Chapter 17: Tarnishing Someone's Innocence for No Reason
The students of the Institute of Literature and Art are not just nerds. Sometimes they will organize a basketball game at night when they are bored. There is a mini basketball court in D School. The conditions are simple, but it does not prevent everyone from sweating.
As a rare young person in the class, Lin Weimin is not very interested in this thing, so he decided to let the older men play with it.
On the weekend, a rare rest time, the class agreed in advance to go to the Summer Palace together.
Early on Sunday morning, when the No. 18 bus arrived, more than 20 people swarmed onto the bus, scaring the driver.
Once we got on the bus, everyone was chatting and laughing, and the atmosphere was relaxed and happy.
The Summer Palace is a royal garden from the Qing Dynasty. Its predecessor was the Qingyi Garden. It is located in the western suburbs of Yanjing, east of the eastern suburbs where School D is located, and west of it. The distance between them is nearly 20 kilometers, which is a long journey in an era without private cars.
The group spent nearly two hours on the road.
Actually, the Summer Palace was officially opened to the public in 1928, but the admission ticket was extremely expensive at that time.
Wu Yu, who taught at Yenching University, once took his family to visit the Summer Palace. He wrote in his diary that day:
May 15, Thursday, cloudy and sunny. I went to the Summer Palace with my third and fourth daughters by car. The round trip fare was 10 yuan, and the wine cost 1 yuan. The entrance fee was 1.2 yuan. I bought another ticket to enter the Paiyun Hall, which cost 50 yuan per person, and another ticket to the Xiqu Garden, which cost 20 yuan per person. Western food cost 10 yuan, and tea cost 76 yuan. The parking fee in the car park was 3 yuan. I bought a picture of the Summer Palace for 10 yuan. The four daughters bought me a jujube wood walking stick for 50 yuan. I took away all the furnishings in the garden. The vase on the table was left with only the wooden base, which was covered with dust for several inches. The door was sealed, but I could see the grandeur of the architecture... There were boats in the lake, and it cost 3 yuan to 5 yuan to go boating on the lake.
The Wu family's father, daughter and two children spent more than 20 yuan on a trip to the Summer Palace, which was equivalent to the money used to buy 10 bags of flour, about 400 kilograms, which was enough to feed one person for more than a year.
Such expensive ticket prices were naturally unaffordable for ordinary people, so only the powerful and wealthy could visit the Summer Palace at that time.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the price of each ticket to the Summer Palace was set at 20 cents, and then it was changed to 10 cents. For a period of time, it was changed to 5 cents. When Lin Weimin and his friends came to visit, the ticket price was changed back to 10 cents.
After buying the tickets, the group entered the Summer Palace. Lin Weimin's first impression was that there was a lot of water. At a rough glance, the water surface occupied most of the park's area.
Qu Xiaowei is from Yanjing and temporarily acted as a tour guide.
"Next to us is the Old Summer Palace. It is a large landscape garden built on the site of Kunming Lake and Wanshou Mountain, modeled after the West Lake in Hangzhou, and incorporating the design techniques of Jiangnan gardens. It is also the most complete imperial palace and garden that has been preserved today..."
The large body of water that Lin Weimin found particularly attractive was Kunming Lake, one of the main attractions of the Summer Palace. The entire Summer Palace was basically built around Kunming Lake.
It is already mid-April, and the city of Yanjing in the north is already blossoming with spring flowers. The willow branches by the lake are bursting with tender yellow vitality, the sun is shining, the spring breeze is blowing, and everything is refreshing.
Today's Summer Palace is not as new as the ones renovated in later generations, but it has the advantage of not having so many commercial operations. One ticket is enough for a full visit, and it is natural and simple.
Walking around Kunming Lake, there are several palaces along the way, including Renshou Hall, Dehe Garden, and Magnolia Hall. Passing through the complex of buildings is Wanshou Hill.
Wanshou Mountain is a remnant of Yanshan Mountain. The buildings on it are built along the mountain. When you go up the mountain, you can see a huge main building complex with the Buddhist Incense Pavilion as the center. From the Yunhui Yuyu Archway at the foot of the mountain, through the Paiyun Gate, Ergong Gate, Paiyun Hall, Dehui Hall, Buddhist Incense Pavilion, to the Sea of Wisdom at the top of the mountain, a central axis that rises layer by layer is formed.
On the east side are the treasury wheel and the Kunming Lake stele of Wanshou Mountain. On the west side are the Wufang Pavilion and the bronze Baoyun Pavilion. On the back mountain are the XZ Buddhist buildings and the colorful glazed multi-treasure pagoda.
There are pavilions and towers on the mountain, including Jingfu Pavilion, Chongcui Pavilion, Xieqiu Pavilion and Huazhongyou.
A large and richly-imaged central building complex was built in the center, including the main buildings in the garden, the Paiyun Hall where the emperor and empress held ceremonial meetings, and the Buddhist temple, the Foxiang Pavilion.
Echoing the longitudinal axis of the central building complex is the long corridor that runs across the foothills and winds east-west along the north shore of the lake.
There are so many attractions and the place is so large that just visiting Wanshou Mountain made everyone feel tired and before they knew it, it was noon.
Tired, thirsty and hungry, they came down from Longevity Mountain and came to Kunming Lake to look for food and drink. There was no rich food like in later scenic spots, but there was food and drink in the park.
Lin Weimin sat by the lake like everyone else, drinking tea, eating a bite of donkey meat hotpot, and looking at the beautiful scenery in front of him. It was so beautiful.
When he was leisurely eating lunch, he saw Cheng Shixu in his class finished eating and took out paper and pen.
Huang Zonghan joked: "Shi Xu is really hardworking."
Cheng Shixu smiled but said nothing. Huang Zonghan turned around and said, "Look at him!"
The tone was almost like scolding a son.
Lin Weimin was speechless. I was shot even when I was sitting!
Old Huang, are you a little bit carried away?
Lin Weimin gave Huang Zonghan a look. After weighing the pros and cons, Huang Zonghan decided to take advantage and run away, then turned around and whispered to Guo Yudao.
Lin Weimin finished chewing what he was holding, clapped his hands, stood up, and faced the spring-filled garden. He was wondering whether he should compose an impromptu poem when a voice sounded next to him again.
"This scenery is so beautiful. Xiao Weimin, why don't you find a female classmate to go boating on the lake with you when you have such a good opportunity?"
Lin Weimin half turned his head and said, "Sister Tang, stop calling me little Weimin or little Weimin. It makes you sound like you've seen me before."
"You're going to die!" Lin Weimin drove away without saying anything. Tang Kangmei rolled her eyes at him and spat, "I really don't know what's so good about you that An Yi likes you."
Lin Weimin was startled. He first looked for Huang Anyi and confirmed that she was not around before saying, "Don't talk nonsense. You are just tarnishing someone's innocence!"
"You know?"
"I'm talking about my innocence."
"you……"
Tang Kangmei was furious and glared at Lin Weimin fiercely.
During the lunch break, there were indeed a few people boating on the lake, but they were not Lin Weimin and Huang Anyi, but a few senior classmates who were "old but still full of youthful enthusiasm".
Lin Weimin saw Huang Zonghan and Guo Yudao boarding the boat together. The boat was unstable when they were boarding, so the two of them supported each other. At that moment, Lin Weimin felt that his eyes were dirty.
When a few people were boating on the lake, everyone rested on the side. After they finished boating on the lake, everyone got up and boated again until the afternoon.
Come with excitement and leave with excitement.
It was already past six in the evening when we got back to School D. Missing dinner did not dampen our spirits at all.
(End of this chapter)
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