Meitai Lane, you can hear a piece of history early in the morning

We live in Mei Tai Lane, which is an old alley. I have heard this place name from various people since I first came to Shashi.

When I first started working, I had to find a place to live. Even after walking a few steps in an unfamiliar place, I felt it was already far away. The first few houses I looked for were all in winding alleys. I only remember that the roads were paved. The bluestone floor often splashes water when it rains. Coupled with the anxiety and unsatisfactory mood of just going to work, I really feel that this place is terrible, and it looks cramped and insignificant everywhere.

Later, the work unit arranged a place to live. Everyone called that place a pawn shop. It sounded like it would be packed up and sold at any time. I was always frightened to live there. Fortunately, all the people living there were colleagues. Although I'm not in the same company, so I've heard about it a lot, and slowly I've become familiar with this place. But I often hear Shashi locals talking about what happened back then, and I always feel like I'm listening to someone's story. After all, I've never participated in it. , Moreover, the glory has long since faded. People who listened laughed and laughed, and those who spoke sighed, but it was difficult to understand.

Now that I have been married for seven years, I consider myself an authentic Shashi wife. I still live in Mei Tai Lane. During this period, I wanted to buy a new house countless times, but Mr. Wang always refused for various reasons, so my life Still centered on this alley extending in all directions. The exit of Meitai Lane leads to Beijing Road to the north. The intersection of Beijing Road and Yuanlin Road is the landmark of Shashi - Shashi, a stone as high as a person with a hole in the middle, standing on the bank of the river. To the west is Salonda Square. When I got married, the Times Mall on the opposite corner of the square was still there. It carries the memories of generations of Shashi people and leads wave after wave of fashion. However, I have never entered this city since I arrived. I went shopping there, because from the outside it looked like they were all cheap wholesale clothes and shoes, so it was of little use to me. Later it was rebuilt and turned into the current Renxinhui. There is a Wanda Cinema on it. It is connected to the underground passage of Beijing Road. There are still many people. It seems to have become more fashionable, but I always feel that it is missing a bit of flavor. .

The two corners of the square connecting the two sides of Beijing Road are not the current underground passages, but two overpasses. It is very lively during National Day or New Year's Day and other festivals. It is more interesting than just shopping in the underground mall now. There are so many - shopping malls are the same in every city. However, the grand scene of these two overpasses appearing during festivals is hard to find elsewhere: because they are just under the square, just past Beijing Road, there is Zhongshan Park, and there are several large shopping malls in the city. Not far from this road, there are many vendors selling Kongming lantern balloons and other seasonal gadgets during holidays. Even many fresh students or office workers go wholesale to join in the fun and are completely different from Wuhan. The children who asked their brothers and uncles if they wanted to buy flowers when caught on Jianghan Road had the disgusting smell of philistine copper. After dinner in the evening, the elderly went to the park for a walk, danced and danced with guns and swords. Relatives who had returned from afar would definitely go out for a stroll after having a family reunion and having a good meal. The young people who were full of energy and youth would naturally refuse to do so. Let’s miss the opportunity of the festival. Of course, what I like most are the children who are jumping for joy. This scene looks like the Lantern Festival in a Dream of Red Mansions. Parents should really be on guard whether their children will get lost like Xiang Lian. At this time, there must be a crowd of people on the overpass. Everyone raised their heads and looked at the sky, watching the sky lanterns flying in all directions, flying far away and no longer visible, rising as high as stars, expressing their blessings and screaming. The shouts one after another in the city center made fireworks rise in everyone's heart. The festive atmosphere reached its peak, and the joyful emotions boiled at night. The lonely people would be infected and temporarily forget the depression in their hearts. Later, the overpass was demolished, and several special places were arranged for setting off fireworks in the city. I have never been there, so I wonder if the scene is still there. A few people still come to put up lights in the square during holidays, but they are few and far between, adding to the melancholy. Once they actually floated onto a newly repaired building and caught fire. Several fire trucks had to be called in, which turned into a farce. Gradually, no one let go.

