Appreciation: Moving

Author: Wang Meng

Source: Yilin Original Edition, February 2021

I have had many experiences of moving.

I remember living in Daxiangfeng Hutong near Houhai in Beijing when I was a child, which was a two-entry courtyard that we rented. I still remember going to the shop on the water in Shichahai in the summer to eat minced meat cakes, drink lotus leaf porridge, and watch the shopkeepers laboriously light the gas lamp in the evening.

Later, the family's situation deteriorated. We couldn't afford to live in the courtyard of two entrances, so we moved to No. 14, Wei'er Hutong, West Fourth North, South, Beijing, and lived in the courtyard, and the outer courtyard was another one. There is a vine in the inner courtyard, and the horns of the vine are very large. One of the questions I loved to think about when I was a kid was, what is the use of vine horns? No one can tell me what the vine horn is used for. When I was young, I was interested in studying the use of vine horns. I decided that the horns of the vines hanging like a dagger under the cane frame must be useful, but the point is that no one has yet studied their use, and I should complete this mission.

Later, I lost this sense of mission and forgot.

I also lived in No. 18 Shubi Hutong, No. 27 Xiaorong Line Hutong, and so on.

At the end of 1963, I made a big move and moved to Xinjiang. As soon as I arrived in Urumqi, I was taken to the Wenlian Family Hospital. It was cold and frozen, frozen and snowy, and from the outside, the house was yellow, with loess walls and yellow mud roofs, more like country houses. After entering the house, it was not bad, it was whitewashed, and the burning (fire wall) was warm, which was the family home of the first unit where I was killed.

In 1965, I went to Ili and first lived in an office, the roof and the floor were inlaid with wooden planks, but the wooden planks were worn out, the paint had been peeled off, and it was easier to walk on this broken floor than to walk on the land. Three months later, I moved into the newly completed faculty dormitory. Because the house was built in winter, the humidity was large, and there was a little fire, and the house was full of water vapor and the smell of grain grass was very strong. And because the wheat is not clean, the wheat straw is mixed with wheat grains, and the mud is smeared on the wall, and as soon as the temperature rises, the wheat germinates one after another, and green wheat seedlings grow on the wall. Of course, they don't grow into wheat, though I jokingly refer to my farmer friends as "my test field."

I have moved many times in Yining City. Each move is made in a Russian-style four-wheeled carriage, basically two cars are moved, one car pulls furniture and luggage, and the other pulls coal, firewood, and rags. At that time, there were indeed very few belongings, which was in line with the principle of "moving forward lightly".

In 1979, I moved back to Beijing, first living in a small guest house, then in the "front three doors", Hufang Bridge, and now I have lived in a bungalow. The characteristics and advantages of the bungalow are closer to nature, you can hear the sound of rain and wind, the room temperature becomes faster with the temperature, you can build snowmen after snow, which is convenient for raising flowers and grass, raising cats and dogs.

Of course, there are also disadvantages, there are many mosquitoes, many insects, there is moisture, there are flying and flying earth turtles, there are "smelly big sisters" (scientific name Tsubaki elephants) who attack dates, and there are aphids with good apricots. Despite several conquests, the bugs still fell and returned. It's also part of nature, there are bugs, it's Providence.

Moving often is too tiring and unstable, but seeing some old friends who have lived together for decades, they are suffocated for them. We have a relative who recently moved once, and the conditions seem to be worse than before. But they said that they are old, and if they do not move this time, I am afraid that they will "have no drama" in the future.

There are always a few days of fresh energy when you just moved to a place, and it is a little bit of a snuggle to say goodbye to your old home when you move. The scene of luggage being packed into bags, littering paper thrown on the ground, and piles of things is even reminiscent of the scene before the collapse of the enemy command in the movie. Whoops, whoops! Get in! And often when moving, people will think: it is several years, and it has passed without a trace. The old days, the homes of the past, are gone. As the "Orchid Pavilion Collection" said: "Between pitches, it is already a vestige." ”

In fact, without moving, time is constantly moving.