One city, one set of memories; one person, one road, city after city: the luck of living in this age.
2017.06
The night rain drips, drips, striking the dark. My hometown, on my last settled night, gives me this great gift. I don't know what I'm feeling right now, nervous or excited; anyway, I've tossed and turned for ages and can't sleep. I always say I adapt well, yet faced with change I can never stay calm; usually I'm tossing and turning days in advance, and when I do sleep it's a pile-up of tangled dreams. My thoughts are always like this, surfacing layer on layer like dreams, never holding together in one line; that's one reason I've been so slow to really try writing fiction.
Mianyang, my hometown. I often feel my origins are tangled and complicated, that I have no real sense of belonging, but really that's just a pose of being different, a conceit. Every time, only when I'm about to leave, like on this last night, or about to come back, do I realize how deeply attached I am to this land. Grown animals are never as easy to tame as young ones. When I was little, some friends left Mianyang for big, glittering, beautiful cities; once gone, after a few trips back and forth, they settled their hearts in their new nests, with new lives and new circles you could look at but never enter. And me? Eighteen years and nine months, every one of them given to this land, and the dreams of my childhood are just like the thousand years of richness and security of the Sichuan Basin.
Perhaps the mother who gives birth to you really does count for less than the mother who raises you (though of course, for most people, they are the same mother), just as there is always a place in the human heart where matter cannot beat spirit. And when we say "blood", how could that mean the genetic chain passed down through the generations? And those so-called views of race: aren't they just feudal belief in another guise?
The sound of the night rain has thinned, but the drops are still falling in my heart. I love Mianyang. Not just like it: liking is only a simple pleasure, but love is immensely heavy, a mix of every flavour. As someone once said: you may not like Nanshan, but you must love Nanshan; you may like America, but you must not love America. I agree deeply with the first half. Nanshan, my high school, stirs all kinds of feelings in me at once. My three years there were one hardship after another, wind and rain without end, nature's revenge and the wickedness of people's hearts, and with them came rapid growth and transformation. Of course, the views I came upon in a hurry after the skies cleared, even with only a very, very short time to take them in, will stay with me for the rest of my life. The me of today has said goodbye to the golden mean I used to put on, faces the world's pain and love openly, and judges people and events fairly. Nanshan gave me three years unlike most people's. I could never say, and couldn't say, whether I liked it or hated it, but now I can say honestly: I love Nanshan.
In the same way, I love Mianyang too. Mianyang has its faults. It isn't deep enough: you can't dig into it the way you read the drifting clouds and smoke of Nanjing's Six Dynasties. Nor is it shallow enough: the traces of farming civilization have faded fast these past years, while industrial civilization hasn't yet reached any height worth noticing. But I love Mianyang. So what if other places are ancient capitals, or at the cutting edge? What's on the page can never match even a single year of vivid memories in the heart. Each place's water and soil raise their own people; some things grow up together with people, and only those who live there know its scenery best. So all comparison becomes nothing but a silly sulk. A nest of gold or silver can't compare with the nest in your own heart; wherever the heart rests is the most beautiful place. That is a fact that can never change.
And yet, however clearly I understand all this, I am still only a child, and going far from the hometown I love always leaves me sighing. Autumn came early to my hometown this year. Every year, the day the leaves fall back to their roots is just when people go off to the ends of the earth. Fate plays its tricks; no wonder the ancients hit upon what falling leaves and parting people have in common.
Leaving the city I love. The night is deep, the rain has stopped, and I'm sleepy too. When day has broken and night has fallen again, it will be time to pack my bags and set off.
Nanjing, a strange city, and some strangers, not far off, are waiting for me. I'm leaving. I'm coming.
2010.09