The night color of Houhai in Shenzhen is beautiful.
On one side of Dengliang Road, the lights are on in the high-rise mansions; on the other side of the Talent Park, there are more and more tourists. Some people are running around the lake, some people are walking their children in strollers, and some people are holding a beautiful woman with a peach blossom face.
Under a tree outside the park fence, a LED strip of lights surrounded a love outline, the light is like a circle of candles, warming the dim ground. A beam of light passed through the gaps in the leaves, through the night's mist, hitting a young man diagonally on the back. He stood in the middle of the heart-shaped area, slung an acoustic guitar, and sang front and center to the park's audience. It was an old song from many years ago, and the lyrics spoke of the complex feelings of a wanderer in a foreign land who had mixed feelings of love and resentment towards a city.
The man who sang the song was called Yang Zong, a Hainanese, in his early thirties, not tall, thin and slightly dark, but with a bright gaze.
Every night around 7:00 pm, the end of the day restaurant work Yang, back to the dormitory alone to the sound, lighting and mark frame and other equipment from the upstairs to the downstairs, to the front and back of the motorcycle, and then back on the guitar from the Houhai New Village ride to the Talent Park, which will take at least half an hour of operation. To the park next to the park, but also spend another half an hour to unload these things in turn, one by one, set up, turn on the power, light up and sing. Has been singing until 11:00 p.m. park closes, and then the equipment put away to ride back to help upstairs ... ... week after week, from last summer to now, Yang has been in the Talent Park performances of hundreds of games.
Yang grew up in Sanya Ledong County, Baoxian farm, the farm has a mountain-sized piece of wasteland, where the family planted the coconut forest. A coconut only sells for 50 cents, tired to collect two big carloads of coconut, but also sell less than a thousand dollars. In order to earn money to marry his wife, more than 10 years ago, he left Hainan to Shenzhen, first in the electronics factory, and then changed to engage in catering.
A chance encounter in 2012, Yang was attracted by a street singer's guitar playing and singing, and has been obsessed with music ever since. He wielded a knife and cut vegetables in the kitchen during the day, and waved his arms and jerked the piano on the rooftop of his dormitory building after work, so he practiced hard for several years, and finally made his official debut in 2018, under the flyover of Luohu's East Gate.
"The first time I performed, I could only sing one song, "Did Anyone Tell You", and I had the cheek to play this one song over and over again so many times"
"Once I sang a Cantonese song, "Silence is Gold", which touched a passing Hong Kong man, who, after listening to it actually put a thousand Hong Kong dollars in my piano bag", said that experience, he was proud.
The singer's career is full of joy, but also a lot of frustration.
Roadside performances are often driven away by the city police, sometimes four or five times a day, Yang had to keep looking for new venues. From the Luohu East Gate flyover singing to Meilin Excellence Plaza, Yang over rolling all the way, a hundred fold, and finally came to the Nanshan Talent Park.
"Street singing for more than two years, was the big brother of the city police drove almost 300 times, like a leather ball, was smashed on the ground and then immediately bounced up, I am now used to it."
2.
Yang and I met last summer, through the chance of Mr. Zhang Zhiyi. I have mentioned that encounter experience in the article "No Name".
At that time, due to the impact of the epidemic, Mr. Zhang had just shut down his music studio and had some music equipment to dispose of. One day I accompanied him to deliver the equipment, and met Yang for the first time in the cafeteria on the negative floor of Junshang Department Store. At that time, Yang had just finished making a BBQ pork for a customer, he came out of the kitchen to greet us and sit down first, and then turned back to make two cups of iced milk tea for both of us.
Wearing a white T-shirt with "HS Band" on it, he sat across from us, and I pointed to his T-shirt and asked:
"Is this your band?" The milk tea was good, but I was not surprised. " The milk tea was good, but I was more interested in the band thing.
"That's all in the past"
He was slightly silent for a moment, then sighed,
"Now it's disbanded, can't make much money playing music, and the guitarist has gone back to his hometown to get married and have a baby."
Although Yang's band has broken up, his passion for music has not diminished at all. He excitedly told us that a few days ago he found a piece of performance in the Talent Park, "Feng Shui", and then wanted to "make a big deal". He talked a lot about the idea of the show, how to set up the sound, lighting and so on. ...... The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of a long journey, and I was able to get to know the people in my life," he said.
It didn't take long for the Talent Park show to really get off the ground.
