Chapter 192 Zhen Xianghong
Zhen Xianghong wrote down his childhood experiences and loaded them into the blank board he had just bought. Along with the story, he also gave the park photos of his deceased grandmother and mother.
He didn't dare to have too much expectation, thinking that even if the "Book Travel" experience center could restore one-tenth of it, it would be fine.
But when he saw this alley that should have been demolished long ago, he felt that everything before him was extremely real. He felt that he was not visiting a paradise, he felt that he had returned to twenty-one years ago.
The child's body seemed to have infinite light and warmth. He ran to the depths of the alley and to the house with a large yard. He saw his grandmother and mother hurriedly collecting clothes. They pulled down the clothes and sheets in the yard, rolled many pieces into a big bundle, and then hurried into the main room.
The threshold of the old rural house was a bit high, and the red paint on it had long been mottled and fallen off, revealing the solid texture of the wood. Zhen Xianghong remembered that when he was a child, he had to knock on the threshold once a day, so his grandmother asked someone to remove the threshold. Without the threshold, the door of the main room had to be removed as well.
Later, they discovered that without a door, wild cats would come in and stay overnight, often bringing leftover fish bones and uneaten mice... So Grandma and Mom had to install both the threshold and the door again, but they only laid two thick wooden planks in front and behind the threshold to make it easier for him to pass. So he kept stepping back and forth there, turning it into a step... Over time, a few shallow marks appeared there...
He originally thought that he had completely forgotten these things, and he had not even written about this part in the story about his childhood. However, when he stood at the door of the old house, he found that memories flooded the sky and the earth, making him stop timidly at the door and never dared to step in.
"Oh, what a sin! Why are you standing outside in the rain?" Grandma turned around and saw him, then took a few steps forward and carried him into the house.
It was summer and everyone was wearing short-sleeved shirts and shorts. When the old man's wrinkled hands held his arm, the familiar body temperature and touch in his memory made him shiver all over, and then he burst into tears.
He cried so hard, so fast, so loudly... Everyone was caught off guard. The neighbor next door opened the door and looked in, "What are you doing? Are you hitting the child?"
Grandma and Mom were at a loss for words, so they took him home and cleaned him up. While Mom was cleaning his dirty feet, she scolded him, "You've gone out to play again. You've lost your mind. Why didn't you hide when it rained?"
Grandma was cooking ginger soup in a honeycomb stove in the kitchen next to the main hall. "The rainwater is so poisonous! The kids next door got lice from being caught in the rain."
Her mother gave her some scientific advice: "Lice are a sign of poor hygiene, not something to do with getting caught in the rain."
Grandma said stubbornly: "If you don't take a shower after getting caught in the rain, that's unhygienic."
Zhen Xianghong remembered how, as a child, he always found bathing troublesome. Blushing, he took the ginger soup his grandmother handed him and gulped it down in one gulp. Heat began to rise from his body. The rain had cooled things down a bit, so he ran to the honeycomb stove and boiled water in a large aluminum kettle. He then filled the tub with cold water and quickly finished his shower. Then he washed all his clothes.
He did the whole process very skillfully, without making any mistakes, and he never put off doing the laundry just to watch TV. Grandma and Mom looked at each other, thinking that the child seemed like a different person.
For the first time ever, my mother turned on the TV and said, "Xingzi, it's time to watch TV."
At that time, their family used a very large and bulky TV. The screen was not high-definition, and there was occasional snow. Sometimes there was no signal, and their mother had to hold a ladder to shake the signal dish.
The TV was playing a cartoon from that era, a type of children's cartoon Zhen Xianghong hadn't watched in years. He'd initially thought he had no interest, but as he snuggled up to his grandmother and mother, the rain pattered outside, and the ceiling fan whirred in the room... he found himself captivated, his eyes, previously red from tears, curved into crescents.
Looking back, the old rural house I lived in when I was a child only had a small area, but in the eyes of a seven-year-old child, it was already a very large home, big enough to accommodate everything he had.
Stone steps, wooden doors, and honeycomb stoves.
Black tiles, cool mats, and a large yard.
At seven years old, he seemed to have endless energy. In the mornings, he'd skip along with his mother to the small shop at the corner of the alley selling soy milk and tofu. In the afternoons, he'd crawl up and down the attic above the main hall. In the evenings, he'd ride his tattered little bicycle around the yard. Then, he'd help his grandmother and mother grind beans and do housework...
The plantain he brought back was too small. His mother said that such a small amount could not be used to make herbal tea, so she planted it in a broken clay pot in the yard. He watered it every day and would pick up any familiar herbs he saw when he went out.
Summer nights seemed very long, and he often fell asleep on the ground while eating watermelon. His mother scolded him to be careful not to catch a cold while she was sewing his clothes with a sewing machine, and his grandmother covered his stomach with a blanket.
Zhen Xianghong wasn't actually completely asleep, but was lying on his side on the mat on the ground, with the mat leaving some beautiful patterns on his face. He heard his grandmother talking to his mother.
Mom: "Xingzai is so well behaved now. He doesn't act like a child anymore."
Zhen Xianghong's heart skipped a beat.
Grandma: "Isn't that good? You always think he's naughty."
