During the summer vacation of my freshman year, I was lucky enough to practice in a metropolis newspaper in Beijing. The construction of the "Belt and Road" is in full swing, which is naturally a key topic in the newspaper. The dean and I volunteered to follow the reporter to the Hexi Corridor for a field trip.

What kind of mood is it? Three years have passed, and I always want to go back to see it, like giving my youth an excuse to die with peace of mind.

There are no high-speed trains and bullet trains from North China to Northwest China, and it takes nearly 20 hours at the earliest. Long journey, finally arrived, Wuwei Wuwei, mixed feelings.

Before leaving the station, I looked back at Wuwei Railway Station, which had been away for three years. Warm buildings, steady and symmetrical shapes, gradually descend, and the majesty of the emperor waving robes seems to be swearing sovereignty over this land. Wuwei was called Liangzhou in ancient times. Who dares to imagine that this small town, which is so easily overlooked in the northwest of the motherland, was once an important strategic city connecting the Central Plains and the Western Regions, and was once an ancient historical capital second only to Chang 'an in scale and fame.

Probably, this is the magic of time. No matter how glorious the history is, it is also possible to disappear in the long river of time. People as small as you and me will naturally have something quietly changed.

After a short rest in the residence, the reporter and I went out with equipment.

It was sunny in the northwest in July, and it was noon when we arrived at Beiguan Middle Road. The sunny and energetic Han Li's "Lei Tai" suddenly appeared on the roadside. Leitai Han Tomb is the first stop of our official interview. This site of Han civilization was once famous for its unearthed "Flying Swallows on horseback", which later became a tourist symbol of China.

Before the interview, we personally went into the Han tomb to shoot. The space of the ancient tomb is very narrow, and the entrance is only an arched door less than one meter high. When we went in, the reporter teacher misjudged the thickness of the arch, got up one second early and bumped into the stone wall.

This collision is not light. In her early thirties, she suddenly burst into tears like a little girl. I'm at a loss when I'm at a loss. I remembered my childhood "experience"-meeting with cold compress. However, we stood in the crowded passage of the tomb, and in a panic, I believed it and "borrowed" a glass of iced coke from passers-by: "Sorry to borrow someone ..."

On the one hand, there was a reporter teacher who was at a loss with a coke, and on the other hand, there was a passenger who was "robbed" of the coke, but another person next to the teacher and I, who was traveling with the passenger, stood there at the same time-I never thought I would meet again, let alone think of it under such circumstances.

The world is so big, but there are so many coincidences.

Liangzhou city, which is chic and romantic in ancient poetry, is really not as quiet as it looks.

Two.

It was five or six years ago that I first set foot on this strange land. My ponytail is not cut into neat short hair. I am shaking my head and enjoying the elegance of youth.

That year, I was in Grade Two. My mother was assigned by the unit to go out for training and study, and only returned to China twice a year. My father is busy with his work and takes care of me seamlessly. They finally decided to send me to menstruation's home in Wuwei.

One reason is that I don't have time to take care of me, another reason is that my doctor and aunt have the highest education in my family, and the third reason is that she has a cousin with excellent grades. It seems that I can only "obey".

According to my father, when my aunt was an undergraduate in Lanzhou, she met her fellow graduate student, my later uncle. My uncle is from Wuwei. After graduation, he stayed to work in his hometown. The aunt who fell in love also insisted on finishing her Ph.D. and became a teacher at a university in Wuwei.

In fact, before I came, all I knew about Wuwei, except the wine and honeydew melon that my aunt brought back from visiting relatives every year, were countless Liangzhou poems recited when I was a child. The style of "The Yellow River is far above the white clouds, and an isolated city is Wan Ren Mountain" was barren and desolate, but it was also free and romantic with the style of "a glass of luminous wine, I want to drink pipa immediately".

