But he didn't forget me.
One day last month, I suddenly got a call from him from Guangdong-saying that he had been looking for me for n years. Through another junior high school classmate, I found my trace on the internet and my mobile phone number. Finally rescued in the vast sea of people. I have to admit that the internet is amazing.
"Old classmate, how are you now?" An ordinary greeting made my heart slightly panic. Thirty-two years! This elder brother suddenly appeared from his recent visit and waved to me, letting me hold the familiar body temperature, breathing, joy and sadness when I was a teenager. Suddenly I had a dream.
Memories are pulled back to the era of bunk beds.
/kloc-in the autumn of 0/982, I was in the second day of my hometown Luojiaba. Zhong Jian seems to have failed the grade. When he came to our class, he was stocky, dark-skinned and chubby. When he laughed, he showed his white teeth. Zhong Jian and I are far from home. In order to study in the evening, we first found one near the school with a bed, and they slept together. Later, the school arranged a big dormitory, where more than a dozen students in grades two and three lived together and got through the pole building.
The room was dark without windows, full of sweat and mildew, and the ground was covered with quilts, bamboo mats and straw. When everyone sleeps, their heads are next to their feet. Rural children don't know suffering, but feel very happy. Zhong Jian sleeps on my right, and we talk about those study problems every night, such as Chinese, algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry ... At that time, we all worked too hard to get into a technical secondary school or a high school, reading books and doing test questions all day. He admired my general performance in China Construction.
Sometimes, we also talk about Huo Yuanjia and Song Wu. Watching martial arts TV at that time was a spiritual feast. There is a black-and-white TV in the school, and hundreds of people are watching it, which is very lively. After watching TV, a group of children "practiced martial arts" under the camphor trees on campus, shouting "hey hey", fighting at random, or kicking trees with their feet. Zhong Jian has physical strength and often kicks trees violently in the moonlight.
Zhong Jian's clothes are very old, and several pieces of each one have been mended. Tuition will not be paid until the middle of maturity. There are many brothers in his family, and his father seems to be ill. It is not easy for him to go to junior high school. We talk about our ideals together. His greatest wish is to be admitted to a normal school, become a primary school teacher and get a "national food stamp". Actually, my wish is similar. What ideals can we have for children in remote rural areas?
In my impression, in order to save money, Zhong Jian seldom eats breakfast, and Chinese food is steamed rice in porcelain cups. There is only rice in the cup, sometimes a little dried sweet potatoes and pickles are put in it, and there is little oil and meat. Of course, our Chinese food is very poor, and eating steamed rice in porcelain cups for a long time is disgusting. Once, I ordered a piece of Sichuan-style pork for 25 cents. I wanted to give some to Zhong Jian, but he firmly refused. At that moment, his face flushed, as if I were going to give him 10 thousand yuan, which made him feel at a loss. Alas, brothers on the floor, how poor and healthy our friendship was in those days!
1June, 984, I graduated from junior high school, and I was admitted to the normal school as I wished, but Zhong Jian failed in the list and didn't even get into high school. There is a trace of loneliness on his smiling face. I don't remember how I separated from Zhongjian last time. We live in different villages, far apart. When we were in middle school, we passed some letters intermittently. He went out to work, first in Fujian, then in Jiangxi or Xinjiang, and then disappeared. When he was in Fujian, he sent me a photo, standing on the dock in a white shirt with a boat in the background and a magazine in his hand. He is energetic, young and promising, unlike a wage earner.
After several moves, the photos have long been lost, but the image of Zhong Jian when he was young has always been fixed in my heart. I can't imagine how rich he is now.
From the phone, I know that Zhong Jian has opened a garment factory in Guangdong, with hundreds of employees, a car and a house, a capable wife and two children, the oldest of whom has gone to college. My brother, who used to sleep on the floor, is now developed and has a sense of accomplishment. But I don't know how he came here in these 32 years. It is estimated to be full of hardships and tribulations. After all, he only has a junior high school education. While being happy for China Construction, I also lamented my mediocrity. Life is not hard, but there are many setbacks and few hardships, so my old friend is still trapped under the heavy shackles of life after middle age. Time, life?
Zhong Jian attaches great importance to friendship. He said he would give me a dress. I said, forget it, we are old classmates. He said, impossible, what his own company does has different meanings. It wasn't long before the courier came. This is a wool coat without a trademark. It seems that his company is still small, helping large companies to do OEM work. The clothes are good, but they are a little short. After 32 years, he is not familiar with my height or even my life. We, just brothers who played on the floor in those days, remember each other as teenagers.
Brother bunk also went to QQ. His QQ name is "Ghost of Lake and Sea", which is actually a pseudonym I used when I corresponded with him in normal school, pretending to be cynical. I forgot it a long time ago, but he remembered it and picked up QQ, good brother! Time will change many things in life, such as fate, life, thoughts ... but the friendship of youth will always be hidden in my heart, like amber in the sand, warm, complete and eternal. What a great comfort!
At this point, the QQ of the bunk brother is online. My QQ is also on. Our QQ is professional, busy and trivial, and has no emotion. He doesn't talk, and I don't talk. Do we still need to talk? It's been 32 years, and suddenly an entrepreneur with a big belly in a suit and tie appears on the Internet. I'm scared. He doesn't look like his older brother.
Let time stay forever 32 years ago. Although, there is only one mouse between us.
