new
quiet
night
empty
Awaken life with literature Let art embellish dreams
Xie Qingru
During the year
The winter solstice is the longest night
But the night after that got shorter and shorter
Just as there is no eternal night on earth
There is no eternal winter in the world
The moonlight of the wilderness
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I stood in the noisy crowd, my eyes penetrating the cascading figures, and I saw the sudden night.
As if it were still three o'clock in the morning, there was a temporary nucleic acid test, and the sound of footsteps accompanied by the shaking of the stairs. Just a few hours after the first day of the new year, the people who had woken up from their slumber waited in line, and some puzzled voices asked in a low voice what had happened.
When the queue reached the hall of the second teaching building, all the doubts were frozen and disappeared. Medical staff and volunteers stood there in white protective suits — ready to work for hours of sleepless work in the harshest cold. Seeing this situation, gratitude and admiration arise spontaneously. The lighting hadn't arrived yet, so in the thick darkness, the first man waved his arm and lifted the glowing phone screen up. Next, one, two, a little light that swayed slightly in the palms of everyone's hands, and finally gathered sand into a tower, and gathered armpits into a fur. The long river of silver light flickered, faintly illuminating the tired eyes that were not covered by the mask.
At the time of the moon's sinking and the sun rising, there are brave people who choose to go retrograde to maintain the life of a city. Over time, the life of sealing and control has become accustomed to it. For the sudden outbreak, most people go to bed as usual, and gradually generate a virus that cannot conquer the indifference and calmness. Except for going home, other things can no longer touch people's hearts. Everyone is looking forward to the future after the seal is lifted.
Hometown of Jiangnan
When you wake up in the morning, a touch of light is printed on the back of the curtain. It is the yellowing daylight outside the window that climbs up.
After my roommate and I had finished washing, we went out for our daily routine of nucleic acid testing. We were covered with long hair, wrapped in dark down jackets, like two frozen jackdaws, greedily breathing in the cool air. The land in the north rarely rains in winter, and at this moment it is even more sunny, and the eyes are dazzled by the bright. There were clattered clouds in the blue sky, and beyond that it seemed calm.
Young faces sullen behind masks, whispering. The quiet campus will usher in three or four hours of activity, and it is clear that everyone cherishes the rare moments of the daily wind. The proportion of students who came out of the canteen to carry meals and went to the supermarket to queue up to buy snacks also accounted for a large proportion. Occasionally, a couple huddled intimately together on the playground, and the next second they parted in a panic amid the shouts of the regulator "keep a meter apart", causing onlookers to laugh unceremoniously.
I stood in the queue, absent-minded, wondering when I would be able to get home. My mind broke free from the hustle and bustle of the crowd, and I jumped into the sky, from north to south, for two thousand three hundred and ninety-seven miles, and fell on the wetland by the lake. The broken aroma of indigo flowers wraps around the upper finger. I looked at my hometown in the distance, and felt the wind blowing through the crown of the reed flower, lying on the ground, gushing pure snow white.
"You guard your Chang'an, and I belong to my Jiangnan."
It's a New Year's wish – but the next moment it's back to reality. There was no queue in front of the last few nucleic acid testing points, and a few tightly covered medical staff kept waving their small hands at us, which was really cute. After running quickly, a young nurse's unshadowed eyes smiled happily. Someone in my ear talked about the increasingly serious new cases, and I remembered video chatting with several friends across the Chinese New Year's Eve to celebrate the New Year, and the friend's inquiry had not yet left: "Are you okay in Xi'an?" ”
"You guard your Chang'an
I belong to my Gangnam."
Island one side
If it is more complicated than the situation outside the school, it is naturally better. Before the lockdown, the school was sealed first, and after the lockdown, the dormitory was sealed, and everyone's nerves were unconsciously condensed into a thin and hard armor. We don't have to worry about the risk of infection, we don't have to worry about the purchase of three meals. Some people are struggling to find a way to buy vegetables on the Internet...