Really immersive, the city is not so heroic. On the contrary, compared with the traffic in my hometown and the beautiful neon at night, this small town in the northwest is more quaint and spacious, which always makes me feel a deep sense of undisturbed pride. When the flood of "one side of a thousand cities" has flooded, it still retains a little different flavor.

Just stopped in Wuwei as an "intruder".

My cousin is two years older than me. She was a senior one in Wuwei No.1 Middle School that year, and I borrowed from No.10 Middle School not far from No.1 Middle School. Every day after school, I walk two blocks to the entrance of No.1 Middle School, waiting for my cousin to go home together.

So naturally, I met Fang Cheng.

Maybe my cousin had something temporary that day and didn't come out for a long time after school. At that time, students were not allowed to bring mobile phones, so I had to wait. When Shishi's toes counted to the seventy-fourth time at the door, the handsome guy parked his bike next to me: "Are you Chu Qing's sister?"

Fang Cheng is two years older than me, and he is already a head taller than me. He told me that my cousin was temporarily ordered to rehearse the Teacher's Day program and asked me to go first. The dusk in the northwest is colorful, and the teenager who is embedded in time and space by the sunset is humble and gentle, much like countless old dreams in my later years.

I nodded and said nothing. Go home alone.

He got on the bus and took a fork not far away. I walked alone, and it didn't take long to find him riding back without saying a word to send me home. Two people with few words were silent all the way, and a blunt and polite "thank you" was the conclusion that we met for the first time when we were young.

Later, we met several times, sometimes in the stationery store at the entrance of No.1 Middle School, sometimes in front of the Kanto cooking stall in Hutongkou, sometimes he rode past us and greeted us softly, sometimes he simply waited for me to go home outside the school gate with his cousin.

"He is a member of the Party Committee of our class; This is my cousin, hehe. " My cousin once introduced this to us, "Equation geometry, at least on the same math paper, let's get to know it."

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I was still a naive and confused girl. I have never thought about how my heart beats, and I don't know what the beginning of each story looks like.

Three.

There were many tourists coming and going in Leitai Han Tomb that day. I helped the reporter out against the crowd, and Fang Cheng and his companions followed.

I don't know what kind of complicated expression I was, but what I saw in Fang's eyes was a trace of forbearing warmth. The reporter sat down on a bench in the shade of the tree to rest, and Fang Cheng's companions helped buy more ice cubes. We are deadlocked in the scorching sun. It seems that there are too many stories to tell, but for a moment, we don't know how to speak.

There are many unknown birds flying over the Han tomb. Perhaps because of the heavy history, tourists walk very softly and carefully, and the songs of birds are particularly noisy. Their wandering makes me feel dizzy.

Embarrassed, we decided to take a walk outside Leitai Park. The surrounding tree trunks stretched upward as if to poke a hole in the sky. A few years ago, it was also here that we bared our teeth and learned the posture of those trunks, and spent countless heartless afternoons.

I shook my head and put away those unhappy thoughts. Turned around and chatted with him about the triviality after parting. After a brief conversation, I learned that he was studying civil engineering in his senior year and recently did a summer internship in his hometown for the protection of ancient buildings.

"I am studying in Beijing." He said, but suddenly he wanted to talk and didn't continue.

Beijing is so close to my hometown, but the world is so big that we never meet again.

He is still gentle, but more handsome and mature than a few years ago. Tacitly, none of us mentioned "once", not even our best cousin.

Four.

In the past marked by "once", my cousin and I walked home, and later gradually became a threesome.

Fang Cheng lives in Tianzhu Street, far from her aunt's house. He goes to school by bike every day, but after school, he will push his bike with us to go west to his aunt's house, then go north and turn back to his east residence.

After a long time, I saw a sentence that someone who wants to take you home is on the way. At that time, I was secretly sad because I felt that I was not the protagonist of others' "passing by".

At that time, I was introverted and quiet, and being far away from home made me more timid and silent. So I just walk quietly beside them every day, listening to them talk about school life, the past and the distance.

