End of June: Conversations and Walking

The last three people in the dorm all went back to Chengdu yesterday, but I took the train alone. Because those two were going to work at Foxconn in Chengdu for a month and the start date wasn’t confirmed, I bought my ticket early. Later they were told everyone had to be in Chengdu on the 30th, so they hurriedly bought tickets for the 29th.

Next to me sat a sophomore girl from the Foreign Languages College, and across from her was a dark-skinned girl. I thought they were together, but they glared at each other for a long time. It turned out the dark-skinned girl was a local, not a student. Across from me, a rare empty seat appeared, and only after the train departed did a middle-aged uncle in his thirties sit down, carrying two cans of beer and a bag of braised chicken feet. The four of us in the seats didn’t know each other. In a strange environment, a group of strangers contacting each other is truly a wonderful thing.

From the uncle’s conversation, I inferred he worked at a public institution, but his parents had something going on, so he hurriedly took the train back. Later I learned he had served in the military in Tibet, stationed in Yadong. Perhaps this was the most unforgettable part of his life—his conversation was filled with countless senses of pride. He talked about how when he was guarding the border on a snowy mountain peak, old soldiers ordered him to stand punishment in the snow, how at night he used a quilt to cover snow water and boiled it for the old soldiers the next day, how on the mountaintop they ate ribs full of maggots and rotten vegetable leaves… In short, the hardships we’ve college students endured are nothing compared to his. I felt ashamed all over and deeply admired these people who had been tempered in harsh environments—possessing strong will and full of confidence in their future life. In one’s lifetime, one should have life-and-death experiences like his, understand one’s own potential, the preciousness of life, and the beauty of living.

Dealing with people is constantly finding common ground. Sure enough, we had some—all four of us were from the countryside. Even the dark-skinned girl across diagonally had brought two boxes of mangoes grown at home. Carrying two large boxes of mangoes was exhausting. I joked that if she didn’t mind, she could sell them to me at market price. Of course, no one would agree to my request. The hardest part of the agricultural product sales chain is getting out of the mountains—one kilometer—and it’s quite similar to the last mile in the express delivery industry. Once out of the mountains, it’s a different price. So she should sell that box of mangoes to me at Chengdu price, otherwise it wouldn’t cover costs.

The uncle said he really regretted transferring from rural to urban hukou back then. Now rural conditions are so good, and there’s annual subsidy. Knowing no one would believe it, I still very stupidly said: now work hard to make money, and in a few decades when it’s privatized, go buy land in the countryside. Then casually mentioned urban-rural hukou issues, like Chengdu’s urban-rural integration development example. I noticed he couldn’t follow the conversation, so I shut up. Talking to yourself in front of a group of people, others will think you’re schizophrenic.

Utterly bored, I started flipping through the only New Weekly I brought home. For fifteen yuan, this magazine is really too thin. After two or three hours, I’d read all the inner-page ads word for word. Then I listened to a boy in the next seat loudly chatting with two girls traveling the same way, while secretly marveling at how the Foreign Languages girls had trained this boy to gossip just like them. He talked about some boy chasing a boy: “Do you have a girlfriend?” “No.” “How about the two of us?” I almost vomited half a liter of blood. There are already few boys in Foreign Languages—what the hell are they doing! How can those girls bear it?

The laughter and chatter on the train accompanied the train’s dull little logic. Moreover, the next day at nine o’clock, I dragged myself off the train exhausted.

That afternoon, after two and a half hours and changing buses three times, I finally arrived at Xihua University to pick up my two roommates’ laptops. They were working outside, and the computers had become a burden, so they were temporarily stored at my house. In their decent zero-rent apartment outside Xihua campus, I found them. The air was stuffy and hot—unfortunately there was no fan in the room. I couldn’t stand it, only stayed a short while, then carried the two computers home. While waiting for bus 310A, I encountered a girl wearing light brown glasses with long hair tied back. She was wearing a floral red short skirt and denim shorts, carrying a tote bag with the Jiaotong University emblem printed on it, looking very elegant. Later she also got on 310A. I kept looking back, paying attention, looking back again—she was gone.

At that time the bus hadn’t entered the Third Ring Road yet.