In contrast, the dormitories and canteens that students used to complain about are like bright dawns in the dark clouds. Schools have become a haven in the midst of chaos. We seem to be cut off from the rest of the world, an island of safety in the storm.
However, this is not the case, after all, "no one is an isolated island, a book is a world", in the dormitory, you can still read books, create plans, paint and small experiments, you can write and craft, watch movies and chase dramas, and you can barely do a lot of things. There are already people playing badminton in the corridors. Undergraduates began to take online classes for the next semester, while graduate students naturally had to take online classes in addition to intermittent tutors. There are many people who have become busy because of the scheduling of affairs, of course, this complaint does not help, and in the end only a few words of longing to go home and postpone the holiday are left.
"No one is an island
One book, one world"
Hymns of food
Lunch is a rice wrapped with shiitake mushroom chicken fillet served in the canteen. I also bought bags of fruit and put them on the table along with supermarket snacks. Red heart dragon fruit and cantaloupe, pear and orange are hidden in cardboard boxes, luring me to eat with a sweet scent. Chicken fillets are fully rolled on the iron plate, wrapped in yellow rice to give off a haunting aroma, mixed with the fresh juice of green vegetables between the lips and teeth. A full bite is as happy as Scarlett, who has experienced famine, to taste a creamy oyster pie.
Interestingly enough, I have a ritualistic habit when I eat, always thinking about the exquisite descriptions of food in the books I have read. It's as if I can eat it in my mouth, which usually makes my chewing full of pleasure.
So, in the palace of my memory, I ate orange juice fish cooked in New Orleans on oil paper, cod clam soup in Boston, Normandy "Prince Regent" bun gamete chicken in a lamb fat ball basket, brine goose soaked in teochew lane brine, fluffy and sticky steamed cakes on the Chongyang Festival, and wontons swirling at the bottom of the soup. In the afternoon, make a steaming cup of lemon tea with a chocolate pie bought from the supermarket. I don't buy other breads in the supermarket because they're either too dry or too greasy and very rough. Only this bread is chocolate with a puff pastry and a large piece of semi-solidified and semi-liquid. The sweet, thick chocolate sauce mixed with the slightly astringent aroma of lemon makes me feel like A Proust for a Madeleine cake.
Sudden snow
In the afternoon, some students ran happily on the playground, their hands raised high behind them, embracing the crazy pouring sun.
The rare serenity always makes me silently grateful for life. These bland, small fragments, which were once neglected in the busy schedule, surged into the air at moments of isolation and isolation. Those sweet fruits and distribution of daily necessities, seemingly ordinary meals without any deduction or derogation of taste, are particularly precious. This is undoubtedly worrying and grateful to the people behind the maintenance of life.
At first, no one expected that this would be a menacing outbreak. When it was blocked, everyone was madly nostalgic for the days before—ah, those happy good times, wandering around the walled alleys, the markets packed with grocery stalls, a certain café and handicraft shop hidden in a new neighborhood, art exhibitions and small lectures, and even the days of a slow walk on the playground before the night fell.
My father sent me a video in the afternoon. There was a snow in my hometown, and many tourists rushed to the mountains with great interest to take pictures, but it was full of the eyes of me, a foreigner.
I studied in the city of Xi'an for four years, followed by three years of graduate school. Halfway through the first school year. The snow in the north is thick. The falling snow always accumulates, making my friends and I have red and swollen hands, but we are still reluctantly building cute snowmen. When the ancient city wall and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda are wrapped in silver, the camel bell rings, the flag is raised, and the three or two yellow wines are dangling, it is like returning to the Sheng Tang in the dream.
The snow in Gangnam is cold. It was deep in the mountains draped in plain clothes, and the snow carved out the brigade. Silver crystals fell from the branches, long strips of ice skates wrapped in verdant pine branches and bright red berries. Birds and finches skimmed between the ridges, and their throats trembled with a whisper of affection.
Bai Tou wants to see Gangnam.
