Luohu, my place without history

In the articles I have written about Shenzhen, as long as it is related to Luohu, it is full of warmth, but as long as I talk about Shenzhen as a whole, or Shenzhen's values, I immediately become sharp.

After 1993 and before 2004, I seldom stepped out of Luohu in my life, and Huaqiangbei was the limit. If you consider that I have lived near the junction of Luohu and Futian for the past ten years, then this kind of "occlusion" is even more staggering. Ever since I was a child, every time I went to the Palace of Culture and Old Street with Ah Shui, and every day from middle school to Cuiyuan Middle School on Dongmen North Road, I felt that I was a little closer to the center of the city. When I graduated from college, I simply persuaded my family to move to Buenos Aires. Heart, completely deep into the hinterland of Luohu. It is my perception that runs counter to the development direction of this city that makes me disapprove of Shenzhen's "all the way west" and industrial upgrading.

Unlike many people's impressions of the second generation, my family does not have many houses. In fact, before last year, our family had been renting. There are downfalls everywhere in any era, but maybe the family around me isn't much better, and I never felt like the "poor" or "bottom" of the city as a teenager. My roommate in college, Uncle He, said more than ten years ago that, believe it or not, Luohu will become a slum in Shenzhen in the future. I recalled and said, according to your standards, when was Luohu not a slum?

What I said was not sarcasm. I have lived on Songyuan Road for more than ten years. In the first few years, the main road was lined with rubble and old factories. The houses built in these gaps were not even comparable to the urban villages outside the customs. In junior high school, I visited a classmate's home in Buxin Village (recently renovated, led by Kingkey Group). I took bus No. 24 from Kangtai Entertainment City Station. There is only one audio-visual store in a decent store within a radius of one or two kilometers. In the first year of high school, another classmate and I rode bicycles to his home in Tianxin Village. After crossing Sungang East Road, it was a gravel road full of potholes. If we were not careful, people would overturn their horses, and the walls of his home were covered with mold. in the factory dormitory. According to Uncle He's standards, my two classmates and I must live in a slum, but I had no concept of these at that time. If I had, I would definitely not dare to like a woman who lives in the wealthy area of Xiangmihu. child.

For a brief period, I did perceive the existence of the rich and the poor. It was a love that was fleeting, maybe not a love. At that time, there were still minibuses in Shenzhen, and the fare was 2 yuan, 5 yuan, or 3 yuan. Compared with the IC card (which later became Shenzhen Pass), which only cost 80 cents a time, she preferred to take the minibus to go home. After sitting with her for a month, I was already very cash-strapped. One time I was going to invite her to eat KFC. The coupons issued by the school can be used for about half of the price. My deskmate reminded me the day before that you remember to change your change into a few ten yuan, otherwise you will put a pile of loose change. When the money is taken out, it really makes people want to dig a hole in the ground. I fell in love with writing, and it really had to do with her at first. She wrote about the father-daughter relationship, saying that her father worked in the United States all the year round, and every time he came back, he brought her a little gift, and they maintained the father-daughter relationship with the gifts from his father. She wrote about the beautiful scenery of Yunnan, and the unique Naxi people. Although I don't have much concept of money, I know that under my conditions at the time, I couldn't write such words.

After separating from her, I wanted to open up a writing path myself and needed another teacher. Like Kafka is good, but I have nothing to compare with him except for a mentality full of frustration; authors like Midnight Publishing are also good, but my lack of interest and patience for "things" may even I can't even watch Last Year at Marienbad; something like Milan Kundera is not bad, but my philosophical attainments need to be built up a bit more. After doing this calculation, I feel that the most suitable one for me is the stream of consciousness: the sounds and colors in front of me, the ringing in my ears, the emotions in my heart, and the thoughts in my head seem to have become paint, and they are mixed together and then smeared on the paper. Each brush has a unique color.

This can also explain why I have devoted so much preference to Luo Wu. During the most emotional period of my life, Luo Wu naturally became the key material for my writing. Of course, Songyuan Road is not a problem. Later, I even bought the lamp style of the terrace according to the street lamp of Songyuan South Street written in my poem. I also wrote about the water pool in Litchi Park (although it should belong to Futian according to the administrative division), and the technique should be borrowed from Pound. After Chu Lin published her photographic anthology (taking a pseudonym that is obscure, I even suspect she did it on purpose), I went to her former home near Caiwuwei for a walk. This community has been included in the old reforms, and her mother has already moved away. In "Xiao Man", I wrote with a touch of sentimentality about the scene of waiting for the bus with her at the station at the gate of the community.