Going south from Meitai Lane is Zhongshan Road. This is the road that most evokes the feelings of Laosha City people. This road is paved with bluestone slabs, which I guess I found when I first came here. The path the house took. There are still several old buildings on Zhongshan Road, including the post office. It is said that it was a water prison built when the Japanese occupied it. When Mr. Wang pointed it out to me, he said that there was a soldier guarding the corner when he went up the steps, as if he had seen it. It's the same thing, maybe he's watched too many dramas about tearing up Japanese people with his hands, and he always fantasizes about tearing one up, but the joke doesn't work here, and the atmosphere is still heavy for no reason after so many years. There is another place where I worked when I first came here. It has now been turned into the archives warehouse of ICBC. There are two large round pillars outside. The three words Xu Jiayuan are engraved on the door frame. I can vaguely see the red paint sprayed on it. I think Whether it was the mansion of a famous family at that time, no one told me. Because I am the first young girl recruited by the company in many years, my colleagues are very enthusiastic, and they seem to have a lot of family stories to tell me - stories, I am very happy. This building appears to be at most three rooms wide from the outside, but deep and narrow inside. When the power goes out, even if the sun shines brightly outside, the innermost room used for dining by the kitchen staff will be dark, just like at night. So at noon when the power was out, I listened with the weak flame of a candle to one of my eldest colleagues who finished renovating this house. It was a tragedy. The plot was too tragic to go into details. What I can’t forget is my colleague at that time. The eldest sister was sitting across from me, with the candlelight flickering, and she spoke with such emotion and emotion that I felt extremely horrified, but seeing her eyes wide open and her lifelike voice added to the terrifying atmosphere, which made me finish the meal without even finishing it. Escaped. Later, when there was a power outage, I was troubled, and my eldest sister would often laugh at me. This cannot be blamed on me for being timid, but on her telling stories so well. So these old buildings really don't give me a good impression of this road, but they carry the pain of this city's past. Further south on this road is the riverside. The famous treaty port is here. Everyone knows about the unequal treaties. The prosperity of the past is no longer there. There is a Yangtze River Bridge on the river that was said to be the longest in Asia when it was built. It connects Shashi and several counties and cities under the jurisdiction of Jingzhou.

? Meitai Alley is not a long walk, but everyone who comes here is always a regular customer of a small restaurant, a fruit stall or even a breakfast shop. A colleague once said that she rode a bicycle a long way to buy breakfast in the morning. I was curious about where she went and asked about it. She said that she went to Mei Tai Lane, which made me laugh inwardly. Living here all the year round, I don’t think there’s anything special about it. Anyone selling fried dough sticks and selling soy milk here can become the protagonist of the city’s news. Nowadays, when friends go to meet up at a restaurant with too much oil and water, they will bring their own steamed buns and porridge, and ask where the steamed buns come from. The most popular one must be the old noodle steamed buns from Mei Tai Lane. Each stall is like an arena, and those who can stick to it all year round are like the masters of the arena, calm and relaxed after a hard fight. I often take my children to a wonton shop in the morning. The owner is not a local. The store looks spacious among the narrow breakfast shops. It only sells two kinds of breakfast, hot dry noodles and wontons. The hot dry noodles are served with some millet porridge. , the taste is different from Wuhan Hot Dry Noodles. The wonton soup has some seaweed and shrimp skin, which is a favorite breakfast for the elderly and children with weak teeth.

This morning, because it was Sunday, our family of three went to Mei Tai Lane to have breakfast (usually we all go our separate ways in the morning, based on our respective work units and schools). I usually don't like to eat this kind of food, but Niuniu likes it very much recently, and her father also eats it too. I bought some tofu, steamed dumplings, glutinous rice cakes and the like and sat at the table next to them to eat and wait. Both of them. Except for the two of them, the people at their table were all old people. A couple of new people joined in, and they struck up a conversation with the old man at the same table who was sitting alone. Usually the old people would ask Gui Geng first when they spoke, and this pair of chatters were no exception. The single old man said that he was eighty-eight years old. Everyone saw that he was alone, neatly dressed and full of energy. His voice was not loud but loud and clear. The diners in the room all praised him and said It’s okay to live to be a hundred years old.

When the old man saw someone chatting with him, he was very excited. He said that he had participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, but survived and came back alive. Immediately, a good person next to him asked him about retirement wages and pensions. The old couple who had just asked the question answered: " We don’t have any objection to how much we pay. It’s a life-and-death struggle.” Then they all started talking about their retirement life and the company they worked for before retirement. , and how many people I may just know are now there, the old people talk about it as if they are all in front of me, and they are all new and strange to me.

However, our breakfast has been finished, and I can’t continue listening to it. Niu Niu is going to practice calligraphy. Well, yes, every stroke and stroke has to be practiced, starting from childhood. Walking out of the breakfast shop, it seems like a century has passed. The environment seems to be different from the one when I first came in. What did I hear? Or is it because of what happened? I'm not sure. However, the change has indeed happened unconsciously. This is Mei Tai Lane, and I have just spent a little time there.