Returning Home
Winters in the southwest are bitterly cold, and locals typically hunker down by their fireplaces, munching on sunflower seeds and chatting, refusing to leave the house unless absolutely necessary. However, some restless children often sneak out to build snowmen or ride roller coasters. Their faces are flushed, whether from the cold or altitude sickness.
Zhou Qianling moved two steps to the side, allowing the child sitting in the winnowing basket to slide through the middle.
"It's snowing really hard this year," someone nearby said, looking nostalgically at the child who lost control of his scooter and fell to the ground. "The last time it snowed this hard was in 2008," they lamented.
The woman who was speaking was in her early fifties, with kind eyes and a good face. Although her face had quite a few wrinkles, she did not look old, but rather had a certain grace.
Zhou Qianling nodded casually when his mother mentioned what happened in 2008.
That was her first and last visit to this isolated little town. She still remembered the heavy snow that year, which had blocked the mountains and crushed the power station, leaving the electricity out for an extended period. She couldn't recall how many months it had lasted, but she remembered being trapped in the village with her parents, unable to leave. During the day, she played boring games with the local children, and at night, she sat by the fire, staring blankly at the shadows swaying on the wall.
Boring and stereotyped.
Zhou Qianling shook off the snow on his shoulders and helped his mother walk slowly on the frozen road to avoid slipping.
"I don't know if there are any more buses." Zhou Fang looked at the big words "Closed to North Station" not far away and felt a little worried.
The mother and daughter got off the plane to Qianyang the night before yesterday. Due to the snow disaster, the train they had booked was delayed. After waiting for a full eight hours, the estimated delay time shown on the big screen was extended again.
I had no choice but to leave the high-speed rail station and take a bus. When I pushed the door open, I saw a group of illegal taxis and shops soliciting customers before the air conditioner arrived.
They spoke in the local dialect, fast and mixed, and Zhou Qianling could hardly understand it. He just looked at his mother and shook his head, politely refusing, saying no and that he would take the bus later.
"Don't worry, big sister. We're on a bus. I'll take you there. It's leaving soon..."
The man followed them chattering non-stop, but Zhou Qianling couldn't understand him at all, and she felt dizzy from all the chatter.
"The station has moved?" Zhou Fang was a little surprised.
"It was changed two years ago. You might be out a lot so you don't know." The man continued, "It's not just you. Many people don't know."
Zhou Qianling stood by and watched his mother chat with the man for a while, and then followed the man to the new station.
There are no plains in Qianzhou, so wherever people live, it is crowded. The man took them in twists and turns, walking underground and crossing the road, and finally stopped on a road with few people.
"Ah, that's our shuttle bus."
Following the direction he pointed, Zhou Qianling saw a bus. Behind the window were a young mother coaxing and breastfeeding her child, an old man holding a backpack, and a young man carrying chickens and ducks.
"It's here. I'll put your luggage." The man opened the side door and took Zhou Qianling's password box.
Frowning, Zhou Qianling withdrew his hand and dodged.
Even if you don't know much about the local transportation, when you see this bus with dents on its exterior, you will know that it was converted from an abandoned car.
"This isn't a station."
The man was stunned for a moment, then smiled calmly and said, "Our bus is right here."
Zhou Qianling was annoyed by his blatant fraud and said, "I don't want to take the bus anymore, give me my money back." His mother had paid for the bus fare, 300 yuan per person, long before they came.
"Our unyielding sister." The man looked at her fearlessly, as if writing on his face what can you do to me.
As the saying goes, a strong dragon cannot defeat a local snake. Zhou Qianling wanted to call the police, but the emperor was far away and she was unfamiliar with the place. She had no idea about the security situation here, or whether these people had formed a complicated industrial chain. So in order to avoid unnecessary trouble, she could only swallow her loss.
"Are you still angry about Qianyang being cheated?"
Zhou Fang stood in front of the North Station Hall and saw her daughter's pursed lips reflected on the glass door. "It's my fault. I paid the fare without thinking." She took Zhou Qianling's hand and patted it.
The person who had been silent all the way finally spoke. She shook her head and said, "I just don't like this place. Mom, you promised to go back after paying homage to the ancestors."
It's no wonder Zhou Qianling disliked Qianzhou. When she came here at the age of ten, it was completely dark during the day, so she could only play hide-and-seek at home. At night, it was pitch black, with no TV to watch. This was the first reason. The second reason was that as soon as she left the station, she encountered a scammer soliciting passengers for an illegal taxi and was ripped off. Later, when they took a taxi to the East Bus Station and bought tickets, they found out that the total cost per person was less than 200 yuan.
