Xia Jinyin: My first love
Xia Jinyin Private History 2022-01-28
┃Personal History
My first love
© Xia Jinyin/Dictation
© Square/Organize
Speaking of which, although I was still a "leftover girl" at the age of 28, in fact, my love affair began at the age of 18.
When I was studying at Canal Middle School, I always felt that I could not fully integrate with the girls in my class, whether it was the urban children who were released from su nanxia or the simple girls in the local countryside, I was reluctant to talk to them more. I do have my own little secrets. The secret is that from junior high school to high school, I was secretly in a relationship intermittently.
Therefore, my heart is very complicated, both the inferiority of a country girl and the pride of being pursued; both the sweetness and shyness of my first love, and the nervous panic of "great rebellion". This first love has affected almost my whole life.
In 1968, I was 18 years old. It was hard to get into junior high school, but the school was closed and revolutionized. On a hot day that year, my sister gave birth to a child, so she asked me to go to her seven sets of sewing shops in town to help.
Seven towns are northeast of our canal commune, 40 miles from my house, with six communes in between. As mentioned earlier, the so-called several sets of several sets are actually the loops of the Yellow River. The Yellow River was diverted, but the place name of the Loop has been preserved. From the southeast to the northeast alone, our canal commune has several brigades with large sets, two sets, three sets, four sets, and five sets, and then to the northeast is six sets of communes and seven sets of communes.
At that time, the market town was the location of the commune, and in addition to the rows of bungalows where the commune cadres worked, there was generally a middle school, a primary school, and a small street. The streets are lined with agricultural machinery stations, grain stations, cultural stations, radio stations, and so on. At that time, the economy was backward, materials were scarce, all were planned economies, there was no private economy, and the only shop on a small street of several hundred meters was the supply and marketing cooperative. Qitao Town is also such a small town, with such a small street.
My sister works in a sewing group in town. At that time, the sewing group was collective, a cutter, several sewers, working collectively, and the income of the month was divided equally. My sister gave birth to a confinement and told me to go to the top job.
I used to simply step on the sewing machine, and in the first few days of my trip, my sister in the middle of the month came to the scene and sat next to me to teach me. The sewing team is on the seven sets of streets, and it is the busiest on the day of the market. Every ten days in an episode, people pull cloth in the supply and marketing cooperatives and come directly to our shop to make clothes. It is not easy for the countrymen to catch a trip to the market, so they all take cloths and sit in the shop and wait. As soon as the master was cut, he threw it at us on the plane, and we quickly buried our heads in the sewing. At first I couldn't catch up, and soon I wasn't slower than others. My sister was so happy that she didn't have to come back to the store to watch me.
This sewing shop rents seven sets of the Wang family's house on the street. In front is the shop, in the back is the Wang family. The Wang family has a son who is in high school, and he has a good classmate surnamed Zhang. This little Zhang often came to the Wang family to play, and I accidentally saw him when I stepped on the sewing machine. He was white, tall, and wore a lake blue "really good" (a fashionable and structured chemical fiber fabric at the time), a pair of water ash trousers, and a pair of black plastic sandals. I thought to myself, this boy is so clean!
Once, my sister chatted with me and said that you will marry us on the street of seven sets, and there is a boy on our street who is very beautiful. I thought to myself, "Oh, could it be the boy I saw?" A few days later, the boy came to our shop again, and I asked my sister, "Are you talking about him?" The sister said, "Yeah." ”
I live in the same room as my sister's concubine. Her last name is Ji, and she runs a barber shop on the street. She also followed my sister and called me "little aunt" (we all followed the children locally, which is polite). At night, there was nothing to talk about before going to bed, and I talked about the boy my sister had told me about. She said I'll go to him if you like me. Sure enough, she went to the boy and told him about me. The boy said, it was the girl in the tailor's shop, very beautiful. Sister Ji came back to me and said: You meet at night, at the barbershop. I went there that night and saw him playing the flute in front of the barbershop, and somehow my heart was beating so hard. Until now, when I hear the flute, I still remember what he looked like that night.
The first time we met, we said a few words, where to read or something, his voice is good, low, very gentle. He attended high school in six sets of high schools and was 20 years old.
The next day, I was leaving—Canal Middle School had started, and I was going back to school. He wrote me a long letter with beautiful handwriting. The first time I received a love letter, I was excited and scared, so I told my sister, and my sister scolded me: "I'm going to die, how good is the little girl to meet people!" ”
He kept writing to me ever since. This corresponds for about a year. One day he suddenly came to my house in the canal. I was scared, I felt very bad, why did I come without notice?
My mother knew about this and saw the child. He said that the other person was very good-looking, but he did not agree with our friend because of the bad conditions in his family. My sister came back and said, "His father made big cakes, and his parents still quarreled." "So, our whole family is against us getting along. The two of us had to communicate privately. I told him that my family didn't agree, so I stopped for a while, and then somehow I got back to the letter.
In the summer and autumn of 1969, time flew by in sweet letters, reading letters, and other letters, and it was my last semester in junior high school. This winter, I made him a pair of cotton socks with a pair of chrysanthemums embroidered on the heels. One Sunday, my classmate Liu Yumei and I set off from Canal Middle School and walked 20 miles to six sets. When I saw him, I handed him my socks, and without saying a few words or eating, I walked another 20 miles back. At that time, I didn't feel tired or hungry.
