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Southern Weekly

2024-04-29 23:00Posted on the official account of Guangdong Southern Weekly

Shangdangmen Bell Tower (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

At 9 p.m., I sat under the lamp of a hotel in Changzhi, Shanxi Province, reading the travelogue of Polish writer Andrzej Staschuk, "To Babadag". Every three minutes, reading is interrupted by the roar of airplanes outside the window. Since the morning, the training plane has been hovering over the city, as if it could not find a runway and could not land.

"To Babadag" is not a travelogue in the traditional sense. The author has traveled several times to the former Warsaw member states, to lesser-known places, and writes about the history and plight of the local areas in a stream-of-consciousness tone, like an elegy for the old times in Eastern Europe. Some of the scenes described in the book resemble a wall painting I saw near the Fujun Temple during the day: empty streets, gray buildings, smoking chimneys, and idleness of figures wandering the streets...... The picture is suspenseful and conveys an unsettling atmosphere, as if something is about to happen.

East Street, wall painting (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

The planes roared, like rumbling thunder.

Two days ago, I walked into this hotel on Luyangmen Middle Road.

"Now there's only one room, it's just ......," the girl at the front desk said hesitantly, looking at the computer.

"Just what?"

"Just the room was a bit far from the lift. ”

"How far?" I asked, "50 meters?"

The girl smiled and shook her head.

"100 rice?"

Her smile remained the same.

"200 rice?"

"Almost. She put away her smile and watched my reaction quietly.

I looked around the lobby. Towards noon, there were a few guests dining in the restaurant.

"Breakfast ended at 11 o'clock. The girl deliberately reminded me.

"I want that room. I said.

The room is on the third floor. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, I was stunned—a straight, palatial corridor suddenly appeared in front of me—four arrows of perspective converged on the distant vanishing point, where my room was. With my camera on my back, my suitcase in tow, and my carpet on my back, I walked like I was walking on a luxury train, passing through more than 70 rooms before arriving at my room. In this way, every day in Changzhi, I had to go back and forth to this long corridor several times.

Xixie Street, a takeaway rider (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Photo)

The planes roared like waves.

A security guard walked out of Shanxi Bank, and as soon as he was halfway through his cigarette, he was interrupted by my asking for directions. He pulled the cigarette off his mouth and tilted his head to look at me, wondering why I was walking there. At the same time, I looked at him in surprise, thinking that I had bumped into director Jia Zhangke, and they looked too similar. Later, I found out that similar looks were quite representative in the central and southern Jin Dynasty: a small man, with a round face, lowered eyebrows and eyes, and a trace of cunning hidden behind his gentle expression.

Underground pipelines are being laid on Luyangmen Middle Road. Inside the building enclosure, the working pile driver rams the steel piles into the ground, and gravity conduction causes resonance. I felt the soles of my feet tingle, like an electric shock. Although "Jia Baoan" did not approve of me walking there, he still shook the cigarette in his hand to show me the way. I turned onto East Street, and I didn't go far when I found the wall painting that made me stop.

Prosperous, the passenger on the bus (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

A group of children after school walked together on the road, wearing red scarves and red school uniforms. I walked through them and felt that something was wrong. They hooked shoulders, exchanged ears, confided secrets to each other, and their words and demeanors revealed the old-fashioned seriousness that did not match their age. I saw in advance what they would look like in the adult world as they grew up.

Lotus Lane, two unlicensed cars (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

The plane roared, like an air spell.

The god of the city god is the god of guarding the city in Chinese folk and Taoism, and most of them are played by famous ministers and heroes who have contributed to the local people. Founded in the Yuan Dynasty, the Lu'an City God Temple is the largest and best-preserved one of the existing City God Temples in the country.

In the square in front of the temple, two chefs are playing chess; a team of middle-aged women are practicing model steps; a pink-faced fat woman leads a circle of old people to play a response game, she says that the peach blossoms are blooming, and the old people ask how many flowers to open? She says how many flowers, and the old people have to quickly find companions and hug each other according to the numbers she gave, and the old people who respond slowly are eliminated from the circle, and every time I guess the number of flowers that the fat woman wants to say; and at the bottom of the stairs in the distance, there are also people hugging each other, they are middle school students who are in early love.

Citizens who go to the party gate and exercise in the morning (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

I followed two migrant workers into the City God Temple. The temple is deserted, and the lively scene will not wait until the 15th day of the fourth lunar month, and a temple fair will be held on this day every year to worship the god of the city god. The temple has a theater building, a large hall and a sleeping palace. In the main hall, the statue of the golden city god sits in the center, and on both sides stand the civil and military judges and black and white impermanence; The two migrant workers, one tall and one short, worshiped when they met the image, with a reverent face. The belief in the city god reached its peak in the Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Yuanzhang sealed the city god with the intention of "making people fearful, and if people are afraid, they dare not act rashly". According to the Ming Dynasty's hierarchy, the city god of Lu'an Mansion is regarded as the "Supervisor of the Simin City God", and the official rank is the second grade.

Outside the temple gate, four men gathered to chat about the two sessions that were being held, in which a man wearing an electric car helmet said, "No matter who is in charge, you must serve the people." ”

City God's Temple Square, the old man playing cards (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

The planes roared, roaring like a hurricane.

The spring is cold, and the wind is like thorns. On the back street of Fuhou, the car parked on the side of the road was covered with morning frost, a woman who was late for work was running in a hurry, her trousers rustled, and an old man was walking with her head down, and the man in front of her stopped her to ask for directions. The place where men are going is also where I am going - Changzhi marks the party gate.

