Taking stock of my differences with my father

1

During the Spring Festival this year, I stayed at my brother's home in Zaoyang for two days. I had three meals with my father and chatted with him symbolically, discussing the current situation and his pension. He is 72 years old and can receive a rural pension of more than 100 yuan per month. In recent years, every Spring Festival, after chatting with my father, I want to write something to review the differences between my father and me. Tonight, when I came back from shopping at the supermarket, it was not time to go to bed, and I suddenly wanted to write. I wrote for two hours on the iPad at the dining table. My thoughts were very chaotic, and I only completed the following short paragraph:

 2007年上半年，我没有工作，窝在家里，在父亲的渔具店帮忙。我们在枣阳没有自己的房子，一家四口租住在廉价旅馆的两个单间。我和弟弟到了适婚年龄，都没有女朋友。一天中午，父亲在餐桌上感叹：“家里现在最要紧的是买房。”我心想买房固然重要，但更重要的难道不是家人之间的交流，比如谈论人生和理想。我对父亲说：“还有比买房更要紧的事情。”父亲惊讶地问：“是什么？”我猛然意识到和父亲谈论人生和理想是荒谬的，于是沉默。父亲追问：“到底是什么比买房更要紧？”我慌了神，开始支支吾吾，语无伦次。

2

The cold snap is coming again, and I will definitely get up late tomorrow. Taking advantage of the opportunity of staying up late, I will continue to review the differences between my father and I. The next case is not a disagreement strictly speaking. In the final analysis, it is still a lack of communication. My father and I have lost the ability and desire to communicate with each other, which is more terrible than any specific disagreement.

The cold wave before the Spring Festival was even more severe. My father brought my nephew to Xiangyang for a few days, and then returned to Zaoyang with my mother. The heavy snow paralyzed the high-speed rail, and my parents and nephew were stranded at Xiangyang East Station for 7 hours and could not go. They spent 50 yuan to take a taxi back the same way, and took a car the next day.

My father went to the bus station early in the morning to inquire about the news and confirmed that there was a bus back to Zaoyang. He left after lunch. At the dinner table, my father asked me if bus No. 23 was a circular line, and I didn't know how to answer. I live near Minfa Square on Hangkong Road. My father took bus No. 515 to the bus station and took bus No. 23 back. He got the wrong direction when he came back. Fortunately, the bus station was very close to the terminus of bus No. 23. The bus went around and returned to the correct direction. The driver did not ask my father to pay for the ticket. Bus No. 23 runs from the bus station to Wanda Plaza, and then to the Qilihe terminus. This section of the road is tortuous, but it only accounts for a small part of the entire operating route. It cannot be judged that bus No. 23 is a circular line. My father is not familiar with Xiangyang, and I cannot explain these details to him.

I suggested to take my parents and nephew to the bus station and asked them to wait for me while I cleaned the kitchen. My father insisted that I not take him and dragged his luggage away. About 5 minutes later, I went out to catch up and saw their backs from afar on the east side of Minfa Square. My father was walking in front and seemed to be preparing to cross the road and was waiting for the red light. I shouted loudly and ran to my father quickly to ask him where he was going. My father said to go across the road to take the No. 23 bus. I said, "No, no, no, no, just take the bus here."

My father had drunk alcohol and his eyes were bloodshot. He was a little confused and said that he got off the bus across the street when he came back from the bus station. Since Route 23 is a circular route, he should get on the bus where he got off. I felt angry and sad. Suddenly I understood why my father cared about whether Route 23 was a circular route. He was not sure where to get on the bus and was too embarrassed to ask directly, so he could only ask in a roundabout way. The circular route also has a direction. My father was full of mysterious confidence and ran with his family in the wrong direction. If he got on the bus across the street, he might have been able to ride all the way to Dongjin New District, ten kilometers away, and he would not have to go back to Zaoyang that day.

3

During the Spring Festival just past, I chatted with my father after dinner and talked about my personality. My father believed that my personality was to blame for my ups and downs in the workplace, and my middle-aged unemployment and lack of a way to make a living. "Character is destiny," my father said with certainty. I do not deny that my personality is flawed, which to a large extent led to my setbacks in the workplace, but my father only saw my personality and could not understand my pursuit and struggle in my career.

Nearly 20 years ago, also at the Spring Festival dinner table, my father taught me: "Don't change jobs frequently. Just have a job. It doesn't matter what you do. As an ordinary person, the most important thing is to make a living." How could he say such a thing to a young man in his 20s? My father's snobbery and short-sightedness had a serious negative impact on me and lowered the ceiling of my life.

I have a cousin who didn't graduate from high school, didn't have a proper job, and was addicted to online games. He made a lot of money through game-related businesses, but lost it all and still owed tens of thousands of dollars in debt. The debt collection call came to my uncle's house. When my father heard about this, the advice he gave shocked me: "Break ties with him!"

