Chapter 22 Spring Day Green (5) That is so special in their lives...
Later, people always complained about Beijing's smog, sandstorms, and air pollution. However, in Lin Xia's memory, the sky was always clean and clear, with no clouds during the six months she trained in Beijing.
The compound where the studio is located is actually a large arsenal. The studio rented two buildings in the factory area. Both are bungalow courtyards. One row is classrooms, one row is dormitories, there is also a small shop and a small canteen, which constitute all the areas for students' daily activities.
The dorm was an eight-person room with bunk beds. It was cramped and basic. Lin Xia wasn't used to it when she first arrived. She missed home and couldn't get along with her roommates. She cried almost every night for the first month, but she gradually got used to it. There wasn't anything special going on; it was just the human body's ability to adapt. When you can't change your environment, you just slowly accept it.
Every morning, Lin Xia and her roommates get up at 6 o'clock, wash up, eat, and then walk from the dormitory to the studio together. The two areas are a bit far apart, and it usually takes ten minutes to walk. During these ten minutes, Lin Xia always looks up at the sky.
In the suburbs of Tongzhou, without the many tall buildings blocking the view, one could look up and see an almost complete sky. It felt a bit like the Northeast, but the color was lighter and softer, like the spring blue from a paint box. Lin Xia liked the name very much; it had both youth and spring in it, just like them now, eighteen or nineteen years old.
I arrived at the studio, sharpened my pencils, set up my easel, and began preparing. The studio was small, messy and dirty, with tons of stuff. Classes ran from 8:00 AM to 9:30 PM: sketching in the morning, coloring in the afternoon, sketching in the evening, and design classes on the weekends. There were three teachers in the class: the class teacher, the assistant class teacher, both from CAFA, and a painting correction teacher, a part-time student.
Lin Xia's class consisted of about fifty students, half from Hunan and half from Guangdong. She was the only one from Northeast China, and one of only two who had come to the studio on her own. The studio was large, with several branches in Beijing and partnerships with other local studios. Every year, they would select a group of students to study in Beijing. If Lin Xia hadn't had a solid foundation, she wouldn't have had the opportunity to join.
The studio has one day off every two weeks. You can go out, but you have to report it. Because the daily classes are too tiring and it is too far from the city, most people choose to sleep in on this day.
Apart from the time she asked for leave to visit her grandfather, Lin Xia only went out once, to buy books and painting supplies with Yang Yang and Lao Sun.
Yang Yang is Lin Xia's lower bunkmate. She is a Hunan girl who speaks a plastic Mandarin accent. She is warm and straightforward. She always pulls Lin Xia along in everything she does. She is Lin Xia's best friend in the studio.
Old Sun is a boy, his full name Sun Ping'an. He thinks his name sounds unfashionable and doesn't let anyone call him that. Because he repeated a grade for three years and is several years older than everyone else in his class, everyone calls him Old Sun. He has medium-length hair, dresses in a unique way, and is usually indifferent and aloof, fulfilling all the stereotypes people have of artists. But he's also truly talented. He took the entrance exams for three years and passed them all, but unfortunately, he failed the general academic subjects all three years.
He always told Lin Xia that he would go to Qingmei University, and only Qingmei University for the Arts and Crafts program. He spoke eloquently and logically about this, speaking in broken Cantonese, but with great persuasiveness. To some extent, Lin Xia developed a yearning for Qingmei University and was deeply influenced by him.
Every night, after class, Lin Xia would wash herself clean, stained with paint and pencil dust, and return to the dormitory. Exhausted, she would lie on her bed, snuggled under the covers, and text He Chuan on her phone. Both he and she were extremely busy, with no time during the day, so the only time she looked forward to was the half hour before bed.
Lin Haisheng was discharged from the hospital. He and He Ping stayed in Beijing to prepare for the next round of chemotherapy. Lin Xuedong returned to Wangchun, and He Chuan also returned to Hong Kong. After school started, he was already a junior.
Phone and text messaging charges were too expensive, and they were all poor students who could not afford it. QQ and QQ Hong Kong were inconvenient to use, so he taught her how to use MSN, which is also a chat software.
Every day, they talk about everything, all the trivialities of daily life, but they just can't finish talking. In the high-intensity, closed and repressed environment, all the youthful hormones are transformed into a desire to share, and they can't wait to tell that person everything that is happening around them.
The houses in the factory area are all made of red bricks. The color is very beautiful and different from what I have seen at home.
There was a walnut tree in the yard in front of the classroom. We spent the entire summer waiting for it to bear fruit. When it finally did, we picked up the walnuts that had fallen on the ground, dried them in the sun, cracked them open, and ate them. Unfortunately, they tasted terrible.
The food in the cafeteria is so boring. They just have steamed buns every morning. They're nothing compared to Aunt Hao's. It's all vegetables, no meat. I want meat, roast duck, chicken legs, braised fish. The food in your cafeteria should be delicious, right?
[Recently, a stranger sneaked into the factory. He was a perverted exhibitionist. Several girls in our class were frightened by him. He was later chased away by security.]
In portrait class, we took turns modeling. I loved being a model because it gave me a break and allowed me to see how I looked to others.
