So far, I have lived in three places in Beijing.

The first place is naturally in the courtyard of the former Beijing Film Studio. Since 1977, I have lived here for 12 years. I often haven't been out of the gate of Beiying for a week, and I go back and forth between three o'clock several times during the day and night, like continuing the campus life of college students. Half a minute out of the building to the canteen, from the canteen to the office is only five or six minutes away, compared to today's people who spend two or three hours on the way to and from work, it is really a great blessing to go to work so close.

At the end of 1988, I was transferred to the China Children's Film Studio and moved to the Children's Film Dormitory the following summer. There is a small street here, the length of the small street will not exceed the front gate from the north shadow to the back door, it is very narrow, and on one side is a section of the earthen city wall of the Yuan capital. At that time, the ruins of the city wall were overgrown with weeds and quite wild. At the end of the side street is a certain cadre rest house of the General Staff Headquarters, a so-called "dead end" where vehicles cannot pass. At that time, there were very few people with cars, and "taxis" were also a very luxurious thing, and the vehicles entering and leaving the side streets were not only taxis, but also cars from dry rest houses. On the small street, I see the old directors and actors living in the North Cinema, walking, riding bicycles, or riding electric tricycles, and their wives are sitting in the back seat of the car. Their names are of great importance in the history of Chinese cinema. At that time, the back door of Beiying had just been renovated, and the small street was very quiet.

Another year, there were stalls on the side streets. Gradually, a street market was formed, and almost everything was sold. Things that are hard to find elsewhere can also be bought on side streets. I bought a wild honeycomb in a small street, and my friend said it was artificial, and it was filled into a honeycomb-shaped mold with syrup and saccharin and coagulant, and the process was very easy. I also bought a lizard that was more than a foot long, and the seller said that it was soaked alive with rice wine, and the wine was nourishing. I'm a person who gets drunk even when I smell alcohol, and I never believe in any nourishment, but I just buy and raise it for fun, and I am released soon after. I had a haircut on the street, and spent 20 yuan on the street to enjoy half an hour of massage, and the massage man strongly asked me to take off my vest on a whim, but I had to do it, which attracted many onlookers. I bought three vests for 10 yuan, which were sold by people who said they were pure cotton for export to domestic sales. I've also bought five or six pirated books with my name and my picture on them, one of which is called "The Interweaving of Love and Hate," and I have never written such a book. At that time, I was wearing a tank top, pants, torn slippers, and I had just shaved my head, and I hadn't shaved for a few days. I squatted in front of the bookstall and looked at the thick book, and said, "This book is fake." ”

The young man from other places who sold books glared at me and always looked at me in disgust: "Are there any fake books? Do you read fake books for a long time?

I said I was Liang Xiaosheng, and I had never published a book like this.

He said: "I think you are still a fake Liang Xiaosheng!"

Someone next to me who knows me said that I am not sure how many people in China are named Liang Xiaosheng, but he must be the writer Liang Xiaosheng.

The young man snatched the book, put it on the bookstall with a "snap", and said, "Is it true that only one of you named Liang Xiaosheng is allowed to be a writer in the whole of China?"

I actually had the idea of keeping that book and wanted to buy it. The young man said that he said to me that it was fake, and he didn't give me a penny cheap, and he didn't want to buy it. I didn't want to ruin his interest and my own, so I bought it without saying a word. When I stood at the entrance of the building, the young man chased after me, followed by a little woman with a camera in her hand. The young man said that she was his daughter-in-law, and said: "Since you are really Liang Xiaosheng, it proves that the two of us are too fateful, uncle, let's take a group photo!"

The first thing that makes the streets dirty is the kind of food stalls that are freshly made and sold - pancakes, fried fritters, porridge, fried liver, fried spring rolls, wontons, kebabs, plus vegetable sellers, plus chickens, ducks and fish...... As soon as the morning market ended, the streets were full of grease, and the sidewalks and streets were greasy, and the soles of shoes were sticky when walking. When it rains, the street is like a pot of water, and there are rotten vegetable leaves floating on the black water, and occasionally oil flowers are floating.

I had three confrontations with people on that side street. The first two times were very gentlemanly to each other, and they didn't do anything. The third time, the other party was slapped twice, but it was not me who slapped it, it was Sun Cheng, the young director of the children's film studio back then, who slapped me for me. At that time, the small streets, from six or seven o'clock in the morning to ninety o'clock, were already flooded, like temple fairs on holidays. Even a weasel would not be able to try to cross the street under such circumstances. One morning, I heard the car horn blaring at home, and when I looked out the window, I saw a bicycle lying in front of a taxi, a man and a woman in their thirties, dressed decently. After the taxi, there is a large van of a moving company. As soon as the two cars were blocked, all the people had to shuttle sideways.

I went out of the building, squeezed over, and asked the owner of the bicycle to smooth the bicycle.

The man glared at me and yelled, "You're nosy!"

I asked the taxi driver what was going on, if he was scratching people.

