Wang Anyi: The white horse in the alley

Text / Wang Anyi

A long time ago, a white horse was often patronized in the alley. The inhabitants of the city generally had little experience with livestock, could not see the breed of the horse, the age, and only knew that it was a mare, because it had come to the lane to sell its milk. In appearance, the skeleton of this white horse is considered tall, perhaps for the eyes of a child, but also a strong, which is also the impression of a child from comic strips and combat movies. In this way, it is a standard white horse. It is said to be a white horse, but it is not a snow white, but some yellow and withered, like a kind of hay, in fact, city dwellers do not know much about grass. In short, it is not as dazzling as it sounds, but rather dim. But that's like a real horse. You know, this is in the alley, inside and outside are streets and houses, as well as bustling people and cars, a white horse, after all, it is some magic.

It didn't come here on a regular basis. Within a month, within a week, within a day, at an uncertain time, first came the tinkling bell—it was its owner, a stern-faced north-passerby, and the bell tied to its neck rang, and then the horseshoe heard knocking on the ground of the water gate, and it came very crisply. The children, especially the boys, ran out the door in response, and suddenly tangled up in a group and greeted the white horse. The white horse, surrounded by children, came slowly, and stopped at each door. Its owner did not bark, but only stood. The white horse also stood, and the children took the opportunity to get close to it and touch its mane. Its mane was cut into bangs on its forehead, and the bell around its neck made it look childish, like a little girl. The servant of the Lord stood silently, waiting for the people in the door to decide whether to buy a bowl of horse milk to taste. Man and horses are reserved. They waited for a while, but there was no movement, and then they went forward. If someone came out of the door and bought a bowl of mare's milk— about one in twenty, the north passerby removed a maza from his shoulder, sat down under the horse's belly, and began milking. The pale yellow milk, not raging, but very delicately sprinkled in the buyer's white porcelain bowl, gradually accumulated a layer, and gradually flattened the rim of the bowl. Then, he got up and collected the maza and continued to walk. The children were also active, and they were all quiet. The horse's nipples, under the rubbing of the slender fingers of the north passerby, grew a lot, which made them frightened and pitiful. At this time they were happy again, patting the body of the white horse, feeling its bones, and moving with the rhythm of their steps. There was a little warmth in the palm of his hand, coming up from a deep depth, and it was the body temperature of the white horse. At this time, the white horse seemed to be somewhat familiar with the child, and it did not sweep its tail coldly, not lightly or heavily twitching on the face of a small child, and it was playing with him.

This lane is relatively large, coming in from the big lane on the road, divided into two sides, and there are more than a dozen parallel lanes. The bottom of the crossway extends to one side, and the houses on both sides gradually withdraw and replace them with two walls to form a narrow passage. The white horse walked through the entire alley, and finally reached the bottom of the lane, walked away from the cross lane at the bottom of the lane, and disappeared into the narrow passage. Children usually stop here, the narrow passage is held hostage by the wall, there is a rare light thrown at people, there is a gloomy atmosphere. The children in the alley generally do not walk into the lane, nor do they know where they will lead.

There are various legends about the origin of this white horse. In chronological order, the longest can be pushed back to the Jiajing year. At that time, the Wokou were rampant in maritime activities, often from Wusongkou people to the Huangpu River, up Pudong to Puxi, burning and looting. At that time, Shanghai was a county, called Shanghai County, which was under the jurisdiction of Songjiang Province, which showed that it was still very desolate. However, the imperial court set up a special coastal defense road, sent troops to resist the invasion of the sea, and was helpless to always win less and lose more, and countless officers and soldiers were killed under the guns of the other side. The little Japanese were particularly brave and good at war, and when they came up from the river, they abandoned their boats and landed on the shores, and all at once they went up the city walls, covering the roofs of the houses, and swept through the continuous roof tiles, which was unstoppable.

