The fall of the hometown

Entering the season of autumn dryness, pharyngitis occurs, and you can only eat relatively light things. So I remembered that among the light food, Chaoshan cuisine is the best. Walking through the streets in Shenzhen, I couldn't find any particularly authentic Chaoshan food, so I gradually had the idea of going back to my hometown to have a look.

In the autumn of 2012, my cousin went back to Chaozhou to set up a drink after his big wedding, and my great-uncle also asked me to accompany him on a walk in Chaozhou. In October of this year, the Chaozhou government held an "academic" conference with the theme of "weinan spirit", and even Chen Chunsheng, who later became the party secretary of Sun Yat-sen University, attended. Chen Weinan is from Shaxi, the same clan as me, and belongs to my great-grandfather's generation in terms of generation, so the people in the clan asked me to call him "Uncle Ancestor". Grandpa studied at Hanshan Teachers College in the 1930s, and later did business in Hong Kong. He and Li Ka-shing are both outstanding representatives of Hong Kong's trendy businessmen. Since the opening, he has successively donated more than 100 million yuan to Chaozhou. Baoshan Middle School and Chao'an County People's Hospital were established by his donations. When I went back in the summer of 2009 and 2010, I saw Chaozhou and Shaxi full of his giant portraits and the famous saying that "success in business lies in hard work, and the value of life lies in dedication".

I haven't written much about my grandfather, because I can't digest this experience in my heart. On the one hand, he's a nice guy, and he's been really nice to me. In 2008, I was just admitted to CUHK as a graduate student. After he found out about it through the people in his clan, he gave me a scholarship of 10,000 yuan, which greatly eased our family's financial pressure. On the other hand, I don't have much sympathy for the man who walks in front of my grandfather, but I can see that he is very useful in this kind of swarming. There will be a secret rivalry between those who are "fortunate" to speak to him, to see who is better in front of him and who speaks more appropriately. In addition to the juniors of the clan, there are also small and medium-sized officials in the Chaoshan area. My grandfather showed me what the life of the most successful Chinese was like, and I avoided it after reading it.

After the meeting that day, he took us back to Dongshan Lake Resort. Waking up from my luxurious hotel room the next day, the others had already driven away, and I walked out alone and walked a few kilometers on the muddy road before I saw a station. After waiting for more than half an hour, a tattered bus came with a long bench as a seat. In 1990, my mother would occasionally take me by bus from Shaxi to Chaozhou to meet my grandparents. If the car had been driven by now, it would probably be about as bad as this bus. Along the way, I looked out the window of the ruined appearance that had remained unchanged for 20 years, and began to doubt this model of helping the poor.

On the 12th, I told my uncle and sister Miao, because this time I will go back and visit my grandmother and my second aunt. My grandmother lives in Xiangqiao District, Chaozhou City, and my aunt lives in Jinshi Town, Chaoan County. I didn't want to bother both parties, so I booked a hotel near my uncle's house.

Before leaving, my uncle sent me a message: "Akun's case is upheld."

Akun is my cousin and the son of my uncle. Last year, he was investigated because the company he practiced for was doing p2p. He was also arrested, and he has been detained in Guazhou, Gansu. When I first heard the news, I couldn't believe it. I thought that this kind of case was just a matter of arresting the decision-makers of the company, but my uncle told me that all the employees of their company were arrested and sent to Gansu. Uncle could not find a particularly good lawyer in Guazhou. In the end, Akun was sentenced to four years (his boss was sentenced to more than ten years). They insisted on appealing, and the court ultimately upheld the original verdict.

In addition to Akun, the most pitiful is the grandmother. She was too old to take such a blow, so her family kept hiding it from her. During the Chinese New Year, they said that Akun went to his brother's place in the United States. For the past six months, they said that Akun was working in Shenzhen. Also remote signal is not good. "Don't miss out when you see your grandmother," my uncle told me.

When I came out of Chaoshan High-speed Railway Station, I bought a ticket to downtown Chaozhou. On the way, I heard an old man in the back row talking with an old lady.

The old man said that his son works in Henggang, Shenzhen, and the monthly rent is 1,800. He can't save much money in a year. With the current housing price in Shenzhen, it is impossible to buy a house in Shenzhen in the future. The old lady said that it would be good to work in Shenzhen for a few years to accumulate a little experience, and then go back to Chaoshan to start a small business. The old man said, yes, it doesn't have to be in the city, the various customs and habits in the countryside are more authentic, and it is more comfortable in the countryside.

