I am a seed.
I transplanted myself to the city.
I have to say, I am a mature seed. I was fully mature before the age of twelve. And I tell you what, I come from somewhere. I have a lot of teachers; every blade of grass in my homeland was my teacher … Long before I was twelve, I had already read three thousand faces, and eaten every type of plant that grows in the fields, and knew every kind of birth and death. After this, every day of life is all part of the process. The process cannot be transcended.
I carry on my back a thousand acres of earth (without the foundations of a home), almost six thousand eyes (and a handful are blind, or half-blind, but they are still looking at me), and almost three thousand mouths that can't control themselves (sometimes, they will say a dead person is alive, or a living one dead)—their flying spit can drown people.
The reason I am putting myself on display is to make you understand that on this Earth, people are different from each other. Each person comes from somewhere. A person's childhood, or their background if you like, can influence their entire life. For example, in my subconscious: the ring of a telephone is as abrupt as a dog's bite. But things are different now. The dogs have come into the city too.
Do you want to know what I feared the most in my first ten years in the city? I'll tell you, the ring of a telephone. Every time a phone rang, my heart jumped out of my body!
And sometimes, I think I am a peg.
A willow peg that has been shoved into the city.
Although sometimes I sprout all over, I don't know if I can take root in the earth of cement and grow into a tree, because my elders in my homeland are still waiting for the cool shade of my boughs.
Thirty years ago, when I arrived in the provincial capital with my luggage on my back, and got off the train, it was already dusk. Everywhere I looked there were lights. They seemed to bloom open, one after the other, like chrysanthemum flowers, and not a single one was mine. But my heart was full of warmth still, because I was someone with a "work unit" . I followed the asphalt road onwards, and the buses drove past me one by one, and the bicycle bells tinkled one by one, and the stream of people rolled over me like a tide. I knew they were people with a direction, people who were going home. I had a direction too, my work unit was my direction. I was in no hurry, I didn't take a bus. It wasn't because of the cost (it was five fen to ride one stop in those days, and one jiao for three). I wanted to use my steps to measure this city, which I very likely would be taking root in from then on.
I asked the way as I walked along, but after I had walked an hour and forty-six minutes, when I arrived at the work unit, I suddenly lost my "direction" . The old man in the reception office at the college gate told me, "They've gone home. Come back tomorrow."
I said, "I've come to register."
The old guy said, "I know you've come to register. Human resources have all gone home. Come tomorrow, eight tomorrow morning …"
I stood there hesitating for a long time. Where should I go?
I was a bit dazed. I wandered aimlessly from street to street, all the while wondering: where should I go then? I didn't even realise I was hungry. The only thought I had was, should I go to the train station and stay the night there? I had one hundred and twenty six yuan and six jiao in my pocket at that moment (savings from graduate school), but I didn't think of staying in a hotel. I didn't have any awareness that I might stay in a hotel. And at that time, they hadn't started the identity card system yet, you needed other identification to stay in a hotel. Before registering at my work unit, I had no way to prove my identity, which means I had no identity. I had nowhere to go.
As I stumbled along, an idea suddenly popped into my head: Kale! I clung fast to this idea, repeating it over and over in my mind: Kale. Kale. Kale.
Kale was his childhood nickname. He was also from Wuliang village, the son of Wu Laogen, and his real name was Wu "Capable" Youcai. He had been a sapper in the army for three years, and after demobilisation he'd become a construction worker for a firm in Yingping. I met him when he returned to the village one summer, wearing a "Dacron" polyester T-shirt, and sporting a watch on his wrist. He said proudly that their site had moved to the provincial capital and they had built an office there, on some street or other. "Come over, everyone come over and visit me!" I knew he was just saying that. He knew the villagers had no way to visit the provincial capital—that was why he invited them. It was empty generosity, but now I'd really turned up.
The city's streets were arranged in a grid. I walked from the first horizontal street to the tenth, then wound back from the ninth vertical to the first, then through Peace Road, Culture Road, Yellow River Road, Agriculture Road, Beijing-Canton Avenue … Slowly the night deepened, and snowflakes danced down from the sky. In the street lights the snowflakes looked like pink hangings fluttering over heaven. I kept walking until I caught the scent of peppermint.
There was a faint minty smell in the lamp light, just a tiny bit. No matter which street I wandered, I could always smell that peppermint coming out of the lamps. My feet felt heavier and heavier. Each time I reached the end of a street, I stopped and looked at the street signs, and thought of Kale's face. Kale, where on earth are you?
Kale's big mouth swam in and out of my mind. I could see him waving his arms around, the watch on his wrist shining, and his voice saying, "It's pure shockproof steel, made in Shanghai." In those days, Kale the construction worker was the dandy. That was the difference between cities and villages then: lights shining or dogs biting, dyed nankeen or "Dacron" polyester. He was beckoning to me with his "Dacron" and his "Pure Shockproof Steel, Made in Shanghai" . When I felt tired, I would rest against a utility pole, like leaning on a piece of ice, and cautiously size the city up. Would it belong to me?