This is the sixth article in the "Nearby" column. In an uncertain era that is sometimes broken and sometimes chaotic, we often find that what the individual can grasp is often only within reach. The protagonist in the text is like this, after his life fell from a high place, he returned to his hometown and found that he was still sure that only an old courtyard was left. So he piled up the yard with teddy bears and decided to protect himself in such a childish, naïve, and dreamlike way.
Anyway, he needs to heal himself, bravely treat himself as a fragile baby, comfort and care as much as possible. Other than that, perhaps he has no choice.
Written by 丨 Cui Yifan Editor 丨 Zhang Rui Produced 丨 Tencent News Gu Yu Studio
A small universe surrounded by teddy bears
At the end of February this year, I went to the mountains of Wenshan Prefecture in Yunnan To look for Yang Shilong. I first noticed him on Weibo Hot Search, when he bought 100 teddy bears and filled the yard of his hometown village. They are mostly soft pink, purple or white, with bows tied around their necks and smiling faces. They were hung on the walls, on the pillars on either side of the gate, and large ones had exclusive seats. In the middle of the different teddy bears is a happy middle-aged man. In the video, his hair is half black and half yellow, split diagonally from the middle. As he gently places or caresses the teddy bear, he tells the background of the story: he is in debt in business, and his feelings are not going well, and after a few years, after paying off the last debt, he buries himself in the teddy bear, which is his own small universe.
Yang Shilong in the video Yang Shilong
His hometown is a place we would mostly overlook – it's more remote than I could have imagined. In order to find him, I first flew to Kunming, and then transferred to the high-speed train to Puzhehei. Under normal circumstances, it is necessary to take a light rail or bus to Qiubei County, and then circle the winding mountain road for more than two hours to reach his home in Yule Pingzhai before the early morning.
It was in such a rural area that was far from sight, specifically, in his wooden structure, rat-infested with rats, and did not even build a toilet, that he declared his life a stage victory in the most dreamlike and urban way. It may not be accurate to describe it, he does not think that paying off more than 300,000 debts is a victory. Anyway, he needs to heal himself, bravely treat himself as a fragile baby, comfort and care as much as possible. Other than that, perhaps he has no choice.
I met Yang Shilong outside the Puzuhei high-speed rail station. He was 29 years old, not tall, with a round head and a cool haircut that was replaced by short black hair. He seems to be an optimistic person, and he can keep talking about it no matter what kind of topic he starts with.
Yang Shilong, who was in the garment processing business in Jiaxing, was in debt for two years and paid off 300,000 yuan at the end of last year. He also remembers that it was almost the New Year, and on January 19, he received a payment in the factory and immediately transferred it to the creditor to pay off the last sum of money. He sat down in a chair, leaned back, and closed his eyes. It had been a long time since he had been so relaxed, and for the past two years, he seemed to be weighed down by something. That's not a lot of money, but for a kid who came out of the mountains, it's proof of his struggles for the first 30 years. These proofs once gave him confidence, and debt deprived him of it. Now, he feels relaxed, at least he doesn't need to let his parents go to the construction site to work and pay back the money. How can you heal yourself? It was good to go on a tour and have a big meal, but it wasn't enough. "Think about it, and then there's a scene like this: a yard full of teddy bears surrounding me!" He's a guy who does whatever he thinks, and when the teddy bear scene comes to mind, he gets excited.
He immediately walked into the toy store near his home, took the only five thousand yuan left on his body, and wanted to sweep away the teddy bear in the store. The boss looked at him with a strange expression, but didn't say anything. Because there are not enough bears in offline stores, the other part is bought online. A total of 5200 was spent, and another 700 freight was spent to transport them from Jiaxing back to their hometown in Yunnan. It was a ritualistic act, and the reason why it was transported back was because "the scene envisioned at that time was in the courtyard of my hometown."
