Jiang Bai stepped out of the subway car with his guitar on his back, followed the nearest steps to the upper platform, and Sarah Brightman's extremely ethereal voice was in the earphones.
On the old platform of the Paris Metro, there were entertainers playing the accordion and singing cheerful unknown songs, which combined with the soft music in the Jiangbai headphones into an unbearable and chaotic noise.
Jiang Bai frowned, took off the earphones, and turned off the mobile music player.
Immediately afterwards, he looked up at the crowds coming and going from all directions around him, as well as the bifurcation of the upper platform extending in all directions, feeling a little dazed. So he picked up his phone again, found WeChat, and confirmed the location Fang Yuan sent him.
After looking at the navigation map for a long time according to the positioning, Jiang Bai decided that he must have the awareness of being a road idiot.
"I'm at Chatelier Station, which exit do I take?"
He sent a voice message to Fang Yuan, stood there waiting for a reply, and by the way listened to the street performer's accordion playing and singing with great interest.
It was a ditty with a very quick rhythm, and the tail of each sentence would tremble with a small transition. It sounded like a bonfire party on a tropical island beach where everyone wore grass skirts. Buskers with beards and fluffy curly hair tied in the back of their heads shake their heads to the music.
Listening, Jiang Bai's toes began to beat the rhythm of the minor key unconsciously.
At the end of the song, he stepped forward, threw a fifty-cent coin into the open piano case of a street performer, and said with a smile in his unproficient French: "This song makes me feel good!"
The street performer politely replied: "Thank you for your support!"
Jiang Bai wanted to say something more, but before his language was organized, the phone rang the sound of a message being delivered, and it was Fang Yuan's voice message that came in.
"Why did you go to Chatelier station? There are eight subway lines there, I'm afraid there are dozens of exits! My God! Why don't you get off at Ninth Bridge station?"
"The navigation said Chatelier Station." Jiang Bai replied.
"You can take Line 7 to Ninth Bridge Station, or find an exit at Chatelier and navigate from the ground. The bar is between the two stations, not too far from either side."
"OK."
Jiang Bai put his mobile phone back into his pocket, stepped on the accordion soundtrack and the singing rhythm of street performers, and walked towards the nearest exit sign to him.
Located on the north bank of the Seine, the Chateau train station is a transportation hub near the Ile de la Cité and one of the important business districts of Paris. Eight subway lines converge here and then radiate outwards, forming a dense spider web that envelops the whole of Little Paris.
It is said that when we stand at any point in Little Paris, we will definitely find a subway station within a radius of 500 meters, and then we can take advantage of the extensive rail transit in Paris to go to any place we want to go.
Jiang Bai felt that he didn't panic only when he was holding the navigation in his hand.
After all, no matter how well-connected the rail transit here is, the various alleys in Paris are still dizzying.
In particular, the roads here are not like the Beijing where Jiang Bai lived since he was a child. They are horizontal and vertical, right south and north right—the roads in Paris are planned very freely. Large and small circular squares, roads radiate and interweave, cutting the city into fragmented and irregular pieces.
For example, the Arc de Triomphe Square, surrounded by the world-famous megalithic arch in the middle, extends a total of twelve intersections. If you don’t have the assistance of modern technology, if you ask people for directions, you will probably hear the words that you can only hear in movies in the past-"at your ten o'clock direction".
Fortunately, the intersection where Jiang Bai is now is not that complicated. Not long after he walked along the navigation on his mobile phone, he found the bar with the wooden sign "No. 6, Little Jasmine Road" hanging at the door.
"Ah, Xiaobai is here!"
Fang Yuan sat facing the bar door, and when he saw Jiang Bai pushing the door in, he got up immediately.
A big Chinese boy and a French girl sitting opposite him turned their heads at the same time and greeted Jiang Bai: "Good evening!"
Fang Yuan pulled the two sides together and introduced: "This is Jiang Bai. We are in the same French training class in China. Jiang Bai, this is Chen Lijie. I have been in France for five years, and I learned Chinese, English and French. Trilingual translation, Xueba! This is Si Lewei, Chen Lijie's girlfriend, who has been learning Chinese for two years. They opened this bar together, and the Sino-French salon was also their idea."
Jiang Bai greeted the two of them.
Chen Lijie pointed to the guitar behind Jiang Bai and asked, "Are you still playing music?"
Jiang Bai shook his head and smiled: "Today's language class is about the theme of music. The teacher asked everyone who knows how to play musical instruments to bring them. I usually just play casually at home."
Chen Lijie: "Hey, they can sing too! It just so happens that our store is closed to the public tonight because of the Sino-French Salon, so you can try singing a song on the small stage."
Jiang Bai had been looking at the small stage in the bar for a long time, and now he had the permission of the bar owner, so he didn't refuse, and walked up with the guitar.
Chen Lijie helped him adjust the microphone and sound system.