Compared with the lively cousin, Fang talks a lot less, but a gentle and introverted teenager always gives people a feeling of peace of mind. He will always be careful not to leave me as an uninvited guest, pick up the drink bottles on the roadside and throw them into the trash can, walk on the side closest to the road with a gentleman, and remind my cousin not to forget the experimental materials to be handed in the next day before leaving ... Maybe he is sensitive, but I can always capture those trivial details.

One day, my aunt was on a temporary business trip, and my uncle went out to socialize. My cousin and I had to buy some snacks from outside for dinner. Before the stall selling cakes, I was as silent as ever. My cousin rummaged around for change, only to find that I was distracted again and suddenly said, "Why do you always laugh?" Before I could answer, he took the ketchup from my aunt and drew a big smiling face on my cake.

You know, his naive but sincere behavior has lived in my heart for many years.

Get to know each other gradually, and each other is less formal at first. Fang Cheng, who is older than me, often jokingly called me "kid", and I gradually became cheerful and shouted "Geometry will eventually destroy the equation" to fight back. My cousin laughed at our naivety, but soon joined in and "denounced" Fang Cheng with me.

I once wrote in my diary that Dafu Street, which is neither too long nor too short, is the best road in my youth.

In the third summer, there was still not much rain in Wuwei. We went for a walk by Tianma Lake on the grounds of relieving stress in my senior high school entrance examination. The breezes in Tianma Lake in midsummer and steamed clouds on the lake make the northwest, which should be rough and wild, poetic. My cousin is teasing the toddler. I sat on the wooden railing of the sidewalk by the lake and watched Fang take pictures of the aquatic plants with his camera. Suddenly feel ridiculed as "exile" westward journey is actually a very beautiful thing.

Just when Fang suddenly turned around, I staggered my sight of rushing together. He came up against the sun and casually leaned against the railing beside me: "Come on, son, come on for the senior high school entrance examination. Come to No.1 Middle School and we will be alumni."

In a few words, I was at a loss. I vaguely answered "OK, I will refuel", but I blushed inexplicably.

I know that it was a sudden awakening of a girl's heart, which is described as "heartache" by an idiom.

Five.

Three years later, Leitai Han Tomb reunited and left each other in a hurry.

That afternoon, after the interview, I ran to the gate of No.1 Middle School alone. The stall selling hand-grabbed cakes is still not far from No.1 Middle School, but it is no longer the boss. I bought a smiling face without ketchup. I photographed the rebuilt middle school gate, and I went to caress the toes of the stone lion. You know, some rituals are the best way to pay tribute to the past.

It's time to go to school, and my brothers and sisters are going out one after another. There are people waiting for their peers at the gate of Shishi, but each teenager has his own unique scene.

I thought Fang would go back to my alma mater, but I didn't expect it to be the same night. Just like a long time ago, he came to me with a gentle and beautiful smile like a teenager. If he wasn't wearing a school uniform, I would even blurt out "Let's go home". I put the cake in my mouth in disguise and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

"I have been walking for several years, go back and have a look." Fang Tuo casually threw out a word, and then took his steps and walked towards No.1 Middle School.

He greeted the doorman teacher very well, and we went backwards in our school uniforms. There is no scene of digging a wishing bottle in a novel, and there is no scene of looking for a name engraved on a tree trunk in a TV series. We just walked around the playground in tandem, round and round. ...

You see, when my cousin is away, there are always so many awkward silences between us.

I gave a wry smile and stopped Fang Cheng who was ahead. My voice is dry: "Let's go, it's time to close the school gate."

He gave me a look and nodded. As before, he always looks like jade.

Dreams have become a thing of the past, and stories have become stubborn. What happened in these three years, I have never asked my cousin, and I have never contacted Fang Cheng. I know nothing. This is the best summary. However, even if I know, what can I do? A burst of sadness suddenly surged, and the tears I had been holding back for a day finally broke out.

