"Goodbye Evening Star" pays tribute to all those who are for love

Text/Liu Shuang

I would like to invite you to listen to a song from Tam Wing Lin's "Late Spring" released in 1983.

Here's a letter, and allow me to read it on my behalf:

Dear Kang,

I'm sorry to call you Kangshi again because of my anger, because I have been away for a long time, and I can't imagine the peaceful appearance that you have never appeared because of aging. Suffering is over, the world is good, and if there is another tunnel that leads to sleepless nights, I will drive my dark brown jeep and roll down the creaky windows that are frosted by the cold, and I want to show you my indestructible clasp and the longing that I have not shaken for a day.

I often wonder why people are beautiful and why they wither, whether they have eaten trina-created fungi, or poultry caused by plague, and the moving pieces of paint are peeling off, and the hair is like snowflakes. You must not belong to any kind, and I am ashamed that I would even praise you, and your beauty has never withered in my acres and three-sided fields.

If I had been born ten years later, I must have been a well-known contemporary love story king, and ten years earlier, the children would have recited my poems, and they would have copied short and pithy sentences from the title page of the hard leather book, torn them in a pit and given them to the girl of their choice. I can't help but be a little sorry, I wrote for you, no publishing house is willing to publish, blind, everyone who reads it knows, if it is not with deep affection, how dare I unscrupulously express my love for you, I can not even find the words, easily describe your elegance. In other words, I must have been criticized by historians for my rhetoric, and in order to beat you up, people must have accused me of deliberately extinguishing the universe for a short time.

In the spring of the Desert River, the lush blades of grass laugh and spread from the snoozing snow, the sun will always hang on the distant mountain tip like a mural, have you seen the chimney, you must have seen it, the chimney on the low roof will be clumsy magic, around the purring smoke ring, the scenery will become distorted and changeable because of the combustion, if it happens that the distant mountain has become the background of the chimney, then the mountain also dances up the waist. My father hugged me, the neighbors talked, your cub always stared at the chimney, growing up to be a cook! He would throw himself around and twist my neck roughly, not allowing me to look. Before long, I found the chimney accurately through the sideburns behind his ears and looked at it secretly.

My father was a kusama who coexisted with rudeness and elegance, and in 1955 Chairman Mao said: "The countryside is a vast world, where great achievements can be made." "So he produced me here, where the river is like ink, terrible and turbulent, just as I am still accustomed to calling it the Ink River after so many years." In the early years of the Silingi station, there were a lot of trolleys selling popsicles, and I never glued my tongue to the popsicles, that was the biggest regret of my childhood, so Kangshi, did you stick the Silingian popsicles?

I don't even know where your childhood was, and our exchanges made us know very little about each other. This is perhaps the first time I have spoken to you about my father, whom you have only seen in a hurry at our simple wedding feast, and who greets you in old age and even without ease.

I have told you more than once that I love the winter in Peiping, the youth of Peiping will dance a very fashionable dance, you know that the jeans at that time were a symbol of fashion, they all wear, so I ingeniously, To Li Shipeng from Beiping to carry a pair of jeans, as my shabby gift to you. I think it's great, I want to see you put it on and dance a gibberish dance, and you know, why I like you so much must be because of your graceful and stupid dance style that attracts me.

The first time I met you was the first winter I returned from Studying in Peking, in front of the stone flower bed in front of the Radio Agency. That afternoon in the Desert River, the chimney twisting with unknown wild winds, I lit a golden leaf in front of a green-roofed truck. I venture to guess that it was your first job, and you were talking to a critess with a crippled female comrade with curly hair, as if to say something about the rise, or whether it was suddenly ringing on the radio with an unnamed music that you liked, and you turned around and swung your arms to the music, as if a crisp begonia was not in a hurry to shake off the dew on the vine, which was the limit of what I could describe at the time. My eyes were drawn to you, the sun is very good, the sun is too good, the temperature of the village and town rises, the temperature rises, my temperature rises, but I think that this Pingshui edge, I hate this Pingshui has not even risen, it has fallen in a hurry.

Don't hide from you, in the study hall, I also wrote poetry, most of which have nothing to do with love, if it is related, it is also a hypothetical lover, such as Teresa Teng on the poster, or Zhong Chuhong in the Hong Kong film, I dare to guarantee that the first small poem I wrote to you was the first stupid act in my life. During the long week of not seeing you, I always had the excuse to wander in front of the radio agency, superstitiously believing, like metaphysics, that as soon as I lit a cigarette, you would appear, and I swore I had never smoked a cigarette so often.

The first time I found out about your name, I was such a superficial person that I didn't even know you.

Have you ever seen a village where the Aurora appeared? I wanted to take you to see the Aurora, and my father told me that the Aurora would visit the village by chance on a casual summer evening, and I was convinced of this.

We're going to fall in love, and I'm convinced.

Kang's, my duty in this life is to experience with you the little-known romantic moments of nature.