In the two years of debt, he also thought about doing Internet celebrities, cooperating with people to shoot a few, no one watched, and he didn't make money. For young people back home, there are only a few roads: going out to work, getting a job, or doing short videos at home – traditional farming is hardly taken into account. In the village, the legend of making money through short videos has always existed, XXX Douyin Kuaishou added up to 1 million fans, mainly singing, and the songs he sang could always hit the wandering workers. XXX is mainly dancing, the dance posture is weird, probably the lower waist movement (but the hand is not supported) plus the handstand forward, the video at the top writes "My Story", telling how he practiced this unique style of dance, failed again and again, was snubbed, but he persevered. The dancing man is from Yang Shilong's neighboring village and has tens of thousands of fans. He had also thought about being such a dance blogger before, but he heard that it was not easy to cash out, and he saw more jokes, "but less of gifts.".
Yang Shilong danced in the courtyard
Yang Shilong drove me around the mountain road, night fell, the lush grass and trees in the mountains gradually dimmed, the air was moist and warm, and small animals that did not know what to call passed in the middle of the road from time to time. There are so many bends in the mountain road that even people who don't usually get motion sickness should be prepared here. "That's what we are here, it's close to there, but there's a ditch in the middle that needs to be bypassed," he said, "and it used to take more than 4 hours to go to school." For the first 20 years of his life, his story can be simply categorized as "out of the mountains." At the same time, a similar story happened to almost all the young people in the mountains. They read, then they don't read, and they work. People usually go out to work at their youngest age. Instead, Mr. Yang told me, there are young people on motorcycles on mountain roads, and it may be a way to vent excess energy — they never brake when they bend.
Arriving at Yule Pingzhai is close to the early morning. It was very quiet, there were almost no lights, but there were a lot of stars and it was bright. I walked up the steps to the courtyard of Yang Shilong's house. The moment you enter the yard is a bit of a shock, with teddy bears hanging on the wall, bamboo poles, or sitting on chairs, and some stacked in corners to prevent rain from getting wet. Yang Shilong opened the light strip around the courtyard, and the light strip was wrapped around the door frame, on the wall and on the bamboo poles erected, the colors changed brilliantly, illuminating almost all the teddy bears. The lights also hit Yang Shilong's face, which was the result of his spending several days arranging, coupled with the light ball in front of the door, the whole courtyard was shining like a KTV. Yang Shilong sat in front of the gate, looking at the flickering lights and the teddy bears all over the yard, showing a satisfied expression. "It's the way I please myself," he said.
The strip of lights illuminated the teddy bears in the yard
They're happy, and I'm happy
The next morning, when the sun was shining, Yang Shilong and his father moved the teddy bears in the corner of the house to the sun. Yang Shilong's favorite teddy bear is called Xiao Zi, and he moved a chair to let Xiao Zi sit in front of the main door. Little Purple is pinkish purple, half human tall, unlike the biggest bears, which make people feel oppressive, not so small, and have enough security when they are relied on. This is the reason why Yang Shilong likes it. He likes to let Xiaozi accompany him, whisper to it when there is no one, and of course he can't let others know what he says. He even took Xiaozi out to run errands with him, he drove, and Xiaozi sat in the back seat, like the most familiar friend.
Yang Shilong carried Xiao Zi
Yang Shilong's father looked a little thin and didn't speak Much Mandarin, but he always smiled at people. Yang Shilong said that when his parents planted land, cut down trees and sold timber, he played in the village. When he was a child, there were no teddy bears in the village, and he had never seen them. Once, a child from a neighboring village gave him one. The doll was a few feet long, and he took him as a friend and talked to him everything. He fantasized that he lived in a fairytale world where all teddy bears had life. Later, the teddy bear went nowhere, and he grew up.
Yang Shilong has been looking forward to life outside the mountains and wants to see it with his own eyes. He wants to go to the big city to work, but the money is secondary, mainly "want to learn more things." Around 2010, he saw the recruitment information in the village, went to the construction site to work for 1,670 per month, he did not go, but went to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, working in a kitchen, the monthly salary was only 1400.