"What do you want to hear?" Jiang Bai asked.
"Heh! How dare you order songs here?" Chen Lijie laughed, "Just come to something you are good at."
At this moment, Fang Yuan interjected with a bottle of beer in his mouth: "The "Blue Lotus" you sang that time was quite tasty, let's just go with it."
Jiang Bai nodded, brewed for a moment, swept the strings, and spoke loudly.
"Nothing can stop your yearning for freedom—"
His voice is not too vicissitudes, like the timbre of a cello, or like black velvet, deep but soft. Interspersed with the chords of classical guitars, it can actually create an extremely harmonious resonance.
The door of the bar opened quietly at this time, but the three listeners in the room were all attracted by Jiang Bai's singing, and did not notice the people coming in from outside the door.
The man closed the bar door with his backhand, leaned against the bar counter, and looked at the big boy who was holding a guitar and singing in the center of the small stage.
Jiang Bai was singing, and from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure beside the bar, and subconsciously turned his head to look over.
It was a Frenchman in a black shirt, the neckline open to the second button, and the sleeves rolled casually up to the elbow. His slightly curly dark brown hair hangs down in front of his eyes, looking messy, with a neatly trimmed layer of extremely short stubble on his cheeks, and the smile in the corner of his mouth is slightly evil and not obnoxious. bohemian.
Jiang Bai has never been good at judging the age of Westerners. Seeing this appearance, he sighed in his heart: What a sexy and handsome uncle!
Thinking of this, Jiang Bai blinked and smiled at the handsome uncle with a charming temperament.
"Blooming forever, blue lotus—"
When the music stopped, the handsome French man stood up from the bar and clapped his hands.
Sylvia turned her head and said in surprise, "Yabu! You're back!"
Even Chen Lijie stood up from the sofa and greeted the visitor: "Hey, brother!"
Yabu had a face-to-face ceremony with Silewei and Chen Lijie, shook hands with Fang Yuan, and looked at Jiang Bai: "This..."
"Hello, my name is Jiang Bai."
Jiang Bai held the guitar in one hand, and stretched out the other hand to hold Yabu.
"Jean-Baptiste Dupont." Yabu laughed, "you can call me Yabu like them. Of course, I also know that this abbreviation has a strange meaning in Chinese, if you don't mind ."(Note)
Jiang Bai was taken aback, and then he thought that this uncle Yabu might also come to participate in the Sino-French salon, so he should have learned Chinese.
"Hey, actually my initials are also those two letters." He immediately laughed at himself, trying to narrow the distance between the two of them.
Yabu reacted for a while, and sure enough he burst out laughing.
Chen Lijie also laughed for a long time, and finally introduced: "This is Sylvia's brother, the third partner of the bar, and the one who pays the most! He just started learning Chinese, and the French in our salon basically It's all about him."
Yabu didn't know how much he understood in this sentence, he probably caught the description of "not long after learning Chinese", tilted his head and greeted Jiang Bai in Chinese: "Hello!"
Jiang Bai replied with a smile: "Hello."
Yabu then changed to French again: "I can also sing the song you just sang, but it's the French version."
Jiang Bai didn't know that "Blue Lotus" had a French version, and his eyes widened in surprise.
Yabu smiled and pointed at Jiang Bai's guitar: "Can you lend me a use?"
Jiang Bai handed over the guitar.
Yabu sat down on the stage chair, held the guitar and swept a few times.
The tune of "Blue Lotus" is matched with French lyrics, and there is no sense of disobedience.
Yabu's voice is deep and thick, with a hoarse tone that has experienced many vicissitudes of life. The pronunciation is very close to the root of the throat, as if it comes from the chest cavity. His voice is actually not very suitable for singing this song, but he controls his breath and articulation very well, and puts all his emotions into it. The effect of singing is very amazing.
At this moment, two Frenchmen opened the door and came in, surprised: "Oh! What day is it today? Yabu actually came on stage in person!"
Seeing someone entering the venue, Yabu stopped after singing for a while, handed the guitar back to Jiang Bai, and went to say hello to his friends.
Chen Lijie leaned into Jiang Bai's ear and said mysteriously: "Yabu played in a band before, and he was the lead singer in it, but he hasn't spoken in public for many years. You guys can do it, just lead him to sing a song!" "
"Ah, let me just say, it's a pity that he doesn't sing with this voice!"
Jiang Bai was almost fascinated by Yabu's voice just now, that kind of deep voice that seemed to come from the heart coupled with just the right hoarseness, if he sang love songs, he would definitely fascinate a large number of girls...and boys.
He thought for a while, then smiled again: "That was not considered a public place just now, aren't these all people he knows?"
Chen Lijie nodded: "That's right."
At seven o'clock, the scheduled time for the Sino-French Salon arrived, and the small bar was 80% full.
