There are two roads in my neighborhood, they are of different widths, they are surrounded by different neighborhoods, and for various reasons they give off different vibes.
The one towards the north is large, wide and clean, with the biggest frontage being Carrefour, and Yonghe Daiwang and KFC on the side. Pedestrians are in a hurry on the sidewalk, and there are especially a lot of people coming and going near the metro station, as well as some food stalls and motorized tricycles guarding the entrance all year round.
The big square in front of Carrefour seems to be quite empty on weekdays, but once in the evening, all kinds of people come out, and they coincidentally gather here, play and sing, sing and dance, and walk around in circles, which is quite lively. Xinjiang people open kebab stalls and the side of the crowd of Xinjiang dance, Carrefour doorway in piles of social dance and square dance crowd, and only recently disappeared carousel and learn roller skating small team ...... Although annoyed by the sound of the loudhailer, but also when you can feel the bustle from here. What's more, the main road is full of two sides of time, just like you choose to come here, whether to work to catch the subway, or to blend into the night for fun.
A road parallel to the south is relatively small, a lot of roadside opened more than ten years of small stores, from hardware stores barber stores, to aquatic stores vegetable stores, to Internet cafes, the store in front of the trail is always full of grease stains, but also piled up the original belongs to the small store items. Nearby there is an elementary school, up and down the road are lively talking live in the neighborhood of the green scarf red scarf, the school entrance has a home what all have to sell the small store, like Doraemon's universal pocket.
Then not far ahead is a small-scale food market, ants although small, but all the organs, basically what can be bought. The snack street in front of the market also shows its history and popularity in the signs and lanes, and it's perfectly capable of guaranteeing you a month's worth of breakfast, what with steamed buns, pancakes, soya bean milk, wontons, doughnuts, millet, sticky rice, baklava, cakes and the like, as long as you don't mind the heat as you huff and puff. The foot traffic on this road is highly consistent with regular meal times, and the lively life of the old neighborhood is often inextricably linked to this small road.
I've always felt that the breath of life is something like a mysterious field that you can't see, but you can feel very keenly; and you can give feedback on how good or bad you feel about it all at once, or nearly all at once. I can't say that I have any feelings of favoritism towards these two roads, but I do feel that they are both very close to my life, and not just in terms of physical distance. So that's probably what the vibe of life is like, it affects the nuances of your experience of life, not just the trajectory of your life.
Two
The place where the breath of life is strong is perhaps at the end of the city, or deep in the courtyard, or in a corner of the house; or in the crowded place in the city, or in the small world of the village in the self-preservation. Of course, not all places will have this kind of attraction to you, even if it is highly prosperous and superficially glamorous. Sometimes, what attracts you is very simple, the so-called breath of life, perhaps just delicious doughnut soybean milk, rich cinnamon fragrance, or healthy and non-polluting green vegetables.
A few months ago, I went to Huaqiao, neighboring Shanghai Jiading, said to be a very rich town under Kunshan. After getting off the highway, a lot of real estate agents suddenly appeared on the ground to solicit business. They walked in the middle of the road as if nothing had happened, showing us properties for sale through the windows of their cars as we waited for the red light. Although it was early fall, the smell of summer still lingered in the air. A large road named after a real estate developer, with an irrationally designed traffic light, was on and off. The roadside are high-rise buildings for sale, brightly colored billboards tell the story of the various benefits of the property; there are roadside umbrellas under the agent soliciting people to see the agent, not far from the forest of real estate agency stores.
A high-profile mother and baby brand exhibition and sale, no sale of water, no sale of food, no hint of labeling and have enough toilets. I was ready to find a place to eat, but I couldn't, so I drove a few kilometers away to get into a McDonald's.
There was nothing to eat, and I didn't know where to go.
There is no sense of life, no perfect supporting neighborhood. There are only houses and buyers and sellers here. This is the intuitive feeling that Huaqiao brings to me. I'm not a map gun, I also believe that there are unique customs here, however, in the breath of life this point, I still can not agree. Life is not only about the buildings, but also about the space, and the so-called "human atmosphere" that this space brings. The lack of it makes it impossible to settle down.
From Huaqiao back to their own small home, looking at a pile of baby products, I feel that the meaning of home is suddenly different, and life has a different atmosphere that was not there before.
Three
There is a kind of dislocation that I find quite interesting.
My grandfather was a farmer all his life, and I don't remember when he actually "retired". Even though he didn't have the physical strength and energy to take care of the large contracted fields to grow rice and canola, he would often be seen busy in his own plot of land. My grandfather could grow and grew all kinds of vegetables, but he didn't eat much himself, so at the end of the day the biggest beneficiaries were his children and grandchildren. "Greens from your own land" is what I've known since I was a kid and what I've been eating since I was a kid. It may not be as free of insect bites as the ones you buy, and the mud-stained leaves don't have the same verdant luster, but I can satisfy myself with a big bowl of fried greens like that.
Later, my uncle inherited my grandfather's piece of land. Uncle is a laborer, but as a child as the eldest in the family, also has been doing farm work origin, so will not be less than grandpa. The land was not left unused, and under his careful care, the land still produced the freshest and healthiest fruits and vegetables. The family eats beans, radishes, pumpkins, greens, mustard greens, potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplants, okra, sugar cane ...... are all from this magical land, in the most seasonal season, to bring the family full of rich flavor of life gourmet meal.
My husband's second uncle, an elementary school math teacher, has become obsessed with farming in recent years. In his hometown, he cleared the land, watered and fertilized it, and learned new things from the land in his spare time. So my husband's extended family is blessed. Every time we go to our hometown, we can hear our family proudly introduce these delicacies to us who have just returned home, and Uncle Er has always been talking about his experience in farming, such as sweet potatoes need to pay attention to applying more potash fertilizers, such as kiwis need to put up a black cloth to protect them from the sun, and so on.
Mr.'s grandmother's house is on the mountainside, and when you look at it on the way down, you can see a large area of lush farmland. This has the second uncle's credit, and he is always idle, often with a hoe, wearing mud-stained farm shoes, the old man shirt a wear, hat a wear, go to the field labor. My first impression of my second uncle was that of a good teacher in the next class in elementary school. Sometimes I think the world is so small, from teachers to relatives, from teaching to part-time farmers, this kind of change, also quite interesting.
I've been going to the fields with my husband to chat with my second uncle and, incidentally, to look for mulberries and a kind of wild berries called "ga gao gao". Of course, this is another flavor of life, for us who have not experienced field labor since childhood. For no reason at all, I remember the spring of my childhood, my father took me to the field to pick marjoram, that belongs to the field of the rotten.