In Hanoi, ghosts often come up to me and ask, Japanese?
Shaking their heads, they'll ask again, Korean? Taiwanese? Hong Konger?
It was as if no one would think I was from the mainland. It seems that when the gweilo see teenagers walking in the hot sun with their backpacks and their heads down, they naturally think of independent Japanese kids.
The hotel where I stayed was in a deep alley in the city center. In Hanoi's alleys, sunlight fills every corner. Most of the alleys are filled with long, delicate, skinny French buildings. Grand rosebuds tumble over the fence. There are times in the late afternoon when it is so quiet that you can only hear the sound of water vapor evaporating from the leaves.
The hotel was owned by a Vietnamese woman. She liked to grow flowers on her balcony and would carry buckets of water upstairs to water them in the mornings and evenings. So I woke up every morning to the fragrance.
There were three floors in the total **** of the small hotel, and the floor I stayed on was mostly Japanese, with a few Brits who had gone to university in Guangzhou.
When I went out in the evening, I saw groups of Japanese kids giggling and speaking tongue-chewing Japanese to get coffee. They look at me alone with my keys, come up to me and say, Together?Instinctively, they shake their heads. Probably, just wanted to go out alone.
I really envied them. Those Japanese kids.
Wearing pants and clothes a size too big. Using SONY cell phones they've never seen before. Almost all of them had dyed yellow hair. They would smile when they saw people. I've also heard that Japanese high school students are in the habit of traveling abroad. Very young, but used to walk to different places.
At night in the hotel, I took a shower and watched TV. There are very few TV stations in Vietnam. Mostly American or Thai TV stations. From time to time, you would see a domestic TV series like "Gold Dust". Strangely though, the dubbing is always the same voice.
Hanoi's streets retain most of the French architecture from when it was a colony.
Ly Thai To St, not far from the lake, is lined with tall trees and cream-colored French villas hidden in the foliage, which have now become home to chambers of commerce, embassies and multinational offices of Europe and the United States, or have been converted into French-inspired bars, cafes and galleries.
Almost every day, I go to an unnamed video store. It sells all kinds of pirated CDs. There are pop CDs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, jazz and rock from the West, and DVDs of Hollywood movies with English subtitles. Most of the DVDs were Hollywood movies with English subtitles, but there were also a lot of Hong Kong movies. I often see the geeks picking them up and talking about them in hushed tones. An American man from Seattle who loves Bruce Lee.
Every time I go, I get something. Like the Icelandic orchestra, Bill Evans sixties jazz. Those are hard to get in Hangzhou.
Those pirated CDs, though roughly packaged, are extremely cheap. I would unwrap them and listen to them at night when I couldn't sleep.
The bookstore put a large number of LP travel books in the most prominent position. Almost all of them are pirated. Prices are usually $1 a copy. Most were about Southeast Asian countries and China. Later, in the coffee shop, I saw ghosts with a handful of LPs, almost all of which were also pirated copies bought in Vietnam.
Often went to unknown galleries to see paintings. Most of them are abstract oil paintings. Vietnamese painters with indifferent expressions seldom talk to customers. Each painting has a hefty price tag.
Love Little Hanoi Café, where I often order a cup of coffee and sit alone for a long time. Or talk to the ghosts. There are young Vietnamese waitresses in the store, often humming softly when there are fewer customers.
Many of the gweilo arrive with laptops and are often warmly greeted as they look at photos with them. Twelve months a year, nine months working and three months walking in different parts of the globe. They show me sunsets taken at Angkor Wat. A square in Saigon.
Young, skinny American girl, who came here alone because she loves Hanoi, has been here for two weeks.
Buying a variety of fruits to eat every day. Dragon fruit. Ruby red fruits. Milk fruit. Pineapple. And so on and so forth.
Almost never eat. When I'm hungry, I go to buy fruit or go to the rice noodle stand on the street.
There are very few ghosts at the rice noodle stand. But Vietnamese people like it here. Even late at night, the rice noodle stalls don't close. After a hard day's work, Vietnamese people sit on the street, drink beer and eat rice noodles. Vietnamese rice noodles are usually served with some fruits and lettuce. The owner also plays mournful Vietnamese love songs on a worn-out tape recorder.
I often mingle with those Vietnamese. Even though they knew I was Chinese, they rarely came to talk to me.
They talk in euphemistic Vietnamese and tell jokes. Even if you don't understand the language, you can feel the calmness of their lives. And Hanoi feels the same, full of life, and unusually down-to-earth and patient.
On the way to the water puppet show, I passed by ST. Joseph Catholic Church. Just looked outside, didn't walk in. The church is tall and majestic, except that the walls are stained and moldy and peeling.
