I am a pessimistic person, from a place called Daicheng, where in addition to the factory or the factory, the sky there is always hazy, the water and air there always have a strong smell, the gray factories are next to each other, they all have gray walls and those gray clothes.
My fate is destined to be with these factories, I have no way out, after graduating from high school into the factory as an apprentice, in our technical school, no one is listening carefully, I lie in a chair full of blue sky and flying, the future is no different from me, being an apprentice is no different from selling cigarettes, there is no paradise here except gray.
My father is a worker, he used a few cigarettes to exchange me for the identity of the fitter's apprentice, fitter, not to use three shifts is a very good errand, the fitter's workshop is a big tin room, inside the winter cold and summer hot is very dry, my master called "old cow" is an old fritter, but it was a brilliant history.
It doesn't matter, I'm alive anyway, fitters, plumbers, and electricians, they don't matter to me, the master leads the door to practice by individuals, my main job is to unscrew the four screws for the pump, it is so simple and rough, there are very few women in the workshop, the little girls are raised like flowers in the department, only those little aunts and old aunts grow in the pump room.
Pump room, it is only a small four squares, generally in the most inconspicuous position in the workshop, inside is very clean each pump room has a small aunt, their main job is to press the pump switch, seemingly clean and comfortable, in fact, the inside is wet and cold, due to the nature of the factory, the pump room does not allow there is a fire heating equipment, so many of them have serious rheumatism.
My work was spent in screws one after another, tasteless and boring, that day I was helping at the master's car stall, bored and I watched the flow of people in front of me in a daze, and suddenly a rainbow came to me with the freshness of the rain, it was a long-haired girl, she was wearing a light blue dress, and her white face was vividly studded with two dark and bright eyes.
My eyes were drawn to her, my breath was held back by her, at the age of 20 I felt for the first time what true beauty was, she rode a brand new bicycle past me, I lost my mind, I don't know where she came from, I don't know her name, but she took root and sprouted in my memory.
The days after that were still as dull as a bowl of frangipani flowers, but there was still a time when I was almost taken away by the god of death, it was a close contact with the god of death, I almost died in the work of formaldehyde poisoning, I was sent to the infirmary, the white walls and the white bed, let me have a spring dream in a trance.
Spring dreams bloom brightly and sunny, my body blooms wantonly in the warm grass, suddenly the eyes light up, a beautiful face appears in front of me, the dream in the spring has not dissipated, I saw the girl who made me miss day and night, love seems to come suddenly, she, white and blue just entered my life.
She is white and the gray here is incompatible, she is like a white light illuminating my 20-year-old sky, that year I was madly infatuated with her, she was always on top of no one, she did not belong here, here in addition to gray is confused, she looks beautiful and naturally attracts attention from many aspects, to pursue her many people, the most famous is the son of the director of the Chemical Industry Bureau.
This brother is cultured, promising, and good-looking, in front of him I am like an ugly duckling without maturity, but I am young and I am afraid of anything, I am not afraid of anything, I race with him and he compete for the glory of picking up and dropping off White Blue, White Blue does not like Brother Gongzi, and it seems that I am not so attentive to me, but I don't care, my youth is full of hormones.
Father made a little force again, this time he sent me to the electrician class, the electrician class has nothing to do, you can also wear a suit and tie, I still don't know anything, but this time no longer screw up, changed to move a ladder with Xiao Li to change the light bulb, we are both young and good-looking, for a time the whole factory up and down we have become the most popular object of the girls.
That year, I only hoped that the light bulbs in the factory could live a long life, as if I had no other pursuits, the gray sky was as good as ever, the white and blue were getting closer and closer to me, I knew her origins, it turned out that she came from Beijing as a college student, she said: "Lu Xiaolu, what do you want to do in the future?" "How do I know, I said I might go to the last factory's vocational university, and then enter the factory's department, she said, the factory's vocational college has long been canceled, or you report the night to go to the adult class."
God, I was afraid of learning, if it wasn't for fear I wouldn't always score a few tens of points, but that night I looked at the white and blue eyes and her persistence, I said, for you, I will, in the calm surface of the electrician class, there is actually a dark tide, during this period I fought with the security captain, we almost spelled out a dead life in the bathhouse, 20-year-old youth is so arrogant.
The young body is always full of unquenchable desire, and I and Bailan have finally broken through the last line of defense, but she is still incompatible with here, the night I was admitted to the night, I drank a lot of wine, I know that I am drunk, I also know that Bailan will definitely go, her future is not in this gray world.