Those who will come to this salon are Chinese students who have just come to France to study and French people who are learning Chinese. Everyone came here with the purpose of learning a foreign language well, so they were not too cautious, and found new friends who were pleasing to the eye and chatted back and forth. Although it's nothing more than "what's your name" and "how long have you been studying" and the like, they are considered to be familiar with each other.
Chen Lijie looked at his watch, put down the drink in his hand, jumped to the small stage and picked up the microphone.
"Hey, ladies and gentlemen... and ladies, our Sino-French Exchange Salon is about to start! Let me explain our process here, everyone listen carefully!"
"The salon starts at seven o'clock. We can only communicate in French between seven o'clock and eight o'clock, and only in Chinese between eight o'clock and nine o'clock. If you don't understand something, the bar provides small notes and pencils. You can You can draw pictures, and you can also make gestures. If you really don’t know how to do it, just ask me!”
"Okay, today our topic is to introduce ourselves and talk about our hobbies. Now, the Sino-French Salon officially begins!"
Chen Lijie said these words in French and Chinese, and then he stepped off the stage and sat behind the bar.
Jiang Bai put away the guitar and stood in the corner next to the bar, looking up in the crowd to find the bohemian figure. He came here today with the intention of practicing French, but now, it seems that something is trying to break through the ground, which tickles his heart.
"Hey, if you don't mind, let's get together?"
A familiar male voice sounded behind Jiang Bai.
Jiang Bai turned his head and saw that it was indeed Yabu, and immediately smiled: "No problem."
Yabu took out two bottles of beer from the bar and handed Jiang Bai a bottle: "I invite you to drink."
Jiang Bai took the beer and smiled, took out a few coins from his pocket and put them on the bar.
Yabu didn't care about his insistence on paying the money, and asked casually, "How long have you been studying French?"
"I have studied in China for a year, but I only have classes on weekends." Jiang Bai replied, "Now I am studying language preparatory courses here for a period of one year."
The next step is the "self-introduction and basic information" link where you come and go, as if checking your account. Yabu himself also learns Chinese, knowing that learning a language for beginners is just such a wheel-like topic, so he cooperated very well and didn't ask anything too in-depth.
The content of the chat is not much, but because the beginners need to organize the language, they need to bypass some expressions that they are not sure about, and they have to be corrected by the other party for their wording and grammatical errors, and the time dragged on for an hour.
Then I switched to Chinese and continued to talk about these daily routines.
Jiang Bai learned from the conversation that Yabu had just passed his 33rd birthday and was ten years older than himself. He was originally an architect, but after working in a multinational company for a few years, he felt that it did not meet his expectations of the lifestyle, so he resigned. In addition to opening this small bar, Yabu also travels around the world, living a free and easy life.
Jiang Bai admired this attitude towards life very much, and those rough and rough buds in his heart arched upward again, and began to look forward to the relationship between the two of them moving forward.
It's just... Although France is a country that can live and die for romance, if two people really want to develop something, it will ultimately depend on their feelings.
If it feels right, it will fall in love at first sight and for ten thousand years. If it doesn't feel right, even if you stalk it, the result will not be good.
Besides, Jiang Bai knew that there was a more serious problem on his way of making friends—sexuality.
However, this question is too private, and it must not be asked at the first meeting.
So Jiang Bai could only maintain a polite and simple smile, patiently listening to the broken Chinese of the man in front of him who poked his heart at the first sight he saw. He finally breathed a sigh of relief until the fixed time of the Sino-French Salon ended.
Yabu also breathed a sigh of relief, and immediately switched to French: "Your French is much better than my Chinese."
"After all, I have learned a year more than you." Jiang Bai was not humble, and said bluntly, "You will speak well in the future."
The hands of the clock slip past nine o'clock. For the city of Paris, people's nightlife has just begun at this moment.
Although the time for the Sino-French salon is over, many people still choose to stay here and continue to chat with new friends, regardless of the language. Chinese and French are mixed, and occasionally they really don’t understand, and they will also include a few words in English. .
Yabu was sitting at the bar, and Chen Lijie brought him a martini.
"Do you want to learn the French version of "Blue Lotus" just now?" Yabu took a sip of his wine and asked Jiang Bai with a sideways face.
In fact, Jiang Bai originally planned to learn the lyrics from the Internet after returning home, but now he has the opportunity to get close to Yabu, so why not do it
So he smiled and said, "Okay, I can also teach you to sing the Chinese version."
The two hit it off.
Jiang Bai took out the guitar from the corner of the bar, and Yabu found the innermost booth of the bar, and went to learn songs from each other.
The author has something to say: Note: The French spelling of Jean-Baptiste is Jean-Baptiste, which is directly called "JB" among French acquaintances, transliterated as "Yabu".
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Blue Lotus French Version: Fred Band · "Pas comme ca"
Link: https://music.163.com/#/song?id=480433306