Short novel: Zhanghe Travel Notes

My friend came back on Wednesday night.

I was working overtime at the company that night. If I hadn’t seen his Moments, I wouldn’t have known he was back.

I sent him a message that night and asked him why he came back suddenly? Is the company on vacation? But my friend said he just came back to see me.

From what he said, I knew something bad must have happened to him, but I had no intention of asking any more questions. I just asked him to go to the Zhanghe River on the weekend. He paused and agreed.

The Zhanghe River is regarded as the mother river of our city, with its long green water flowing through the entire city. In this increasingly busy city, it is the only unhurried scenery.

My friends and I live in the suburbs of the city, and we can see the water of the Zhang River when we go out. Maybe it's because we live in the upper reaches of the Zhang River. The water of the Zhang River at the door is clear and transparent, flowing quietly. From time to time, sparkling water flashes, like a pair of bright eyes, staring at this inconspicuous small town.

When I was a child, my favorite thing with my friends was to walk further upstream along the bank of the Zhang River to see where the end was? In all my childhood memories, the Zhanghe River occupies an absolutely important position.

When I saw my friend walking towards me from a distance, I was stunned and almost didn’t react. We met years ago, so it didn’t take long. But his change really surprised me. The memory of him from half a year ago was still a pair of sharp eyes like a falcon, a tall and straight posture that would never bend, and a majestic walk, just like the general's momentum when he returned from a victorious battle to show off.

But what now? As he walked toward me step by step, he was obviously a deserter who had lost the battle and lost his fighting spirit. Of course, he is more like a beggar living on the street. His beard clung to his face like dust. His eyes were also empty, without a trace of blood, let alone vitality. When he came completely closer to me, I felt like his eyes and mental state were like taking drugs. And what about him? He didn't care about the confusion in my eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked.

"Unemployed."

He spoke calmly in a low voice. He sighed vaguely.

My friend was holding on to the stone railing on the bank of the Zhang River with his eyes looking very distracted. And it’s hard for me to ask why he lost his job. I know him very well, and it feels a lot relieved to be able to talk to me about being unemployed so calmly. Of course, he might have said this because he knew I had noticed his embarrassment.

"Then what are you going to do next? Do you want me to introduce you to a job and you can do it first?"

"No, I can find it." He paused. I touched the back of my head and said, "Sooner or later."

I didn't know what to say for a moment, and my friend also looked at me and smiled. In the adult world, smile at each other and don't have to ask more questions.

The two of us walked along the road we often walked before toward the end of the upper reaches of the Zhang River. Along the way, we never had a word about work.

The weather in mid-April is already a bit hot. But walking by the river, the river breeze was blowing, and it was a bit chilly at times.

"I remember there was no concrete road like this when we came here after our senior year, right?" a friend suddenly asked.

"Well. This road should have been built in recent years."

"Time flies so fast! In the blink of an eye, we have graduated seven years ago."

< p> His sudden sigh caught me off guard. But before I could formulate a word to answer him, he continued to walk forward. Looking at the back of my friend. I thought to myself, maybe it was just a sigh? It was a bit baffling.

The upper reaches of the Zhang River are not like the Zhang River flowing through the city. The Zhanghe River that flows by the city has been cleaned up without even a trace of garbage. But it's different upstream. Maybe it's a little further away from the city. Residents living upstream will blatantly dump all their garbage into the Zhang River. Of course they knew it was wrong. But so what? They knew that the thrown garbage would be picked up by sanitation sanitation personnel if it floated all the way to the edge of the city along the Zhang River, and the river surface would be cleaned up, as if there had always been only river water in the river.

Therefore, on the water surface of the Zhanghe River, which is watching everything, the residents upstream just throw away garbage, while the sanitation workers on the edge of the city have to silently clean up the garbage because of their work. The two do not interfere with each other, but are closely connected.

Just as my friend and I were walking along the river, a middle-aged woman in her forties wearing heavy makeup, a cheongsam and a pair of flesh-colored stockings appeared in front of our eyes. A bag of garbage was thrown into the Zhang River. When the river flushed, all the rubbish contained in the rubbish bags scattered. At a glance, we saw that there were several red and green condom boxes among the garbage. When the middle-aged woman saw that we had seen the box, she did not hide it. Instead, she smiled at us, then twisted her waist and went back to the house. It was an extremely ordinary small shop with the word "massage" on it.

I don't care what business she does, because I can't possibly take care of her business or wish her a prosperous business. At least not now. I remember the last time I came here with my friends, this wasn't a massage parlor, it was probably a barber shop. But the boss hasn't changed. After changing the store name, business should be better. This can be judged from the garbage just now.

But I remember that she was still relatively shy at that time, or maybe she wore light makeup, or more likely, I remembered it wrong. I must have remembered it wrong.