In the misty eyes, the big boy in front of him frowned and panicked, but in the end, he didn't ask questions like "What's wrong with you", but just said "Don't cry, little friend" with unchanging tenderness. ...

"The temperature difference in Wuwei is too big. You have a cold." I prevaricated and deliberately used the coldest words to draw a line with my past self.

He sighed softly and said nothing more. He took my half-eaten cake and put a packet of paper towels in my hand. Still the one who is careful enough to make me sad.

I ran out of No.1 Middle School alone, like a cage that broke through the past.

Six.

Actually, No.1 Middle School is not my alma mater, because I have only been here for less than a year.

Time is in a hurry. That year, I did well in the senior high school entrance examination, and I was able to borrow books. Cousin and Fang Cheng have also changed from leisurely senior one to nervous senior three. It is more convenient for us to get together without waiting for everyone to go home.

At that time, I spent more time together, and gradually found that a bud sprouting in my heart was growing up.

I have learned a sentence called: I am at a loss, but I have a deep understanding. I didn't even watch idol dramas before, but suddenly I became melodramatic and asked myself again and again, "Will he like you?"

But I always hesitate to answer my preset questions. However, I try to find proof anywhere without logical connection: when I eat rainbow candy, I will think, if the last one is red, you just like me; When climbing a mountain, I will think that if I finally climb to the top with my left foot, you just like me; When I buy a magazine, I think that if there is a magazine I like on the newsstand, you will like me, too. ...

The fact is, I deliberately left a brown sugar when I was eating sugar, and then I ate it with satisfaction; When climbing the mountain, I deliberately stepped on two more steps, just to reach the top with my left foot; When I buy magazines, I deliberately detour to the newsstand, because there are always my favorite magazines there. ...

At that time, I tried to deceive myself and others, but the emotional test paper gave me another answer, which instantly reduced the original 50% introduction to zero.

On the day of winter vacation, I returned to Wuwei from my hometown early. God knows which is more convincing, studying hard or vaguely missing someone.

We are still "hanging out" together, sometimes going to the countryside to shoot farmhouse music, and sometimes going to the wild to eat barbecue, putting the grandest youth into the small Wuwei.

One day, my classmates and I went to rehearse the program of the April Drama Festival. When I got home at dusk, I found Fang Cheng wandering downstairs in my aunt's house, holding a delicate gift box in his hand.

At that time, my cousin was playing piano at home.

It was February 14, Valentine's Day.

The winter in Wuwei is unequivocally cold. I froze there and felt that something was abruptly broken by the northwest wind.

Let's see, I've reached out and counted: he walks a long way home with us every day, he will accompany us to the library to read comics during the holidays, and he will … so maybe he likes me?

How ridiculous. Obviously, I'm just a supporting role in those scenes. The details used to fascinate yourself, if it is another possibility, are still meaningful.

Secret love is a dark trek, like an ascetic monk in the vast desert, with only a little faith in his heart. Actually, I don't even know where the real exit is

A mirage is an oasis.

I ran into the corridor regardless and let Fang Cheng, who was startled, call me at the back. I am very stingy, and I don't want to be the swan and dragon that you pass on your love.

Fang didn't go upstairs at last, and as for the gift, he didn't see it from his cousin. But these did not affect some of my feelings sinking into the bottom of the water, and then suffocating, turning the whole ocean into tears.

In the days after that, we went to school together, went to the library together, and went out to play together, as always, but I knew that what was broken was difficult to recover.

What kind of days it was, like sand in the eyes and stones under the feet, dull pain was not severe, but there was no way to ignore it.

I'm calling to know the return date of my mother's training. Under the guise of homesickness, I hurriedly asked my aunt to help me with all kinds of trivial procedures and then fled home.

That year, I was a freshman.

