Short Story | Cai Zhihai: The Next Snow (Optional Reading)

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Original Edition, Shanghai Literature, April 2022

Next Snow (Optional)

Cai Zhihai

The game starts with the game and the story starts with the story. I'm trying to find something that never started, and it's hard. People are strong but not the beginning. A stone, also has a beginning, becomes a cliff, becomes a mountain. The growth of stones will be very slow, and so will the game.

Hopscotch, which started with Gan, brought us this kind of game. Her name was the hardest word I'd ever come across to write. At first, I thought it was two horizontal and one vertical. She told me that Zhang, Jiu, Gong, and Bei, together, are. A hard-to-write name that turns into a smart and pretty girl.

Draw nine squares, throw sandbags or flat stones into the grid, and the person and the thrower stand in that square. Sandbags are good to control, stones are not easy to control, she is like sandbags, I am like a pebble. I always shake in the grid. I didn't have a grid, it was she who slowly turned me into a grid. In fact, choose a gentle place to climb the hill, find a shallow place to cross the river, eat the right amount of salt, eat cooked rice, that is also my grid. Because I didn't experience the hopscotch game, I never knew that I was also a person with a grid. I have a coarse plaid cotton dress, and my mother spins one pound of two or two yarns, changes a pound of cotton, and does not look for money for each other. Picking up cotton from the soil, my mother spun yarn under a tung oil lamp, spinning me into a lattice teenager, a spinning wheel made of bamboo, eating cotton strips, spitting yarn, and growing a spindle. Before I became a plaid teenager, I first became a spindle. The Chinese textbook has the story of the zodiac, and the mother does not have a language textbook, and she spins the yarn while telling the story of her uncle. When my uncle was twelve, my grandparents died of the plague, and my uncle became an orphan and went to my sister and brother-in-law, which was my parents. One more mouth to eat, one more labor. My uncle was twelve years old, and his experience was too poor, and he always injured soybean seedlings and bao grain seedlings when hoeing grass. Father was heartbroken for the crops and scolded him. The little boy never came home again and ran to become a bandit. He was supposed to be a Red Army soldier, but it was dark and it was raining, and he ran to the bandits' den. Mrs. Zhaizhai left him as a servant and helped her carry her baggage. Zhu San's troops suppressed the bandits, and the mortar shells blew up her uncle and the baggage into pieces, and Mrs. Zhai cried on the spot, and she was heartbroken, and those fragments, the fragments of satin clothes and gold and silver jewelry, a piece of broken jade stuck in the bones of the little boy, and the gold ring stuck in the eyes of the little boy. She picked up a few intact pieces from the debris. He asked someone to bury the little boy's fragments along with the fragments of his clothes. She said: When the Zhu Three Troops are gone, they will erect a monument to the little boy.

Mother said: Your father is cruel. Finished spinning. My mother didn't tell me about my uncle again, and she probably forgot. Forget something, and the yarn will be spun evenly. The yarn is spun evenly and I can wear a good plaid coat. I've got a good plaid coat, I've walked in the wind, and I'll be a good plaid teenager.

All this is related to the spinning of the mother's yarn.

I put on my plaid coat and wanted to hopscotch with Gan. The lattice on the ground is always drawn by Gan. Gan said: You wear such a beautiful plaid coat, you draw. I drew nine grids, half the size of a basketball court. Each line is straight and well set up. Big grid, I throw stones without losing my hand. It is a bit laborious to throw sandbags, and the advantages and disadvantages are evened. The size of the grid affects the outcome of the game and does not change the rules of the game. We both took turns drawing lattice, she drew small, I painted big. Sometimes, we also exchange throwers, she calls me a stone, I call her a sandbag, and we are both throwers. The game was covered with the game, and we used rock scissors to bet and decide to follow. Take off, like a thrower, settles in the lattice.

The southern horizon is less clear, with ridges in the distance, rivers dormant, echoes and birdsong in the woods. I wanted to draw big grids and draw the wind as a game.

The game is friendship, growing with people. Until one day, Gan and I exchanged throws as a souvenir. That year, I was seventeen, she was sixteen, odd and even, and the odd numbers were odd.

