Last year, a friend from Taipei came to Beijing and asked me to complete a task: in just two weeks, I would take her to "see" Beijing as much as possible. She is a "new Taiwan" who grew up when Lee Teng-hui was in charge of Taiwan. After Taiwan University, he went to Oxford for further study. After completing his studies, he returned to work in New Taipei. She bears the common imprint of this generation of well-educated young people in Taiwan: she does not feel that Taiwan is the homeland of the soul, nor does she feel that the West is Mount Zion worth living in. There is curiosity, vigilance, and a hint of hidden fear about the increasingly powerful continent. She came to Beijing for a short-term training, and seemed to be preparing for her future development in the mainland. Before the trip, when he was indecisive, he called her Oxford tutor to ask if she wanted to come, "Why not? The best opportunities in the world in this industry are in Beijing." She hung up the phone, and my task came.
I didn't take her to the scenic spots. The countries she has been to are far better than mine. She can check in the scenic spots in Beijing by herself. Instead, I watched a few stage plays with her, and ate a few times in restaurants at different price points. We had a great time talking every time we met. At that time, it coincided with the tenth anniversary performance of Meng Jinghui's "Opinions on the Life of Two Dogs". After watching it, she was in high spirits and analyzed the evolution of avant-garde drama and the reconstruction of the fourth wall from a professional point of view. I was suddenly aware of the turbulent passage of time through Beijing and through my body: Once upon a time, I would watch a drama like this. But now I can better understand the terriers used in the two dogs. There is pain after laughing. Hearing "The Flower House Girl" will raise melancholy. Unlike her, I am no longer a tourist. I have been destroyed by this city, and I have been reborn from the ruins, and I will never go back to my former hometown.
Just like Jianqing, like Xiaoxiao.
I officially came to Beijing in 2009. When I was not familiar with this city, I took refuge with a high school friend who was working hard in Beijing. He lives in the first eight. I saw with my own eyes the magical scene in "The City of Landing": the first eight are close to Tsinghua University and Linda University, and it only takes ten minutes to walk to Wudaokou. It was a famous urban village at that time. Tenants are bizarre, college students, IT migrant workers, garbage collectors, small vendors, and even international students from Africa and the Middle East are attracted by cheap housing prices and convenient transportation. The landlord, with the demolition and relocation, has a lot of money. The landlord of a friend sent his two daughters to Canada through the demolition and bought them a house of 500 square meters. The two of them were in Beijing guarding the remaining house that was about to be demolished and doing nothing. The man was lying at home smoking a lot of cigarettes all day, and the woman was playing cards and chatting with the young male tenant.
My friend graduated from a famous domestic university, and my girlfriend was still in graduate school at the University of Mining and Technology. His dream at the time was to build a snack empire, so he didn't want to find a serious job in Beijing. In order to realize his dream, he bought a breakfast cart, developed his own recipes for buns, and pushed the cart to Linda University, Mining University, and Beiyu University in the morning and evening to find students for trial sales. I don't think it's a good path to success, but it's romantic and it seems to be a good way to observe life in Beijing, so I went out with him a few times when I was free. Winter in Beijing is really cold. There is not much enthusiasm for making buns, so it is difficult to attract buyers, and sometimes the sales are not as much as we eat ourselves. I didn't care, I chatted with the vendors and students next to me while eating. When I was in the mood, I went to the Wudaokou Cinema for a night show, but my friends became increasingly melancholy.
Later, I moved into a hutong in Dongcheng due to a job change. The size of Beijing is not only in space - life in Dongcheng Hutong and life in Haidian urban villages are separated into two completely different worlds by a two-hour bus ride. And quickly changed our development trajectory: my friend’s popular recipes have been progressing slowly. Due to lack of financial resources, I first resumed my profession and went to work in a law firm, and then I felt that the law firm was tied up and couldn’t continue to sell buns, so I became a security guard and then changed. became a courier. The girlfriend who graduated with a master's degree couldn't bear him more and more moving to the lower classes of society, and proposed to break up several times. My friend's heart is getting bigger and bigger, and one day he will get a strange disease that cannot be found out, such as cervical pain, dizziness, and when he gets dizzy, he can't do anything. In the late autumn of 10 years, we ate at Guijie, and we hadn't seen each other for three months. He hesitated several times, and before parting, he hugged me tightly. The next day he went south to Shenzhen to join his younger brother. He returned to his hometown not long after, and never came to Beijing again.
He is the only friend who remembers my birthday every year. It was the bunk where Haizi and Camus used to talk all night together. It was the brother who picked me up at the West Railway Station when it was snowing heavily in the capital. He was the only one who helped me move twice in Beijing. It is the companion who watched "2012" together and went to KTV to sing "Good Night Beijing". It was the best friend who witnessed each other's first love... After returning to their hometown, my friend first started in a family business and reinvested a little of the money they earned. Because they couldn't adapt to the primary market in third-tier cities, they failed again, and they entrusted someone to enter an insurance company. Resigning, taking a lawyer's qualification test, doing odd jobs in the court... The last time we met was when his son was born. He found a local tour guide to marry. The son's name is Senran. "Is everything so peaceful?" he said. "How is Beijing now?" "Is it okay?" An embarrassing long silence...I only remember the year he just left, I felt very lonely, but Beijing quickly filled me with its busyness, but when I was insomnia, I knew clearly that something had been cut off . When the wound encounters loneliness, it will ache faintly.
I told my friends in Taipei about this story. She also sighed. She is the second generation of foreigners and is as international as Rene Liu. But she also experienced the time of calling her mother and crying late at night when she was overwhelmed by heavy schoolwork in the UK. Thinking of the past in the UK, she also had some similar feelings. "It now looks like it's a blurry country," she said. In that country, she had never experienced love. But after returning to Taipei, he wrote several Harry Potter fan fictions in his spare time. "Writing is healing for me," she seemed a little embarrassed when she talked about her work. "I can't settle in London. I just can't. You know. So I didn't become a new immigrant."
Probably this is also the reason why Liu Ruoying is not good at telling the story of Jianqing and Xiaoxiao. Never been destroyed by this city, let alone stood up on the ruins. It is impossible to describe the depth and complexity of Bei Piao's emotions. Xiaoxiao's face is blurred and unfounded. Jian Qing is also thin and outrageous, as if he was just staying for the sake of staying. Rene Liu "can't see" Beijing. So I can only sing "Later" in a whisper. Stacked up with some embarrassing lines. Even the role career settings are almost pale - in 2009, Zhongguancun computer sales have gradually withered. The small shops of Hailong and Dinghao were largely depressed. 10 years of real estate agents earn a lot of money. Doing real estate sales is one of the best careers for many foreign youths. The game has not yet arrived. Beijing has yet to start cleaning out basements. In 11 years, Momo began to shape urban love. If Jian Qing and Xiaoxiao are real people, they sell discs on Guanghua Road, but they don't live in Tongzhou but in Apple Garden. How could they survive in Beijing for ten years?
What is certain is that it is impossible for all the people in this movie to understand Ruin Band's "Beijing". The movie is just a gust of wind passing through the empty Chang'an Avenue late at night. Wrinkled some memories, destined to be fleeting.
But it doesn't matter. It's like seeing Qing and Xiaoxiao passionately buying breakfast all night only to find that the building is empty. We will all disappear into the vast sea of people, whether we miss it or not. isn't it?
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