Chapter 234 Rooftop Postman (2)
The extremely dirty and chaotic environment of the Walled City was unbearable for a young man like Jiahui who had read foreign books and seen modern international metropolises.
However, no matter how unbearable it was, for the sake of survival and for the reason of entering the walled city, he still had to continue to endure it.
Originally, Jiahui thought that enduring this dirty and messy environment was something that ordinary people could not endure - but reality slapped him hard in the face.
The postman's route in the Walled City is not for humans to walk on!
The lanes and stairs were walkable, but the "shortcuts" illegally built by residents, such as wooden springboards, scaffolding made of bamboo poles, and windows of all sizes, gave Jiahui a lot of trouble.
On the contrary, thanks to his familiarity with the fortress over the years, Uncle Cao was much more agile than Jiahui when walking on these mysterious roads even with a cane: after all, there were many times when walking on these roads required climbing and crossing with both hands and feet, and the role of the feet was therefore weakened a lot.
There were even neighbors who poked their heads out to laugh at him, saying that a young man like him couldn't outrun his grandfather who had a cane...
The figures of an old man and a child walking in the deformed buildings on the screen became one of the inspirations for the extreme sport "parkour" in the eyes of those who paid close attention. Hong Kong's early urban action films all contained such elements to a greater or lesser extent, thus giving rise to the memes of so-and-so Happy Buildings and so-and-so Happy Houses.
But at this time, these elements were just scattered in the plot as embellishments; only Su Yun, who had integrated the knowledge of later generations, combined the route map and action references during the filming period to design this first-generation parkour form with varying speeds and staggered arrangements for the two postman characters.
Unfortunately, at the premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, these carefully designed, seemingly thrilling, yet ultimately safe and sound action sequences were hailed as "Chinese Kung Fu" by the ignorant foreigners...
Although things did not go as planned, this thrilling and safe first entry into the Walled City was indeed very gripping.
From the action design to the picture composition, the struggle for survival in the harsh land like a ruin, and the display of the walled city buildings from point to surface and then to the whole as the two postmen act, follow the previous shock of viewing the walled city from the outside to the inside, and gradually transition to depicting the excitement of the walled city from the inside out.
Then, when the two postmen walked onto the rooftop from the dim and mysterious road, the afterglow of the setting sun, accompanied by the gorgeous sunset glow, gave the viewers a sudden feeling of surviving a catastrophe and seeing the light of day again.
The huge black shadow of the plane, accompanied by a deafening roar, cut through the fine dust floating in the air under the setting sun, narrowly brushed past the messy electric wires and clotheslines, and then flew away, carrying the clothes and quilts it had lifted up in the waves.
In the distance, the children who had climbed onto the rooftop to play after school cheered a few times at the shadow of the plane, and then began to hurriedly pick up the clothesline that had been blown to pieces.
When Jiahui came to his senses after climbing up to the rooftop for the first time, Uncle Cao took him down to the dim alley again.
Several days passed as the two postmen moved around. On the night before they officially started working alone, Jiahui worked late into the night, drawing one sketch after another of the route maps.
"As the saying goes, a good memory is worse than a bad pen. You definitely can't remember the whole route using only your brain when you just came back. It's a good thing you knew to take a pen and write it down." Uncle Cao is very satisfied with his grandson's professionalism.
"I know." Jiahui pushed his glasses and took a piece of paper to continue drawing, but the small desk lamp on the table suddenly flashed a few times.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" The whole room suddenly went dark. Jiahui was so frightened that he shouted a few times in the darkness, but all he got in return was Uncle Cao's tone of being used to it.
"This is the condition of the wiring here. There's nothing we can do in an emergency. You should go to bed early. I'll ask Yunji to come and fix it tomorrow." Mr. Cao looked outside through the shabby window that could only be opened to the width of an adult's palm. Seeing that there were lights on in other places, he realized that there was something wrong with his own wiring.
"Are you mistaken..." Jiahui's complaint and Old Man Cao's snoring gradually faded into the darkness. After a few seconds, a white flashlight light illuminated a pair of brown eyes.
Those eyes looked hazy like a dream, but unfortunately the scar that could not be concealed even by the big scarf covering the eyes ruined all the beauty.
After some effort, the wiring problem in Uncle Cao's house was fixed. After collecting the money, Yun Ji, the electrician played by Su Yun, slowly walked to Long Po's house opposite under Jia Hui's puzzled gaze.
The lady who lives in the house opposite is an elderly widow who lives alone. She relies on the food and clothing sent by the welfare association and some cleaning work in the old people's home in the walled city for a living. Her life is very difficult.
However, Yunji showed no mercy at all and bluntly said that Long Po had not paid for repairing the rice cooker yesterday. He ignored Long Po's explanation that she had bought some medicine recently and was short of money, and just stood there with his hand out to ask for money.
Jiahui subconsciously took a step forward, but was pulled back by Mr. Cao: "Yun Ji is the only electrician willing to stay with us. You can't offend her, otherwise we will have no electricity in the future."