It was late afternoon and the sun was still beating down. Fruit vendors were heading home with their loads. Vietnamese children chased and played back and forth in front of the church. College students in national dress talk and laugh in groups with their books. A cart driver puts a bouquet of white jasmine flowers on the brake of a tricycle. A family of three squeezed onto a motorcycle sped home.
How I wish such a life were my own.
Before coming to Hanoi, I read Anne Baby's The Rosebud Island. In it, she wrote that Hanoi is a Crazy City.
And the Hanoi I saw. Hot. Hidden. Quiet. And how the roar of motorcycles that would fill my ears in the morning paled in comparison to the hustle and bustle of the city.
So how exactly do I describe Hanoi.
It is such a city.
You can casually walk aimlessly through the city streets in flip-flops.
You can get an iced coffee anytime you want. You can do nothing but ramble on every day. Walk around aimlessly.
Wake up every day to the scent of flowers and the roar of motorcycles. Go to sleep in the humid, muggy air.
This is Hanoi in my eyes. Simple and pure.
The winter that never dies:
1.
Knowing that now, I haven't forgotten what happened in those years.
The memory is like a fragment, trembling helplessly in life.
That damp and cold southern town. That dirty and angry river. The ships stranded on the banks of the river, unable to return. The winter when the hours don't go by. And, that girl named Silly.
Oh no. Her name wasn't Silly. Her name was Sasha.
2.
The southern town where I used to live was at the end of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal.
It was a dirty river that brought together all of the town's unpleasantness and past, and reeked with the putrid stench of garbage all day long. The garbage on the bank slipped into the water as it bobbed around. Various stalls and stores lined the riverbank. One deep and obscure alley after another spreads out from the river like a vein and then clings to the town. The light gray clouds on the river surface were stained with a bit of earthly filth. Large flocks of birds resting on old utility poles would suddenly take to the air at the shrill, urgent sound of a steam whistle.
I often feel that this is a river that is gasping for breath, its life force over-exploited and depleted.
It's like huge particles take over my eyes, and there's no way to lift a hand to wipe them away.
As a young man, I used to look forward to the cargo ships coming in from the north. Those boatmen would usually park their boats along the canals and sell the goods brought from the north. For weeks, even months at a time. They would never leave, always perched on the ships. Those old, worn-out and vicissitudes of the ships seemed to be their home. Some of them didn't even leave again, rooted in this strange southern town.
Then yes, I have met many children from the north. They all came south by boat with their parents. They spoke in a nice northern accent. They spoke some northern dialects that I didn't understand. Those northern boys were bright and cheerful, and knew a lot of new and strange games that I had never played before. I was often mesmerized by their adventure-like experiences. Since I was a child, I have been drifting with my parents. All the days and nights were spent on a boat. Their lives exuded wanderlust. I don't know why, but I felt it was a bravery that I admired.
From their mouths, the strange north finally had a shallow outline in my mind. I learned that the north was expected to be a sea of forests with no boundaries. The north has a very muddy corn porridge. There are also donkeys that I have only heard of in fables.
They also say that in the north there is a grand silence of snow.
Every winter, the university covers the whole world. Everywhere is bright white and it stings the eyes. One can look for squirrel holes in the snow, where furry little squirrels shrink into a ball and nestle inside. Snowmen built on doorsteps don't melt for weeks. They also said that the village where they came from had a huge lake. Every winter, cranes would fly in and roost by the lake. The villagers used to take some corn grains or sorghum to feed those cranes.
I was often mesmerized by what I heard. Those wonderful experiences are beyond my imagination. That winter in their mouth, after all, is not the same as the south. The winter in this southern town usually doesn't snow. Even if it did snow, it was very, very small, and was scattered all over the place in the northwesterly wind without any rules and regulations. With the naked eye, it was hard to tell that those dandruff-like substances could be snow. Even if it fell slightly heavier, it was not going to accumulate. It seems to have melted during their descent to the ground.
This small very southern winter has no grand silent snow, only penetrating cold.
And just as that winter was approaching, a freighter from the north pulled up to the cold and dirty canal.
The girl on the boat was called Silly.
3.
Foolish is very foolish indeed.
That's what I thought when I first saw her. Her gaze was always dull, and her mouth always said something unintelligible. Every day, when I passed by the canal after school, I could see her sitting on the old and worn-out boat. The boat was full of goods. She was sitting inside those goods. If she sensed that someone was looking at her, she would giggle. I felt like she was one of those moldy cargoes.
The alley where I live is not far from the canal.