In this year, seven boats, people unconsciously suddenly entered the Mouth of Wu Song, coastal defense minister Dong Bangzheng personally deployed, arranged sharpshooters potential city wall ruins, the previous one, shoot one. The enemy suffered countless casualties, but he persevered until eighteen days and nights, and finally could not get close, so he had to sweep around the surrounding suburbs and roar back. Dong Bangzheng successfully withdrew from the enemy but did not dare to be careless, knowing that things were not so simple, and that if Wu Kou ate a grain, he would definitely become more severe, so he was more vigilant. Sure enough, within a year, one day, thousands of Wokou suddenly appeared under the city, landing from Jinshan, along the riverbank, and advancing by land. Only to see a white horse, far ahead, like a blade cutting into the defensive line, wherever it went, it immediately splashed blood on the road. The upper room is over the wall, and there is no obstacle. Seeing that the enemy was pouring water straight toward the city gate, a thousand shots were fired, and the coastal defense soldier Chen Rui swung his sword to face the horse's head, and the knife fell, falling on a human head, and the white horse had already deflected and went around Chen Rui. Chen Rui grabbed Kou Shou, held it in his mouth, broke the enemy line, and the enemy Kou was horrified, confused, and turned around and fled. Just like the coming tide of the tide, and like the castration of the low tide, in the blink of an eye, the wind is clear and the sun is bright, just that white horse, the dragon sees the beginning and does not see the end, and there is no trace. People say that the white horse entered the city from the east gate, and since then it has been moving and breeding along the river, and the sun and the moon have changed, and the white horse who sells milk is its descendant, because this alley happens to be near the east gate of the old city. So the horse lead is accurate? It is the descendant of the benefactor who took it in. According to this statement, it should be a local talent, but why is it a foreigner? There is also an explanation for such a question. It should be known that since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, there have been tributaries passing by the city in the lower reaches of the Wusong River, countless merchant ships on the river, and the banks of the river have become bustling markets. In the year of Ming Yongle, the Huangpu River was dredged and more unimpeded, and people and things exchanged and distributed here, some past, and some stranded, so that the east, west, south, and north were mixed in five directions. To put it this way, this white horse is the white horse of Japan, perhaps after the famous horse, now stealing a corner of the security, reduced to the flow of leading cars and selling pulp.

More recently, about a hundred years ago, on the day of midsummer, dozens of Qing soldiers rode to the county seat of Shanghai. At that time, King Li Chuang had already withdrawn from Beijing, the foreigners sat in most of the world, and the Ming Dynasty went into exile across the river and lived in the south, known in history as the Southern Ming, but in fact it was already lingering. In this year, two rounds of power were replaced, the era name was changed from "Hongguang" to "Longwu", and the next year it was changed to "Shaowu", which was obviously doing the final jump. The Qing court did not let them see them, only dozens of horses and horses, and generally came from a door trip. Here, the Nanming water division shouted door to door that there were thousands of people, but they were all ordinary people at home, with shoes, clothes, or empty hands, or shoulders with a pole, talking and laughing, it was like welcoming relatives. Fang went out of the city gate, only to see the opposite side with a knife and a horse galloping forward, and before he could figure out what was going on, he immediately scattered, some diving, some running around the city and shouting. But the Qing soldiers just teased them, roared for a week, suddenly turned back, and returned home. There is a legend that the riders did not leave in full, but they broke into the city gates on their own, and from then on wandered around the city, first wild children, and then raised by others, and the white horses that sold milk were their heirs, and the horse-leading people were also the flag people. In this way, man and horse belonged to Han.

Another one hundred and eighty years passed, in the Light Years of the Qing Dynasty. This time, it was the British. The British attacked Shanghai by land and water. The land was divided into two more teams, one was the Royal Artillery Detachment, and the other was the British Artillery Corps, leading the engineering team and the mine team, and the north gate was forced to come. When they arrived at the door, they saw that there was not much movement, and the British had not heard of the "empty city plan", pushing the door, the door did not move, calling people, people should not, ordering a small soldier to climb the city wall, like stealing melon dates by climbing over the wall of the neighbor's courtyard. The little soldier got down the wall, opened the gate, and the man rode in on horseback, carrying cannon, and rumbled in. The city was indeed an empty city, and the officers and soldiers had long since heard the wind and fled, and there was no trace of them. The opening of this place for trade is like a long time ago, sooner or later. The British army class is very high, and the military horses are naturally also the upper echelons of Mali. The horse, carrying cannons or men, ran over the pebble road, and the horse's head was almost level with the black eaves, what arrogance! At this time, Shanghai is still a barbaric place, thieves are everywhere, I don't know how many horse thieves are staring at it! I don't believe that they are all going back to their hometowns. So, will this little mare have any relatives with them?

