In less than a month, you're going to be out of the country. This time it was a long time away at once, and I went to live alone in a foreign country. Mom and Dad promised to write you a letter, and you promised to write us a letter. Tomorrow, Dad will go to Guiyang. The typhoon was coming, the willow trees downstairs were already blowing crooked, dancing in one direction, and the clouds were also in large clumps, drifting rapidly from east to west. The weather has become much cooler. In the days when the typhoon comes, the mind will become clearer than usual, and it is more suitable for writing a letter.
I especially like the days when typhoons come to Shanghai every year. The grand summer is quiet and exciting, a very strange feeling. I wrote it this way, so let's start with the typhoon. I remember that summer in 2006, when you were still very young, we had just moved to this new house, and it was also a summer vacation day, and one of the scenes that I was deeply impressed by was that when the typhoon was about to come, we opened all the doors and windows and let the cool wind pass slowly through the room, a single sofa, placed in the hallway of the living room,—— the huge leather sofa of our house (you will definitely miss it in the future, because there is no such comfortable sofa in the world) - and I was naked, Wearing only a pair of shorts, the skin of the body is in contact with the leather sofa, because there is a very cool wind, blowing on the body and the dry sofa, feeling cool and leisurely.
You were probably over 3 years old at the time, and you were naked, lying on my belly, and we watched football together, as if it were a World Cup. I remember we all liked England with a big head player named Looney. I lay in the palm of one of the big couches, and you lay on my belly, shiny and slippery, and we were both deeply sunken into a big couch and into a soccer game in the summer. I'm close to your little, warm body and skin, and I still have unforgettable feelings.
More than ten years have passed, you have grown so big, 18 years old, when did you really become a man, handsome, confident, have your own preferences, their own friends, not much to say, but the logic is still clear, sometimes on the right thing, there is also accurate judgment, in addition to football, there are also some intellectual interests. Ignorant children have grown up to go to the outside world, to the wider world.
I am about to leave my parents and go away, but when I think about this matter in the days of the typhoon, I still can't forget the scene of that year, and the more I can't go back to the past, the more I teach people to be nostalgic. We'll all miss you. In this letter, I will write about a few life scenes that we are all familiar with.
The second scene in my head was when we were in Starkville, USA. Remember, a bargain hypermarket, I found a very cheap soccer goal net, only $5. We bought it back, plus a football that wasn't a regular one, and we would have a period of time every day, an hour or two on the grass in front of our house, often as I was the goalkeeper, and you attacked tenaciously again and again. Sometimes football will fly far, to other people's lawns, but never worry about the ball will fly, there will never be cars and pedestrians, the grass is one foot deep and one foot shallow, and it will never fall to the foot. Bulldog, that's really a wonderful world for us, and it's probably because of that time of insistence on playing football, you fell more and more in love with this sport, mind and body, and grew up with the happiest sport in the world.
Therefore, you will find that you will be very persistent in loving a thing, and you will seriously do it well. I remember walking home once, passing by the door of an agricultural, industrial and commercial supermarket on Yangliuqing Road, you said to me:
"Dad, can I go to junior soccer school?"
"Don't read this Urawa."
At that time, I was very shocked, and also heartache, your physical quality, is not suitable for being a professional football player, this is the gene given to you by your parents is not enough, can not blame you, but your soul, actually beyond the constraints of your body, broke through the discipline of the body, free to fly. You love football so much that you can't do it professionally, and it's a shame mom and dad are ashamed of you. If you have such qualities, Mom and Dad are certainly willing to let you fulfill your wish. But the persistence you have shown from it, and you have persisted for so long, and found your own wonderful from this hobby, which is what we have always been optimistic about, and I feel that you have such a spirit, the true spirit of football, and will definitely do all things well.
Many things in life, in fact, most of them are not satisfactory. But we must remember to respect and protect the imagination of that day. You may encounter the problem of "finiteness" more than once in your future life, and I believe that you can maintain the stubbornness and rhapsody of your youth.
The third scene is that we go to Shanxi this time to see the prairie, and I think that on the savannah, when you go to the far side, there is a special symbolic meaning, because you are about to leave us and go to a broader world, and the scenery in front of you makes people feel a beautiful revelation, and brings a beautiful yearning to our future life. I later wrote a very literary statement in the circle of friends:
The three-hundred-and-sixty-degree gentle slope of the Marlen Grassland showed me such a wonderful landscape, and the boundless emerald green spread out toward me, and I was in the center of this great gentle slope, step by step, as if I could go all the way to the sky, but I never dreamed of the end; the grass on the slope was deep, shallow and soft, and there were countless daisies, orange blossoms, solitary flowers, and southern stars swaying in the breeze, free and drunk, and it seemed like a dream, and I was actually in the middle of them. Suddenly, a galloping horse and another galloping horse gradually grew from small to large from the sky, and from near to far, and a huge white cloud descended like a fairy mountain. The herd of ungranished cattle, lying or standing, gathered in a low, grassless flat ground, quietly waiting for the rain to come, knowing that every day there would be a gift. And my gift is to hear the happy sound of Dada's hooves in my heart, and there is a teenager, who will be his eighteenth birthday in a few days, with a small blue flower in his mouth, and is walking far away. I looked at his back in the sky, and embraced his boundless fresh emerald green grass slope, and my heart was moved, indescribable...
