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 1996, I visited Mr. and Mrs. Hu Kehupeng at home with the leaders of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and I was deeply impressed by the modesty and kindness of the two old artists.
At 4:30 p.m., the train finally departed. I called Lao Yuan, chairman of the Shijiazhuang Literary Association, and told him to come to the station in an hour and ask him to prepare for the pick-up. But we thought it was too beautiful, the train began to slow down after 20 minutes, and when it reached Baoding, its speed was described as fast in oxcarts. What's going on? Train malfunction? I've had this experience many times, but we didn't get a radio notification from the train. I kept calling Old Yuan and saying: Don't worry, we have to be late, late! Who would have thought that this delay would have been more than 3 hours. When I arrived in Shijiazhuang, I walked out of the platform only to find that Shijiazhuang had been covered with nearly one meter of snow, which was sudden, and then I heard the news that it had not been encountered in sixty years, and the whole city was paralyzed. We sat in the car that picked us up, and we just couldn't drive out in the parking lot, and the front of the car kept spinning around in place. Unconsciously, more than two hours passed. At this time, the people who had arrived in Xibaipo earlier called one after another to ask when we would arrive, and I said to Old Yuan and Hu Jian, let's make a decision quickly, Xibaipo will not go. Even if the car barely drives out of the station, the Xibaipo Road is also snowy, if we go, we may freeze to death on the side of the road and no one will find it. Hu Jian said, then let's get off the bus and stay in the nearby hotel, and we will decide what to do tomorrow.
Things weren't so rosy, and the four of us in the group split into two groups and went in two directions to find the hotel. Hu Jian and I were in a group, hand in hand, one foot deep and one foot shallow, along the road to ask if the hotel had a room, and the waiters impatiently replied no, no. At that moment, we were really a little desperate. Finally, Hu Jian said, we have to go far away from the train station, even if it is five miles and ten miles. I said, listen to you, let's cross the snowy mountains and meadows. After about an hour, we finally arrived at a five-star hotel, and when asked, the waiter said that there was only one suite, 1700 yuan. Entering the room, the condition was fine, I let Hu Jian live in the inner room, I was in the outer room. After seven or eight hours of tossing and turning, we were all hungry enough to say in unison: Go, eat and go. Although Shijiazhuang is brightly lit at night, almost all the restaurants are closed. It was another trek, and we ate a bowl of snow vegetable meat noodles at a noodle restaurant, but fortunately the boss did not kill us because of the snow.
The next morning, it was impossible to go to Xibaipo again, let alone to Huaishuzhuang, so we squeezed on the train back to Beijing. On the train, I wanted to tell Hu Jian that my father was hospitalized at the time and had advanced stomach cancer, but I never said anything. Now, the heavy snow makes me hurry back to Beijing, is my father calling me? I think so.
(Original title: My Ice and Snow Memories)
Source: Beijing Daily Author: Red Child
Process Edit: U065
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