Their words reminded me of Akun again. Before he was arrested, he was really going to look for a job in Shenzhen. Akun's brother went to the best schools since he was a child. He was recommended to go to the China Normal University Affiliated High School in Guangzhou for middle school, and was recommended to Tsinghua University for college. His existence not only brought me the shadow of growing up, but also brought huge psychological pressure to Akun. One year, our family went back to Chaozhou together. Akun was still in junior high school. When my dad saw him, he said, "Your brother went to Google, do you have the confidence to surpass him in the future?" Akun bowed his head in silence, my dad insisted, let's make a military order, you will be more successful than your brother in the future, or you will admit that you are stupid like a pig. I stopped him and said, are you crazy? Not more successful than his brother is stupid like a pig, do you think you are good? Our father and son almost got into a fight on the spot.

Akun's physical condition was not very good in the first place, and these unrealistic expectations made him even more depressed. When he was in high school, everyone gradually accepted the fact that he was an ordinary child, and only hoped that he would be safe and healthy. He was admitted to a college in the end, and his parents didn't feel ashamed. When he was about to graduate, his brother introduced him to a company run by his classmate. Not long after his internship, he found out that the company was doing p2p and told his family. He wanted to resign, but his uncle and aunt persuaded him that it was hard to find a job now, so let's do it. In this way, he was inexplicably sentenced to four years.

I was extremely angry after knowing this. I'm angry with my dad, if he hadn't said those words against Akun, Akun wouldn't have given up on himself. I'm angry with his brother, why should I introduce such an unreliable job to my brother? I was angry with his parents, why didn't I let my son leave the job as soon as possible? I'm even mad at myself. I haven't paid much attention to him for so many years. What's the use of being angry now? If the country wants to comprehensively crack down on p2p, there will always be people who will be sacrificed, but I did not expect that the sacrifice is my own relatives.

When I came to my uncle's new home, my aunt really gave me a table of Chaoshan delicacies, including brine goose, oysters, anti-sand taro, raw and pickled blood cockles, fried kueh and several Chaoshan desserts. When my grandmother saw me, she was so happy that she burst into tears. She kept holding my hand and asked me if she had talked about her girlfriend. Why didn't she bring it back to me to see? The aunt's son, A Jiang, is now the father of two girls. The eldest daughter is often bullied by the younger daughter. My aunt's daughter, Ahan, gave birth to two sons and is now a housewife. The second aunt's son, A Miao, is a civil servant in Chaozhou, and like me, his life-long event has yet to be settled. Because it was only said one day in advance, neither A Han nor A Miao could find time to come.

Grandma said, you haven't seen Akun for a long time, I was stunned for a second, and immediately said, yes, the place where he works is quite far from our home. My grandmother said, I haven't come back for a year, and I haven't called him. Fortunately, his parents have gone to him recently. Otherwise, if there is no news from him, I will be worried to death. Since last year, the eldest uncle and Akun's uncle have gone to Gansu to discuss the matter of Luo Akun's lawsuit. After the first trial was judged, the eldest aunt also passed. My uncle took my grandmother to his house and coaxed her to say that both my uncle and my aunt had gone to Shenzhen to accompany Akun.

I was afraid of being with my grandmother, saying that sooner or later my words would be revealed, saying that I would go out for a walk after eating, so I walked most of the Chaozhou city in one breath. From Kaiyuan Temple to the old city of the Binjiang Promenade, more than 20 years ago, it was not a tourist attraction, just some old houses. My grandfather took us for a walk in the morning. He liked to walk from Nanxing Road to the current old town, and then go back to the West Lake. There used to be a Xinhua Bookstore near the old town. I bought a copy of "Resurrection" and a copy of "Wuthering Heights" there on the second day of my junior year. When I went to see it that night, the store was still there, but it was definitely not a bookstore anymore. I walked out of the city wall and saw the quaint pavilions on the Guangji Bridge, together with the mountains on the opposite bank, all lit up. In the Pearl River in Guangzhou, the West Lake in Hangzhou, and the Jinji Lake in Suzhou, I have never seen such a common sight.

I wanted to find my old footprints in the old city, but suddenly felt futile, so I groped and walked back to my grandmother's home on Nanxing Road. In the past, every time I got off the long-distance bus, I would say "Go to the Aquatic Building" to the tricycle master. Now I search for "Aquaculture Building" on the map, but I can't find it at all. That house was bought by my uncle around 1990. It has been 30 years since then, but it lasts forever in my memory. I watched "Little Dragon Man", "Football Kid" and a few episodes of Satellite TV Movie Station there. Hundreds of Hong Kong-produced films, I went back to college one summer vacation and watched most of the "Vinegar". I was startled when I saw the sign "Financial and Taxation Dormitory" hanging at the entrance of the community. After a closer look, the concierge was still there back then, but he no longer recognized me at all. I reported my uncle's name and asked if I could come and see it, but he firmly disagreed and only let me take a picture from a distance. "The whole family has gone to the United States, you can go to other relatives."