I don’t quite understand my father’s train of thought. As long as the next generation is “useless” or even if he is not satisfied with something, his first reaction is to cut off relations. More than 20 years ago, on the Lantern Festival, I invited my college classmates to my home for dinner. My mother was busy in the kitchen, and my classmate and I went out shopping and visited his high school alma mater. We didn’t get home until dark and missed the dinner time. My father was furious and wanted to cut off relations with me and not let me go to school.

My cousin's marriage was once a hot topic within the family, and it was also a topic that my father and I had to talk about at the Spring Festival dinner table. Our views were diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. I still cannot forgive my father's violent remarks against my cousin. I am used to his snobbery and short-sightedness, but I still underestimated the brutality of his remarks.

My cousin is over 30 and has failed in many blind dates. It seems that he will be single for the rest of his life. I emphasized that the gender imbalance caused by the one-child policy is the deep-seated reason why it is difficult for my cousin to get married. His father did not think it was a big deal: "So what if there are more men than women? If you have the ability, why worry about not being able to find a wife?" Someone introduced a divorced woman to my cousin, but he refused. His father commented: "You still don't agree? Then you won't even be able to find a third marriage!"

Marriage is one's own business, and no one else has the right to interfere. My father felt that as an elder, he had an obligation to worry about his cousin's marriage, and he said those things for the good of his cousin. I reminded my father that he didn't really care about his cousin, and if he couldn't provide help, staying away from his cousin would be the best thing for him.

This year's Spring Festival, my cousin's marriage was not mentioned by my father and me for the first time. After all, we were just chatting symbolically.

4

During the Spring Festival when the new coronavirus outbreak occurred, I was with my father. He stayed in front of the TV to track the epidemic data, and I browsed overseas media over the wall. We had a wonderful conversation.

“Chris Buckley, a reporter from the New York Times, is coming to Wuhan.”

"Of course he wants to come and watch the fun. With Wuhan in such a mess, he must be very happy."

I said that Chu Bailiang rushed to the scene regardless of his personal safety to fulfill his duty as a journalist, and that he would not be happy about the suffering in Wuhan. My father was dismissive of my statement, and I was furious. My father's ignorance was outrageous. He had lived in the county town for most of his life and claimed to have seen the world, but in essence he was still a country boy with only elementary school education.

My father has been watching CCTV for a long time. In the heyday of print media, he subscribed to Chutian Metropolis Daily for several years. Little did he know that official newspapers and television are poisonous. The more you watch, the dumber you become. My father doesn’t believe that American journalists really care about the epidemic in China. In my rural hometown, some people will gloat over a fire in their enemy’s house. If their own house catches fire, their enemies will definitely gloat over it. This is my father’s indestructible logic.

When the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out for almost a year, my father and I were chatting at the Spring Festival dinner table. I said that Putin was a sinner of Russia. He brazenly launched an aggressive war and cut himself off from the international community, making life more difficult for the Russian people. But my father spoke highly of Putin, saying that the earth owed him to the United States, which dared not do whatever it wanted.

My father's strong anti-American sentiment should be attributed to the official media, but unfortunately he hated the wrong people. The years when his fishing gear business was the most prosperous were the honeymoon period of Sino-US relations. Everything made money, and the whole country was filled with an optimistic atmosphere. Later, China and the United States became hostile, the new crown epidemic broke out, and all industries were in decline. The "fishing ban" issued by the government directly killed my father's business. Long before the dynamic zero was cleared, he had experienced the layers of escalation by fishery law enforcement officers.

I talked to my father about the people's leader who was recently re-elected. My father said that he was also doing it for the good of the country. There is no leader who does not want to make his country better. According to my father's absurd logic, Hitler was for the good of Germany, Stalin was for the good of the Soviet Union, and Kim Jong-un is of course also for the good of North Korea.

“You have been brainwashed by CCTV.”

"You have been brainwashed by the United States. Stop talking about politics all day and try to live your life first."

5

There was not enough space at home, so my nephew and I stayed in a hotel near our home for four days. At around 9 o'clock on the third night, my father suddenly visited my hotel room. Apparently he found my room number at the front desk. I was a little annoyed and didn't understand why he didn't call me.

My father and I sat face to face at the dining table for three consecutive days, each of us eating without any substantial communication. We both knew each other's character and didn't want to make small talk and bore ourselves. Tonight he came uninvited to ask me if I still needed my mother's help after the Spring Festival. I took the opportunity to have a good chat with him. My father sat on the mini sofa by the window, and I stood in front of the window, staring out the window, facing my father sideways the whole time. As we chatted, I completely exploded with an unprecedentedly tough attitude. I ordered my father to leave more than once. He was finally angry and left without saying a word. My 9-year-old nephew sat at the desk and watched anime series on my iPad, unaffected by my conversation with my father.

After my daughter was born, my mother stayed in Xiangyang most of the time, helping to cook and take care of my granddaughter. My father lived in my brother's house in Zaoyang. He was very pitiful without my mother to cook, and often ordered takeout by himself. My brother has two children, and my mother needs to cook for 6 people in Zaoyang. I don't want her to cook for so many people, but my parents don't have their own house, so no matter where my mother lives, she naturally bears the responsibility of cooking for the whole family.