Some people also say that in the third year of Xianfeng, Liu Lichuan, the general of the Small Knife Society, rode a white horse. This white horse xiao yong loyal, several times, Liu Lichuan sent people to Zhenjiang Nanjing, and the Taiping Army, all of them were appointed white horses to carry, the stars and the moon and the journey, no going back. Once, when a man fell off his horse and was killed, the white horse came back alone, and the people who watched the city gate also knew him, so he went straight to Liu Lichuan. The following year, the Qing army and the French army joined forces to join forces, and the former and the rear joined forces, encircling the county town of Shanghai like an iron barrel. The knife would be trapped in the city, first running out of food, then slaughtering livestock, then digging rats, and finally bark and grass roots, and even holding out for a whole year. In the fifth year of Xianfeng, the generals decided to fight a battle against the water, put the dead and live later, and the soldiers divided into several roads to break through from the west gate, the north gate, and the east gate. Liu Lichuan was from the west, encountered Qing soldiers at Hongqiao, and died in a fierce battle. The white horse leapt into the air and jumped over the corpses all over the place, not knowing where it was going. Livestock are all nostalgic for the past, not to mention the creation of the horse, it is inevitable to return to the city, follow the old traces of the master, and then gradually sneak into the city and become a hermit inside the horse.

It is said that Zhang Xiao, a large industrialist in Nantong, founded the Tonghai Reclamation and Animal Husbandry Company in the northern Jiangsu region, which should be a horse farm. The horse is a Mongolian horse imported from the north, the appearance is not very good, but the physique is strong, the tendons are developed, and it can withstand the grinding. Later, the reclamation and animal husbandry company did not make up for the losses, and finally went out of business, dispatched the personnel, and the cattle and horses scattered. Presumably, there will be Mongols who migrate with horses, leaving behind a few familiar stallions, holding the secret books of generations of horse breeding, and opening a small stallion. However, this small ambition is nothing more than a repetition of Zhang Qian's failure. Even the rough Mongolian horses are difficult to adapt to the warm and humid climate in the south, and the horse grass is not appetizing, the disease of unavoidable disease, the castration of castration, and the running away. In the end, the white horse was left, selling milk with its owner along the way, and finally came to Shanghai. After several matings, it has long been intricately related, the white horse and its ancestors are far apart, according to the principle of survival of the fittest, it has also changed its temperament, served water and soil, it is actually a hybrid horse.

Or, it is not excluded, it comes from the Jockey Club. This came to the mid-nineteenth century. The horses of the Jockey Club are pedigree, have names, surnames, and are educated—trained at the Horse Racing School, like west point. This is so delicate that the word "horse" in the sound dog Mali refers to it. Almost overnight, the sea rises and the moon rises, and the city becomes the Paris of the Far East. Just like a dream, the people in the dream have forgotten time, a hundred years is like a moment, suddenly waking up from a dream, but changing the world. What about the new workers' and peasants' regimes that completely banned horse racing and reclaimed the land of the racecourse? What do these horses make a living from in the ensuing chaimi career? Think of it this way, the white horse in this alley is downcast, and compared to before, it is almost like begging. About being in a part of history, I don't know it, so as if I don't have any complaints, I serenely walk from house to house, selling its milk. The north passerby who led the horse, the black and thin knife face, could not see the age and mourning, what secrets did the master and servant keep together, is it the mystery of their lives?

Under these high-class horses of origin, the city once had many hard-working horses, pulling people, pulling goods, hooves slipping on the stone steps of the dock, eating the whips of the masters, casting their genitals in order to make them contribute, no longer in heat in the spring, and the pleasure of such a small number of livestock was gone... Which one is the ancestor of the White Horse?