Then, that night we were watching the stars in the middle of the Hanging Village. The experience of seeing the stars is also very unique, and it is very symbolic in the life of you who are about to leave Shanghai and go to college students. We taste the solemnity and vastness of the universe from the deep and shallow Milky Way and the infinitely distant stars; when we look up and stare at the stars for a long time, there are many troubles in the real world that can actually be discarded.
The starry sky in the sky has a pure beauty, but also a noble mystery, just like the vast world of human knowledge, the unknown world, waiting for you to explore the endless mysteries in it. You may not have felt this way at the time, and have been busy taking pictures with your mobile phone; perhaps at this moment, when you see this paragraph, you will laugh in your heart that it is just an essay by a professor of the Chinese Department,—— but you should treasure it first, and when you come to see more troubles, narrowness, wilting, and boring calculations of real life, you may find this wonderful memory. The images left in the mobile phone are only images, and they are not as good as words to stay in the depths of memory.
Fourth scene: When we are in Northern Europe, the cruise ship arrives in a small town, and I ride with you to a small road in the surrounding area. When riding on the road, we will feel that the ride itself is full of uncertainty, such as exploring the unknown world, all kinds of fresh curiosity, what kind of scenery will we see along the way? Is there anything in this town worth the physical effort? Then, as God had arranged,—— not the tour guide's arrangement,—— we turned into a secluded path, bumped into the ground, and when we came out of the jungle, our eyes lit up, such a big fjord, and in the distance there was a red boat, standing still, picturesque. An adult with a small child and a dog was playing there, and we said hello to him and went to the beach to take pictures. It's a really exciting sight. Once told you that we do not know what we will encounter in the future life, life has no fixed script, there is no tour guide behind, it is a bit like an accidental and random ride, in the uncertainty, fate will take us to find a strange, fresh, vast landscape, give us some unexpected surprises. But what is certain is that we have to give, to go on, to bravely go far away.
The fifth scene is the superposition of two screens. One is the Kong Xuetang in the summer, where you ride down the very high slope of Dacheng Jingshe, a very steep slope, a big curve, and a very high speed. The other is hokkaido in winter, my mother and I are scared to death, it is dark, the mountains are high, the forest is deep, the snow is thick, you pick up the sleigh for the first time, how can we be so assured?! You didn't show up on the slide for a long time, but then you finally came and slid down the mountain like a brisk bird. My mother and I's heart have been put down, and in addition to rejoicing, we are proud of you: in fact, you have great potential and learning, and our worries may be superfluous. Especially Mom, she can't worry about this or that, projecting a lot of anxiety into your life. In fact, it is normal to make some mistakes, people will always grow up through mistakes, educate themselves, and learning from mistakes is the fundamental growth method of young people, and everyone cannot do everything successfully to ensure that they are not wrong. I believe that you will definitely walk better and more steadily in the future, get more energy from the bigger world, become stronger, more confident, and live happier in the future world at the same time.
One of the last scenes that comes to mind is when you go to be a little teacher at the "Love To Fly Village Teacher Summer Camp." Although your English skills are strong, you have never taught in English to adults, especially to more than seventy rural teachers from Yunnan. You're so nervous you can't do it. However, in the end, with a smooth and full tone, the rich content of the PPT, from India to Spain, and from Europe back to Yunnan. That time as a small volunteer, you paid a lot, and you heard a lot of rural stories, and initially experienced that helping others is actually to get your own spiritual enjoyment and personality growth. In the past two days, Zhengzhou flood, the Olympic games, we are in front of the TV, abandoning the Olympics and watching Zhengzhou, the flood is merciless. Never forget that in the midst of a vast ocean, those ordinary people who put others before themselves, those who are enthusiastic about disaster relief, those soldiers who have no remorse, those strangers who share hardships and hardships, and those flower givers who have never known each other. Never lose your heart of compassion, the heart of a child, the heart of sincerity, and never be a cold and exquisite egoist.
I think mainly of these scenes, of course, and one is the release of paper airplanes on the hill and bridge of Hong Kong Chinese University. The little white plane, weak, light, and wonderful, but without flinching, plunged headlong into the black night and the boundless grassy slope. It's too poetic to say, but it's a little mysterious, and I had a hunch that you'd go a long way. I actually have a little hope in my heart, you can come to CUHK to study, we often come to Hong Kong to see you, you often go home, drink beer on typhoon days, watch the World Cup... Of course, the past will eventually pass, and what greets you is a new future. What should change, it will always change. The unchanging, for example, persistent pursuit, courageous imagination, love of life, care for others to face the big, will never change.
Love you forever
Father
July 22, 2021
Written at home before the typhoon came to Shanghai
On the evening of the twenty-third day, it was revised in Guiyang
Author: Hu Xiaoming
Editor: Wu Dongkun