Qingyang's Travelogue: When Cicadas' Song Fills the Fields in June
Chapter 1: The sound of pigeons piercing the morning mist in the conference room
As the June morning light, like unformed honey, slanted into the conference room through the gaps in the blinds, the air conditioner was still humming and blowing cool air. The last page of last night's project report remained on the projector, and coffee stains spread in varying shades of cloud patterns on the glass tabletop. Inside the circle of twelve swivel chairs, someone was lightly tapping the table with the end of a pencil, the tapping sound mingling with the gradually increasing volume of traffic outside the window, weaving together the unique noise of a city morning.
“I’ll say it one last time,” Chen Mo slammed his mug on the table, the porcelain base striking the glass with a crisp sound. “The ancient town is full of commercialized bar streets, selling more cultural and creative products than tourists.” He rolled up his sleeves to his forearms, revealing a worn-out mechanical watch on his wrist. “I just came back from Zhouzhuang last week, and even the old ladies rowing the boats were reciting tour guide scripts through megaphones.”
Sitting across from her, Lin Xiaoman tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, her pearl earring shimmering in the morning light. "But Yunnan is too far away. Round-trip airfare costs three thousand yuan, which is simply not enough to cover my budget." She opened her laptop, and a dozen or so travel apps popped up on the screen. "Besides, I have to submit quarterly reports at the end of the month, so taking a long vacation is not realistic."
Someone's phone vibrated in their bag, like a muffled thunderclap buried in a pile of documents. Ah Yu stared at the whiteboard next to the projector, where "Team Building Destination Candidates" were written in highlighter, with the three options—ancient town, wetland park, and resort—crossed out in ink. She suddenly remembered a poster she had seen in the subway last week. It depicted a waist-high rice paddy, with a farmer wearing a blue headscarf standing among the rice stalks, against a backdrop of dark green mountains, and the words "Qingyang Town—Two Hours from the City, Deep in the Rice Waves" printed in the lower right corner.
“I have a suggestion,” Ah Yu’s voice was half an octave higher than usual, her fingers unconsciously twisting the cap of her pen, “How about Qingyang Town? I checked it out yesterday. It’s directly accessible by high-speed rail, the homestay prices are within my budget, and…” She paused, remembering the lush greenery on the poster that seemed to drip with oil, “It hasn’t been developed much yet. The travel guides on Xiaohongshu all say that it retains the original ecological rice paddy scenery.”
The meeting room suddenly fell silent. The hum of the air conditioner, the traffic outside the window, the vibration of the phone under the table—all sounds seemed to be sucked into an invisible vortex. Chen Mo twirled his mug, the coffee stains at the bottom drawing new arcs on the table; Lin Xiaoman's finger hovered over the mouse wheel, the travel app on the screen still refreshing; in the corner, intern Xiao Zhang secretly opened a map app, the search bar showing entries related to "Qingyang Town's pastoral scenery".
“Qingyang Town…” Chen Mo repeated the name, as if weighing its significance on his tongue, “Sounds plausible. Has anyone been there?”
No one answered. Those three words were like a pebble thrown into still water, creating unfamiliar ripples in their lives filled with PowerPoint presentations and KPIs. Ah Yu could feel her heart racing, her fingertips slightly cold with nervousness. She remembered summers spent at her grandmother's house in the countryside during her childhood, going with her grandmother to water the rice paddies in the early morning, dew wetting her trousers, frogs leaping among the rice plants, and the distant mountains shrouded in a thin mist, like a watercolor painting that hadn't quite dried.
“I think we can give it a try,” Lin Xiaoman suddenly closed her laptop, her pearl earring dangling again. “Anyway, we’re tired of ancient towns and resorts, so why not try something new?”
"But what's fun about the countryside?" Xiao Zhang muttered to himself. "We can't really go and plant rice seedlings, can we?"
“You can fish, pick fruit, and visit the village history museum,” Ah Yu immediately chimed in, as if she had already rehearsed it countless times in her mind. “I read in the travel guide that there’s a century-old mill in town that’s still grinding tofu with oxen. There’s a stream right next to it where you can wade and catch crabs in the summer.” She became more and more excited as she spoke, her eyes sparkling like the morning light. “And the guesthouse owner said that you can watch fireflies by the rice paddies at night, and there are also open-air movies showing old films.”
Chen Mo put down his mug, got up and walked to the whiteboard. He crossed out "ancient town" and "resort" with a red pen, and then drew a wavy line under "Qingyang Town," as if sketching the first outline of this unfamiliar land: "Okay, Qingyang Town it is. Ah Yu, you are in charge of the itinerary planning, three days and two nights, with a budget of less than 800 yuan per person."
When the meeting ended, sunlight had already bathed the entire wall in its glow. Ah Yu returned to her seat and immediately opened the ticket booking website; only a few second-class seats remained for the high-speed rail. Her fingers flew across the mouse, but her heart fluttered like a bird's wings. The traffic outside the window continued to roar, but she seemed to hear another sound—the rustling of the wind through the rice paddies, the tinkling of the stream hitting the rocks, and the barking of dogs from a distant village.
When booking the guesthouse, she dialed the number on the poster. A middle-aged woman with a local accent answered, introducing herself as Aunt Wang from the "Rice Flower Village" guesthouse. "Young lady, how many of you are there?" Aunt Wang's voice was like a warm, cozy quilt, radiating a simple warmth. "It's the rice harvest season now, the fields are so green they're almost blinding. The bayberries behind the house are ripe too, you can pick as many as you like, there's plenty!"
As Ah Yu wrote down the address and precautions for the guesthouse, she imagined the scene described by Aunt Wang. She seemed to see a vast rice field undulating in the wind, like a green ocean, with several children carrying bamboo baskets walking on the ridges, and distant green mountains like a soft screen, separating this small town from the noisy world outside.
After hanging up the phone, Ah Yu sent a message to her colleagues: "The train tickets and guesthouse are all booked. We're leaving next Saturday. Remember to bring comfortable walking shoes and mosquito repellent."
Soon, Chen Mo's reply popped up in the message box: "Received. I can finally escape this cage of reinforced concrete."
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