If you look at the eyes of the white horse, it is difficult not to move, how much taming is hidden in those eyes, taming its fate. The outline of the eye is parallelogram, because the angles and tips are obliquely long. The eyelids are extremely deep and covered with thick eyelashes. The pupils are brown, and looking into it is like a deep well, and there is a small person at the bottom of the well, which is you, but you don't recognize it. You look at you like this life looks at a past life. You may have also seen the tears of the white horse, falling to the ground one by one, crackling. Sometimes the rough hands of the north passers-by squeeze the nipples; sometimes they shed horseshoes, and the flesh is stuck in broken bricks and nails; and sometimes they are born with backs. It was quite sinful, but they all endured it, never saw it resist, nor did they see the north passers-by show gentleness to it. A kind woman touched the neck of the white horse and said: Reincarnate in the next life! But what about being a man, I haven't seen the North Passerby laugh, who knows what he's thinking. Between this man and the horse, it seems cold, but perhaps it is deep and uncertain, because they are all the same loneliness, the same fate.

Occasionally, a thousand years rare, the north passerby issued a "oh sigh", the white horse suddenly took a step and trotted up, the bell and the horse's hooves faster, coldly ringing in the alley. The pony's tail was fluffy, and it rose and fell down. Waist and hips convex and concave, a little feminine, and a little windy. With another "Oh sigh", the white horse stopped and returned to its original gait, and the surrounding area was silent again. At this time, there was no one in the alley, and the North Road people and the white horse were also because there was no one, thinking that it was their world, so they indulged a little, in fact, in a back door, there was a pair of eyes watching!

The little boy had been ashamed that he could not get the permission of an adult to buy a bowl of mare's milk. Especially in this afternoon, the north passerby led the white horse through the alley, and did not summon a buyer, and the children did not know where to run, and this huge alley was surprisingly silent at this time. Usually, this little boy always got close to the white horse with other children, but now he was alone, and he didn't have the money to buy milk. He knew that it was about the livelihood of the white horse. He hid behind the door alone, the west-sloping sun shone in the alley, huang Chengcheng's light, unexpectedly, glimpsed this scene, the north road people and the white horse were actually lively. This scene, fleeting, is simply stunning. They quieted down and walked out of the alley, and the bells and horseshoes returned to their original rhythm. The child quietly came out of the door and followed. He followed the horse and the man out of the cross-alley, walked up to the straight lane, and then turned into the next one. The setting sun made the door bright, and there was a faint laughter behind the door, but no one came out, probably because it was too late to drink milk. Occasionally, children are in the alley, but they bury their heads in playing their own fresh games. Renhe And Ma Wu walked in the mingdling alley, and finally walked through all the cross-alleys and came to the bottom of the alley.

The child still followed behind and came to the cross of the bottom of the lane. This cross-alley is more like a sandwich, much narrower than the front one, so it is also much darker. The format of the buildings on both sides is also different from the front, and the outer walls are embedded with countless dark windows, all of which are silent. The water pipe is coiled, the water leaks through the brick surface, and there are countless cracks entangled. Suddenly there is a stirring sound of water in the water pipe, indicating that there are people living and moving inside. The buildings on both sides got closer and closer, the clamps got narrower and narrower, there was a line of sky on the head, and it seemed that it was about to close, and the building was abruptly broken, replaced by two high walls, and there were nameless thatch growing on the walls, swaying in the wind. The North Passerby and the White Horse walked under the high wall and changed to side by side. Man in front, horse in back, child in last. The water gate under his feet first turned into a gravel road, then turned to mud, and the sound of horses' hooves also quietly came down, and the bell clanged by itself. The child waited for the white horse to turn back, but no, the white horse and the north passerby kept moving forward to the end of the narrow alley. There was a tattered wooden door, the door frame was randomly embedded in the broken bricks, and there was light entering the narrow alley, like the light in the courtyard of the house, and the laneways here were all accessible. The white horse followed the north passerby through the wooden door, and for a moment, it was embedded in the light, and then walked out without turning its head. The time is around the mid-1950s.

May 26, 2007 Shanghai