"Okay, Mom will go back and stay for two days and show you your aunts and uncles, then I'll leave."
Zhou Qianling said nothing more and followed his mother into the hall.
Zhou Qianling still couldn't remember the name of his hometown, so he stood aside while his mother and the ticket seller bought a ticket. He looked around the hall boredly: it was small, and judging by the yellowed walls, it was quite old.
She lamented once again the backwardness and isolation of this place, saying that a single trip required several changes of transportation. First, she flew from Yanzhou to Qianyang, then took a taxi to the bus station, where she took a bus to Biji South Station, then from South Station to North Station, and finally, from North Station, she took a bus to the township.
According to her mother, her aunt would have to find a car to pick her up when she arrived in town.
Taking a deep breath, Zhou Qianling found a place to lean back and rest his feet, thinking to himself: I will never come here again.
After buying the tickets, the two waited for another two hours before the bus rumbled into action.
The weather is cold now and the car windows are closed tightly. There is an indescribable stench in the bus that can never be dissipated. It seems to be the smell of leather, sweat, and a faint sour and spicy smell can be smelled. Zhou Qianling couldn't stand it anymore, so he took out a mask and put it on, and felt much better.
Probably for the convenience of passengers, the bus did not go on the highway.
Many of Qianzhou's roads are built on the mountainside and are narrow. In some places, only one bus can pass through. When encountering unpaved sections of road, the entire bus will shake from side to side.
Zhou Qianling was jolted against the window, feeling herself tilted 45 degrees with the bus. Turning her head, she saw the bottomless cliff outside, her heart skipping a beat. The bus straightened a few seconds later, but Zhou Qianling was still terrified. Meanwhile, the others on board were chatting or sleeping, as if they had gotten used to it.
"Don't worry, this is the road condition here. The drivers are already very familiar with it." Zhou Fang knew that her daughter was frightened, so she comforted her, but also felt a little guilty.
Zhou Fang hadn't been back to her hometown since both her parents passed away. She'd only ask someone to help her hang up some gifts for the occasional wedding or funeral. She'd suddenly suggested ancestral worship after dreaming about her mother a few days ago. She'd missed her mother so much she wanted to come back and see her. Unfortunately, her mother was out of town, and her daughter was on winter break, so she dragged her over.
"Mom, look at you. Even if you don't let me come, I have to follow you to feel at ease." Zhou Qianling took her mother's hand and leaned on her shoulder intimately.
With the help of his mother, Zhou Qianling felt safer and less uneasy, so he had the leisure to listen to the people chatting in the car.
In fact, many words in the local dialect are similar to Mandarin, except for the tones. You can still understand the general meaning as long as you speak slowly.
Some said the frost was good this year, and that potatoes would grow big next spring. Others complained that they raised a few piglets a year, but their children ate them all in a few days. Some worried that their sons were still single in their thirties. Some were even surprised that their neighbors had married a woman two years their senior.
Zhou Qianling lost interest as he listened and dozed off with his eyes closed.
Boring county, boring topics, and... boring people.
The bus drove for five or six hours and finally arrived in the town. Zhou Qianling was woken up by his mother.
"Master, brake."
The driver stopped the car upon hearing this. Zhou Qianling looked towards the roadside and saw a gray-black and white van parked not far away. He saw the bus door open and a woman got out of the van. She looked a bit like his mother, so she should be his aunt, but he didn't know which one she was.
"Sister, you're finally here. We've been waiting for an hour. We thought you wouldn't be here today."
After saying that, another man got out of the car, greeted Zhou Fang, and asked them where their suitcases were.
"The blue one in the trunk." Zhou Fang didn't mind ordering her brother-in-law around. She turned around and introduced Zhou Qianling, "This is your third aunt and uncle."
Zhou Qianling greeted them politely and followed them into the van. When he saw that there were already two passengers and a driver inside, Zhou Qianling was stunned. He glanced at the sign outside that said "Limited to 5 people" and accepted it well enough to sit in the back seat.
The space was extremely narrow due to the overload of two people, so Zhou Qianling had to stand up and hunch over the whole way. Fortunately, the destination was not far from the town. My aunt said it would only take an hour to get there.
