My 2019 Questionnaire | Lose a person, lose an entire city

Hesitating for a long time, procrastinating for a long time, let’s get straight to the point

There are less than ten days left in 2019. Share an event that you didn't expect to happen this year at the beginning of the year? How has this event changed your personal life?

When answering this question, there are less than 30 hours left in 2019, and I cried a lot on this day. At noon, when I received the news that Pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to 9 years in prison in Chengdu, I started to have a splitting headache.

What's so sad, am I just losing this person? Over the past decade, so many names in this city have been imprisoned, exiled, intimidated, disintegrated and disconnected. Pastor Wang Yi is just a sad footnote. The cultural landscape has long since changed. However, at this moment, I clearly realized that this city, I completely lost it.

In the open-air teahouse in Funan River, every Wednesday more than ten years ago, Liushahe and other "old counter-revolutionaries" with an average age of 65 would drink tea and chat here to exchange "intelligence". I got up and read it to the other party; the old reporter Car Spoke, who moved a bench every day in the 1960s to sit at the construction intersection to observe, excitedly reported the construction process of the military industrial enterprises in this area, and later Liushahe commented on the same generation Car Spoke's article: "Just Like a Shanghai textile worker who was late on weekends, dozed off at work on Monday, and knitted socks that were more than ten feet long!" Many years later, when he met a wheelchair in his old age, he still didn't forget to ask someone to push him to eat a bowl of bell dumplings; The bridge downstairs, you can participate in the "Caotang Reading Club" (Pastor Wang Yi is also one of the organizers); the "Wild Grass" salon, which has persisted for more than 30 years, provides a literary aesthetic standard; Poetry recitation in the White Night Bar.

This is the first scene of my understanding of public life, and the memories left me with the most intimate comfort. In my growth psychology, I have never been too far away from this group of people. The long-term nourishment and protection of the folk soil has made them very local and very resilient, and they can work hard for the lofty ideas. To me, they are the words that Erlan wrote in "People in Dark Times": "Even if the times are dark, we have the right to expect an illumination, which does not necessarily come from theories and concepts, but mostly from theories and concepts. It comes from the indefinite, often faint light. The light comes from the men and women, from their lives and works.”

"No one's hometown will fall." This is what Ran Yunfei, a local cultural person, wrote on the cover of the book. I have been skeptical of this sentence for a long time. I do not believe that a city that has been independent from the political civilization of the Central Plains for thousands of years will lose its temper in a short period of time, the populist tendencies will be reversed, suffering will be distorted into the accessories of centralization, and then lose many, many grasps of this The righteous at the water level of urban aesthetics and perceptions. When the fall has become so routine, so lacking in drama, this afternoon, I have to relive that sentence.

Yes, I can't feel its pulse anymore, it has no life connection with me. We were strangers to each other, and I needed to wear a veil and be careful in front of it. We no longer have a goal that we can reach together, and we no longer have to share weal and woe. So much so that when I think about the future of my sinking hometown, I feel that every word is too heavy to say. It was a pre-publicized murder.

I'm not too worried about Pastor Wang Yi, because people of faith are exceptionally strong.

I worry about myself, I lost the whole city of ginkgo trees.

Say one thing that made you feel the most powerless in 2019. Did you try to change it? If you can't change it, how do you deal with it?

The Hong Kong movement has deeply involved me both morally and emotionally. For those who studied here in the past, Hong Kong has defined my worldview after the age of 20 and directly influenced my choices. Because of this, I see it as a place where I can stay together forever. Strong, even if you don't live here in the future. From 2008 to 2012, the media still had room to imagine that many Hong Kong drifters (probably the term also appeared at that time) could still write articles about Hong Kong in the mainstream media in mainland China. Since then, the situation in the two places has deteriorated sharply. When we always wanted to be a bridge, we found that there were fewer and fewer tools available to build a bridge, and the consensus on values between the two places became thinner and thinner. The relationship between Hong Kong drifters and mainland friends who have strong empathy has collapsed collectively. This is probably the most powerless year I've ever had.

