Celebrating the New Year

On February 2nd, I caught the 7 AM bus back to Chengdu. This year’s New Year was over again. Unlike previous years, this time there wasn’t that reluctant feeling of leaving home.

The day before, I went to town. At the village entrance, I looked at the row of locked houses above and felt a wave of dead silence. This bend has ten households, including my grandparents. Usually only five elderly people and one child live here. Those who haven’t gone out to work mostly live in the township and only occasionally return to pick some vegetables before hurrying away. One day on the road, I ran into someone about twenty years older than me who went to school with my dad. According to family hierarchy, I should call him “brother.” He talked about their childhood games, vividly describing the lively atmosphere when the village was full of people. But now, forget about children’s noise—even dog barks are rarely heard. Though I don’t want to, I have to foresee that this village at the county border, just two or three kilometers from the national highway or Chengdu-Chongqing Expressway, will eventually lose its vitality—not because of natural disasters or war, but due to the inevitable population flow from rural urbanization. I’m always worried this village will be blown away by a sudden wind like Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude, disappearing from people’s memories.

Only those far from home can truly feel the imprint their hometown has left on their hearts. I grew up in the countryside, and its mountains and waters, winds and clouds, fields and lands are deeply etched in my heart. In dreams, I can still see the shadow of myself as a child chasing someone at the dumb mouth of the valley—I don’t know who it was. Maybe it was Dad leaving home, or maybe someone on a motorcycle. But these fragments of memory are about to lose their roots, like duckweed floating with the current.