"Feng Shui Treasure Land" is located in the northwest corner of the Talent Park on a sidewalk, one side of the park across a guardrail, the other side of the road across the road with the Shenzhen Bay Vientiane City, on both sides of the constant flow of people, is indeed a very suitable venue for the show.
The crowd was huge. Yang and Zhang Zhiyi took turns on the stage with their guitars. Zhang Zhiyi sang Li Jian's "wind blowing the wheat waves", "Lake Baikal", soft like water, long aftertaste; Yang sang Xu Wei's "Blue Lotus", "perfect life", the vicissitudes of high-pitched, stirring. Between performances, there are often bold audience volunteered to cross the park fence to show their own voice; there are often parents to lift their children over the fence to encourage children to perform in public. A guardrail invariably seems to divide two worlds: one side is the reality of life in the material world, and the other side is the spiritual world of poetry and faraway places.
"Music is all about having fun together", and seeing the audience singing along made Yang himself happy. He looked up at the moon in the sky and forgot about the sixpence on the ground.
One night, shortly after the show started, the sky was drizzling, so we rushed to close the stalls. It was still early in the day, so Yang, Zhang Zhiyi, me, and a young man named Yingjun decided on the spur of the moment to go drinking near Yang's place.
Yang pushed his motorcycle in front of him, and I carried my guitar and sang "Shepherd of the Cocoanut Sea" with them one line at a time. Recently, there are a lot of people singing this song, although it does not quite fit our taste in music, but sometimes it is an indispensable state of mind to have fun with the people.
In the drizzling rain, a group of idealistic young people were walking along, passing by the intersection next to the "Shenzhen Bay One" mansion, where prices are said to have risen to more than 200,000 a square foot. However, at the moment, in the corner of their eyes, it is just a piece of psychedelic light and shadow. We continue to sing the shepherd's love story and soon leave the mansions behind, tonight my friends and I just want to drink and have fun, not wanting to care about humans and buildings.
Beer and barbecue, and all we talked about was music.
Yang has been constantly praising Zhang Zhiyi's composition "Jiangnan". This song is a ballad written by Zhang Zhiyi when he was a resident singer in a bar in Xitang. The smoky rainy Jiangnan in September was like a gentle girl, which gave him the inspiration to create the song.
Zhang Zhiyi turned back to Yang and said, "Didn't you also write a song called 'Love in a Country Town', sing it for us to listen to", and handed Yang his guitar as he spoke.
Yang took the guitar, and sang on the barbecue stall,
Beer, night, countryside, girl, folk singers always use some of the most beautiful words to express the longing for a better life, even though the truth of life is often a piece of chicken feathers. But this is not exactly pretentious, the problem may be that they are prone to swelling up for the ideal.
After the wine had been drunk and the singing finished, the rain stopped outside, and it was time for the show to break up. We each drilled into the darkness of the night and disappeared, just as the wine we drank, the cattle we bragged about, and the songs we sang this night all disappeared like a dream when we woke up. When the sun rises tomorrow, the first thing we will think about is how to fill the stomach, send the children to school, and then go to work, meetings, see customers, these specific banal things constitute the bulk of life, day after day, ordinary.
I still vaguely remember the words Yang said at the end of that night, "Tomorrow I have to get up early to go to the restaurant, more hot and spicy hot pot, business is busy on the weekend, and then earn more money ...."
3
In the blink of an eye, a few months have passed, and Yang's show has become an inseparable part of the scenery in Talent Park. Although the weather is getting colder and colder, there are still a lot of people coming to listen to the songs.
On the night of the New Year's Eve, a few new friends came from far away to play in the band, led by a Hong Kong elder brother who has been playing the piano since he was eight years old. He was followed by two high achievers who had returned from studying in Japan, one specializing in tambourine playing and the other in singing and playing. The performance was a "battle of the immortals", and they collaborated on a song called "Don't Hesitate", which rocked the house.
But as the Chinese New Year approached, the management around Talent Park became more and more strict.
One night, about two weeks before the Spring Festival, Zhang Zhiyi and I were on the lawn listening to Yang sing his favorite song
"Has anyone ever told you that
I love you very much (Shenzhen)......"
I realized that every time Yang Zong sang the word "love you", he would softly chant the word "Shenzhen" right after it. I think he really likes this city, like its openness and tolerance, like its vitality and passion. The slogan "Come to be a Shenzhener" tempts young people from all over the world to come here to struggle and start their own businesses, although after many years, only a lucky few of them can buy a house and start a family here and become real Shenzheners, while the others end up becoming passers-by in this city. (Please forgive me for accidentally spilling a bowl of chicken soup.) But isn't that what youth is all about? People can only be young once, who do not want to let go in the age of the dream? Even if the end is just a passer-by, there are no regrets.
