A few California articles (1) | Chinatown

Newcomer check-in~ First time to Matters, one of the student party, in this uncertain era, I am lucky to enjoy the half-year exchange in the Bay Area. I am still amazed by every new encounter, so I try to record some fragments of prose in my life, most of which are for writing practice, please give me your advice.

If you come to Chinatown in San Francisco, it is difficult not to be attracted by Chinese supermarkets - the abundance of products here is comparable to that of any major supermarket in the country. The small door that opened on the street was like a space-time barrier, and as soon as it crossed over, the foreign country fell behind. The products are only attached with Chinese labels, the salesperson does not seem to know English, and the customers who come are naturally regular customers. If you look on the shelves, you can find countless rare treasures - sauces that are piled up by door, traditional Chinese medicines that are caught by scale, as well as dried sea cucumbers, pig liver and chicken blood, preserved eggs and salted eggs... What’s even more amazing is the sense of overlapping of time and space here. The latest self-heating hot pot buns are on the shelf on the left, and the bubble gum that is almost extinct in small county towns (and has not expired) is on the floor on the right. How did they do it!

Perhaps under this bustling neon road, there is a deep and long dark passage extending from the corner of the supermarket, silently passing through the new and old houses in San Francisco, and crossing the vast Pacific Ocean. When I arrived at the other side of the ocean, I walked through the streets and alleys of a certain city and a certain village. According to the name and the appearance, I collected the obscure objects in my memory one by one, and jumped out in Chinatown like a submarine cable. Collection of bowls. The piles of shrimp noodles and Jiangmen rice noodles were piled up like hills, and there was a mottled gold lacquer "Xi" on the back wall - this place can also be transformed into a restaurant. In a certain period of time, there were also newlyweds who walked in holding hands, dressed in gold and silver, prepared strong tea and wedding candy, and stubbornly reproduced every detail of the wedding banquet in their hometown. And the unused lotus lilies, candied winter melons, etc., may still be sold in a corner. So, what else can Chinese supermarkets do?

It's really a long walk. To say that the only troublesome thing is the old man sitting at the door. He was wearing a plus-size suit, a newsboy cap, and a four-legged cane clenched in his hand. Maybe it was because we were making a fuss in the supermarket. He glanced at it several times, and when we went out, he stopped everyone: "Hey, are you new here?"

"That's it..." Regardless of your country of origin or origin, in Chinatown, the first thing to set the tone is whether you are new or old.

Hearing that we exchanged from Hong Kong, he hurriedly asked which university it was. He said it was a question, but he actually answered first: "I am from Chung Chi. I graduated from Chung Chi College, Chinese University in the 1970s, and I have been here for 50 years!"

He stretched out his hand and made an exaggerated gesture of "five", but he took off his cane and fell to the right, so he had to quickly stabilize it, and then looked at us from the edge of the reading glasses with his eyes, as if he was wearing clothes Dressing can tell where we are students.

I had to say that I was not at the Chinese University, and his face was already disappointed; I heard that it was the University of Science and Technology, and the University of Science and Technology did not have academies, and he did not care about Wei and Jin. Although there are also classmates from Chinese University, they are all in some new academies. The old man also lost his interest in the topic of the college, and turned to other things:

"Where did you buy this camera? I had a card camera back then, and I bought it back for more than 2,000 yuan... I took the test for you. Do you know how to use the aperture? What kind of photos should a large aperture be used for?"

"You know the Hung Hom Polytechnic Institute back then..." "You mean Polytechnic University?" "It was still a Polytechnic Institute at that time! I have taken engineering courses and certificates in it, but I don't want to be an engineer anymore..."

"I see people very accurately. I see light in your eyes, which is a good thing. Young people's eyes must be full of vigor..."