But it's not completely bad. In the past six months, I will feel more about the attitudes of others and spend more time sorting out my emotions. A few lines of Rilke's poems always work: Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

In 2019, what made you feel most empowered?

Sisterhood, which also has my mom.

When I was 30 years old, I lost my imagination of the comfort that the intimate relationship between the two sexes can bring. In the past two years, I have been very dependent on the female friends around me. We share common values, complain together, have fun together, and share food, beauty, beauty and beauty together. They were all courageous, innocent, kind, and full of heart. We have never worried about losing each other, we will give each other a deep and lasting, warm and strong emotional support, the kind of friendship that can warmly nourish, accompany and support each other in the face of inner loneliness and anxiety.

Every day I want to confide in them: how shocking she is, how beautiful she is, how she makes everything, really everything, possible.

Describe a person you met this year who made you feel warm just thinking about it?

I went home once in the middle of the year and strolled along the Funan River with my friends as usual. On the bridge of Fuhe River, I saw a young man with Down syndrome, in his early 20s, walking with a dog, laughing and dragging a megaphone. He stopped, stood on the bridge and sang very freely. He's so involved that he can't help giggling as he sings, his face squeezed a bit funny by the expression, he's deaf, and the megaphone effect is muddy, not for begging, he just wants to sing. His dog was sitting upright and didn't seem surprised by the owner's move. That scene was too profound, and it was vivid and fragrant. He gave me and my friends some inspiration. When we come out, we need to sing a little more in life, and don't care what passers-by think.

Is there a moment when you realize that time is passing, and do you panic about it?

There are so many coordinates to observe, and it feels like time has passed all the time. Of course, I will panic, and I will count the list of life silently in my heart, and I will be scared and froze when I count it. To keep myself from getting too nervous, I prefer to sleep when I feel flustered.

2019 is also known as the "Year of Circumcision". In this year, is it easier or more difficult for you to stay close to friends, relatives, and lovers?

Since June, I have closed the entrance to the Moments, neither reading nor writing. I actively deleted a lot of people, which saved a lot of time. But occasionally, there will be disputes with old friends who are reluctant to turn against each other on the Hong Kong issue. Being close to anyone in a relationship isn't always easy in itself, I'm lucky, my family is amazing, they've always respected my solitude, so I can enjoy love and get back to my own place.

How has your relationship with your body changed compared to a year ago? Do you like your current body more?

My body must not accept my displays of love, I am too bad for her, stay up late, eat irregularly, and be overly emotional with close people. I understand the reasoning, but the self-control ability is too poor. The most important thing in the coming year is self-practice, avoid hurting yourself uncontrollably, and avoid hurting others impulsive.

Can you name a point of view that has been changed by others over the past year?

From the movement, we re-understand "violence", and re-examine whether the order that regards non-violence in any form as the most fundamental order is still applicable in real situations. "Violence" is "violence", and "illegal" is "illegal". It may be that most of us have been educated since childhood and will not particularly reflect on its meaning. Even liberalism, which is ideologically open, is conservative on relevant points, but looking at what is important about this movement prompts us to think about these points.

Please fill in the blank: 2019, _____ matters

2019, feeling matters.

Finally, can you share your most frequently listened song, your favorite book, your most impressive movie or your biggest brain hole in 2019?

Whenever I feel like crying, I reread Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, Hemingway's In Our Time, Mary-Beth Hughes' Song of the Pelican , Bolaño, The Last Night on Earth. Literature pays attention to beauty, human condition, and the truth of the world. Of course, its most fundamental is its own aesthetic value, and the sense of freedom in literary imagination cannot be replaced.

Two of my favorites this year are Nobel Laureate Peter Handke's Winter Journey on the Danube, Sava, Morava and Drina Rivers: Justice in Serbia and Lydia Davis ' Fortune The Ten Stories of Loubai.

The most often listened to is all the music of Hosono Haruoomi

One of the most impressive films is the story "Pain and Glory" dedicated to me by director Pedro Almodóvar.