There is nothing to fear on Xiaoyun Road, a once distant and unfamiliar street, where most of my days now pass.
More than ten years ago, I learned about Lai Tai Flower, and I would come here a few times a year to carry various flowers home and come back after they died. Every time I come to Lai Tai is from the East Third Ring Road to Xiaoyun Road, and then a little south is the flower market. In the early years, there was a porcelain store in the row of stores opposite Laitai, and we met Ni Ping, who was in her prime, when we were shopping there. In those days, every time you made a trip to Xiaoyun Road, you felt so far away.
Blue Harbor just opened, as if the 2009 New Year, to participate in the New Year's Eve activities, midnight from the Blue Harbor left, Liangma Bridge, Xiao Yun Road or lights, the more to the south to drive, the lights are more and more sparse, almost to the home into the basement before, all the way to the son of the silence suddenly said: this and just like two worlds ah! Then again, self-congratulatory like, said but we are here quiet, suitable for sleeping.
In 2016, my son took a leave of absence from school to come to the U.S. Embassy for a visa, the Embassy has moved from Yabao Road to Tianze Road, which is perpendicular to Xiaoyun Road. We made an appointment for the earliest interview and went to Starbucks in the Air China Building for breakfast afterward. At that time, Starbucks was not yet all over the capital.
Then one day that year, I came back to Lai Tai to buy flowers, parked my car on Xiao Yun Road, and crossed over from the Netcom Building to Lai Tai. When I saw an apartment building next to mine, I opened my cell phone, checked the nearest Chain Store, and asked them if they had any recommendations for suitable apartments nearby.
In the early spring of the next year, I moved to Xiao Yun Road.
The month before, the modern building in Xiaoyun Road in the nine to five ten years of college friends left the workplace.
Nearly three years ago, I became familiar with Xiaoyun Road, and friends around me often come to Xiaoyun Road to chat and talk about things. After all, there are no streets in Beijing like Xiaoyun Road, where there are at least four or five Starbucks on one street, and there is a cafe, a milk tea store, and a variety of restaurants with different flavors and prices a few meters away from each other. The restaurants west from Netcom are basically affordable, mainly for Air China, Hyundai and Netcom employees to eat working meals, while east is a variety of grades, there are suitable for treating guests, hidden Xiaoyunyuan, there is the old French Fu Lou, there are dozens of restaurants gathered, and there are stores constantly changing the name of the Xiaoyun food street, but also a variety of grades, abundance and frugality, Pengrun, and HNA building in the restaurant also have their own specialties. While the expensive Japanese Kaiseki downstairs in Netcom closed within a few days of opening, Laojitang on the first floor was lucky enough to catch the Michelin star rating as soon as it opened, and the parking lot in front of the door is full of all kinds of vehicles at night, so I guess it won't be closing down anytime soon. And during the daytime, the downstairs of Netcom Finance, which collapsed in the tide of 2019, almost every day there are people who come to ask for money gathering, sometimes standing on the balcony and opening the window, you can hear them shouting in unison: XXX, pay back the money! Police cars also visit from time to time. Because they know that I live on Xiao Yun Road, my friends also send online gossip and rumors about the boss of Netflix to the group. Friends who went to MCC to have their babies, to UFH for physicals, or to the Xin Yuan Li market for groceries, would WeChat me and say, "I'll be passing by your house soon, are you at home? Are you home? Come out for a chat? When it's almost Chinese New Year, I'll meet up with several groups of friends a day at Mrs. Lai's. But this year is different. But this year is different. After many rumors, Mrs. Lai is finally closed for upgrading, and the street across the street has been demolished for several years and converted into a street garden. In other places where I used to live, the square-dancing adults would not miss such a place, but here at night, there are only a few occasional people walking.
On weekday mornings, commuters pouring out of the Liangmaqiao subway either ride their little yellow bikes or walk to Xiaoyun Road. At 3 or 4 p.m., several international school buses can be seen stopping to drop off children. In addition to the winter season, the children's activity area downstairs is filled with shouts of children speaking various languages until 8 or 9 pm. At the end of the day, Xiao Yun Road's small yellow bikes are again swept away by people coming out of various office buildings, and then there is a long line at the subway entrance, waiting for the security check to enter the subway. During the summer vacation, my son, who was on internship, came back from the subway at night and found that the subway to the east was packed with people. He was a little curious about where they all lived. Xiaoyun Road on weekends, but then cold like Beijing City during the Spring Festival.
What many people don't know is that most of the neighborhoods on Xiao Yun Road, with the exception of Xiao Yun Road 8, have prices that are less than half of what they are in the West Side school district.
Can't find a suitable word to describe Xiao Yun Road.