He was 16 years old and went to Shanghai. Out of the train station on the subway, never sat. His cousin, who was also working in Shanghai, picked him up. Great shanghai, modern city, he was shocked. Walking out of the subway is Huaihai Middle Road, he looked up and saw Hong Kong Plaza, "That building is particularly tall," he looked up. The cousin said hey, don't look at it, what's so nice about this, take you to the Oriental Pearl to play later. Yang Shilong was arranged by his cousin in a rather high-end Cantonese restaurant, a bowl of egg fried rice sold for more than 80 yuan. He was an apprentice in the back kitchen, very serious, and he still firmly believed that 80 pieces of egg fried rice was different from 8 pieces. He felt that those days were "particularly fulfilling, able to learn things, contact with different groups of people, all over the world, and feel that after not reading, they are also improving, especially comfortable." ”
But as he said, "Life never let me go". He did all sorts of jobs. After coming out of the kitchen, he opened a laundromat with a man who was said to have graduated from Peking University, and he regarded others as partners, more friends. Others treated him like a worker, and he was gone. He also worked as a worker in an electronics factory in Shanghai, assembling computer casings on assembly lines every day. He works the night shift, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., and can't sleep after work, sometimes opening his eyes until 5 or 6 p.m. The factory was noisy, he had to work with earplugs on, and when he got back to his dorm room, his roommate snored like ten thousand cell phones vibrating, and he had to wear earplugs. Earplugs are not washed very often, as if they grow in the ears. One day, the ear began to hurt, continuously, without stopping, and the pain was so bad that he didn't sleep for two days, and he realized that the ear was inflamed. Even so, he still didn't want to quit, "so serious about work, so persistent!" Even in the electronics factory, he said, he believes that efforts will bear fruit. He was 21 years old, had been wandering in the city for five years, and his life seemed to be much longer than others.
In 2015, under the leadership of his cousin, he went to Jiaxing to start a business, and the two of them each paid 100,000 principal and rented a small factory to do clothing processing. I didn't make any money in the first year, and I was busy dealing with all kinds of slippery businessmen. He also remembered talking about business with a man in his fifties, who called him a brother as soon as he came up, and he was only in his early twenties—Yang Shilong was a real person, which made him a bit unbearable. He only started to make money the next year, not because of why he didn't get it, but just a friend introduced him to a big business. He is also desperate enough, double 11 before the order, a month to make ten thousand clothes, two or three o'clock in the morning to run to the dyeing factory to urge the other party to quickly dye their own goods. In two years he made millions.
Looking back on that time now, he felt a little confused, made a lot of fox friends, ate together, drank together, and didn't want to do anything other than to make the business bigger. He briefly had confidence, began to imagine buying a house in the city (something he had never dared to think of), buying a better car, owning tens of millions of assets before the age of 30 — it turned out that money obscured his vision and laid the groundwork for future failures — and then he was confident that he would win, making hundreds of thousands of sweaters without noticing the market changes. Failure is a slow occurrence, a large number of sweaters can not be sold, but the cost is increasing, and when he returns to His senses, the money he originally earned has all been lost, and more than 300,000 have been posted upside down.
After the debt, he felt pain and sadness, not because of the creditor's urging. In fact, they never took the initiative to urge him to return the money, nor did they limit the repayment time. But Yang Shilong still couldn't get over, in addition to confidence, some of the hopes he had always had, and the way out of the mountains that he had envisioned since childhood had also been cut off.
His parents felt sorry for him and wanted to help him pay off his debts, find a nearby construction site, and cement, miscellaneous, five thousand a month, remove the meal money, and leave more than four thousand. He felt inappropriate at a glance, his parents were old, they could no longer do this, and "they could not earn money to pay off their debts in a short period of time." His parents insisted on going, and Yang Shilong even complained a little, "They don't understand anything" - "I don't know how heavy and hard those lives are!" But the parents insisted. He drove them over, settled in, and didn't say anything. On the way back, it didn't work, the car stopped on the side of the road, lying on the steering wheel and crying.
Yang Shilong's father
As you may have noticed, he's a fanciful guy. Fantasy can make people relax and escape from reality for a short time, like closing themselves off in an amusement park that you have created. That night, he found the only 20 yuan of cash left in his pocket and bought lottery tickets. Of course, it didn't work.
When talking about two years in debt, his first reaction was always to shake his head, "It's too hard," he said. The grand idea of the business field was temporarily extinguished, and he did the simplest garment processing, that is, sewing clothes and the like, as he did when he first arrived in Jiaxing a few years ago. In that small workshop, he was nominally the boss, but also a worker, and the workers worked until 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock, and he worked until one or two o'clock, and many times slept directly in the factory.