However, most of the villages that even buses cannot enter are located in remote mountains. Not only are the mud roads slippery, but they are also much more rugged and steep than the previous roads. Zhou Qianling was shaken so much that his stomach churned and his face turned pale.
"The two from Yuxianwan, here we are." The driver braked, and the couple who had been in the car opened the door and got out.
The sudden braking caused Zhou Qianling's stomach to reflux. She forced her throat closed but found that she could not stop the urge to vomit. She pushed the door and got out of the car, holding her chest and vomiting acid.
Wiping away tears, Zhou Qianling moved his limbs and breathed in fresh air to relieve his motion sickness symptoms.
"We're almost home." Zhou Fang patted her daughter on the back to reassure her.
"Xiaoling, are you carsick?" My aunt got out of the car and let my uncle and the driver go first.
"I've never walked this kind of road before. I'm not used to it."
Zhou Qianling wasn't being pretentious. Her health didn't allow her to do anything. The car had already left, so the others weren't in a hurry. They stood by the pool and took their time.
The road curved left, with a mountain to the right. A three-meter-high earthen wall bordered the roadside, above which lay the land of the people, and above that two or three tiled houses. Just inside the left bend was a small pond, its surface covered in a thin layer of ice and dotted with a few withered stalks and fallen leaves. It must have been a lotus pond.
Yuxianwan.
Zhou Qianling looked at the withered willow branches by the pond, wondering about the story behind these words.
--
Yuxianwan Village was adjacent to his hometown, and it took about ten minutes to walk there. Seeing the stone tablet on the roadside, Zhou Qianling finally knew the name of his hometown.
Laowa Village.
It sounds better than the Duck Foot Claw Village and the Shit Town we encountered along the way.
After entering the village, there are more buildings on the roadside. In addition to the old-fashioned blue-tiled houses and old small bungalows, you can also see grocery stores and pork stalls with their doors open to sell things.
"I think both mother and daughter are hungry. Come and have something to fill your stomach first." Third aunt greeted them warmly, walked a few steps to the other side of the dirt road, and entered a store.
Zhou Qianling looked up and glanced at the sign on the fly restaurant.
Meilai casserole mutton noodles.
The two of them had only eaten a few mouthfuls of noodles yesterday and were indeed a little hungry now.
"Xiaoling, come and see what you want to eat."
Zhou Qianling glanced at the menu on the wall, ordered a small bowl of mutton noodles, and sat opposite his aunt.
The store is not big and is divided into a kitchen area and a dining area. The dining area is barely equipped with a round table and a row of narrow folding tables against the wall.
"Do you want it spicy?"
A question came from inside, the voice soft and clear, like the lingering final note of a guqin. Zhou Qianling looked up at the food delivery area and saw only the tip of a ponytail swaying.
"Two bowls of extra spicy, and one bowl of mildly spicy." Zhou Fang, knowing her sister and daughter's tastes, added, "No green onions for the mildly spicy bowl."
After saying that, Zhou Fang continued chatting with her sister.
Zhou Qianling averted her gaze and, bored, pulled out her phone. It was only at 10 percent battery, and the signal had dropped from 4G to 2G. She opened her favorite social media app, but after a long wait for it to load, she locked the screen and set it aside, propping her face up and idly tracing the lines on the table.
A few minutes later, the curtain was lifted. Zhou Qianling raised his eyelids lazily, and when he saw the man's face clearly, his fingertips couldn't help but tap the wood grain.
The woman was about the same age as him, around 26 or 27, with a fair, delicate face and bangs, a style popular among students a few years ago. Although she was wearing an apron, it was clear that she was wearing a long, fur-collared yellow down jacket, a popular style from a few years ago.
Perhaps Zhou Qianling's gaze was too wanton, the woman paused for a moment and then lowered her eyelids to block the two of them from looking at each other.
"Slightly spicy." She put down the bowl, said two words and turned back to the kitchen area.
Zhou Qianling stood up to help carry the rest, but Zhou Fang held him back and scolded him, "That's a clay pot. You'll burn the skin off if you touch it directly."
Zhou Qianling had no choice but to step back. The water was still bubbling in the casserole on the insulation pad. She took out a pair of chopsticks and used the tails to hook the casserole in front of her. A strange smell penetrated her nose, which seemed to be the fragrance of mint.
Zhou Qianling had never eaten mutton noodles before, but she had a hunch that she might fall in love with the taste in the future.
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