The building that is still standing nearby is Luohu Book City, which was called Shenzhen Book City at that time. She brought me here once, and played half of Chopin at the Hongwen Music Store on the first floor, which I wrote in an essay in the fall of 2013. There was a Friday in the first year of high school, extracurricular activities for research study, I brought my team members here to find materials, and finally turned into their own books. I leaned against a glass window on the east side of the third floor, looking out from there, the upper half of the opposite building had been engulfed in the setting sun. It was already dark outside at 6:30. I was waiting for them at the station. When I turned around, I was caught off guard by the dark green spotlights in the grass. In a trance, I saw them standing at the gate above the steps. I wrote this in a novel in my freshman year.

Today, I was wandering in the bookstore, and unexpectedly found that I can get a library card, and I can borrow five books without spending a penny, including all the new books, for a period of up to one month. I remembered that for the research study, we got a library card at the Luohu Library near Yijing, borrowing a deposit of 50 yuan, two books of 100, and so on. With my money, I could only bet fifty, and with this card and the rickety 13-way, I half-read and half-borrowed most of the humanities and social science books I thought were valuable in the Luohu Library. The first half of my high school was occupied by Luohu Library and the "Flanders Road" from Hongling Road to Hongbao Road.

I've written about that passage in several novels and essays, and it's not a good thing that it crowds out so much of my memory. Readers who don’t know me read what I have written before and may think that I am a literary author. In fact, I am just a scholar now, and I am a critic at most. Although I have not given up the ambition to create novels in my heart, I have not re-entered novels for a long time. state of writing. And how I went from being obsessed with literature, to focusing on academics, and now deviating from the normal academic track to independent academic research, I rarely talk about how it happened. That is to say, the past events I told over and over were just trivial memories going back and forth on the road, and what I did subconsciously was no different from Sisyphus.

It wasn't that it lacked drama afterward, but because it was a real interaction, it disgusted me. I didn't write about my girlfriend at that time in my work after high school. I didn't write about the scene of sitting with her in the tail seat of No. 23 after school every day, but I wrote about the scene when she got off the bus and I was alone by the window. Contemplation, on the swirling viaduct, is like being executed by sunset. When I think of Xianhu and Xiaomeisha that I went to with her, the first thing that comes to my mind is the natural scenery, followed by the classmates in the second class of high school. Some people may say that it's because I don't like her enough, but who can guess, I wrote two notebooks for her in the third year of high school, more than for Chu Lin in the junior high school. This kind of favoritism in the later narration can only be explained from my ranking of values: no matter what Chu Lin’s writing is now, she is the one who once brought me “transcendence”, and the one in high school was almost I dated from the very beginning for the purpose of getting married, when we were only 17 years old. Such a relationship, the atmosphere of the world is too strong.

In the official-led narrative, Luohu is the birthplace of "Shenzhen Speed" and one of the earliest windows of opening up to the outside world. Whether in the early days of reform and opening up or after Shenzhen's "westward expansion", Luohu has always been the most densely populated area in Shenzhen. The world is bustling, all come for the benefit, and the world is bustling, all go for the benefit. However, in my opinion, Luohu is a huge no-man’s land.

This "no-man's-land" imagination is best reflected in the novel "Yuanyuan". This novel has never been out of Luohu from beginning to end: my home is in Buxin, her home is in Cuizhu, the first time we met in Xihui City, the second time was at the flower market on Aiguo Road, I went to Baishi Da (her uncle's house) picks her up at the gate of the community. Inside, Futian appeared as an extremely dangerous place, whether it was the step up when she called me in the early morning, or the cocopark bar where we were drunk. Finally, when I returned to my home in Buxin, everything was peaceful again. The contradictions were revealed, but they were gradually resolved.

There are no flesh and blood characters in this story. Some people appear to promote the development of the story, and some people are simply background boards. The most outrageous thing is that before publishing, in order to appease a few friends who have known each other for many years, I forcibly added their names in a dispensable paragraph. Judging from the reactions of readers, the most lovable character is Yuanyuan, and many people even asked me if I have always been obsessed with her. This is really a big misunderstanding. What I remember more from the beginning to the end is the background she appeared in: without this story, I would not be able to portray the Luohu where I lived after 2007. Strictly speaking, this is a geography, not a novel.