Gan is from Jiangxi, and her name is the name of a big river. In my world there are only two rivers, small rivers and big rivers. Her father's Jiangxi accent sounded more difficult than writing a gan character. We call the Jiangxi old watch, and Gan's father is the cousin. My cousin was an ordinary township cadre. What kind of cadres and what duties are general cadres, I don't know. The township mayor told his cousin that he was also an ordinary cadre at that time, and he became the township chief and worked in one place for eight years. Eight years is from the first grade of elementary school to high school. My cousin smiled and said: "I will not become the township chief in eight years, but I will definitely become the father-in-law of some little cub." Eight years, I spent eight years hopscotch, learned to jump frogs, cats, fleas, and jumped two and a half feet high. I jumped a dozen rocks in a row to cross the river without getting wet and my shoes and socks. The township chief spent eight years with the villagers to build a ten-mile-long cliff-crossing road. For eight years, he was tied to his waist with a brown rope, and a man hung on a cliff, and a road builder called him a hanging melon. The road was built, and the villagers called him a hanging melon. His real name is Nanzheng, and after a long time, he becomes a hanging melon. The monkey stole the brown rope, hanging like a hanging melon on the cliff, the cliff set up a person and monkey and melon shed, the hanging melon can not find the brown rope and scolded the monkey: I am building a road, what monkey do you install?

There were also people on the edge of the cliff shouting: Hanging melon, the county minister is coming, come down quickly.

Minister Luo of the Organization Department of the county party committee told Hanggua: The organization decided that you are the township chief. Hanging melon said: Report minister, the county will give me more steel brazes, explosives, sledgehammers, brown ropes, and other roads to build, I will make you a good township chief.

The township chief later said to his cousin: At that time, I was an ordinary cadre, and I really wanted to be a township chief, and when I became a township chief, I knew that I was a hanging melon.

When my cousin first came, he called him a commissioner, and later he was dismissed from this position, he was an ordinary cadre, but everyone still called him a commissioner, and he was a leader anyway. I was afraid of him, he had a pair of eyes that loved to look at people, and I was afraid that he would look at something. Every time I see him, I will lower my eyebrows, and a pair of hands will keep rubbing on the placket, and what people have done will leave marks on their hands. I haven't done anything bad with my hands, and of course, I haven't done anything big. The biggest thing is to learn Fromagashi with a stick. I also rubbed brown rope and could only lead the bull. The hanging melon was hung on the cliff with a brown rope, which was rubbed by his father and was strong. Father rubbed a brown rope, tied it to his waist, tied one end to a tree, and hung it off the cliff, so that he could try it once and then hand it over to the hanging melon. Although his father was confident in the brown rope he rubbed, he still had to try whether the brown rope was firm. Only by caring for the lives of others can we be safe everywhere. The father scolded the uncle, who became a bandit and was blown to pieces by the shell, and the father would repent for the rest of his life. I think that's why My father rubbed every brown rope. I would be silent with my father because I had killed a snake. It is probably a non-venomous snake and harmless to humans, but how could I know?

The look in my cousin's eyes made me feel weak.

I've had measles, a high fever, a lot of rashes, it's itchy, I can't scratch it, it will become numb. I asked my mother, will I die? The mother said, no, there is Guanyin Bodhisattva to bless. Dreaming of falling into the abyss, surrounded by something as soft as cotton and as sweet as honey, I thought it was the appearance of death. When the illness is cured and a layer of skin is shed, the snake will also molt, and the snake will grow once.

My cousin looked at me as if he had seen my dream. And Gan jumped out of the house, she jumped into a deep pool, and I jumped down. I don't know how to swim, I swim in my dreams, and I step on the water like I walk flat. I carried her ashore and she wasn't dead. I laid her on a pebble and let the sun dry her hair and wet clothes. She asked me, how did the grid of hopscotch rise?

Did my cousin see my dream in that look?

My cousin asked me: How old are you?

I said: Commissioner, I'll be twelve next year.

My cousin asked again: How old is this year?

I said: Thirteen years old.

He laughed: I only heard that the land will reduce production, and the age will also reduce production? You're supposed to be fourteen next year, right? Otherwise, you're eleven years old.

My cousin's words were wise. He has all the wisdom of the world. He is the light, I am the darkness. He was fire, and I was the snow of the night. Meeting a man, no matter how old he is, brings me closer, and if he has expectations of me, it is to make me disappear, like a drop of rain disappearing into a river. Since then, it has gone with the flow and galloped thousands of miles. But a drop of rain is in trouble, make a plan to pour a thousand miles.

