But there is Batai, my hometown has no cattle and sheep
After the broadcast of "My Altay", many people declared that Altay is their spiritual homeland. But I don't know why, the more beautiful the grassland is, the more it reminds me of my hometown.
The town where I was born and raised is no different from any other small town in the south of the Yangtze River. There is a small river running through the town. On both sides of the river are several houses occupying good terrain. There are also several alleys between the houses leading to the outer streets. The whole town is centered on a crossroads and is divided into four streets: east, south, west, and north. The crossroads was built into a street garden in the 1980s, which is the landmark of the town. The so-called street garden actually has no garden. It is surrounded by iron chains and concrete piers, and in the center is a traffic police booth for directing traffic.
After dinner, people say to their families: I'm going to the street garden. This is a good place to take a walk after dinner and chat with neighbors and friends. When boys and girls go on a date, they will also say: I'll wait for you in the street garden. Therefore, on every iron chain in the street garden that can swing back and forth like a swing, there will be a girl looking around waiting for her lover.
The market is on the east side of the street garden. Usually, it is just an ordinary road. At four or five in the morning, the ground on both sides is filled with farmers who come to the morning market, bringing their own vegetables, eggs, pork... Everything is their own. If you say that his things are not good, it will be the deepest hurt to him, and he will be unwilling to sell things to you from then on.
We have the same "Batai" in TV dramas - boys who learned to ride bicycles very early and would take girls to the Yangtze River on weekends. Don't forget that the territory of us Jiangnan people is water, the Yangtze River, the river flowing in every town, like warm blood flowing day and night.
We rode hard for about an hour, passing through the street garden, squeezing through the market, and passing by the rice fields that were about to be harvested. Finally, the houses became increasingly sparse, and the Yangtze River embankment slowly unfolded like a long scroll.
We couldn't wait to throw the car down the embankment and climbed up carefully. The embankment was narrow and the end was out of sight. The rolling water of the Yangtze River made a rumbling sound. Standing on the embankment, the wind was blowing, and it seemed that there was only one person left in the world. After trying to balance myself, a sense of pride rose in my heart. The "Batai" shouted loudly in the wind: We will go to a very far place in the future! We will go to the end of the Yangtze River! The momentum of the teenagers seemed to have achieved half of it just by shouting, but the sound was swept away by the wind as soon as it came out, leaving behind an "ah" and mixed with the sound of the wind.
After they finished talking, they ran down the sloping dam slope amid the girls' screams, their speed getting faster and faster, partly to show off and partly because they really couldn't stop. They stopped only when they were just a line away from the Yangtze River. When they looked down, they found their shoes were soaked by the river water.
At that time, we always yearned for the distance, thinking that as long as we walked along the Yangtze River, there would be a more wonderful world, not just a world of street gardens.
Later, the street gardens were demolished, the swings were gone, and people who took a walk after dinner were driven into the emerging large shopping malls, where pop songs were played non-stop and shelves were piled high. The market was moved to another place with a green roof and fixed stalls. The sellers who produced and sold their own products could not afford the stall fees and hid in the corners at the entrance of the market. Only familiar buyers could find them.
We stopped shouting by the Yangtze River. After a period of silence, one day, one of the "Batais" suddenly said: Maybe we can go see the sea. His eyes sparkled, as if he had found another shortcut to escape from his homeland. He later went to the south, very close to the sea. I didn't go far, I went to Shanghai, not far from the sea. Always choosing to live by the water may be the fate of us children from the south of the Yangtze River.
Shopping malls opened and closed and gradually withered. Tea shops, fried chicken shops, cake shops...physical stores opened and closed at a rate of months. Some of them could not continue to operate before they were even finished renovating. Many small merchants from other places wanted to gain a foothold in this town, but many of them lost their capital and returned to their hometowns. The town was turned upside down and was at a loss. It didn't know why these people came and went, leaving the mess behind.
In "My Altay", Batai's father Sulitan said that the life I loved disappeared bit by bit.
The hometown we like and are familiar with is also disappearing. Even if there are a few years when we don’t want to go back, our hometown has also completed its transformation in places we cannot see—for good or bad.
Sometimes I get shocked. What exactly is my hometown?
Try your best to escape, but a special habit or a spoken dialect will expose your origin at any time. Everything tells us: your beginning is here, and a part of you is integrated here.