The mother sighed, "It's not a good thing for a child to grow up suddenly!"
Zhen Xianghong's eyes turned red. In the years that followed, some people cared about his grades, some cared about how much money they could make from him, some disliked his acting talent, and some worried he wouldn't become famous... No one, like a true family member, cared about whether he had caught a cold or hoped he would behave properly.
Zhen Xianghong suddenly jumped up with an impulse that didn't know where it came from, scaring the two women.
"Grandma! Mom! Actually, I traveled through time!" He roared, his voice louder than the barking of the dog next door.
Grandma and mom looked at him in amazement, then laughed together, "Xingzai's face blossomed."
Zhen Xianghong touched the mark on his face left by the mat in a daze. He didn't know what was going on, but he also burst into laughter.
…
"Really! I really did travel here from twenty-one years later." It was another summer night, and the old-fashioned light bulbs emitted a warm yellow light. Zhen Xianghong lay on the mat with his eyes squinting, enjoying his mother applying talcum powder on him, while emphasizing the specialness of being from the future.
My mother said, "You should be 28 years old now, and you still let me paint your face. Aren't you ashamed?"
Zhen Xianghong rolled around on the mat, throwing a tantrum. "No, no, I'm still my mom and grandma's child at 28."
Grandma also laughed. She was reading the newspaper with her reading glasses on. She said, "Then tell me what the lottery numbers are so that I can get rich too."
Zhen Xianghong: ...
Mom shook her head. "The lottery numbers are so long, Xingzi can't remember them."
Zhen Xianghong: The smiling face deflated again.
He snorted, "The lottery is nothing. Being a star is how you make money. You can't imagine that in the future, stars can make millions just by filming a movie! I can make tens of millions a year by myself!"
Wow, this shocked grandma and mom.
Zhen Xianghong's grandmother was a military artist, and his mother was a stage actress. Later, when she had the opportunity, she acted in movies and TV series, earning only a few hundred yuan per episode. No one could have imagined that his mother, who once shone so brightly on television, would later become an ordinary woman.
Mom laughed and said, "Our Xingzi is really amazing. Now that you've made some money, have you bought yourself a big color TV and a big refrigerator?"
Grandma continued, "Big refrigerators and washing machines are great. From now on, our Xingzi won't have to wash his own clothes. He can make a lot of food and put it in the refrigerator without worrying about it going bad."
Of course Zhen Xianghong did. He enthusiastically recounted his life a dozen years from now and introduced them to many amazing touch-screen appliances. He even said indignantly, "I was really disappointed when I bought that big refrigerator. I paid tens of thousands for it. They said it could read recipes, but who knew it was just a diaper for my family."
Hahahaha... The whole family was laughing in the house, and Zhen Xianghong almost rolled off the bed.
It didn’t seem very funny at all, but being with my family made it particularly joyful and precious.
After laughing for a long time, grandma said, "Xingzai makes so much money, he must be very famous! Can he be called a superstar?"
"No." Zhen Xianghong suddenly became depressed. He never played the victim before, but now he couldn't help but talk incessantly. He said that it was very difficult when he first entered the circle. He could only start as an extra, and was beaten and scolded, and was slapped repeatedly. Later, his father who ran away became rich and gave him a lot of resources.
He finally landed a leading role. But his adoptive father wasn't in love with him; he was invested in a film company. To make him more money, the company gave him too many generic roles. And of all the money he earned, the company took most, leaving him with only a small portion. Yet, outsiders still thought he was a wealthy second-generation kid living a life of luxury.
After enduring for several years, he finally made it and had the right to speak. His adoptive father, who was getting old, actually became kinder and began to give him money without hesitation. However, his acting style was also fixed. The director said that his spirit had been worn away, his colleagues said that he was a rich second-generation who could write his own characters, and even the handymen thought that he was born spoiled and had a bad temper.
"I want to be famous so much that I should change my stage name to Zhen Xianghong." Zhen Xianghong choked up as he spoke, feeling particularly wronged in front of his grandmother and mother.
Grandma and mom hugged him in their arms with heartache, "Xingzai, don't cry, don't cry."
Zhen Xianghong's eyes reddened as he asked, "Aren't you going to ask?" Facing the stunned gazes of his grandmother and mother, he said, "You don't ask me if I'm evading taxes or laundering money for others since I earn so much money?"
Grandma: "You are not that kind of child."
Mom: "I believe you won't do anything bad."
Zhen Xianghong looked at them and said, "I'm trying every trick in the book to become famous. Don't you think I'm snobbish?"
Mom shook her head. "Who told you that? Who doesn't want to be famous as a celebrity? Who doesn't strive for better things? It's like a student getting the top score on a test. Who wouldn't want that? As long as we have a clear conscience, that's all that matters."
Zhen Xianghong: "What if, not only can I not become famous, but I can't be a good actor either, and I can only play one type of role for the rest of my life?"
Mom: "If you can play a role to perfection, that would be great. Mom and grandma would be proud of you."
Grandma: "If you can't be famous, then you can't be famous. It's good enough to live a happy life. Grandma, when I was young, wasn't I the most beautiful girl in the village? I'm not unhappy."
Zhen Xianghong looked at them and burst into tears again after a while. This time, he started laughing while crying.
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