The people in the walled city were clearly divided, with social groups gathering in the east and residents gathering in the west.
Most of the businessmen are in the middle area between the two sides. Most people prefer to do regular business in the west of the city, but it is difficult to find a few good electricians even in the "well-behaved" east of the city.
The reason is simple. After decades of stealing electricity in the Walled City, even though the government reluctantly provided electricity in the past few years to prevent residents from causing trouble due to electricity, the wires are still in a mess. This job is hard and thankless.
What's more, this level of repair and maintenance is beyond the capability of ordinary electricians.
High-level technical jobs are extremely rare in the walled city where the average cultural level is extremely low.
People outside say that the Walled City is chaotic, and of course there are chaotic areas; but the vast majority of people there are ordinary people who work hard, save enough money, and dream of sending their children or themselves away.
Those who make the transition are the middle-class people who go out to work and earn wages outside during the day, and then come back to the walled city at night to sleep and enjoy the high housing prices in the walled city. The price difference between the inside and outside is almost five times.
As long as they can get out, no one would want to stay in the old shacks or new buildings in the walled city: most of the current residents of the new buildings are people who cannot afford to build new houses on their own and can only use the land of their old shacks to exchange with the real estate developers for units in the new buildings.
In this transaction, the real estate developer is quite "generous": one-for-one or even one-for-two transactions often occur - because these new buildings, which are nearly four-fifths cheaper than the outside houses, have no relevant documents, but only a self-made contract paper with basically no legal effect.
If there is any dispute, the residents of the new building will be very unprotected.
But even so, those new buildings have been gradually filled with people over the past few years.
The residents of the walled city who roughly understand the tricks of the real estate developers, as well as the elderly who are reluctant to give up their old houses and find it inconvenient to climb high-rise buildings, mostly live in the old and dilapidated shantytown area, which contrasts with the seemingly new and solid new buildings in a strange and sharp contrast.
Seeing that Long Po was staring at Yun Ji's receding back and cursing in a low voice, Jia Hui listened carefully and heard Long Po calling Yun Ji ugly, selfish, and ungrateful, and that she deserved to be cheated on by her husband who was secretly cheating on her.
Taking advantage of his job of moving around the city, the curious Jiahui asked a little about Yun Ji.
The elderly people in the nursing home said that Yunji used to live in the walled city. When he was a child, his face was accidentally burned in a small fire. Later, he was taken in by his relatives to live outside. He only ran away quietly two years ago with a pretty boy.
At that time, Yunji's face was ruined by a quack doctor outside and he was seriously ill. The pretty boy wanted to take care of him but he didn't have much money. So a few months later, people who were working outside saw him outside the walled city being driven back by a burly, fat and rich woman.
This matter was discussed privately. As for whether Yunji knew about it, no one thought about it carefully: there were few people who could do electrician work here, and Yunji had such a face...
The Walled City needs electricians, but the work is hard to make a living and they are often delayed in payment. Maybe the pretty boy is so arrogant and often asks the postman if there is any letter, and it is with Yun Ji's tacit approval!
Especially the letter, a naughty kid took it out and read it secretly when Mr. Cao was sitting in the corner taking a rest - the suffocating smell of cheap perfume and the sexy red heart-sealed envelope, and the content was a bunch of corny and explicit words and instructions to meet at the old place, which gave many people goosebumps.
The most unbearable thing is that every time he receives a letter, the pretty boy will sneak away!
"...I don't have your letter here for the time being." In this side room, Jiahui, who delivered the letter to the shack where Yunji lived, was a little speechless in the face of the inquiry from the pretty boy Ah Rong.
"If there is a letter from me, please send it to me as soon as possible. It's urgent." Ah Rong is a young man who looks clean and tidy. He speaks politely as if he is well-educated. But when Jiahui thinks of his shameful behavior behind the scenes, he feels that he is not as "normal" as Yun Ji, who is cold and ruthless in chasing debts everywhere.
Of course, if he did this with Yunji's tacit approval, then these two are a perfect match: from the past to the present, there have been those rotten men who let their wives go out to sell themselves while they themselves act as private agents to attract customers.
Of course, basically no one respects such people.
At dusk after a workday, before the sun sets, Ka Fai always likes to stay on the rooftop of a high-rise building to enjoy the rare sunshine in the walled city.
Now, he has been able to do what the locals do, ignoring the planes flying overhead and concentrating on the things at hand.
The previously scattered hand-drawn drawings and records of the internal conditions of the walled city were gradually improved and integrated as his understanding of the walled city from the inside out deepened.
But the more Jiahui got to know the Walled City, the more he felt disgusted and annoyed by this dirty, messy and deformed fortress.
The camera gradually zooms out with a close-up of his complex eyes. Xiao Se's back, standing in the dusk, blends into the darkness with the buildings below under the shining light, but also reveals a kind of incompatible sense of resistance and rebellion.