I was born at midnight on the Chinese New Year's Eve of the lunar calendar, to the big, to the dragon, to the small, to the snake, in the middle of the nongchen. Mao Zedong's poem, "Mountain Dancing Silver Snake", is about me. "The golden scales are not things in the pool, but they will turn into dragons when they encounter the storm", it is still about me. I can't tell you much about my age. I fell with the snowflakes of that night. The snow falls silently, the snow leaves the sound above the floating clouds, the colorful colors leave in the clouds, the silent white, the world that cannot be provoked, and it is a good snowfall. I was born without a sound, without crying. As the saying goes, it is a dream child, that is, a lifetime of not speaking, only breathing. Because of breathing, the mother will have the mother's declaration that the child is alive. I patted my mother with my small hand, surprised her and reassured her that I was alive and that life was more important than crying and talking. Not a single fish made a sound, did not cry or speak. A drop of rain fell in the river, greeting each other, never silent. The frog can sing, cry, talk, make a pond and a well, cry and break its throat, sing clouds and rain, when it meets an old turtle from the East China Sea, what did it say?

When my cousin asked me how old I was, it started to snow, and my age was at the junction of eleven and twelve, and I couldn't figure out how old I was. When I signed up for school, the teacher asked me how old I was. I said either five or six, or six or seven. The teacher filled in the age column for six years old. The teacher said: From now on, you are six years old, and the next year will be one year older. What else are you afraid of? How old is it, remembered there. Regarding the age and the word "what", the teacher did not remind you: you write a fifty-word essay, write more than thirty "what", sentences have "what", you will only write this "what"? I said, teacher, what then? The teacher who helped me write my age has since been my language teacher, teaching us language and composition exercises. She found a few good sentences from my large pile of "what" words. The peach blossoms that bloomed last year are back on the trees this year. You see, who can write such a good sentence? My classmates didn't dare to laugh at me anymore, and I became a well-known "what" figure. During the cleaning, I found a letter in the waste paper pile, and in the corner of the envelope was a plum blossom, which Comrade Qingzhi collected. She was going to go with the letter, and it was hers. Only then did I know that the teacher had a name, called Qingzhi. She asked me: Didn't you read the letter? She blushed a little, looking a little better than usual. She said, "You can't understand it." I've had a red face too, and sometimes a lie, sometimes a secret. I will not say, will not let others know the secret of Mr. Qingzhi. She blushed and looked good, it must be a good secret. There will be one or two ancient poems in the Chinese textbook, "Two Yellow Orioles Singing Green Willow", Gan asked the teacher, can two birds say two birds no? Teacher Qingzhi asked me to talk, and I said: We have a few chickens, a few pigs, and a dog. Teacher Qingzhi said: You see, you slowly understand the taste, but when you write, there is a bird on the tree, don't write a bird, this is a language class. In the language class, three words, word by word, she said the accent. Casual planting, willing spring and autumn.

My cousin is an ordinary cadre, doing ordinary things. He was an off-campus counselor, a specialist in the Sports and Fitness Movement Committee, and he helped write slogans that were very folk and later became folk jokes. He would have told jokes. He was also sometimes an agricultural technician and sometimes a veterinarian.

He asked me how old I was when it was snowing. He looked at my height and said that sports can increase height, and it can also increase intelligence. Did he think I was short and said I was low-minded? As soon as he looked at it, I was out of my soul. His gaze was like a whip, and my soul was like a flock of sheep, a fragment of a sheep, running all over the ground. Flocks are fragments of sheep. Souls are sprinkled all over the hill. At this moment, the snow fluttered and the plum blossoms bloomed all over the hills. He asked me how old I was, and then he looked at my height, my limbs, and my mind to see which sport I was suitable for.

In his examination, the two of us completed an aggregation, a unification. We agree that hopscotch is also a sport. There are also jump ropes and swings. His sports are divided into two categories, one is labor, picking cow dung, digging dirt, moving stones, and the other is game, hopscotch, swing, swimming, playing ball, and martial arts. You can't play football. Where you can set up a table, you can collect a liter of valley, a football field, you can collect dozens of quintals of grain. There is no place to place a football field in the mountains, and the basketball court is also small, and you can shoot directly from the serve line, so that the opponent is invincible. He later went to the sports school as principal and trained two Olympic weightlifting champions. It is said that moving stones is an important training method for him.