The work of the electrician class passed quickly in my uninhibited debauchery, and later, my father retired and I also lost my shelter, I was transferred to the factory area and began three shifts, a bag of cement on my shoulders, I saw that the sky outside was more gloomy, this is a hopeless place, in the fitter's class, my master "old cow" was injured and bleeding heavily during a job, but there was no car in the factory to take him to the hospital, and the family members in the factory just had a burning sensation, and there were cars to pick them up rain or shine.
That day the rain was very heavy, I was frantically pedaling the tricycle in front, and Bai Lan was taking care of the master in the back, we sent the master to the hospital as fast as possible, and a few minutes later the "old cow" saw yama, I smoked a cigarette and sat on the steps in front of the hospital, Bai Lan also sat down with me, she asked me for a cigarette to light, we didn't say anything, the sky, the sky here is just as dark.
In this factory I like the white and blue infirmary, where you can see the wildflowers outside the factory, which are small flowers without a name, and the yellow ones are orange, and these low flowers are open along the walls of the factory all the way to the sides of the road in the distance, and they are very gorgeous, like a very fierce sun shining on the ground, and this wildflower has a long flowering period, starting from October until the frost falls on the earth, which is a proud indifferent flower, like white and blue.
Bai Lan sometimes said, "You are a rebellious youth." I said, "I'm not, I'm like this as a worker, late and early, cursing people over walls, and all these things, in fact, the workers here will do it, if I write poetry, then I am a rebellious youth among the workers." ”
I and Bai Lan are like two parallel lines that cannot intersect, we can see each other, but we all know that we have no future, and later, Bai Lan left, she went to Shanghai to go to graduate school, and I missed the farewell with her, she left me a hat at the train station, and I wore it like I saw Bai Lan.
I stayed in the factory for another four years, during these four years I had a muddy life without day or night, and finally one day I decided to resign and I was going to Shanghai, I wanted to see the white blue, to see the white dazzling light, I found her school, but she had left, she went abroad in a week, and I missed her forever.
"Young Babylon" is a book about youth written by Lu Nei, which tells the story of a 20-year-old young Man Lu Xiaolu, who spent his bloody and decadent youth years in the Daicheng factory, while the movie of the same name with it, "Young Babylon", produced by Huayi Brothers and starring Dong Zijian and Li Meng, was released in China in January 2017.
The story of this book is set in China in the early 1990s, when China was a fast-growing industrial era, but what did not match it was the spiritual lag, the inability to keep up with the rhythm of life, and in the rapidly turning wheels of the big era, everyone had a rollercoaster-like sense of sickness.
Lu Xiaolu is a young man with distinct characteristics, he is impulsive and confused and has some habits of street gangsters, but he also has a kind and upright character, he is not completely rebellious but not docile, he is a typical worker's son, he also inherits the helpless and arrogant disposition of that class, the confusion and impulsiveness of 20-year-old youth, the passion of love and the ignorance of the future, which are always impacting him.
The times and personalities, spirit and matter, they are like strange beasts, so that the young people of that era can not accept at once, it is an era of transformation, human rationality and animal-like wildness are colliding and merging, everyone is confused and trying to find their own place, but the rebellious force carried by youth is impacting every seemingly calm heart.
The factory is full of unequal hierarchies, the weak are widely recognized and accepted, thinking is suppressed by numbness, succession has become the norm, no one wants to change anything, friendship, love, teacher-student affection, they are weak and not worth mentioning, Lu Xiaolu as a young man in a new era, he is not willing to live such a gray and helpless life, but he does not know how to change.
It was a strange circle that made young people like Lu Xiaolu almost suffocate, he knew that he could not be indifferent and could not do nothing, but he did not know how to struggle, he hated the factory and missed that time, pain and happiness, sorrow and hope, they alternated in Lu Xiaolu's mind.
But he is still lucky, he met Bai Lan, this woman gave him hope and vitality, he fell in love with her without hesitation, love and youth they are accompanied by each other, love is the most powerful way to enlighten youth, beautiful love let Lu Xiaolu see the hope of the future, Bai Lan encouraged Xiaolu to change himself by reading, hoping that he could find a path that really belonged to him, and her youth enlightenment of Xiaolu was of great significance.
Babylon, its simple explanation is actually the prosperity after the Fall, whose youth is not confused? Who hasn't experienced decadence and disappointment in their lives? But life is like this, it always allows us to see hope in the ups and downs of the experience, it is white and blue or that golden wildflower, although inconspicuous, but always let us find the way forward!