Even if the name and body of the author of this book are gone, the elders in this story about retreat, escape, hiding, and displacement should not be forgotten. They are: Tai Jingnong, Fu Shizhong, Ouyang Zhongshi, Hu Jinquan, Gao Yang, and Jia Sizeng. They may not be acquainted with each other, but by chance, they passed on all kinds of education with a long history to the author of the book who was incapable and magnificent—the son of another shameless old gentleman named Zhang Donghou.
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Perhaps out of a secret sense of escape, when I was in college, I didn't like to go home during the winter and summer vacations. I always mixed up with some overseas Chinese who could not return home and applied to the dormitory supervisor. One of the conditions is, of course, to pay the full dormitory fee, and the second is to move out of the original room and squeeze with a few foreign students from Vietnam or Myanmar. I have no problem with overseas Chinese, but once I move in, it forms a force that invades their small society. So one of the Myanmar students in charge of night access control management later discussed with me: If I promise not to move there, he can turn on the power in the bedroom that I live in (actually the four rooms in our corner) at night. In this way, I don’t even have to file a formal overnight stay application at all, and I don’t have to pay any fees. I only need to get another key before the end of the semester, so I can enter and leave the dormitory at any time during the vacation. The only inconvenience is that I have to put a layer of black paper on the transom above the door and the inside of the push window facing the tennis court to prevent the indoor lights from escaping; and I can only put a sixty lamp between the corner of the table and the bed board. A small lamp of watts, and try to be active at night-without making any sound. In other words: act like a mouse.
I officially became a rat during the winter break between the first and second semesters of my sophomore year. I felt that the money paid in the previous two vacations was a waste of money, and I didn’t know that those overseas Chinese did not like me to break into them. The real reason for life is that they think my feet smell bad-there is no need to argue about this, because no one thinks how good someone else's feet smell. In short, even though the holiday during which I lived a rat-like life was only one month, it had an extremely far-reaching impact on me. In retrospect, it seemed to be more than a month, more than a severe winter; it seemed to sum up my college life, the end of my youth, and the golden years. It was also the first time in my life that I began to enter a real, thorough, and solitary day. Rats than mice—at least the mice don’t have to hide when the same kind appears, but live like a thief in a Catholic university that is famous for its moral education. I’d better not contact anyone, because once contacted, it is bound to Make me aware of my state; an illegal existence. You can definitely imagine the situation: at a certain moment when walking on the cold campus, someone shouted: "Zhang Dachun, why are you here? Didn't you go home? Is there anything wrong?" Or: "You still live in the dormitory Is it?" Then I have to lie. Saying anything casually is a lie.
Yes, I still live in the dorm. Every day, only at dusk, at the moment when six o'clock in the afternoon comes, the moment when the Burmese overseas Chinese turns on the power for me, the whole world has a little connection with me. Only at that moment, I felt that someone still knew and recognized my existence. In addition, that kind of life is boring even when describing it; I get up at about six in the morning every morning, tiptoe out of the dormitory, go out through the small door on the east side of the campus, and walk 17 minutes to a house called Man Yuan. Spring’s bakery buys half a loaf of toast, three boxes of milk, and one hundred grams of ham slices. On the return trip, a small shop that specializes in selling cooked food in the nearby cafeteria just opened the iron rolling door, where you can buy piping hot brine. Eggs and cabbage, if the proprietress is in a good mood, she will scoop a spoonful of chilli and cucumber in a plastic bag. These are my meals for the day-except on Sundays, there is no cooked food on this day because the cafeteria is closed. I usually take a one-and-a-half-hour bus ride home on Sunday morning, eat lunch, take my pocket money and six days’ worth of fruit, and then go to the bookstore to pay all the dormitory fees that I haven’t paid and the food money I saved. Spend there.