Every night, I can hear the noise coming from that dilapidated cargo ship, the sound of beer bottles breaking, the roar of men ...... and even the sound of that cargo ship shaking violently. Those sounds mixed with the violent components of the raw pricked my ears. Father once told me, it is said that they are Hebei people, help people to transport goods here. But they were unlucky, the boat was broken and the goods were all in the water. The owner didn't take it. There was no money left. They have to stay here for the time being. I also heard people say that they don't plan to leave, and plan to make a living in the south.
Every day, many old people gather at the entrance of the alley to chat. At times, they could be heard talking about Silly. They said that on that ship, there lived a female fool who was delirious. Her father often beat her mother. Some times, even beat her.
I also often heard some good people ask the silly, silly ah, your father often beat your mother ah? And Silly always giggled like that every time, and then squatted on the boat again like cargo.
That day at noon, I was reading in my room. After a long time, I noticed Silly standing outside the window.
What are you standing there for? I asked her.
She kept giggling and didn't say anything.
I was a bit curious. So I asked her again, "What's your name, anyway?
She stood like that for a long time again, as if she was thinking very hard about something.
My name is Silly. She spoke very softly and ran off with a thump. That was the first time I learned her name.
I watched her run away. She had a red rope tied around her head, swaying in the wind. Later, I noticed that Silly came to my window often. Always without talking each time. Whenever I finished playing the tape, she was gone.
This time, she didn't stay still like before. She pointed to the tape recorder on my desk. In a flash, I realized that, as it turned out, she had come to listen to me play the tape. So I inserted the tape into the recorder. The tune playing on it was shubert's Serenade. Shubert was standing so still again. The music finished playing and she was gone again.
Afterward, she came often. Every time she came it was always the same as before, just standing quietly. I didn't pay any attention to her anymore, I just read my own book.
That day she came again. However, as she was leaving, she put something on the windowsill.
I went over and saw that it was a few wild hawthorns that hadn't ripened yet.
Later, when she came, she would occasionally bring something. Sometimes, it was a small apple. Sometimes, it was an orange, and some wild fruits that I didn't know the name of. Gradually, I actually wished for her.
One evening after school, when I came home, I saw a few boys with stones throwing silly. Those boys were holding a large handful of small stones they had picked up from the riverbank. They laughed and threw those small stones at Silly, who was crouching in the bow of the boat. The silly man, however, just stood there with a silly grin on his face. I couldn't stand it any longer, so I went over to Silly and said, "Go to the cabin, don't let them bully you. Surprisingly, she listened to me very well, straightened her legs and got into the dark, damp cabin.
I couldn't help but feel a little pity in my heart. Ever since she appeared in this southern town, I hadn't seen anyone treat her much better, just some old people who occasionally gave her something to eat. She also always wore that gray blouse in the cold winter, which never seemed to change.
Their family was still the same, her dad always beat her mom.
Maybe out of that little bit of sympathy, I never bullied her. As time went by, Silly and I actually got acquainted. Gradually, she would say something to me, but it was always in the back of her mind, and I had to think for a long time before I could understand it.
She began to take me to some places. It was a small hill not far from the canal, and not far from the alleyway of my house. But I seldom went to play on that hillside. Silly, on the other hand, walked through the deep bushes like a familiar guest. From time to time, she suddenly squatted down and used her hands to pick unknown also-rans in the grass. First, she took a bite herself, as if she thought it tasted good, and then she picked a few more and handed them to me.
About 10 minutes into the walk, through the thick bushes, you can see a small clearing, that is the top of the hill. The view opens up as well. From time to time, the two of us, Silly and I, stood in that clearing and didn't talk, just looked at that world at the bottom of the hillside. Silly always squinted his eyes, as if he was searching for something.
I could see the river that was gasping for breath, like a slit that had been cut open and was gurgling blood. There were also densely busy people again, the breathless winter sun casting their humble shadows.
And there was also the sight of Silly's home - the dilapidated barge filled with moldy cargo.
4.
South of the town is a now-abandoned chemical plant.
In the past, it was often possible to smell the pungent odor of chemical potions that permeated the area around the plant. Later, when the town responded to the call for environmental protection, the chemical plant was closed, and the pungent smell disappeared. Everything in the workshop was emptied and moved away, leaving only two empty houses standing amidst the wildly growing weeds. At night, like two large ships sailing alone.
This chemical plant has some history too, just take a look at the long chimneys. The cement on the chimney had completely peeled off, revealing a reddish turn of head. In the cracks of that brickwork, dark green moss is often seen, feeding a steady stream of damp memories.
I often looked up under the chimney. The top of the chimney became a tiny granule fading into my sight.
The chimney also had a narrow tread, like a ladder to the sky. Often children climbed up the treads to great heights, even to the top of the chimney.
