The Light Within the Old Phone
Lin Xiaohe carried an iPhone 6 in her pocket. Not the latest model, nor any special edition, just the kind with slightly worn edges, a screen protector replaced countless times, a battery that didn't last long, an old fellow that would occasionally "ponder life" when running. Most young people on the street held shiny new phones with multiple protruding camera lenses, click-clack, taking photos so sharp they looked like they could capture your very soul. Not Lin Xiaohe. She just used this old companion, taking photos slowly.
The street she lived on had some years to it. Flanked by tall French plane trees, it offered dense shade in summer and golden fallen leaves in autumn. At the street corner was a noodle shop that had been open for decades. The owner, surnamed Wang, always cooked perfectly chewy noodles with generous toppings. Lin Xiaohe often went there for a steaming bowl of noodles with pickled greens and shredded pork. She would take out her phone and snap a picture of the bowl of noodles. No filters, no searching for the perfect angle, just a casual shot. Photos from the old phone weren't brightly colored, perhaps even a bit grayish, veiled in a haze. But Lin Xiaohe felt this was fine, like looking at things through a thin layer of steam, possessing an indescribable gentleness.
Once, she was outside the noodle shop, photographing a fat orange cat sunbathing. The cat lay lazily on the bluestone slabs, eyes narrowed to slits. Nearby, a fashionably dressed young girl was also furiously snapping pictures of the cat with the latest phone model, telling her companion, "Look how cute this cat is! My phone has such high resolution, you can even see the dust on its whiskers clearly!" The girl zoomed in on the photo to show her friend; indeed, every detail was sharp. Lin Xiaohe also looked down at the photo on her phone. The cat was a blurry patch of warm yellow; the background bluestone path and the moss at the base of the wall merged together, indistinct. But she felt the cat in her photo captured exactly how she had perceived it then—lazy, warm, a bit unreal, like a fluffy dream.
Her housemate teased her, "Xiaohe, you really should get a new phone! Who still uses this thing? It can't even focus properly for photos."
Lin Xiaohe just smiled, wiped the phone clean, and tucked it back into her pocket. It wasn't that she couldn't afford a new phone, nor was she deliberately trying to be different. She just felt this old phone was like a mild-tempered old friend, unhurried and calm. Using it to take pictures required a slight pause—aim, hold steady, then press the shutter. This process made her feel grounded. The resulting photos seemed imbued with this slowness and patience.
She liked photographing unremarkable things. The street surface, wet after rain, reflecting the overcast sky. A few small weeds growing on the windowsill, their leaves holding dewdrops. White shirts hanging to dry in the alley, billowing in the wind. And the elderly people, sitting at their doorsteps, watching the passersby with calm eyes. The old phone's lens seemed particularly adept at capturing these quiet scenes, imbued with the traces of time. The photos weren't sharp or dazzling, but looking at them brought a sense of peace.
Sometimes, she would transfer the photos and view them enlarged on her computer. There was a lot of noise, and details were blurry. But the interplay of light and shadow, those unguarded moments, seemed to hold the mood of the time better than high-definition photos. A photo of the old street taken at dusk: the streetlights had just come on, casting hazy yellow halos, a few blurry figures walking past. She remembered feeling a faint melancholy that day; seeing the photo, that feeling seemed to return, yet it wasn't sad, rather a gentle savoring.
She felt the old phone was like a filter, screening out the excessively noisy and glaring aspects, leaving behind the underlying tones of life—a bit old, a bit slow, but very real. Taking photos with a new phone was like viewing the world through a magnifying glass; everything was crystal clear, but perhaps because it was too clear, the overall atmosphere and feeling were overlooked. Using the old phone was like looking through a fine veil; the minute details were obscured, yet one could better sense the poetry within the haze.
That day, she went to Boss Wang's noodle shop again. Evening was falling, and the shop was quiet. She sat by the window, watching the plane tree leaves sway gently in the breeze outside. Boss Wang brought her noodles, smiling as he asked, "Xiaohe, taking photos again?"
"Mm," Lin Xiaohe raised her phone towards the window, "Capturing the evening light."
On the phone screen, dusk gathered; the distant sky was a soft hue, somewhere between blue and purple, the nearby plane trees mere silhouettes. She pressed the shutter. The screen flickered, leaving behind a blurry, quiet image.
"Nice," Boss Wang glanced at it, "Looks a bit like the sky I saw when I was a kid."
Something stirred gently in Lin Xiaohe's heart. Perhaps, what this old phone captured wasn't just the light of the present, but also some light from days past, settled in time. She lowered her head to eat her noodles. The steam fogged her glasses, and also seemed to veil the fading daylight outside the window. The phone lay on the table, screen dark, like a sleeping old companion, covered in the fine, imperceptible dust of time.