The taxi driver said absolutely not, and he didn't know why the other party was blocking his car.

The woman scolded: "You are confused! You honk the horn to make us upset, we have to stop you from going to the morning market today!"

I was so angry that I smoothed my bike and tried to direct the taxi through. The other man pushed me away with a palm of his hand and put the bicycle across the front of the taxi. I did this to him three times, and he removed the chain from the car and raised it menacingly at me.

At that moment, he received a big mouth on the face. Before I could see who was slapping him, I heard a "pop" in my ears again. When I recognized that it was Sun Cheng who slapped him, the man had obediently pushed the bicycle and left, and the woman followed him, and neither of them looked back once...... I still don't quite understand why that couple is such a virtuous couple.

Two years later, the "free market" was outlawed, and it is said that the General Staff Cadres Retreat Center acted through the military.

Now that I have lived in the north of the Peony Garden for more than ten years, there is also a small street here, which was also quiet at first, but now it has also become a market street, a place where taxi drivers are extremely reluctant to go. It's becoming similar to the side street my family used to live in ten years ago. On a sweltering summer day, the air smells of rot and fish. The pavement was resurfaced twice, and it wasn't long before the soles stuck again. When it rains, the running water is also like brushing pot water, like the greasy brush pot water flowing out of the gutter of the rich man's house before liberation, and the greasy degree of the road surface in some places can be shoveled down with a shovel. The sidewalks are virtually non-existent, almost completely occupied by a small shop next to each other. It's not what it used to be, it's better than it used to be, and on both sides of the street, it's next to a car full of cheap cars, and occasionally you'll see a very high-end one.

At about seven o'clock in the morning, the "commercial activity" began, and the streets were filled with the smell of fried smoke. Office workers are in a hurry, and some are eating and walking. The old man who bought the breakfast walked slowly, and the taxi or private car stopped wisely, patiently waiting for the old man to stagger by. Around eight o'clock the streets were in a state of chaos, with more people and more cars. Nowadays, it is only 10,000 yuan to buy a cheap second-hand car, and 5 or 6 out of 10 small business owners who rent a storefront room and open a small shop also have a car, and the morning is when they are busy loading goods. The free shuttle bus of a "Gome" mall in Taipingzhuang went around and around the small street, and compared to the width of the street where two cars were barely in the opposite direction, the "Gome" bus was a behemoth. If a car encounters it head-on, and each has no room to reverse, then jamming for half an hour or an hour is commonplace. The "Gome" bus is a nuisance for taxi drivers and people driving private cars, but because it is free, it is the favorite of the elderly. It is really jammed, and the old people who have already sat on it or are anxious to get on it tend to stare at the taxi or private car without a good eye, obviously thinking that it is the latter who is causing the chaos early in the morning.

The situation in the evening was worse than in the morning. At about six o'clock, the tables and chairs of the small restaurant were already placed on the sidewalk, as if the sidewalk was its own at all. The sidewalks are full, and there is another row along the side of the road. Grilled meat, grilled seafood, roasted corn, roasted potatoes, and sweet potato slices also appeared. Times have progressed, people have eaten in new ways, and there have been vendors of roasted eggplant, green peppers and papayas on the side streets. The hottest is a seafood restaurant, where more than 20 sets of tables and chairs are placed on the sidewalk every night, and there are men and women who come to eat in "BMW" or "Audi", often eating until late at night. Some men had to take off their clothes straight after eating, ** their upper bodies, sweating, drinking five and six, and giving orders with fists, as if there was no one around. In the miasma, pedestrians hate driving, drive, set up stalls, open shops, open shopfronts, and rent out storefronts -- rents have risen again, and occupying the road is tantamount to expanding the store in disguise, and only in this way can you earn more. Inflation has greatly increased the cost of living in Beijing, so how can they do it if they don't earn a little more? And the aborigines dislike outsiders alike all outsiders -- how quiet this small street was at the beginning, but look at what kind of people have made this small street look like now? At that time, almost everyone in this small street hated their compatriots in their hearts......

And at that time, there were still traffic jams!

Once when I came home, I saw an "Audi" parked diagonally in front of a vegetable stall. At that moment, a third of the street was occupied, and three or four cars were blocked on both sides, and the horns were blaring one after another. There was a man sitting in the car, listening to music and smoking a cigarette leisurely.

I couldn't take it anymore and walked up to the window and yelled at him, "Are you deaf?!"

Only then did he flick off the soot and reluctantly straighten the rear of the car. As a result, the blockage is eliminated. It turned out that he was waiting for a woman who was picking and choosing to buy vegetables in front of the vegetable stall. At that time, the food on this street is the cheapest. However, just to buy a few catties of cheap food, as for driving an "Audi" to such a small street, is it incomprehensible to some of our compatriots!

Before the man drove, he glared at me and asked menacingly, "Who did you just scold?"

I grabbed a mop from the stall on the sidewalk and said more aggressively than he did, "You're the one who scolds, bastard!"