I, on the other hand, never climbed. Because my father once told me never to climb that chimney. Because I had heard that some children who climbed the chimney fell to their deaths. I felt it was a deep curse to me as a timid and cowardly young man.
That evening, Silly and I went to the abandoned chemical plant.
She pointed to the chimney and signaled for me to climb it. I immediately remembered the advice my father had once given me not to do the climb up. Standing in place somewhat timidly looked at her. Who knows, she actually climbed up very skillfully, obviously not the first time to climb up. She climbed all the way to the top of the chimney. I stood at the bottom of the panic upward shouting, called silly quickly climb down. But Silly sat down on a small piece of tread and didn't seem to hear my shouts.
It wasn't until she had been doing this for ages that she climbed down skillfully.
She told me that she liked to climb up the chimney at night. At night, the stars would come out and talk to her.
I was a little taken aback, not expecting her to say that at all. I asked her for the first time, "Silly, why does your dad always beat your mom?
She suddenly became serious in her expression, seemed to think for a long time, and then told me that her dad always said that her mom's face looked like a dead man's face. Her dad slapped her mom hard every time, and if he was drunk, he would raise his leg and kick her mom hard alone. Her mom would shrink into a ball every time, not even daring to make a sound. Her father would always say , kill you this dead face, kill you this dead face, every time he hit her mom.
The fool told me all this, really do not want a mental problem, she is so calm, so calm.
That year, the town's winter came a little earlier than before, only the beginning of November, the sycamore trees began to flutter off the leaves. The streets were full of yellow and dry leaves, like dead and decaying butterflies. I also put on a thick coat. Silly, on the other hand, still had the same gray blouse, only with one or two more very worn undershirts inside. I asked her, Silly, are you cold?
She was still giggling like that and didn't say anything.
Dumb and Dumber and I still went to that abandoned chemical plant often. He still likes to climb up the chimney of the chemical plant, alone, late at night, to talk to the stars. I still play music for her, still the same Schubert Serenade. She still tells me a lot about their family, but, every time, it's her father who beats her mother.
5.
After the final exams, when I came home with my report card joyfully. A group of mates gathered around and said to me, "That female fool fell to her death in the chemical plant! Let's go take a look! Someone has fallen to their death!
I looked at them in horror and then ran as fast as I could in the direction of the chemical plant. It was as if I heard echoes from far, far away. A heavy light as my eardrums. It was Silly. It was calling out.
That was her calling out to me.
Beneath the chimney, instead of Silly, there was a puddle of congealed blood. An old man who lives next to the chemical plant came up to me and said that she had been carried away by her father, and that she had fallen down and died while climbing this chimney. You kids should be more careful in the future and not come to climb the chimney. The mates dispersed in dismay that they had not seen her die.
And I, on the other hand, stood still. Just as Foolish had once stood motionless in front of my window. It was as if the blood on the floor was the red rope around Silly's head, waving in front of my eyes.
Death can take away life, but it can't take away the evidence that a soul has existed.
Until the end, I still hadn't seen Silly. All I know is that instead of cremating her one body, her father found a place to bury her. Where she was buried, I don't know.
That night, I had a dream, I dreamed of a train. I saw Silly right inside the train. She was still giggling and not talking like before. Suddenly, the whistle blew, and the train slowly began to start. So I ran after the train like crazy. But the train suddenly disappeared from the tracks, as if it had gone to another world. The dirty fish of this world were cut off from it.
The very next day after Silly's death, it snowed in this southern town.
I remember someone said that snow is a greeting brought to earth by the heavenly beings. But I feel that the sudden snowfall was clearly the tears of Silly.
That snow was a bit scary. That town, except for that river, almost all other places were covered by the snow that came in such a vast way. But people still could not suppress the surprise in their hearts, this southern town had not snowed for some years. I heard those old people at the entrance of the alley keep chanting, how can there be so much snow ah, really never seen, so much snow ah .
While people are looking at this long-lost snow with joy, they may have forgotten that just yesterday, the girl who lived on the ice-cold ship had disappeared from this world. Or perhaps, they didn't even want to remember that such a girl had appeared in this world.
But I will remember.
6.
And after the snow, the old barge and the two Northerners disappeared into the southern town without warning. No one knew where they had gone, or if he
was still in the world.
Later, some people said that Silly's dad was actually mentally ill. Others said that her mom had killed her dad, stabbing him over ten times in the body. What's more, it was said that her mom chopped off her dad's
hand.
Perhaps, all these things were true.
Perhaps, it was just boring speculation.
And when a long time had passed since then, no one would ever mention it again.
Just another long, long time has passed.
Someone told me that, in fact, her name wasn't Silly, her name was Sasha.