The friend glanced at the back of the middle-aged woman and said, "Do you think it is easy for women to live a good life?"

I understand what he means. I didn't answer, just nodded. It's not that I agree with what he said, but I don't think it's necessary to talk about other people's "careers" behind their backs. Of course, the front is not necessary.

My friend added: "Either you grow well or you are born well. That's better than anything else."

"Well..."

I responded in a low voice. There was a sound. Maybe I agree with this sentence more than the previous sentence. And what about friends? He just glanced at me, said nothing, and walked straight ahead.

I sighed softly. If we were still in primary school now, we would never talk about these issues, but would justly stop the middle-aged woman from dumping garbage into the Zhang River. I may not, but my friends, I will.

After walking up the Zhang River for more than an hour, there were only a few scattered houses and cement roads with white smoke blown by the sun. But it was rare for him to become quiet. This is the suburbs of the city. Except for the occasional truck that sells fresh fruit and collects garbage, there are basically no cars. However, garbage collection trucks rarely come up here, and at most they drive outside the middle-aged woman's massage parlor.

As we continued walking forward, an old man in his sixties was pouring wheat from his family on the cement road in front of us. Then he used bamboo chopsticks to spread the wheat on the entire cement road. Except for a motorcycle path on the far right, the three-meter-wide cement road was completely occupied by the old man with wheat.

Seeing that we were approaching, the old man quickly shouted: "Go to the left, don't step on the wheat."

My friend and I had no other choice but to start from We walked through the reserved motorcycle path on our right, which was only fifty centimeters wide. Looking at the old man standing on the side of the road, concentrating on drying wheat with bamboo choppers, his proficiency told me that this was definitely not his first time. I have no reason to blame the old man, just like my mother who dried her bedclothes on the guardrail of the Zhanghe River every time. I know that's wrong, but I can't say "wrong".

The friend remained silent. I haven't spoken since I nodded. I don't know what he is thinking, and I don't ask him.

About twenty minutes further on, you will reach a large bamboo forest, which is where my friends and I used to play when we were kids. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t been here for a long time. After seeing the bamboo forest from a distance, I just felt that it was even more lush. In addition, in April, the bamboo leaves are tender and green, which is particularly pleasant.

I said: "Go and sit in the bamboo forest in front, just to hide from the sun."

My friend nodded in response. So we were going to sit in the shade by the bamboo forest. But just when we were about to get close to the bamboo forest, moans one after another came from the bamboo forest. Although the voice was very restrained, my friend and I still heard it clearly. Listening to this sound, my friend and I immediately understood what was happening in the bamboo forest and stopped walking forward.

A friend said: "Do young students nowadays like excitement so much? A taxi from the city costs at least fifty, right?"

"Well, it's almost fifty now. It used to be Cheaper." I took out the cigarette and handed him one.

Of course we cannot see the scene inside the bamboo forest. But just listening to the sounds that came into my ears one after another, I had already seen everything in my mind. My heart also felt itchy, as if a cat's claw was scratching me.

When my friend and I were about to finish smoking our second cigarette, the people in the bamboo forest finally came out. But to our surprise, what we thought was two people turned out to be three. Two men and one woman. The girl was wearing a floral skirt. She was young but very elegant. She looked like she was a college student in the city. The two men were not young, they looked to be a few years older than my friend and I. The two of them were dressed very casually, and apart from the reflective Rox Stantons on their wrists, I really thought they were gangsters. But it's not far behind. And these three people were obviously a little surprised that my friend and I appeared outside the bamboo forest. Especially that girl. After she glanced at my friend and I, she kept stroking her hair with her hands and covering her face with her hands.

But it was obviously not the first time that the two men had been touched by others for doing such a thing. As my friends and I watched, a man put his arm around the girl's waist, and another man quickly ran to the side of the bamboo forest and drove an off-road vehicle out. As my friends and I watched, the three men drove away. Watching their speed increase from slow to fast, then disappearing from sight in the blink of an eye.

I know that it is absolutely too late for the old man to harvest his wheat.

At this time, the friend stepped on the cigarette butt on the ground, crushed it, and slowly walked to the bamboo forest.

A friend said: "You think, if possible, can we make Takomaru once?"

Takomaru is a character in Akutagawa Ryunosuke's novel "In the Bamboo Forest" . The first foreign novel my friends and I read was "In the Bamboo Forest". Because it was a suspenseful story, and we didn’t have to think about the ideological content, characters, etc. at the time. So we've been wondering who the real murderer is. I think it's Takehiro Kanazawa himself, while my friend thinks it's Masa. As for the so-called murderer Duonangwan, neither my friends nor I think he is the real murderer.

I smiled and said: "Yes, if there are conditions. But do you want Zhensha or do you want to kill Takehiro Kanazawa?"

"Is there a difference?"

p>

"Of course, look at this..."