The day before the winter break, he rode his bike to see me. It was snowing heavily that day, and the road in front of Canal Middle School was white and full of snow, so we walked on the snow and walked forward side by side. Because it had just snowed heavily, it was also very bright at night. He didn't say anything, nor did he dare to hold hands, only to hear the sound of his feet "clicking" on the snow. Halfway through, I ran into the school's logistics director, and I was terrified, as if I had made some mistake.
The next day it was winter vacation, and the next school year I was going to go to Xiangshui County to attend high school, and he came to help me pack my luggage, bundle up the quilt, and then ride away. The snow on the road was frozen into ice, the ground was hard, and when I got on the bike, I fell on his head, and I accompanied him to push the car for a long time, and still didn't say anything.
Later, for a long time, there was no news of him, because my family did not agree, and we did not have any contact. Until one day, I received a letter from Fujian, which contained a picture of him wearing a military uniform, handsome and handsome, really good spirits. Only then did I know that he had gone to be a soldier, in a certain unit of the Fuzhou Military Region. In this way, we traveled back and forth until I graduated from high school. But our correspondence has always been secret because the family has always objected.
Later, when I went to college, my family was even more opposed to me getting along with him. My father was an old cadre, I was the first college student in the village, or a party member, such a condition, in the village, there are certainly no one, in the whole township there are few, probably can be regarded as the "white rich beauty" at this time. Therefore, the family feels that ordinary people are not worthy of me.
In my heart, I hoped that he could be promoted to the army, at least to have a city hukou. Unfortunately, after 3 years of conscription, he was a volunteer soldier for 4 years, but he failed to do it. If you can't do it, you must retire and return to your hometown.
My 3rd year of college was his 7th year as a soldier, and he was in a hurry. When he came back from Fujian for vacation, he first went to our house to propose marriage, and my mother did not even let him in the door, so he had to rush to our school again. When my family found out, they sent a telegram saying that my mother was sick and tricked me back. He stayed in a small hotel in town after he was empty at school. Three days later, the school was going to convey the central document that I was a party member and had to go back to school. It was the fourth day I went back to school and he finally waited for me at the door of the dormitory. This made a lot of people in the school know about it, and I was annoyed. In the evening, I went to the small hotel in Huguan Town where he lived and told him: Let's break up, it will definitely not succeed. He said: Is it your family that doesn't agree or doesn't you agree with yourself? At this time, my heart was also shaken, and I clearly said, "I mean the same thing." This harsh reality he could only accept, so he had to agree to break up.
The next day, I accompanied him to Suzhou for a day. I was also not familiar with Suzhou, and I did not go to the park, so I accompanied him to the train station. Having dinner at a nearby tavern, the two sat overnight at the train station. The next day, he took the train to Fuzhou.
He was my first love, I met and got along with him from the age of 18 to 28, talked about love intermittently for 10 years, he was a soldier for me for 7 years, and in the end we still didn't succeed. In 10 years, we have written hundreds of letters, but we have only met a few times. All the words seemed to have been spoken in the letter, and when they were face to face, there were very few words, really a bit of a cloud, not so real. (Fang Zi said: In fact, in the letter, they both beautify each other and reality, and they are all using their pens to create a not very real self.) But it is this sustenance of true feelings, this romantic depiction, that allows them to spend their youth in beautiful expectations and yearnings, and let them have passion and courage in the turmoil and pursuit of youth. ）
When he returned, he wrote a letter of more than a dozen pages, recalling our 10-year emotional journey. All the writing is a pile of past events, without scolding me. I know that I am sorry for him, I have become more realistic at this age, and in my heart I also agree with the door. In all the years after graduating from high school, I never talked about other friends, and no one introduced me. Family, relatives, friends are all watching what kind of person I want to marry. Therefore, in addition to the firm opposition of my family to getting along with him, my vanity did not allow myself to follow him. I was speechless and could only keep them carefully.
The reason why this love is unforgettable is because it is still so pure after 10 years. That innocence is unimaginable and unbelievable by today's young people.
Every year, silkworm farming is only in spring and summer, and we silkworm technicians are idle people in autumn and winter. This autumn, I was doing some chores in the commune of Xiaojian. One day, my sister came to see me, living in my dormitory, and inadvertently said that this person had been demobilized and was going to get married, and to go to her tailor's shop to make quilts and accounts. I cried as soon as I heard it. I understand in my heart that although I have been in love for 10 years, although I have been repeated many times, that true feeling can never be completely cut off. Since then, I have really nothing to do with this person.
In the multi-management bureau, I became a famous old girl, many people came to match the matchmaker, I also wanted to marry myself out early, but when I met, I always compared with that person, and I didn't feel it in my heart. Several times I rejected others, and finally I saved the last bit of face. Once, someone introduced the secretary of the Youth League Committee of a commune, I went to meet, I felt average, I did not expect people to say "no" first, the reason is that I do not have a city hukou, there is no formal work establishment. This incident gave me a great stimulus, and I have always been confident that I have understood that there is a gap between urban and rural hukou, formal establishment and contract workers, and no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to cross.
Suddenly understood this truth, my struggle and ideals have lost their goals, I am like suffering from depression, sullen and unhappy all day, and often accompanied by tears at night. The future is hopeless, marriage is not, love is not successful, effort is useless, I don't know how to go forward.
This article is excerpted from "Born Like a Summer Flower", Xia Jinyin/Dictation, Fang Zi/Finishing, Soochow University Press, April 2017.