"The camel bell rings
One flag
Three or two yellow wines dangled
It's like going back to the Sheng Tang in a dream."
The life I love
We were all encouraging each other when we talked – just wait until the seal was unsealed. Wild hearts that were once unrestrained have become thoughtful and pretentious. I still remember that in January last year, A friend came to Xi'an to play, and after the holiday, I lived with them in a homestay on Muslim Street, and we celebrated the New Year with strange men and women. We took pictures, wrote blessing characters, and boiled hawthorn dumplings to eat. The night on Muslim Street suddenly stopped, and our muffled laughter rang out in the dark living room. Before the epidemic this year, my roommate and I originally discussed going to Sichuan to see the exhibition.
Oh, life! Oh, play! Oh, tranquility! Oh, home!
I feel that the epidemic has made me love life more, just as the closure has made me more observant.
A friend whose family is the attending physician at the isolation hospital, said in a chat with me: "My only New Year's wish is that the epidemic is over, my mother can go home, and I can go home." ”
"Last year, during the Eighth Festival, I also lined up in a long line to go to the temple to lead the porridge. Every time the master scooped up a bowl, he would recite a sentence, "The years are safe." The red dates and lotus seeds in the porridge were stewed so thinly that my throat was warm as a fire. I came out carrying the thermos bucket and heard the echo of the bell under the porch. There was a little snow on the pavement, and several long marks were made by the boots of pedestrians. There is snow in the mud and mud in the snow. ”
Last year, the Lapa Festival school distributed Lapa Porridge free of charge. Unfortunately, I went early for dinner and missed the porridge period. So I opened a small jar of Eight Treasures Porridge and sucked on the juice, chewing all those complicated thoughts. My mother called and said, "After the eighth year, we will wait for you to come back for the New Year." ”
"Okay, I'll be back in a while."
"Everything is ready, oh, just waiting for you."
I tore off a page full of notepad, crossed out another number on it, and waited. I lived in the twilight of waiting, waiting for the day to come.
When the dawn wind blew the river, the snow buried the falling plum, and the wild spring froze the flute. When the new year is near, a muddy path is stepped out of the field, and I go to the field to hold a few spinach trees, curl up in the fire bucket, and listen to the crackling of roasted chestnuts and peanuts. Feel a hot red roast orange, peel the flesh, and the juice flows. In the hall, I heard a few fireworks and firecrackers in the distance, and watched the dark cornices under the porch. The sky will be bright, and then make tea and fold a wax plum blossom.
At that time, I should sit under the roof of Jiangnan and enjoy the snow. The city, which is two thousand three hundred and ninety-seven miles away, should also wake up from the throes of the virus. On this day of his year, the latecomers will most curiously ask the most profound memories of those ancestors who broke away from the night to chase the sun. It may not be that the night is dark and the fear is hesitant, but the shouts awaken the stars, burn out the depression, and in the distance comes the reassuring sound of the sea, and above the head, the stars in the black fog illuminate the path under the feet. At that time, the fiery red lantern must be able to spread from the city wall to the outside of the city wall, stretching for thousands of miles; the lights of the city that never sleep should also be able to be lit as scheduled, and the light should be grand and slide across the clear sky.
After all, it is the Xingqiao Fire Tree, Chang'an overnight, opening all over the Red Lotus Wanrui.
"The light is great
Glide over the clear skyline."
Author Profile
Xie Qingru, pen name unrelated, is a 2021 graduate student of the Department of Public Art of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, a member of the Huangshan Literary and Art Critics Association, and a member of the Huangshan District Writers Association. The prose work "Eating The Light of Heaven" won the Popularity Award of the "National College Student Peony Literature Award" of Heluo Literature, and the poetry work "Ode to Spring Day" won the Excellence Award of the "Chongqing Geological Cup" National College Students Natural Literature Competition. Prose works and poetry works were published in Huangshan Daily.
Title inscription: Chu Weiqing
Photography: Xie Qingru
Huangshan Daily
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