He came home occasionally. One night he heard his mother in the next room coughing. It was the almost constant coughing sound that was struggling to be restrained. Yang Shilong remembered that he had asked his mother to go to the doctor many times, but her mother never went. He blamed himself for knowing that everything was going well, but now he was living his life like this.
During the day, Yule Pingzhai seemed to be quieter than at night, and there was the smell of charcoal burning in the air. There are only a few dozen families here, built on the mountain, distributed in places with relatively flat terrain. The so-called "village" is an administrative unit that is smaller than the village. Yule Pingzhai is a Zhuang settlement, separated by a ditch and another village on a hill, mainly inhabited by the Miao. There are no pedestrians on the streets here, young faces are rarer, old people gather under a tree that is hundreds of thousands of years old to play cards, and others are stunned.
The noise on the street was sudden, and a group of children rushed to Yang Shilong's house. They were all still in elementary school, the oldest in the fifth grade, dark-skinned and fierce. "Dancing today?" They asked Yang Shilong, and they didn't look polite at all. The children's parents mostly work in other places, including his cousin's children. The children always roared by in droves, and Yang Shilong's house was where they liked to stay. Yang Shilong took out the stereo and connected to Bluetooth, and the crowd became agitated. The kids jumped offstage, he jumped on stage, which made the atmosphere even more lively.
Whether it was a black man carrying a coffin or a Gangnam style, his head was always hanging low. I've seen a lot of crazy dances in short videos. More popular is the social shake of self-confidence, strong self-confidence, naked desire, and looking at everything. Society is the object of conquest, social quotations are the laws of existence, and insight into it is like insight into the truth. But for some reason, Yang Shilong's dance always revealed some sadness, his arms were shaking in front of him, his eyes were slightly closed, and he looked a little tired.
Yang Shilong told me that his dance was learned from "those anchors", "can only say that it is unique, skip it once, and you can't dance it the second time." But very decompressing. Such a free-wheeled dance is difficult to appear in the city. After returning to the village, he spent more and more time on short videos, studying how to shoot and how to tell an interesting story. But more often than not, it's more of a relaxation.
When he first started dancing, he felt tired, especially tired, and after holding on for a while, the tiredness turned into relaxation and became a comfortable mood. He sometimes danced alone in the yard to the teddy bears, sweating profusely and in a good mood; sometimes with a dozen children, the movements were surprisingly uniform, which was when the yard was most like an amusement park. Even so, he still likes to watch the weird live dances on the short video platform. Usually, hundreds of thousands of smart people gather in the live broadcast room, and they brush: "Oops! I didn't agree with your discharge in the first place! Of course, the "hospital" here refers specifically to a psychiatric hospital. It is difficult for Yang Shilong to think of himself as a smart person, because he can really feel the happiness of those anchors, "it is a kind of thing that can't help but be emotional, although there is an element of acting, but you can really feel his happiness at that time," Yang Shilong said, "and sometimes, when I fantasize about something, isn't it the same as them?" ”
It was getting dark. Yang Shilong opened the light ball on the door and the light strip that surrounded the courtyard, and the children exclaimed and danced with the music. Previously, Yang Shilong gave each of them a teddy bear. "I like them (these kids)," he said, "not sure why, they're happy and I'm happy too."
Kids holding teddy bears
Healing moments
On the afternoon of the second day here, Yang Shilong proposed to go to the river to catch fish. On that day, the sun was very warm, and with a little water vapor, Yang Shilong plunged headlong into a ravine full of plants. Going with them were two dark-skinned lads, one was his cousin and the other was a classmate of his cousin. The water in the river is very cold and flows very fast, and it takes some effort for people to stand still in the water. They cast nets in the direction of the current, and the small fish are stuck on the net. "This is my favorite thing to play," Yang Shilong said, "every year when I come back, I go down to the river to catch fish, which is very happy."
He told me why he had to do a cool haircut that was half yellow and half black. It's because he feels like "he wants to be like this, to live like this, according to his own ideas, 'all yellow.'" But no. So I chose half yellow and half black. He said. Yellow represents a life of freedom, while black is as ordinary as everyone else, and it is his choice to keep to himself, and each half is his choice. Yang Shilong recently pondered whether to return to his hometown, and shooting short videos is also part of returning to his hometown, mainly looking for a way out. He often talks to me about how the people in the nearby villages who do a good job in short videos have dozens or millions of followers and have hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue every year, but they are a minority.
