The wheels of the train rolled over the winding rails from slow to fast, and time seemed to be replayed back to childhood with the clanging sounds. A group of barefoot children were chasing and playing on both sides of the rails, with snot hanging from their dirty little faces that could never be wiped clean. They were scolded by unfamiliar adults passing by and rushed to a safe area, but they would sneak back again after they left, jumping from one sleeper to another, and then holding their friends' waists one by one, and dreaming of driving a train along the endless track.
It was not until the green trains, belching thick black smoke and blowing long and shrill whistles, came speeding towards them from the distance that the children dispersed, ran to the side, covered their ears and opened their mouths wide, letting the whistling wind blow the muscles on their faces, making them change into all kinds of funny expressions like a funhouse mirror, and pointed at each other and laughed until their stomachs hurt.
The warm memories are like this, mottled green, swaying body, the smell of beer and boiled eggs in the crowded carriage, eating sunflower seeds, playing cards, chatting and drinking tea, knowing and not knowing people chatting in various dialects, occasionally focusing on the fashionable and beautiful girl across the aisle, looking at her for a while, the journey time becomes more beautiful. Even American travel writer Paul Theroux wrote in his personal book "Riding a Sterling, Taking a Train Across China": Here, the train is not a means of transportation, it is a part of the country, it is a place, a place to live.
As he said, since the 1980s, trains have always represented hope and strength. In his first stream-of-consciousness work, The Sound of Spring, Wang Meng used green trains as a carrier to vividly reproduce the various forms of life in a new era, including complaining women, selfish passengers, despicable thieves, forbearing old farmers, dedicated policemen and motivated students. In the book, the blind Zhou Yunpeng, who later became an idol for many people with his book Green Train, also described his sixteen years old in this way. That year, the sixteen-year-old Zhou Yunpeng leaned on a stick and got on a green train bound for Tianjin. He sat on the interlocking floor of the carriage, listened to the sound of steel colliding, drank a sip of beer and felt:
"The world has become my buddy"!
It was a fragile, romantic and short-lived era. When the wave of economic supremacy came pouring in, the ideals were finally shattered by the beating of reality. The Chinese people began to trample on the last dignity and bottom line unscrupulously. In the following ten years, such purity could no longer be found!
The moment Wen Liang boarded the train, he suddenly remembered Haizi's immortal poem when he followed a female writer who was more than 20 years older than him through Delingha by train:
Tonight I only have the beautiful Gobi Desert
Sister, tonight I don’t care about humans, I only think about you.
After entering the sleeper car and finding his own bed, Wen Liang was startled by the white bed and bright aisle. He then touched Fan Bo's shoulder and said, "The green train has soft sleepers and air conditioning?"
He asked An Baoqing to book the ticket, thinking it was an ordinary carriage. The key is that in his impression, there should not be such high-end trains in 1996. Fan Bo scratched his head. Although he often went to other places in recent years, he usually had a car to pick him up, and the train he took occasionally was basically an ordinary train. He really didn't study this issue. Seeing Wen Liang's rare curiosity, he smiled and said, "How about I go find a conductor to ask?"
Wen Liang was about to say no, when a sharp female voice came from behind them: "Move aside, a good dog doesn't block the road. Do you have any sense of public morality standing in the middle of the road?"
Fan Bo frowned, turned around and said angrily: "How can you talk like that?"
The one who made the rude remarks was a young girl in her early twenties, dressed gorgeously and looking sweet. Her eyebrows knitted together, showing her aggressiveness. She sneered, "What? Did I say something wrong? Two rough guys are blocking such a small aisle, and you're asking why the green train has air conditioning? I'm dying of laughter. You are color blind. This express train has orange and sky blue, but when has it ever been green?"
Before boarding the train, he did notice that the color was different, but the appearance had not changed. Wen Liang thought it was also a green-skinned train. Only then did he realize that it must be a high-end train that had just been running for a short time. With his miserable life in his previous life, he naturally had no impression of it. However, he did not expect that he would meet a crazy little girl on his first train ride in his life. It was really boring. He patted Fan Bo's shoulder, asked him to stand aside, made way for a passage, and smiled, "Miss, we are country people and don't know anything. Please hurry up and pass, otherwise the people behind you will also shout that good dogs don't block the road..."
"you!"
The young girl glared, gritted her teeth, and raised her hand to slap Wen Liang. Wen Liang had never expected this girl to be so domineering, hitting someone for a disagreement, so he decided to teach her a lesson. He didn't know when a handkerchief appeared in his hand, and he grabbed the girl's wrist in mid-air, bent his index finger slightly, and flicked her pulse lightly, then stepped back, still smiling, like a gentleman.