The kindergarten that Akun went to before was on Xixin South Road, and there hasn’t been much change there. It’s just that a comic book store I used to go to often has become a tobacco and alcohol store. With the rise of network technology, industries in small cities are also undergoing restructuring, and the book industry that is not teaching aids is the most likely to be eliminated. On the 14th in Jinshi, I couldn't find the bookstore I had been to before.

My uncle asked me to go to his store after shopping, and he invited me to eat raw fish for supper. I called Didi. The Didi service in Chaoshan area is more developed than I thought. There are plenty of vehicles, and it is almost always on call. The next day my little sister Miao drove me to Jinshi. I was on Chaoshan Avenue far away from the city. Open Didi and you can see several cars. As soon as I closed the car door, I saw my uncle and his "house side head and tail" drinking tea and chatting in front of the milk shop from a distance, and my second aunt was also there.

In the fall of 2009, I lived in Chaozhou for two or three months. Every day, in addition to fighting with people on Douban, I was watching TV with my uncle's son Ayu in the milk shop. TVB in Chaozhou basically does not receive TVB, and "Seventy-two Tenants" and "Balala Little Magic Fairy" are broadcast on TV every day. These uncles and aunts who come and go have taken care of me to some extent.

To my surprise, they weren't too surprised that I wasn't married, except that one uncle tentatively asked if he wanted to introduce me. This year, I have been on Weibo’s hot search twice, once in April for helping Jingyao to post a video, and once in August when I was attacked on the Internet because of Hong Kong affairs. The second time my relatives were terrified, my mother reassured them that it was all a misunderstanding and I had explained it to the police. They didn't ask me about any of these things that night. They just asked me to drink tea and eat fish. I think my uncle greeted me in advance.

The next day I said goodbye to my grandmother and went back to Jinshi in Miss Miao's car. Sister Xiao Miao is the daughter of my second aunt. She has a younger brother who has been with me for a few months and is now married and has children. Brother Bin and his wife met on a blind date, but my younger brother and sister and his son went back to their parents' house that day, so we didn't get to meet each other.

Both of my cousins are hard-working people, Akun is indeed unlucky, and the situation of brother Bin is more complicated. When I was young, I followed my grandparents in Shaxi and went to Shenzhen when I was eight. From childhood to adulthood, both my grandmother and my father had strict requirements on me (but my father left the requirements and did not teach me how to meet those requirements), but my cousin and cousin, both is stocked. I have lived in my second aunt's house for several summer vacations, and sometimes I am very envious of their parent-child relationship: parents have no requirements for their children, they only hope that they are safe and healthy, and children will not complain that their parents have not provided themselves with the best conditions, parents and children Nothing to talk about. Brother Bin likes to watch TV, and Sister Miao doesn't like to study. The second aunt and uncle can say a few words, but it's okay to say it. Later, Sister Xiaomiao graduated from a junior college majoring in nursing and worked as a nurse in a hospital in Chaozhou. Brother Bin failed the college entrance examination. After a year of re-study, it was still not ideal. She worked part-time for her relatives and ran between Chaozhou and Jinshi.

Chaoshan people don't think it's a big deal if they can't read well, but when a boy is in his teens, he is usually asked to develop skills to earn a living. Chaoshan people can do business, which is forced by life. But brother Bin neither likes reading nor doing business. Both the second aunt and the uncle are extremely mild-tempered people, and they don't want to force him, but their family is far from worrying about food and clothing. If his parents don't criticize him, there will naturally be other people pointing his finger at him. My dad came back to Jinshi with us in 2012, and when he saw him, he sneered and said, look at your cousin (my sister) now earning more than 10,000 yuan a month, just look at how much you earn, have you ever been a piece of shit? ? Brother Bin could only nod his head, but I was furious after hearing that, thinking that my dad was really like a bully.

This incident made me feel the irony of life: since I was a child, my relationship with my parents was naturally very bad. They never complimented me in front of me. However, I have developed a very strong character. Even if I learn a major that does not make money later, I still want to do better than others in my major. I envy Bindi's relationship with his parents, but I'm not sure how much this parenting style has anything to do with his later character. He got the "unconditional love" of his parents, but he just had to live by everything, and he didn't want to. Competing with others is not suitable for survival in this society.