I told my father that it was up to my mother to come to Xiangyang, she could come whenever she wanted, the room was reserved for her, and I would sleep on the sofa. I said I didn't need my mother to be a nanny, she was old, and in Xiangyang she could cook for two less people, which was relatively easy.

My father was very dissatisfied with my attitude and said that the key was to take good care of the child. I said you don't have to worry about that, taking care of my daughter is my job. You and mother took care of me before, now it's my turn to take care of my own children, you don't have to worry about my next generation. My father was so angry that he was speechless.

I changed the subject and asked my father if he had sold the house in his hometown. He said he sold it for 30,000 yuan and saved the money. In the autumn of the year before last, I learned from my mother that my father had sold the house. The buyer was a neighbor in the same village. The old house was soon demolished and a new house was built on the site. The neighbor's son needed a house for his wedding.

I lived in the old house for more than ten years and only left when I went to college. I left with many memories. I cannot forgive my father for selling the house without saying a word, causing me to completely lose my hometown. But it is also my fault. I live like a stray dog ​​and miss a hometown that no longer exists.

The old house was built in 1985 or 1986. It is a three-room bungalow facing south. The living room is in the middle, with bedrooms and storage rooms on both sides, a total of four rooms. Behind the living room is a staircase leading to the roof. The kitchen, as an annex building, is located on the west side and is a low tiled house. My father spent nearly 10,000 yuan to build the house, and there was no extra money for decoration. We lived in the rough house for several years. The rough houses of that era were very primitive, with hard mud on the ground. Only my parents' room had a concrete floor. My father's fishing gear business had just started, and the construction of the house seriously damaged his vitality. He had difficulty in cash flow for many years, and he had to borrow money from relatives when decorating the house. In 1998, our family spent the New Year in the old house for the last time. No one went back afterwards. The old house was vacant for a long time and became a dilapidated haunted house.

My father and I are both passers-by in this world. We should not be attached to the houses we have lived in. The land belongs to the state. My father only has the right to use the homestead, and the right disappears automatically when he dies. My brother and I bought a house in the city. Our household registration has been moved out of the countryside. We cannot own or inherit the homestead in our hometown. It is a rational choice for my father to sell the house, but I think he has an obligation to tell me.

6

When my father was 65, he could receive a rural pension of about 70 yuan per month, but he didn't care about this amount of money and never took it out. My father had a bright future. On the eve of the 2018 Spring Festival, he made a very bold decision to spend all of his 300,000 yuan in cash on purchasing goods, thinking that if he worked for a few more years, he wouldn't have to worry about his pension.

The year 2018 was a turning point. Many factors at the macro and micro levels caused my father's fishing tackle business to begin to shrink. In 2019, Zaoyang suffered a severe drought, and my father's business was made worse. 2020 was even worse. The fishing tackle shop was closed for two months, and the goods were piled up in the warehouse. My father's retirement plan was disrupted.

My aging father still goes out early and comes back late every day, working hard in the fishing tackle shop that doesn't make any money. How can he retire? Holding on is everything.

"You might as well use that money to buy a house. You and your mother are old, you should have your own house. 300,000 is enough to buy a second-hand house in the county town."

"If you don't buy goods, what can you sell? You studied economics, but you know nothing about my business. Don't worry about me."

"We don't have to worry about each other anymore, so there's nothing to talk about. Go ahead and get some rest."

My father drank a lot of white wine in the evening and was in a state of mild or moderate alcohol poisoning. He was slow to react to my fierce words. He was like a defeated rooster, lying on the mini sofa and refusing to leave. I talked about his pension again.

"It's so unfair! What can you buy with 100-plus per month? Your pension is a fig leaf for the country. It's better not to have it."

"The country is not yet rich, and it is impossible for everyone to get a few thousand yuan."

"This country is very rich, but the problem is that no matter how rich they are, they won't give it to you because you are not important."

My father used his trump card and advised me to find a way to live my life well first. I was fed up with his words and said desperately: "I can't live my life well unless that person dies!"

Unfortunately, the great people's leader was shot while lying down.

7

My father invited me to my brother's home in Zaoyang to celebrate the New Year, saying that it would be a great time to be together, but I was not in the mood to celebrate the New Year, and I did not need the false excitement. My father did not understand that he could not invite me on behalf of my brother, and it would be cruel to point this out to him. My parents supported my brother and I in buying a house, but their attitude towards owning a house in the twilight of life was extremely negative: "Why buy a house? Who knows how many years you can live?"

I still went to Zaoyang. As long as my parents were still alive, I had to spend the New Year with them. I arrived at my brother's house on the evening of the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month with my wife and daughter. My mother prepared a sumptuous dinner. On the afternoon of the first day of the first lunar month, I hurriedly fled Zaoyang alone and said goodbye to my father at the gate of the Country Garden community in Erqiaotou South. My wife and daughter stayed in Zaoyang until the eighth day of the first lunar month. My daughter wanted to eat the food cooked by her grandmother.

Throughout the first month of the lunar year, I have been taking stock of the differences between my father and I. I have to strike while the iron is hot and write, otherwise I may never have the chance.