Really well-informed! I couldn't stand it, I could only agree. It's full of old things from fifty years ago. It was interesting to hear at first, but after a long time, it felt really distant. The Hong Kong we live in is not the way he remembers it, so it is more like listening to a legend. He also talked about the recent events in Chinatown, how the staff in the tea restaurant worked hard, how the husband and wife in the retail store supported each other, how the young traffic police protected the Chinese, and so on. But these plots are day after day, flat and complete, like the ending of every New Year's film, it seems that it doesn't have to be seen and heard in recent years.

The old man started chatting and said that he wanted to take us to tea, but before he stood up, he stomped his cane twice: "No, since I had a stroke, my legs and feet are not so convenient! See you in the teahouse next time. Bar!"

We expressed regret again and again and ran away quickly, otherwise we would not have time to see the flower market.

"The Chinese University has become very large now! There are also a few more universities in Hong Kong... Now there are many more opportunities for the new generation..." We have all gone out to several stores, and he is still sitting in the same place summarizing .

There were crowds of people on the road, Cantonese was echoing everywhere, and the word that vaguely floated was that the price of cabbage was reduced, and dinner was about to start. The New Year's Day is approaching, and the road around the corner has been blocked for a while. The masters have changed into costumes and rehearsed the grand dragon and lion dance parade. The elderly at the entrance of the supermarket are still sitting quietly in the process of welcoming them. Hong Kong has changed a few Hong Kongs, just as San Francisco has changed a few San Francisco, but Chinatown is still the same. Guys are still mates, husband and wife are still husband and wife, the years just grow in parallel, but life never changes. When he overlooks the magnificent sea view of the Bay Area from the Chinatown on the hillside, does he still see the rolling mountains of Pat Immortal Ridge outside Tolo Harbour? When he queued for a long time to buy freshly baked pineapple buns, he was still walking on the crowded and noisy Nathan Road, right?

Chinatown is a reality built on fiction. In those 50 years that have not been back to the hometown of Guanshan Wanzhong, the vegetation has changed, memories and reality have long been dislocated, and the rest seems to be only the image of the entanglement. But the story of the entire street begins to connect and grow from this fantasy. The world has experienced so many things right and wrong, people right and wrong, but his memory and the memory of Chinatown are still silent and controlled, turning old dreams over and over again, condensing them into thick nourishment, slowly Cui Wei ground. grown into an old tree.

I heard that most of the younger generation of immigrants have moved to other neighborhoods. This is not difficult to understand, the sun is so good every day, everything is happening, who can bear the endless memories of the past? But as the year draws to a close, people still come back here. Prepare bags of New Year's goods in the supermarket, go to the flower market facing the street to buy red flowers, and then find out if there are any masters writing Spring Festival couplets... So the atmosphere of the Chinese New Year set off from Chinatown by car and scattered to many blocks and many people. Home; so every street corner and room with Chinese people has a surging New Year flavor.

Maybe New Year's as well. In faraway places, we have all become old people on crutches, rubbing the details of our thoughts little by little, and constructing the reality on the illusion. Obviously, I don’t always insist on buying flowers, and I felt very bored in the New Year last year, but it was different when I came to Chinatown. Those most old-fashioned and old-fashioned ceremonies have become a rare connection with my hometown, so I have to think about it seriously. , think big. It is to stew together the most beautiful past events about the Chinese New Year, so that he is overcooked and deformed, and the house is full of fragrance, so as to remind himself to have a good New Year.

Therefore, the more lanterns in Chinatown, the better.

Passing by a dessert shop that just closed, the signboard of "Xu Liu Shan" hangs at the door - the deity of Xu Liu Shan in Hong Kong has closed down. I walked into the dimly lit restaurant with its signature dimly lit restaurant, and the menu said it had the signature Lamei claypot rice. When I was waiting for the food, I studied the introduction of the Chinese zodiac signs on the table. The English introduction was written fairly elegantly, but the year could not be compared. A closer look reveals that this small piece of paper was made in 1998. It was already another Year of the Tiger 24 years ago.