In my opinion, Luohu is not only a no-man's land, but also a "land without history". In Chapter 5 of "Learning from Shenzhen", "Development of Shenzhen Rural Areas: Cities Surrounding Rural Areas," Ma Li'an writes about how Luohu's transportation system was re-planned: "First, the railroad tracks across the center of the county were removed and extended along the railroad. An industrial park was established on the line and the northern section. Secondly, Jiefang Road, the main road in the area, was expanded westward to the outside of the central area of the county, and expanded eastward to the vicinity of Huangbeiling, and the section of Jiefang Road that traverses the old city continues to be used. The infrastructure engineer is in the south of the old city. A new road leading to the east gate was paved around it, connecting Jiefang Road in the west extension and the largest market in the district. This new road was called Shennan Avenue, and the urbanization development of Shenzhen has basically followed this road since then. The subsequent road expansion was built along the track route northward to Buji Town, and westward through Shennan Avenue to Guangzhou City.”[1]

I have no concept of this kind of "history" at all. I read "Learning from Shenzhen" that the "first-tier customs" and "second-tier customs" are written, and I feel very unfamiliar, although I do have a hazy impression of Bujiguan: When returning from Chaozhou to Shenzhen, there was a time when I had to stop to check my documents. Before 2007, not only did I have no concept of the history of Shenzhen and Luohu, but I also had no concept of what era I was in. For comparison, when I came to Shenzhen in 1993, it was the second year of Deng Xiaoping's southern tour, and the market economy entered a new stage in China. In 1997, when Hong Kong returned to China, I almost graduated from primary school. When I was in high school in 2001, China officially joined the WTO. In 2008, when I graduated with an undergraduate degree, the housing price in Shenzhen exceeded 10,000 yuan, and the first round of soaring began. Logically speaking, there should be more and more opportunities in Shenzhen, but I remember my father's catering business was getting worse and worse since I was in junior high school, until Songyuan Meat Market finally closed down.

It is precisely because of the dislocation of the family environment and the development of the times that I regard all changes in the outside world as "impermanence" and cannot see the laws. I watched Zweig write "Yesterday's World" and said that when he was young, the atmosphere of the times was influenced by progressivism, and he felt that everything was getting better and better; The struggle of the generation, "When he (father) was fifty years old, even if measured by international standards, he can be called a huge wealth." [2] In the first half of Zweig's life, the era of Trends and family fortunes are all up, so even though he's been through World War I and the Nazis coming to power, deep down he doesn't seem to have completely shaken off that optimism, which he has recognized as a kind of "illusion". [3]

It wasn't until my senior year that I really paid attention to politics and decided to pursue ethics and political philosophy as my career. This has to do with the rise of new types of social media (intranet) on the one hand, and with my readings at the time (Rorty and Strauss) on the other. So for me, history officially begins in this year. Coincidentally, the "Public Knowledge Era" of social media began at about this time. The Niubo.com founded by Lao Luo became famous, and the author of it soon showed his magical powers in the "Weibo" that just appeared. On Renren (renamed from Xiaonei.com), young people have experienced round after round of political debates, and even in the small circle of political philosophy, they sincerely believe that "the success or failure of an argument is related to the future of the country" ". Within a few years, under the comprehensive encirclement and suppression of public power, all this finally disappeared. In some people's eyes, it is the curtain call of a long era, some go back to the beginning of the century, some even go back to the beginning of the reformation, but in my opinion, these are only four or five years.

After entering history, it is difficult for me to look at my past without history. For example, when I see people online (including myself) who miss the 1990s and the beginning of the new century, I can always think that the Cold War had just ended, and the whole world had just ended. There is an air of "the end of history". This suggests that I may not be the only one with nostalgia for "no history" (a seemingly contradictory statement). Luckily for me, Luohu also happens to be such a place where history is dislocated. The more it is "abandoned" and marginalized by Shenzhen, the more it can preserve "history-free imagination" for me. It will be completed in one day, to keep up with the pace of development in Shenzhen, and those fragments without history will also survive in my previous writings.

Only by relying on a place without history can I step into history with confidence.

[1] "Learning from Shenzhen", p. 97

[2] The World of Yesterday, p. 8

[3] Ibid, p. 5