Later, I heard that Bindi had some mental problems, and I thought for a while that he might have had a little "learned helplessness" very early on: because he encountered too many obstacles, he gradually got used to running away. This mental symptom is probably an extreme form of his self-avoidance. However, I don't want to read him too much, and I don't want to cause him further damage. When we met that day, I didn't say a word about his illness, and I didn't give him any advice. I think he should have been tired of listening to such advice.

After lunch, Sister Xiaomiao said that she had asked for leave, and she could accompany me back to Shaxi. Before that, she could take a walk in Jinshi. In the past, I had no concept of geography. When I was a child, I thought that a mountain in Shaxi was the end of the earth. Going out from Shaxi, it was a bigger and bigger world, first Jinshi, then Chaozhou, and then Shenzhen. On the 13th, when I looked at the map on my phone, I realized that Shaxi is between Jinshi and Chaozhou, and Chao’an County is also between Chaozhou and Shantou, and it is also very close to Jieyang City. No wonder the high-speed rail Chaoshan Station will be built in Shaxi.

In the past, my aunt's family also lived in Jinshi. There was a lotus mist tree on the other side of their yard. Every summer, the lotus mist was eaten casually without money. At four or five o'clock in the afternoon, there are hawkers who sell grass kueh (Xiancao), which is steaming hot and sprinkled with thick yellow sugar. I still remember my uncle saying to the people who sold the grass cakes, if you don't come one day, the children will probably be in trouble. This time when I went back, I couldn't find anyone selling this kind of grass cake in Chaozhou and Jinshi, so I was not disappointed.

The appearance of Jinshi Town has not changed much. Many of the clothing stores on Jinshi Avenue are processed and produced in this town. I asked my cousin, have these stores been affected by Taobao? She said of course there are, but they can still do neighborhood business. People can buy things in stores, and generally don’t go to Taobao to buy them. After all, it’s better to try clothes and shoes before buying them. What amazes me is that I bought a few cassettes at a video store 20 years ago, and that video store is still there, still selling tapes and CDs, I don't know how it survived.

If driving, Shaxi is actually very close to Jinshi. Before I came, I asked my mother where is the house where I lived for four or five years. My mother said Dalian Pond. The second aunt said, what is the big lotus pond, it is the big lotus pond. I am quite impressed with that pond. Once, Sister Xiao Miao angered the goose in the village and was chased around the pond for several times. She was wearing a purple dress that day. We urge our second aunt to go with us, so that we don't find a wasteful trip in the end.

Shaxi has changed a lot. I haven't come back to the old house for 20 years. The last time was when my grandfather passed away. We came back for his funeral. After that, the old uncle (grandpa's younger brother) lived there, and when the old uncle passed away, the house was completely abandoned. I have memories of the road from Zhaizi to Shayi Primary School. There is a big road near Dalian Pond, with farmland on one side. Walk along the road, cross a stone pier bridge, and you will reach the big banyan tree. There is an open grain drying field next to it. After another ten minutes, you will reach the town, Shayi Primary School. There is a candy store next to it. In 1991, a candy was a dime. This time, except for the Sun Valley Farm and Shayi Primary School, everything else has changed beyond recognition. The large lotus pond and the farmland by the road have disappeared, and even the road has disappeared. The entrance of the old house is full of waste paper, which may have been placed there by the paper mill next to it. Our neighbor's house was also empty, and the old man used to come to see Grandpa for tea.

From another point of view, Shaxi has not changed, or has not developed much. We have two other rooms over Zhaitang, where the old uncle's widow lives now. Those two rooms have been left since I was born, but there is an iron shed outside, which seems to be the old lady's son (the old uncle's stepson). ) built for her. Near Zhaitang, a family built a big four-story house, which has a bit of a mansion feel. Other places may be more dilapidated than before I left. On the road to the market, the house has not been renovated for about 20 to 30 years, and the building on the Chaole Club side is completely abandoned. This is a place where everyone wants to escape at every opportunity.

For dinner, my second aunt bought me Gong Zong Balls, Fried Kueh and Sweet Soup. Although I didn’t have Teochew Chee Cheong Fun and Lao Kuey Teow this time, my appetite was still greatly satisfied. Before I left, my uncle told me that I still had to find one. I said, if you find you will find it, whether you can get married or not is another matter. He was also helpless.

I have written articles in many places criticizing the patriarchalism and the supremacy of human feelings in Chaoshan culture, but this trip to Chaoshan, I did not have a quarrel with any elders. Not because I've become sophisticated, but because now in their eyes, I'm no longer a junior who needs to be reminded. In my eyes, they are not spokespersons of corrupt culture, but people who have watched me grow up since childhood, and silently endured the hardships of life.

Only memory and suffering can reconcile us to one another.