The leaving train is moving slowly. My aunt's family is coming to see me off, and so are you. After listening to Uncle menstruation's entrustment, I hugged my cousin, but stubbornly refused to talk to you, even refused to give you a special look. I explained to myself that you went to accompany my sister, not just to say goodbye to me. Why? Perhaps, what I refuse to admit is that when I was young, I didn't know what attitude to face a parting.

The whistle stirred up the mood and set off.

I walked along those two tracks again. To me, they are like an iron bar, one tied to North China, one to Northwest China, one to hometown and one to love. It is a heavy dumbbell, carried on the shoulder, full of rewards and the weight of distance.

Like a fool, he reached out to clean the window. His fingers touched some cool and clean glass, lowered his head and smiled wryly. I thought it was the people on the platform who posted their affection on the window, but in fact they just put their romantic feelings in their eyes. Admit it, when the person I yearn for becomes a post, not an obstacle to coming back again, my expression when I leave must be ugly.

Seven.

In a blink of an eye, three years have passed, and I don't know how many times I have thought of that boy and that city. Hearing the "equation" is still a conditioned reflex, but the subsequent impact is no longer a heartbeat, but sadness; To Dunhuang, the train stops at Wuwei Railway Station for 6 minutes. In just 6 minutes, I tried to get off the bus 600 times, and I resisted the impulse again.

Unexpectedly, in a reluctant return visit, I had a starting point again.

In those days, I followed reporters and teachers all the way, and Fang Cheng stayed with us under the guise of summer internship. It was Wuwei city in the midsummer of a year, and it was still a vast land, but it was getting heavier and heavier because of the ups and downs of reunion.

After the series of reports, the reporter and I asked for leave to go to my aunt's house. That night, I finally got up the courage for three years and asked my cousin, "Are you together?" Give yourself a decisive account, I have a crush on you for a long time.

I'm like a TV series that goes through eight o'clock. I clearly heard my cousin say slowly, "He likes you, why should he stay with me?" My cousin's cloud is light and the wind is light, but his words are meticulous. "At that time, I thought it was because you didn't like him that I hurried back to my hometown."

So, my colleagues after school every day, my companions during the holidays, and the Valentine's Day gifts in my hands when I wander downstairs … are all for me who don't know or even get the wrong idea?

I remember a Weibo I saw a long time ago: Garfield and Ou Di got lost and were sold to a pet store. Garfield is in pain. But one morning, Jon walked into the pet shop. He was overjoyed to see Garfield. He immediately bought Garfield back and the family was reunited. At the end of the story, Garfield said, I will never ask Jon why he walked into the pet shop that day.

Some people commented that he came back here, perhaps just to see if his stupid cat had been sold to a pet store.

My heart missed a beat.

That day, in the temple being repaired, reporters and teachers went to interview the staff alone with a face of "I know everything" and left Fang and me in the yard.

The walls of the temple are covered with poems and Zen quotations. I was bored from beginning to end and didn't want to look back. I found Fang standing not far away waiting for a while, staring at the wall. Thin northwest boys, in the strong northwest sunshine, are like flags standing in youth, full of youthful memories.

I walked over and found him staring at the black words on the yellow background on the wall. That's what a poet in the Ming Dynasty said: Don't hate Dongfeng mercilessly, and be open-minded.

A science and engineering man stared thoughtfully at an ancient poem with special meaning, and I laughed out loud.

"I don't want to miss it again. Waiting is more painful than looking for it. At least' looking' has a goal, and' waiting' has no return at all. "

Fang's voice rang in his ear. "Finally, don't go, okay?"

After the inexplicable moment, it is a long period of sadness.

Three years. Three years later, we tacitly forgot the past, but finally stood by each other with a brand-new self. And the long asceticism in the desert finally brought a real oasis.

We went to the temple to see the sky, and large clouds swayed leisurely in the sky, undisturbed and spotless. Suddenly, I feel that the original romantic and chic Wuwei City is so vast, and people are so lucky to meet again.