Wang Shuo: "My heart is full of illusions, and I live down-to-earth. ”

Excerpt from Animal Fierceness

I envy the children from the countryside, who always have a nostalgic homeland in their memories, although this hometown may actually be a poor and unsympathic backcountry, but as long as they are willing, they can enjoy the reverie that some of their lost things are still reliably stored in that unknown homeland, so as to be self-forgiven and self-soothing.

I left my birthplace at a very young age, came to this big city, and have never left since, and I have recognized this city as my hometown. Everything in the city is changing rapidly – the houses, the streets, the people's dress and the topics, and today it has completely changed into a new, fashionable city by our standards.

Without ruins, everything is stripped clean.

After I was thirty years old, I lived the decent life I had long been devoted to. My efforts were rewarded. I created a clear image in front of people, and this image was fascinated and amazed even by myself, and whether people liked it or hated it, it hit me in my arms. If the beginning was more or less a natural image, I was influenced by a variety of complex mentalities in the process of finally establishing it. I can ignore the onset of the haters and be more stubborn and secretly claim to be fast, but I cannot live up to the expectations and encouragement of the lovers, just as water turns into beer and finally vinegar.

I think I should be honest.

Her countenance had changed so radically that I was completely indifferent when I saw her. That day I went to the train station to drop off a loved one, and when I waited in the soft seat waiting room to enter the station, my eyes met her eyes. She sat diagonally opposite a row of couches, her eyes moving with a little girl who was running around on the ground and playing alone, and the little girl ran to the suitcase at my feet, and we met.

Her hands were clasped together with five fingers to almost cover her mouth and nose, her cheeks were as thin as olives, and her eyes were full of folds, white like paper flowers.

Purely due to the monotony of the view, the little girl who was moving developed an irresistible traction, and my gaze was once again on her face, and I found that the glance she had just gazed at me was still continuing.

It is an inquiring gaze.

The little girl ran to her side and spoke in a squeamish voice, her answer so low that she could hardly hear it, and her voice was distorted by imitating the child's tone of voice. She lowered her hand covering her face, and I looked away to confirm that it was a stranger.

At this time, the electronic notice board on the door of the waiting room that I had been paying attention to played the ticket inspection notice of the train we were waiting for.

I stood up and carried my suitcase and accompanied my loved one out of the waiting room.

In the crowd of people on the ascending escalator, I suddenly remembered who she seemed to be. I moved on silently, carrying my dearest to the car, and watching affectionately on the platform at her, who was standing in the window smiling at me, until the train left.

I doubted my own judgment as I walked through the tunnel leading to the outside of the station.

When I hesitated to reappear at the door of the soft-seated waiting room, she and the little girl were gone, and in her place sat a stunned female officer.

Thirteen days later, I went to a party of middle school classmates, and when strange men and women walked into the room and shook hands with smiles on their faces, especially when I heard one of them call out my name, I had a feeling of detachment from reality. I talked a lot with a few men and I knew they were good friends of mine in the past. Someone mentioned some past events that confidently portrayed my look, demeanor, and hobbies at that time, and I was not impressed by this. I am overwhelmed with emotion that I can clearly retain in the memories of some people. One of the students who was hosting the party said in a loud voice, "Let's get to know each other again."

As the names were revealed, the dusty years began to reveal their original luster and vivid silhouettes, and those unfamiliar faces became familiar and kind again. Many people have not changed at all, but we are isolated one by one, out of reach of each other, and when we get together again, the old scene will reappear without difficulty.

The old, gaunt woman had a fox-like delicate face, a face that would not make people fall in love but could provoke the thoughts of an adult man. It was only later, years later, that I began to appreciate women with such looks. She was unattractive to me at the time, and I had long been infatuated with the bright, polished girl in the shape of a moon.

I was impressed with her because she was always with Milan at that time.

In the mid-seventies, the city didn't have as many cars, luxury restaurants, shopping malls, and not so many people. In addition to a few small commercial streets, most of the streets have only a few grocery stores and department stores, and before the New Year's Festival, the goods on the shelves are also very monotonous, most of which are basic daily necessities supplied by tickets. Common on the streets are four-wheel-drive military jeeps and some old Soviet and Polish cars.

During work and school hours, only some cadres from other places are wandering on the street, and even buses and trolleybuses have few passengers. The lively scene can only be seen on special celebration days, and the mass procession of the parade crowded the streets and alleys.

There were no young people in the city, they all went to the countryside and to the army.