The origin of the cousin is very mysterious, how did he come here from Jiangxi? Legend has it that he was half a Ph.D., didn't finish his Ph.D., and went to sell pork. From the province down to the county and then down to the township, he flew all the way down and became an ordinary cadre. Daughter Gan came here with him. Here he found a wife, the director of women, who also ate the national grain on a salary, was beautiful, could sing, was smaller than him, older than his daughter. Her name is Wang Lihua. She sings the wheat waves rolling golden, the birds do not squeak, and the fish in the river will jump out of the water. The flesh of my bite by a bed bug fleas was cured by her singing. Wang Lihua taught Gan to sing and pull erhu, but he was delayed by hopscotch, and I really didn't want to go. Others have long gossiped about my hopscotch, hopscotch can't jump out of a big house, can't jump out of the palace building, can't jump out of good food and wear. Gan said: What is it? My parents never blamed me, as long as I liked it.

I am in the box of the hopscotch, and I am also in the grid of the classroom. These many lattices, some contain constraints and ideals, some contain freedom and happiness. I leave that to the future. I swear at my age that I have not delayed anything. When a certain day comes, that is, the day of a person's future, looking for the age of eleven or thirteen years old, at that time did not miss the ideal, that age is the ideal, age can not delay anything. At that time, at that age, I went from elementary school to junior high school, and in principle, I asked to go back to my original school to attend elementary school. Principles, the original school, have thus become the two most profound terms of life. Nouns are often polysexual. Time folded for easy carrying. I remember that time, my cousin asked me how old I was, and I said that I would be twelve next year, thirteen this year, and I would give me a hundred points for my answer.

My cousin and I talked, should pick a snowy day, everything is hazy, the voice is clear. The transparent sound pierced through the snowflakes, and the shadow of the teenager jumped on the snow, standing on one foot, and the shadow was a throwing object. A touch of snow, a field of dirt, an ambush of the lattice, is my ancestors, the game of laborers, the traces of hopscotch. On such a snowy day, I can hear the laughter of my ancestors. They were naked on their chests, the foot poles that could not be covered by the barrel of their pants, the fire spots, the red flowers of human skin, and the laughter of the shaking flames. The aroma of roasted meat, the skin and flesh of the ancestors and the skin and flesh of the prey are mixed into the atmosphere of the fire pit.

A flower in front of the poor, no more than three generations poor, and those riddles and proverbs are baked when it snows. Shochu is also baked. My father gave me a bowl of honeydew hot wine, and the sky burned, the mountains danced, the earth shook, and I became a snowflake.

There were paw prints of birds in the snow, and I drew some grids, leaving the paw prints of the birds in the lattice, leaving some memories for the birds, as if they had just jumped over the house.

Gan fell into the lattice and screamed. I think she stepped on a hard object, or a terrible nail. She told me to go over and try it out, and she stepped on a fish. Checkered, come on, a big fish, it's going to run away. I tried it with my right foot and again with my left foot, and there wasn't a single fish. The snow melted, flooded my ankles, flooded my waist, spread overhead, and I turned into a fish in the water. There won't be a single fish in the snow, it's its own shadow. I said: Gan, there is not a single fish, you stepped on me, right? Stepping on yours or my shadow, right?

She stepped on the earth, a big fish, a big Kunpeng.

The snow melted easily, the new leaves stained the south, covering the days I did not give up, and everything suddenly came. Teacher Qingzhi said: You have graduated. I, the class teacher of the graduating class, am the last person to send you off, and you left the table and chairs to accompany me, and I can no longer accompany you. What can accompany you is your ideal. What she gave us was ideals, and those beautiful and neat chalk words. Beautiful and neat, is her splendid picture, hiding her ideals, the ideal is a pen, the words are beautifully written.

She called me to her room and there was the smell of osmanthus flowers. I was familiar with the smell, and every time I passed by her window, the light shone through the paper-pasted lattice window, with the scent of osmanthus flowers. Her room is a bedroom-cum-office. A bed draped with a mosquito net, flower quilt flower pillows. A desk, pen brush pencil chalk, and a little water pen and small crayons. A whole bunch of student workbooks and language textbooks, and a globe. A tube of bamboo flute hung on the wall of the board with red silk thread, several film stills. A washstand, enamel washbasin and enamel brush jar, hot water bottle and a pair of chopsticks. All these objects are immersed in the breath of osmanthus flowers.

She gave me several new exercise books and left my language exercise books and compositions.

I also left the grid of hopscotch, leaving that river, talking and singing softly, day and night, the four seasons.

I remember borrowing two books from her, Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty and Song of Youth. I gave it back to her. She took it, handed it to me again, and said, "You keep it." Aside from hopscotch, my favorites are these two books. In the book "Song of Youth", she draws a lot of wavy lines.

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