Reminiscing about childhood
——Lin Haiyin
My life interests are very broad and very ordinary. I like liveliness but am afraid of loneliness. I have loved to get into crowds since I was a child.
I remember that in the summer evenings in Peking when I was young, I would sit on a small bench and sit in a large crowd to listen to ghost stories. The more I listened, the more afraid I became, and the more afraid I became, the more I wanted to listen. Turning around suddenly, I saw a kitten catching a gecko in a dark oleander flower pot. I couldn't help but scream in fear. But he moved the bench forward and encouraged the adults to continue talking.
When I was seven or eight years old, there was a kind of "talker" who walked around the streets in Peiping, which left a deep impression on me. Also in the summer, every day after dinner, Mo Mo Zui hurried outside the gate to take a look. First came the tuberose sellers; they strung tuberoses into beautiful large flower baskets, with five or six hanging on a long bamboo pole. Women liked to buy them and hang them in their bedrooms, filling the room with fragrance at night. After a while, the "lightbulb changer" came over again. He carried a box on his back, which was full of old and new light bulbs. He paid a few bucks and exchanged the broken ones at home for new ones. To this day I still don’t understand what he used the old light bulbs for. Then, the "talker" I was most looking forward to came, carrying a "talker" (later renamed a gramophone, now it's a record player!) and carrying a big speaker like the dog-listening gramophone that's the trademark of Victory Company. I ran into the house and asked my mother to call him in. Even if my mother can't be disturbed, she will always obey me. As soon as my mother agreed, I ran out again. Before I could get out of the door, I shouted:
"The chatterbox! Don't leave! Don't leave!"
In fact, the chatterbox is When he sees me running into the house, of course he will wait at the door. He will not leave until he gets the result. While negotiating the price, a group of neighborhood children and old ladies gathered at the door. Once you come in after negotiating a good price, the crowd will follow you one after another. This is called "Ting Ceng'er" in Peking dialect. Sometimes I let them all in generously; sometimes when I disliked someone, I pushed him out and slammed the door. It was so majestic!
The person who sang the chatterbox put that big speaker on the chatbox. , and then put in EMI records. The film turned, and the two opening lines came first: "EMI specially invited boss Mei Lanfang to sing "Universal Frontier"." The diamond needle rubbed against the record that should have been retired long ago, making a squeaking sound, and he started singing, Sometimes it sounds like a cat, sometimes like a broken gong. If you come across a new record, the price will be increased! But because you are a familiar customer, you will always get a "foreign laugh" in the end. Before the song is even played, everyone starts laughing. When the foreigners really laugh, everyone He even laughed fiercely and performed a "happy ending" that was happy for everyone.
Children’s education in my mother’s era was different from our modern times. For example, my mother gave her a dollar (what a useful dollar!) and asked her to take us children to the “Chengnan Amusement Park”. You can while away a whole day and a whole night. No one said this was unreasonable. Because mothers at that time did not pay attention to the doctrine of "don't take children to public places".
The old lady at that time was really powerful. She had to make arrangements for entering the amusement park. She loved to listen to Zhang Xiaoying's civilized dramas "Saw Bowl Ding" and "Chun Ashi", so I couldn't go to the big theater. Listening to Xue Yanqin's "Plum Plum and Jade". Later, when I became more familiar with it and became more courageous, I found a topic - asking for two large coins (two copper coins) to go to the toilet, and then sneaked out and wandered around. Watch the juggler in a tuxedo; watch the girl with long braids singing the drum; watch the open-air movie "Kung Valley Orchid" by Zheng Xiaoqiu. In the theater, men and women are seated separately (with the exception of the boxes). Sometimes the audience is cheering for the "thrower of handkerchiefs", the one who sets out the melon seed plate, the one who sells magnolia flowers, the one who sells candy, the one who asks for tea money, walking back and forth, noisily, and sometimes they may catch a person losing his temper. The audience master flew the teapot.
There is a play poster on one side of the stage and a sign on the other side that reads "Official Order: No weird noises for cheering" are posted on the stage. However, looking at them only makes people's throats itch, and it is not satisfying to shout "good" twice.
The drama always ended last. It was already midnight. I hired a foreign car to go home. I fell asleep as soon as I got in the car. I don’t understand the mentality of the adults at that time. It was already past twelve o’clock and you were not allowed to fall asleep. You would sit on them (mothers or old women) and doze off, but they would shake you from time to time and say: “Don’t sleep! Hurry up! We’re home!” Later I asked my mother why she wasn’t allowing the sleepy child to sleep? My mother said that on the one hand, she was afraid of catching a cold, and on the other hand, she was afraid that she would be so sleepy that she would not be able to return home.
Many years later, the Chengnan Amusement Park was converted into a slaughterhouse. The prosperity of Chengnan had long since declined with the move of the capital to the south. If you happen to pass there, you will feel a sense of the past and present. This is not a nostalgia for the lively life of the past. The social customs at that time are not worth mentioning, just because those things were experienced in childhood. That is true joy, carefree, unmitigated joy.