Yang Shilong's only short video that was on fire was a full courtyard of teddy bears, taken casually, and he did not expect to attract the attention of so many people. A lot of people contacted him. Most of them have similar backgrounds to Yang Shilong, some go from the countryside to the city, struggle, struggle again, earn money, and then lose money. Some fall on the road of struggle, cancer and the like. Or go out and come back, encountering bloody and cruel stories of dogs in a complicated relationship. They said they wanted to buy one of his bears, and his bears were different from others. Yang Shilong did not sell it, and sent it to them for free. Addresses are all over the country.
He thought of a story he had read a long time ago, of a sad man living alone in a hut, and he spoke to the hut, to the bells, to the couches, to the brooms, and then he left. Yang Shilong has always had such a small world, outside of reality, he is appeased in it, and he gets things that he can't get in reality. Now, for some, he's also a cabin, and he sends his own teddy bear to someone else. As someone said, his bear was different from a normal bear.
There are, of course, more things in the city, like opportunities, more money, possible identities — but they seem very short-lived, sometimes even happiness is short-lived.
One day two years ago, he and his friends talked about the project without agreeing, and the other party quit, which Yang Shilong thought was out of distrust of him. He was in a bad mood that day, wandering alone in the Kunming subway, riding aimlessly in the car. I don't know which station I got to, a girl carried two large suitcases to the car, he helped to help the box, and the two people chatted.
The girl said she was in college and was going to report to school that day, which is why she had so much luggage. Because of the epidemic, it has been stranded in Kunming for a long time. After getting off the subway, she was going to transfer to a long-distance bus, and the school was in Yuxi. Yang Shilong said that I was in business, failed, talked about a small project today, and failed again, I have nothing to do, send you to the bus station. Yang Shilong remembered that they talked a lot that day, short videos, network small things said, and they drank milk tea together. She said that at the end of the month, she could go to Yuxi to play with me, where there is a Fuxian Lake, which is very beautiful. Yang Shilong said yes, but never wanted to ask her contact information. Until the end, the two men did not know each other's names. In Yang Shilong's memory, this was one of his most healing moments.
Yang Shilong dragged the fishing net deeper into the water, the water did not pass through his pants, his waist, he simply took off his shirt and jumped into the water. Fishing nets were sprinkled in deep and turbulent areas, and in a short time many fish were caught. Yang Shilong wanted to take the fish home and cook it, but his cousin strongly asked to eat it by the river, because "it is more fragrant to eat by the river!" ”。 Yang Shilong was busy handling the fish, pinching the small fish out of it, squeezing out the internal organs, and then washing them in the river. My cousin and friends scooped out a wild vegetable called "wild celery" from the ground (but it didn't seem to have anything to do with celery), washed it, and mixed it with a hot sauce made of chili peppers and corn flour.
We sat around the river, the wind blowing up the river, and the large reeds wrapped us up. In front of him were four red plastic bags, the dishes were placed, Yang Shilong grabbed a reed pole and put it down, and the small fish on the head of the pole were roasted and yellow, and there were also dots of wood ash. I picked up a fish, dipped it in chili pepper, and put it in my mouth. The charred fish mixed with wood ash activates ancient DNA along the taste buds — I've never eaten such a delicious grilled fish.
The cousin took two dozen beers from the reeds and said, "Drink! "And we'll drink. My cousin and friends are both working outside the home, one in Guangzhou and one in Hangzhou, both construction workers. They often don't get a job, so they stay where they live and drink with friends they know. "There is no such place [in Guangzhou] where [fish is caught and grilled together]," the cousin said. But every year when he came back, he and his friends came here to catch fish, grill fish, drink beer, as if to recharge himself.
"Life is like this grilled fish," Yang Shilong said, picking up a fish, "although it is all ash, you still have to eat it." He shoved the fish into his mouth.
Producer| Yang Ruichun Editorial Director | Zhao Hanmo Responsible Editor | Jinhe Operating | Liu Xixi Wang Xinyun
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