Amber caravan
I have been working in villages and towns recently, and I have to take a 40-minute bus to and from work every day. Usually leave at eight in the morning, go home at six in the evening, and run back and forth on Panshan Highway every day. When I take the bus, I like to see the scenery outside the window. The local area belongs to the coal mining area. Most of the roads are barren limestone mountain walls, and occasionally there are some tea mountains, bamboo forests and crop fields. Because the dust is big and the color is not green, the farmhouse along the road is dusty. This feeling is naturally not very cool. Only when the caravan appears on the highway can people shine at the moment.
The horses I saw in the morning, like people, all went out to work. In the morning light, several stocky horses lined up on the roadside, carrying heavy goods, wagging their tails, lowering their heads and walking quietly. A big bamboo basket is hung on the left and right of each horse, which contains building materials such as cement, lime and flaky. Two bamboo baskets are set up with wooden sticks and pressed tightly on horseback. Along the way, their bodies were covered with sunshine, their yellow, brown or black hair was stained with dust, sparse and messy, emitting hot sweat, and their horseshoes "clicked" on the hard road.
Horses are driven by ordinary villagers, sometimes even old people and women, holding branch-like whips, without shouting or flogging, just holding the reins, and the horses follow honestly. The master didn't speak, and the horse didn't say a word, like a group of stones moving silently. Occasionally, because a horse can't bear the load, it will raise its head and spray its nose, and look at our car by the way. Its mouth is grinning, and it seems to be smiling at us innocently. Its eyes are particularly gentle and simple, like those children in the mountains.
The horses here are typical southern ponies. They are not tall or strong, but their bones and muscles are strong, their legs are short and strong, and they are good at climbing mountains. A horse can carry three or four hundred kilograms and walk on the rugged mountain road. It is said that there were caravans before liberation, but they all traveled long distances to Guizhou and Chongqing to sell salt and mountain products. At that time, there were groups of caravans on some ancient roads. After liberation, the caravan was once extinct. In recent years, with the development of rural areas, caravans have gradually appeared. But now villagers generally don't run long distances when raising horses. They mainly carry bricks, stones, cement and other heavy objects to mountainous areas where roads are blocked.
Once when I went to the countryside, I met a fellow villager who was transporting goods and asked him about the horse market. According to him, a horse is worth about 2,000 yuan, and it costs more than 20 yuan to eat more than 10 kilograms of feed every day, mainly peas, corn, wheat and forage, and a horse can earn 78 yuan for a day's work! Villagers said, proudly patting a horse next to him, Huang Ma, who was panting. After a busy day, the horse was still carrying two bags of cement, and several deep blood stains had been drawn on his back. I touched its back, and it wagged its tail at me, wondering if I was grateful.
Whenever I look at these humble and honest ponies, I always sigh in my heart: this is fate! Similarly, horses in the north can gallop like the wind in grasslands and deserts. The earth is their stage, freedom is their character, and running is their image. In the south, these Ma Tiansheng carry heavy loads, put on harnesses and carry heavier goods than themselves. They trudged and tired endlessly on the mountain road until they failed and died of old age. Throughout their lives, they never dreamed of vast grasslands, vast deserts and open sunshine avenue, and never embraced the dream of Mercedes-Benz, except walking on these bumpy roads, where they were covered with blood scabs grinded by thorns and rocks.
However, the tenacity shown by these ponies is really respectable. People often refer to doing heavy manual work as "being a cow and a horse". Relatively speaking, horses are more loyal and diligent than cattle. Cows are generally not exhausted. If they really can't bear the load, they will be lazy and lie on the ground. Therefore, although cows are hardworking, they sometimes win an indecent name: lazy cows. Horses are different. Although there are "good horses" and "bad horses", there are never "lazy horses". It would rather be exhausted than stop trudging. In the face of these simple horses, I think of some poems I have read: "I am an old horse immersed in thousands of years of farming/forgot to gallop/earned my whip and hometown." I think there must be an inner force supporting these horses when they are carrying heavy loads and walking hard in the depths of the mountains. Otherwise, how can they climb such a high mountain pass and cross such a deep ravine?
I also heard of one thing: at the beginning of the development of a local scenic spot called "Ordovician Park", the owner invited some caravans to carry materials. Due to the tight construction period and heavy traffic, horses worked day and night, and four horses died on the construction site. This story is very sad. In my opinion, the park owner should build a monument for these four Matthew horses, so that people can remember these animals who gave their lives for human happiness when playing. Although they are so humble and silent when they are alive on earth, who can say that their souls are not more holy and noble than us human beings in front of the merciful gods?
On the way to work, meeting a caravan is another scene. As the sun sets and dusk falls, the horses end their day's work and walk at a brisk pace under the steep mountain wall, which is so relaxed and comfortable. They shook their vigorous bodies in the sunset glow leaked from the Woods. There are grass and wild flowers along the road. Some horses can't help but stop and nibble comfortably, and their owners are not in a hurry. Some horses still have a lot of grass in their bamboo baskets, which were pulled by their owners. Horses and their owners walked quietly along the road for a while, and then returned to those farmhouses with orange lights and rested there.
Our car has gone far. Looking back, the caravan had already disappeared, and the mist was as slender as the reins on the mountain road, hidden into the night. I don't know, at that night, when those horses stood by the stable and chewed silently, would they forget the hard work during the day and occasionally think about things related to running ...