The song went into the chorus, Yang flew his right hand, the rhythm to the climax. Just at this moment, a Yuehai Street Office cityscape patrol car passed behind him, and soon, two people in uniform got off before and after, approached to Yang's side, waved his hand, and said softly,
"Stop singing!"
The sound of the piano came to an abrupt end, like a car running on the highway suddenly being slammed on a sharp brake. Yang, who had been around city police for years and knew it was futile to argue with them, calmly unloaded his guitar and said sorry to the audience. He even put himself in the shoes of the city police: they are just carrying out their duties, and they are just trying to make a living at the grassroots level. It's not easy.
But the audience couldn't watch.
"Why don't you let people sing here?" A pugnacious older sister let out a broken cry.
"That's right, we all like to hear him sing here, where does it affect the cityscape?" , another audience member followed suit and protested.
"They are a bunch of people are bullying soft and afraid of hard, square dancing mothers they do not dare to go to the control, will bully reasonable and civilized people", the big sister continued to indignation.
The man in the uniform turned to face the crowd that was about to boil, and said nothing.
After a short stalemate, the crowd eventually dispersed. Although the enforcement of the city management is unreasonable, but it is still civilized, they just feel a little regret, since the park named "Talent Park", why do you want to drive away these young people who come here to show their talent?
Yang turned off the lights, collected the sound, removed the mark frame. People in uniform left, on the way out, shook his head regretfully,
"What is not good to do at a young age, have to beg?"
4
After being driven away by the city police, Yang was not seen singing in the Talent Park for several days. When everyone was worried about him, Yang sent a message in the microblogging group:
"I'm going back to the Hainan farm to plant, tomorrow is my last performance in the Talent Park."
The last performance was on February 2, just one night before the beginning of the Spring Festival, and the branches of the trees on both sides of the Dengliang Road were full of big red lanterns, which made people feel that they were not the only ones in the park, and that they were not the only ones in the park. The red lanterns on the branches of the trees on both sides of Dengliang Road were already full of red lanterns, giving people a strong New Year's atmosphere.
Yang looked a bit tired and gave the show to his fans and friends without singing a few songs. A handsome man from Beijing and the Hong Kong big brother who appeared on New Year's Eve walked up and sang a chorus of "Silence is Golden", which was a little windy that night, just in time for the first two lines of the lyrics.
After performing the first verse of the song, accompanied by a warm interlude melody, the handsome man from Beijing said emotionally,
"....... Yang, I very much admire your perseverance. All people who love music, not necessarily to become a star, but we have to have a dream and sing persistently, in this way, we are the happiest ourselves, which is more important than anything else..."
The handsome man from Beijing loves music as much as Yang, and so far he has accumulated more than 1,000 songs on top of All K Song.
5
The whole idea of going home to farm is just a joke, of course, and Yang returned to Shenzhen on the fifth day of the first month of the lunar calendar.
However, it seems he was too busy with other things after the New Year to bother singing at Talent Park. He was running around all day and night, buying ingredients, ordering kitchenware, registering trademarks, doing business licenses, and seemingly planning to do something big.
Sure enough, two days ago, he said he and his friends engaged in an online catering project, mainly selling Hong Kong-style barbecue pork, but also a dominant name, "Yang's God sculpture barbecue pork".
It turned out that the New Year's Eve appeared the Hong Kong big brother and Yang very much, he is also surnamed Yang, in Hong Kong has done more than 10 years of hotel catering management. The two met and talked about music and catering, drinking all night long, and talking to each other. At dawn, Hong Kong's big brother decided to invest in "Yang's divine sculpture rubbing barbecue pork" project, Yang is responsible for the kitchen production, Hong Kong's big brother is responsible for market operations. It is said that just opened to now, their barbecue pork has been sold out hundreds of copies.
I would like to Yang fans as the identity of "Yang's God carving barbecue" to support the scene, not only because of a piece of my own feelings, but also contains a personal respect for Yang. The waves of this era of profit and profitability are turbulent, and the boats of countless idealists have been mercilessly crushed by it, but there are still some people who hold on to a piece of driftwood and continue to swim forward. I am ashamed that I lack the courage to fight for the ideal, but I am willing to wave the flag for the warriors on the shore, and sincerely wish them success in arriving at the other side of the ideal.