The girl screamed, and her whole arm was instantly paralyzed. Although it didn't hurt, she couldn't use any strength for a while. She was a weird person, and she didn't worry about her arm at this time. Instead, she stared at Wen Liang's handkerchief and asked, "What are you doing with the handkerchief?"
"I just washed my hands, I'm afraid they're dirty!"
Wen Liang's infuriating behavior was learned from the combination of Xu Yao and Ning Xiaoning, and the effect was immediate. The young girl had always been willful and reckless, and had never been humiliated so wantonly. She immediately wanted to eat Wen Liang and shouted angrily, "Sister Chenlu, this boy is not a good person, arrest him."
Wen Liang then noticed that there was a woman standing behind her. In fact, it was not that he just noticed it. At first he did not feel that this woman was any different. She lowered her eyes and stood there quietly, as if waiting for the people in front of her to finish arguing before walking over. At this time, when he heard the young girl shouting, he realized that they were together.
His gentle gaze swept over her face. She was fair and pretty, with a simple ponytail tied behind her head. She was wearing a light blue sportswear and had a slender figure. She seemed to be no different from an ordinary pretty girl. In terms of appearance alone, she was not even as beautiful as a young girl.
Hearing the girl's cry, his eyelids, which had been drooping, slowly opened, causing Wen Liang to exclaim. His eyes, which had seemed normal just now, were now shining brightly. When his eyes moved, it was as if the early morning sun was chasing a drop of morning dew that was about to slide off a lotus leaf, with a magical power that made people dizzy. When you couldn't help but admire her face carefully again, you would be surprised to find that her eyebrows were thin and long, but slightly raised at the corners of her eyebrows, instantly turning her softness into a spirited and handsome appearance. And along the corners of her eyebrows, the tip of her nose and her red lips suddenly seemed to have changed their appearance, outlining the contours of her face so three-dimensional and symmetrical.
She was still not absolutely beautiful, but her entire temperament had changed drastically after the first sight. Compared with her, the young girl was simply a child who had not grown up.
"Thank you. Excuse me." Without even looking at Wen Liang, she took the young girl's hand and walked past them as if no one was around. At the moment they brushed shoulders, she seemed to be reconciling, but also seemed to be warning, saying, "This is a 5G train, which has just been opened not long ago. It's different from the ordinary B train. But when you go out, young people, don't be too ostentatious!"
Wen Liang made a gesture of invitation and said with a smile: "I agree. Young people really shouldn't be too ostentatious."
She didn't stop, turned her head to look at Wen Liang, and then continued walking forward.
The young girl said dissatisfiedly: "Sister Chenlu, why don't you arrest them?"
"Have you forgotten what President Yan said? You should solve the problem yourself. If you want me to intervene, you must obey me. Otherwise, don't even think about going to Suhai to play next time."
"Shangguan Chenlu, didn't you see him hitting me..."
"If you don't hit someone first, no one will dare to hit you!"
The young girl obviously had no way to deal with her. She turned her head and fiercely raised her fist to Wen Liang, shouting, "Be careful!"
Fan Bo also saw that these two women were not ordinary people, but he was still angry. He took off his scarf and threw it on the middle bunk, saying: "When did Qingzhou have such unreasonable girls? They are really uneducated!"
Wen Liang stared at the backs of the two women and smiled nonchalantly, "Can't you see that they are empty-handed? This must be Su Haishang's car. They just happened to be caught by us when they were coming back from the restaurant."
"Oh, that's really bad luck..."
Wen Liang fell on the lower bunk with his clothes on, gently pressed his temple, and said, "It's not necessarily bad luck, the journey is boring, just treat it as a small episode. Teacher Fan, relax, there's nothing to worry about!"
However, Shangguan Chenlu is indeed a good name!
Many people got on the carriage one after another. After a burst of noise and bustle, the train finally started, slowly drove out of Qingzhou Station, and rushed to the north.
Gradually, bored people gathered in groups of three or four, some spread out cards on the lower bunks in the private room, some set up chess games in the corridor, and someone's radio kept playing the German folk song "Die Gedanken sind frei". Wen Liang was not sleepy either, so he sat on the lower bunk with Fan Bo and chatted about all sorts of things. Both of them were well-informed people, and their conversation was lively and interesting, which actually attracted the two girls on the other bunk to join in the conversation.
After an unknown amount of time, he suddenly heard applause from the corridor. Wen Liang was being forced to flee by the undisguised affection of one of the girls, so he hurriedly made an excuse to run out. But he saw a girl with long hair leaning against the middle of the corridor, holding a guitar in her arms. She played and sang the song she had just heard on the radio:
Thoughts are free
Who can guess her
I want what I want
Also imagine what you like
My wishes and desires
No one can stop it.
She's there
Thoughts are free (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets on Qidian. Your support is my greatest motivation.) (To be continued)