It's rare to bring up the topic. But before I could express my opinion, my friend interrupted me with a wave of his hand.

"You are different from before." The friend changed the subject, and his words suddenly became unusually sure and sharp.

"This...maybe, people will change. Who doesn't?" I did not deny it, and handed my friend another cigarette.

The friend took the cigarette and stopped talking for a moment. As for me, I just threw the lighter to him and waited for him to speak. The friend squeezed the cigarette in his hand, as if he wanted to say something, but when the words reached his lips, he took it back. The friend walked to the bamboo forest and looked at the bamboos and bamboo shoots sprouting out of the ground, and suddenly laughed.

My friend’s smile was too sudden, and he already looked a little depressed. His smile was like a dying person coming back to his senses.

I said: "What's wrong with you? Why are you laughing?"

"Do you think these bamboos look like people?"

"Bamboos look like people? ”

I have some doubts. I was wondering if he had been hit too hard outside and had some mental problems.

But I can only think about this in my heart, and I can never say it with my mouth. I walked to my friend and looked at the bamboo shoots and bamboos in front of me. Bamboo shoots can be big or small, and so can bamboo, which is no different from what you see in daily life. But when I look back at my friend, the smile on that worn-out face is actually mixed with a clearly visible pain, sadness and helplessness.

"Look at these bamboo shoots, their quality is determined from the moment they break the ground."

The friend stared at the bamboo shoots in front of him. One eye seemed to see the enemy, and the other eye seemed to see itself.

"They are all bamboo shoots, so they are different in size. How can they be distinguished?"

I suddenly didn't want to pay attention to my friend's unreasonable remarks. But what about friends? He didn't care at all about the tone of my answer. Instead, he touched an extremely thin bamboo shoot, then pointed to a thick bamboo shoot next to it that was obviously several times fatter, and said:

"Look, they are obviously all the same." The bamboo shoots were born in the same year, but one is so small and the other is so big." The friend said again: "Look at the color of this bamboo, it should be two or three years old. But it’s only as thick as our thumb.”

I followed what my friend said and looked over, and saw that there was much more than a bamboo as thick as a thumb. But beside them, there are several green bamboos that are as thick as my arms standing tall. Not only are they long and thick, but they are also unusually upright. The dense bamboo leaves absorb the sunlight upwards and suppress the growth space of the tiny bamboos downwards. Seeing these bamboos with different sizes but completely opposite ages. Why can't I understand what my friend means?

I sighed and said: "Natural selection, survival of the fittest. This is the law of nature."

"But they are the same species."

"I know, but doesn't the same species need to compete?"

"Of course it does. But how can it be easy for those who are born weak to compete with those who are born superior? "My friend touched the thin bamboo shoot with a gentle movement as if he was stroking himself. Before I could ask, my friend said again:

"Just like us, we work hard all our lives. The end of life is just the starting point of others. Although we can occasionally see a little sunshine, it is just a weak sunset. It is not only devoid of nutrition, but also so out of reach that it is fleeting before you can enjoy its nourishment. ”

I was silent. I don't know how to answer my friend's words. Suddenly, for a moment, I even felt that what my friend said was right. Because I can't find any reason to refute him.

At this moment, my friend reached out to the big bamboo shoot next to the thin one. Before I knew what my friend was going to do, he broke the big bamboo shoot in one hand. The tender white bamboo shoot meat leaks out of the bamboo shoot shell when it is broken, just like a woman's thigh wrapped under black leggings in winter.

The friend broke off the bamboo shoots and smiled slightly, with a touch of joy in his eyes and the corners of his mouth raised slightly. Then my friend threw the bamboo shoots into the Zhang River. I have no idea what to say. I can only look at the bamboo shoots flowing down the river. I think it will become a delicacy on someone’s dinner table tonight.

"Hahaha."

The friend looked at the rushing water of the Zhang River and burst into laughter. But the laughter was short. Before I could ask, he suddenly stared at the Zhang River in trance. Seeing my friend like this, I was afraid that he would lose his mind and jump into the Zhang River. So I stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder and said:

"Among all things in nature, water should be the fairest. It benefits all things without competing. Are you right?"

" The best is like water. If it is unfair, how can it be good for everyone?" The friend pointed to the water of the Zhang River in front of him and said:

"But human life is actually like the water of the Zhang River. " < /p>

"Why is it like Zhang River water?"

"Because sooner or later there will be one less H!"

"H?"

...

It was already getting dark on the way back. The old man had harvested his wheat early, and the woman who owned the massage parlor was doing a booming business. The further we walk into the city, the more we feel an indescribable strangeness.

But in my memory, I seem to have been sent back by the water of Zhanghe River. As I go down the river, my whole body becomes like the water of the Zhang River that is getting smoother and less passionate.

Where are your friends? Follow the water of Zhanghe River and never come back.

…………