Four in the morning in New York, like an ink-soaked sponge, damp, cold, and heavy. The halos of streetlights diffused in the thin mist, barely outlining a long, winding queue snaking alongside Fifth Avenue. It wasn't a line for relief supplies, nor for some celebrity autograph session, but to snag a "Hummingbird" brand camera from faraway China.
The city, this vast labyrinth built of steel and glass, exhales weary neon and clamor at dusk. And deep within the maze, behind an unremarkable window, lived Old Wang. Old Wang, a name as common as a roadside pebble, his existence too, like a pebble, swept along by the torrent of the times, submerged in a corner of the metropolis. He was once a diligent cog in a factory, polishing away half his life in exchange for the tranquility of this small room in his later years, and a string of digits in his passbook—modest, yet enough to console his declining days.
Old Wang, the third-generation owner of Wang's Fresh Tripe, had spent his entire life dealing with beef offal. He prided himself on having seen more of the world than the varieties of tripe simmered in hotpot. His shop was tucked away deep in the city's alleys, the neon lights barely managing to dampen his faded sign. The shop wasn't large, and the air perpetually carried an honest, coarse smell – a mix of spices and raw freshness. Regulars knew Wang's tripe: dipped briefly, it came out perfectly crisp and tender.
Old fisherman Zhang San had no hobbies in his life, except he loved to go out to sea on his rickety boat at dusk. He didn't fish to sell them, it was purely for fun. As he put it, "Chatting with the sea is more comfortable than chatting with people."
Liu Tiezhu felt his life was like a repeating decimal, endlessly repeating the monotonous rhythm of gifting, chatting, and gifting again. Until he met "Little Sweetheart."
In Beijing's hutongs, there's never a shortage of stories.
Take this wall, for example. Bluish-grey bricks and tiles, pitted and uneven, it looks unremarkable. But its age is older than all the families living in this hutong combined. Since the Qing Dynasty, this wall has stood here, enclosing a Siheyuan, where a Manchu family surnamed Zhao once lived.
The sky was overcast, like a giant lead plate pressing down on the city of Beiping, suffocating its inhabitants. At the entrance of the old street's alleyway stood a newly built wall, gray bricks and cement, exuding a sense of rigidity and finality.
When we talk about Japan, what are we talking about? Is it the exquisite cuisine, the busy subways, or the predicament of an aging society? The incident of a Japanese elderly man falling into a sewer and not being rescued for 35 days may give us some deeper thoughts. This is not just an individual tragedy, but an echo of the entire era.
These days, numbers haunt everyone like ghosts. Would you call this "progress"? I don't see it that way. At least, for this elderly man lying on a stretcher, the numerical password is more fatal than his illness.
Pushing the stretcher is the old man's son, his face a mask of anxiety, beads of sweat larger than soybeans. The old man, meanwhile, is semi-conscious, tubes snaking across his body, occasionally convulsing. Doesn't this scene resemble a postmodern painting? Absurd, yet so real it makes your heart clench.
Old Li was gone, suddenly gone, just because he'd exchanged a few words with his neighbor, young Wang.