In ancient times, Changzhi was called "Shangdang", which means "with the sky as the party". Shangdang's terrain is high and dangerous, and it has been a strategic place since ancient times, and it is known as "the party can hope for the Central Plains".

Look at the man playing cards (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/picture)

Shangdang Gate is the gate of Shangdang County Bureau, built in Sui, Xing in Tang Dynasty, destroyed in Jin Yuan, the existing gate and bell and drum tower were built in the Ming Dynasty. The bell and drum tower of the nine ridges is located on the battlements on both sides of the gate, the bell tower on the right side is called "wind gallop", and the drum tower on the left side is said to be "cloud movement". It is said that when I climbed the tower and overlooked, the Changzhi City was in full view, but unfortunately the bell and drum tower was not open when I went.

I rested for a while on a bench in the park next to me, and the old man was right when he said that you shouldn't walk here. A few citizens played badminton in the open space of the park, but the wind was so strong that the ball was blown away after not playing three or five rounds.

City God's Temple Square, a woman walking as a model (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

I walked into a building across the street with a sign that said "Art School." An old man mopping the floor stared at me hostilely, not wanting to be trampled by a daredevil, and I told her that she only wanted to use the bathroom. On the entire wall of the second floor are printed photographs of young teachers and their resumes, which have been edited by computers – the same makeup, smile, neck length, hairstyle and hairline. Passing by a dance studio, I saw a banner on the mirror: "Work hard for 30 days, do it without regrets".

There are several departing buses parked at the Changsheng bus station. Passengers waiting for the bus did not want to get on the bus early and sit in the cold seats, so they stood with their necks hunched and waited for the driver in a small patch of sunlight. Drivers huddled in cramped dispatch rooms, smoking, chatting, and looking at their phones.

A bus pulls into the station and unloads a group of women in red cashmere coats, chatting and laughing as if they were going to a group event. I noticed a girl following behind the group of women, shy and overwhelmed.

Blue warning for high winds. I chose to take the bus back to the hotel. In the car, I saw the weather forecast about the definition of wind: no wind level 0, soft wind level 1, light wind level 2, light wind level 3, gentle wind level 4, clean wind level 5, strong wind level 6, strong wind level 7, strong wind level 8, gale force 9, storm level 10, squall wind level 11, and wind level 12 or more is called a hurricane.

38 Festival, children who buy flowers for their mothers (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Picture)

The plane roared like a monster.

In the evening, I went to Shen Kee Cake Shop, which has only three tables in Sweetwater Lane. Three young men in ties sat around the table at the door, ordering 3 bowls of crispy broth and 30 biscuits, with business backpacks on empty seats, and they spoke with Henan accents. At the other table, there was a mother and daughter, with a schoolbag and a carnation on the empty seat, and they were very quiet, eating cakes and drinking soup without making a sound. Looking at them, I was reminded of the scene at a fast food restaurant at noon.

The fast-food restaurant is opposite the Huaxia Cinema. When I walked into the restaurant, there were few customers, but in an instant, the restaurant was full of elementary school students who were taking their lunch break. The constant noise fills the restaurant.

At the table across from me, sat a pair of siblings waiting for dinner, about five years apart in age. The younger brother kept pushing his sister, and the older sister picked up the coat she had taken off and beat him hard. He dodged with his hands on his head. I thought he would beg for mercy, but he didn't. There was a snickering of triumph hidden in his feigned painful expression, and his purpose was to provoke his sister.

The mother who was waiting for the meal came back and asked my sister not to be like my brother, who was still young. At this time, the younger brother was weak, lying on the back of the chair, shaking his legs, and there was a wicked smile on the corner of his mouth. He likes to see how his sister is even angrier because his mother is biased towards him.

Shen Ji Cake Shop, the proprietress of the pancakes (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/Picture)

Once, in a park where the snow was first shining, I saw my brother throwing him with a snowball, and my mother laughed on the side. To the mother's surprise, the elder brother suddenly picked up the snowball and smashed it heavily on the younger brother's face, the strength and ruthlessness did not look like it came from a five or six-year-old child. The mother's reprimand made the second snowball that the brother fired back even more powerful, even though the younger brother howled.

Throwing cake is a local snack in Shangdang, similar to the way to eat Peking duck, and the pancake rolls donkey meat and green onions. Shin Kee is a mom-and-pop shop, where the owner is in charge of sliced meat burritos, and the proprietress is in charge of pancakes. The boss worked as a cook in Yili, Xinjiang in his early years, and after returning from demobilization, he first started a small business, and later opened this cake shop. On the wall of the shop is a certificate of winning a skills competition. My boss told me that he had been invited to Beijing to show off his cake throwing skills, a large state-owned enterprise just 10 minutes from Tiananmen Square. That time, he ate beautifully from top to bottom, and killed more than 200 catties of donkey meat in two days.

The tossed cake got cold, and I drank the still hot soup and ate the last one.

Hongmen, goldfish playing in watercolor lanterns (Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming/photo)

The plane whispered, like a snoring at the end of the hallway.

Time is an insurmountable wall. I glanced at the clock on the table: 22:44. The plane is still cruising non-stop, like a lonely iron bird lost in the night sky. At this moment, I had become completely accustomed to its presence, as if the annoying roar had been absorbed by the thick darkness of the night, and had become nearly inaudible, or it had flown into the depths of my consciousness, where any sound would be silenced. The wall painting resurfaced, and someone carved a narration on the painting - "It's your turn". Yes, as a passer-by, I had to learn to adapt to the hustle and bustle of the night sky like the locals. I closed the book, stopped thinking, and went to bed.

Southern People Weekly reporter Jiang Xiaoming

Editor-in-charge: Zheng Jie, Fang Yingzhong

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