At that time, I was fifteen years old, in the third year of junior high school at a middle school far from home, and every day I took a bus from the East Side to the West Side through the entire downtown area to go to school. This was an extreme measure taken by my parents to keep me from some of my original bad friends. The middle school I used to attend was a girls' high school, but since I began accepting boys into the school, it has fallen into chaos and the school discipline has been abolished. In order not to be bullied, boys naturally form gangs of varying numbers. Every day after school, various gangs would fight in the alley, using bricks, wire locks, and sometimes knives, until one of them was beaten to the head and scattered, which made all the parents of decent students frightened.

I am grateful for the era in which I lived, when students were liberated to learn useless knowledge that was later destined to be forgotten. I sympathize with today's students, who can't do anything about it even if they realize they're wasting their youth. I still insist that the reason why people force young people to study and tempt them with a bright future is simply to prevent them from making trouble in the streets.

I was just going to class just to not be too ashamed. I was not at all worried about my future, which had already been decided: after high school I would enlist in the army and be a platoon officer with four pockets in the army, and that was my whole dream. I didn't want to end up in a senior position, because at the time I thought that the old people who occupied the senior position would live forever.

I don't have to fight for anything, I just have to wait, and naturally it will be my turn when I am eighteen.

The only thing that can be called a fantasy is the sino-Soviet war. I was eagerly awaiting involvement in a world war, and I had no doubt that the iron fist of the People's Liberation Army would smash the war machines of the Soviet Union and the United States to pieces, and that I would emerge as a war hero who attracted worldwide attention.

I have only an unshirkable responsibility for the liberation of the peoples of the world.

So my parents isolated me from my comrades-in-arms and moved me from the vibrant school to a dead school—the new school was one of the few remaining schools in the city at the time that could still maintain order—and I could imagine how bored I would be.

I didn't find comrades in my new school for a long time, and although I made a few friends, I found that they were under the influence of the teacher. I am accustomed to the arrogance of the crowd, there is no ally, and I am afraid of single-handedly defiance of the world to provoke the teacher. It is like a mouse being forced to compromise with its natural enemy, the cat, accepting and obeying the cat's authority, and despite all the famous cats, the mouse's bitterness is self-evident.

I think the reason why my later low-level interests were out of control was very much related to the situation at that time.

I was mainly looking for pleasure in the insults and quarrels of people on the bus, and many of the exquisite vulgarities were realized during that period.

When people are forced into a life of mediocrity that conflicts with their own interests, as a gesture or a symbol, they must resort to a vice, because it is more negative than to be sick.

I became obsessed with keys, collected a large number of keys from my home, on the street and other classmates, and used tough wire tongs to form the so-called "master key". First, he legally opened the various locks of his own home one by one to help the friends who locked the keys at home, and then began to open the locked doors of other people's homes without invitation.

I like to use an ordinary key to open that kind of complicated lock after careful thinking and testing. The click of the tongue jumped away, and that moment brought me infinite joy, which felt familiar to people who loved fishing, and it was also familiar to the veterans of the Soviet Army who participated in the Battle of Berlin in World War II.

Aren't keys the natural enemy of locks?

From this activity I have obtained strong evidence to overturn a folk proverb that approximates the truth: a key opens a lock. In fact, some keys can open a lot of locks, and if you add patience and dexterity, you can even open an infinite number of locks - such as the "master key".

I swear I'm just unlocking and not being a thief. In my short career of sneaking, I have not taken anything worth more than ten dollars, and even if I did, it was purely out of love and not greed. People didn't have money back then, and household appliances that are now considered essential were unheard of.

Most of the buildings in front of the schools I frequented were inhabited by ordinary cadres of state organs, and most of the houses were made of wooden furniture issued by the public, and even sofas were rare to see. The most arrogant one I remember, probably a director, had an old-fashioned Soviet-made black-and-white television set, that kind of wooden shell. I did think about moving it away for a moment, and then I had a thought: This is a crime!

I can testify that at that time, except for some cadres with dubious political qualities, corrupt officials and corrupt officials were rare.

Those buildings are exactly the same from the outside, five floors, gray bricks; The interior furnishings are also similar, wooden beds, three-drawer tables and large wardrobes, bookshelves, the new style is beige paint, the old school is dark brown.

During working hours, the buildings were often completely empty, so I wandered around the unoccupied dwellings, lying on the master's bed, eating two mouthfuls of food left over from the kitchen, looking at the furnishings in the room, imagining what kind of people lived here, satisfied or frustrated.

On several occasions I even fell asleep in a stranger's bed, and it wasn't until I left work at noon that people and footsteps in the hallway hurried away.

I was sure I wouldn't be caught, when people never slipped around during work hours, and because they hardly lost anything, they didn't arouse people's vigilance.

Before I leave, I sometimes clean the room for the people who are too sloppy, and fold the quilts that will be folded in the future.

That's when my literary imagination was cultivated.

Next to this building is a bungalow belonging to the Muslim minority, which I never go to.