I have a roommate who's from Chaozhou. She grew up by the sea. I envy her so much. Have you ever seen the sea in Hong Kong?
I like to draw while listening to music. Since I don't have a place to download new songs, my classmates and I use Bluetooth to transfer them to each other. However, the files saved on our phones are all named with their original file names, making it difficult to tell what's what.
She always talks more and he says less, but as long as she sends a message, he always responds.
There's a sculpture in front of the library called "Zhongmen." My classmates said walking through Zhongmen would cause you to fail the exam. I didn't know that at first, so I walked through it and didn't fail.
Yesterday, a Hong Kong celebrity gave a lecture at our school. Many students attended. The crowd was the largest I've ever seen.
The food in the cafeteria here is pretty good, but the vegetables are few and far between, and they're not fresh. Vegetables are expensive and scarce in Hong Kong, as is fruit. People often buy them at ParknShop or Kanghui off-campus. I miss Aunt Hao's steamed buns, too.
[Be careful. Don't stay alone to draw after class at night. Go back to the dormitory with your classmates.]
"Do you get nervous being watched by so many people? What do they draw of you? I want to see."
[You can see the sea from the mountain on campus, and some dormitories even have sea view rooms.]
My roommate has been listening to Lady Gaga lately and even changed her ringtone to her songs. Every day I wake up to these incredibly dynamic music, which gives me a headache. Whose music do you like to listen to?
From Hong Kong to Beijing, a distance of more than 2,000 kilometers, crossing countless mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, the black and white text on a small display screen carries the bond between the boy and the girl for more than a hundred days and nights.
Leaving their homes, far from their parents and friends, studying abroad alone, striving for their futures, they endured a double exhaustion, a sense of loneliness and desolation. The person on the other end of the phone was their only confidant. The ping of messages, the flickering screen, the clacking of fingers on the keyboard—it was a time in each of their lives that was so special. Though brief, insignificant compared to the long journey of a century, it was a time that no one could replace in the years to come.
Youth in peacetime is not so turbulent, without so many separations and deaths. The long-lasting companionship and support are enough to become an unforgettable existence in life, and will never be forgotten for years to come.
......
One day at the end of September, a new group of students arrived in the studio. There were eight of them, all from Chongqing. They were in the evening class when they arrived. The teacher brought them into the classroom, gave them a brief introduction, and then asked them to start painting with everyone else.
Among the eight students, one boy stood out. He was tall, well-proportioned, with a slightly dark complexion. When he smiled, his white teeth showed. He was sunny and cheerful. His name was Ren Zijian, and the moment he appeared, all the girls in the class were dazzled.
Yang Yang pulled Lin Xia's sleeve and whispered to her:
"Do you think he looks like that Korean male star?"
Lin Xia felt that he didn’t look like her, but he was indeed very handsome.
There were several groups of models in the classroom, and students could choose one to draw. Ren Zijian looked around and finally chose the group of models that Lin Xia and Yang Yang were drawing, and sat next to them.
He smiled at them and nodded. Yang Yang looked expressionless, but in fact he was so excited that his hand, which was close to Lin Xia's, almost tore her sleeve. Lin Xia was inconsolable because this was the only piece of clothing she had left that was not stained with paint!
The commotion caused by the arrival of the new students only lasted for a short while, and everyone soon immersed themselves in their own drawing boards again.
This class was portrait sketching. The models before Lin Xia and the others were classmates: a young girl sitting with a round, apple-shaped face. This was a very cute part of the portrait, but it was the most challenging to draw because you couldn't find the bone structure. An elderly face, with its wrinkles and crevices, was more detailed and easier to draw. This was Lin Xia's weakness, so she had come here specifically to practice.
Just as Lin Xia was painting with great difficulty, she suddenly heard some whispers around her:
"What a wonderful painting."
“The details are easy.”
"There's no way I could have handled this clothing."
Lin Xia was shocked when she turned around. She didn't know when a group of classmates gathered around her, watching Ren Zijian draw.
Lin Xia leaned over to take a look and had to admit that his painting was indeed good, but wasn't it a bit exaggerated? Perhaps his looks played a role, after all, people are visual animals, especially those who studied art, who were even more "lustful".
The teacher came over, stood beside Ren Zijian, watched for a while, praised him a few words, and then sent the others back.
Ren Zijian turned around and saw Lin Xia and Yang Yang looking at him. He smiled calmly, neither proud nor embarrassed, obviously used to being watched and praised. He glanced at Lin Xia's drawing board, which was a little closer to him, and pointed out her problem:
"Your styling isn't rigorous enough. The cheekbones and nose bones aren't shaped accurately."
"oh."
Lin Xia responded reluctantly. She certainly knew what her problem was.
Ren Zijian shifted his gaze and saw four small words written in black pen on her dark green drawing board - Must go to Qingmei.
Lin Xia and Lao Sun learned this and wrote these four words on their drawing boards, paint boxes, paint buckets, wardrobe doors...anywhere they could see them every day, to motivate themselves. Lin Xia was a little embarrassed and used a subtle color and size to write, just to avoid being seen by others. Unexpectedly, Ren Zijian said directly:
"Your target is Qingmei? My target is also Qingmei, so we are competitors!"
He smiled brightly, and Lin Xia's mood suddenly became depressed.
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