Do you remember? I had solemnly ordered you to teach me to dance, and I thought it was just an excuse to spend more time with you, because of the convenience of my work, I was given the key to enter the barn, it was the first winter evening of my dance with you, my nose was filled with the smell of grain powder, the lights were flickering, the insects were ringing in the ears, we sneaked into the tall sack pile, and the shoe marks under our feet slowly spread out like ripples in the dust, and in the barn where the needles could be heard when they landed, I heard your small breath.

"You hold me, yes! Put your hands here! ”

"You step on your right foot first, I step back on your left foot, yes, and then alternate, let's try it."

I didn't dare to make a sound, the white breath would reveal my nervousness, but I saw your drooping eyelashes, and I looked at you for a long time while you lowered your head.

It was the most splendid time I could think of with you, you have to know how much time we stole from the gods, we are obsessed with dance and music, we waste our lives immersed in love, I asked, will the gods blame it? Countless nights were stolen from the night, and countless evening stars were placed in the night bowl.

In 1983, in Mohe Li County, a large number of production convoys passed through the dusty streets, banners were raised on the beams of the postal office, and in the winter of the same year, we had a minimalist wedding, and you became my legal wife. Li Shipeng was very drunk, he also wanted to light a cigarette for you, I couldn't stop the curious you, took only one sip, and his cheeks were choked pink.

The last time we went to the barn to dance together was the day before we learned that it was going to be renovated and expanded. We crept into the low door beams of the night, where there was a pile of grain, leaving us with only two positions, orange lamps swaying and dangling overhead, crickets playing the piano, begonia grooming, "Late Spring" in the tape recorder, don't go away when it is late, the evening star is closed, just today night.

"Shhh, did you hear the needle falling to the ground?" ...'Ding'..."

I hear, I love this peace, the peace I share with you.

Goodbye Evening Star, our secret ballroom.

In 1987, the great fire of Daxing'anling, which shocked the whole country, swept through the entire Mohe County in the evening without warning, and just 14 days after I insisted on leaving from Gagdaqi with the task force, the news reported that some people called it "Heavenly Fire", because I had never seen a fire mixed with a 9-level wind, and a cloud of flames roared down from the sky, and the rapid fire almost took only half a day to burn the mohe county town to the ground.

The 1987 "Five, Six" fires caused a total of 1.01 million hectares of forest damage, more than 50,000 people were affected, and 211 people lost their lives...

And among these 211 people, including you, my poor wife, Kang.

By the time I could drive to the county mouth, the fire had gone, the sky was getting darker, the whole county town was in ruins, the charred rubble was crooked from side to side, only a row of chimneys stood obliquely, and the wooden beams in the distance were faintly bubbling up the faint mars, as if it were hell after being poured by a heavy rain. There were no bodies, no wreckage, probably because it was hard to identify, or because I was afraid that I would lose control and weep out of control, and they refused to let me see you one last time.

Why man is beautiful, and why he withers, is it angering the resting gods, or even it is jealous of your beauty, descending on your fiery appearance and retreating with blazing heat. The evening star is obsessed with the night space under the four no-man's eyes, and refuses to tell the reason for patronizing the planet, like the clear eyes under your soft eyelashes, and the life has put a fire in my place, there is no reason, there is no reason.

Kangshi, haunting me in my dreams, is often you running among the burning buildings, the flames on the hem of your skirt, fainting on your chest, you running anxiously, shouting my name, but I am not by your side. For 30 years, it has been lingering. Sometimes I really get lucky, but I think to myself that you may have managed to escape to the forest in the east, where you built streams and moss, transformed into deer, and danced thoroughly.

If you have time, you will come to see me, fawn, and look at the snowfields that have awakened and aged year after year, and see my eyes that melt into a river like frost knots in the sun, and if you have managed to escape to the forest to the east, you will come to see me again.

I'm old, don't cry, take advantage of the night, go back to the forest to your east.

Kang's, the letters are numerous, not as much as I miss, the suffering has passed, the world is good, and I am much older. Mohe built more beautiful low-rise buildings, the sloping roof in winter, the thick snow like a quilt caressed the window sill awakened in sleep, and the high chimneys protruded from the head in rows, suddenly, just like the one seen from the shoulder of the father. On the street not far from the site of our secret barn, there was an old ballroom, and you hadn't taught me the steps of disco, but I seemed to have mastered a thing or two from my old friends, and I called it the "Mohe Ballroom."

Whenever at night, the swaying ball of lights shakes off the light, the crowd disperses one by one, the music drifts farther and farther, the farther and farther away, I seem to always be able to hear,

"Needles, the sound of falling to the ground..."

"Ding"

Shhh, can you hear?

Goodbye evening star.

Zhang Shi

Winter in December 2019

The old man in the picture who dances alone in the middle of the dance hall is the archetypal character Zhang Dequan (homophonic) old man in the background story of "Mohe Ballroom"