Maybe he saw that I was an old man, maybe he saw me angry, and he couldn't guess what kind of person I was, and he knew that he was wrong, so he scolded me and drove away......

Can it be said that he is not a traffic jam?!

But why did he do that? I still don't understand.

Another time - an old white "Jetta" crossed the entrance and exit of a community, blocking more than a dozen cars on the street in the courtyard, and the side street seemed to have become a parking lot, and even pedestrians had to pass sideways through the car gaps. There was no one in the car, it was locked, and someone who recognized me whispered to me that a man in a T-shirt smoking a cigarette on the opposite sidewalk was the owner. I saw him look at the Western scenery as if he were looking at the mess and laughing gloatingly. There is no doubt that he is certainly the owner of the car. It is certain that he did it because of some unpleasant encounter with the security guard at the entrance.

At that time, I was really angry in my heart, and evil was born in my guts. If I were in ancient times, if I had been skilled in martial arts, I would have rushed to the past and fought hard, regardless of what kind of gentleman I was a fucking gentleman or not! However, I am old, and I have lost all the ability and courage to fight. But there are still some remnants of the courage to scold. So he skimmed off Sven, glared at the man, and scolded a bastard son of a bitch!

Naturally, my scolding didn't solve the problem in the slightest. It was the people of the traffic police detachment who finally solved the problem, but that was more than an hour later. For more than an hour, people sat around the open-air tables on the sidewalk, eating, drinking, and watching the "liveliness", as if the blockage had nothing to do with the occupation of the sidewalk......

More than ten years ago, when I lived in the small street where Tongying Suhe was located, I heard someone say this - I really hope that one day everyone will raise funds to buy hundreds of bags of powerful laundry detergent, dozens of wire brushes, and hire a water spray truck to launch a voluntary labor to completely wash away our greasy and dirty little street!

Nowadays, I've heard people say that sometime I really want to drive a tank from the street to the end of the street!

On this side street, it often arouses not only the disgust of the compatriots for the compatriots, but also the resentment of the compatriots towards the compatriots, and often the tension between the compatriots. They dislike each other, but they don't dare to offend each other easily. Everyone is weak, and everyone has a bottom line. Most people live very stoic and cautious.

The street committee was helpless against the side street, they said they had no law enforcement powers.

The urban management department is also helpless against this small street. They say that if you want to govern, you have to come to the "hard", but Beijing is the "capital of the first good", how can it be "hard"?

The news unit was invited by someone, but it was not reported once. They said that our principle is to report what can be solved, and it is clear that the current situation of this small street cannot be solved at all!

Someone called the mayor's hotline again and again, and finally the comrades of the neighborhood committee found the caller and persuaded him: Isn't it easy to solve the problem earlier? If you can't stand it, you should just move out!

Someone also asked me that the district **** should fulfill my responsibilities, but I never reported the situation of this small street to the district **. My view is that behind every stall and every façade is a family's livelihood, life and even survival.

At the other end of the street, a line of big red letters indicates that one of the locations is "School of Urban Beautification and Management". A few meters across the street, there are fast-food stalls on the sidewalk. The sewer mouth is close at hand, and the summer stench is disgusting.

Chengguan is not inactive. They simply sealed the sewer mouth with cement, and there was a large basin of swill. In the evening, the swill was poured into a nearby sewer outlet, and the other sewer vent also smelled nastic, and the situation was disgusting.

A few steps away, there used to be a stall selling fried food. Over the years, the high-voltage line above the oil pot has been hung with oil smoke, just like the sausage hanging above the stove of a southern farmhouse for many years. The transformer on the shelf has also long been blackened. One night, the chengguan launched a "surprise", repaved the ground bricks in such a place, enclosed the railing, and set up a "law enforcement booth" in the railing. During the day, the stall owner saw that the general situation was gone, and he also lay on the ground to make trouble, but in the end it ended peacefully.

The already narrow street is separated by an 80-centimeter-wide railing next to the sidewalk on one side, making it impossible to park on that side. Theoretically, if a diagonally parked vehicle occupies 1.5 meters wide on the road, that is, 150 centimeters, then it is impossible to park, which is about 70 centimeters less than the road surface. The lesser of two evils, the last resort, is a kind of spiritual "victory". This small street, which is very likely to be the subject of severe struggles between urban management personnel and road occupancy, unlicensed operations, and unsanitary operators, has not actually had any struggles for more than a decade. The struggle will not make this little street a little better, on the contrary, I am afraid that there will be no peaceful days and no peaceful days. This is something that both sides understand, so try to understand each other and be considerate of each other.

Not all facades and stalls will make the streets dirty. There are hairdressers, photo studios, laundries, printing houses, tea shops, pastry shops, optical shops, flower shops, real estate agencies, handmade shoes and small shoe shops on the side streets. In addition to being convenient for residents, they can be said to have no negative environmental impact. The two printing agencies I often go to are owned by people from rural areas. The monthly rent of their shop is five or six thousand yuan, and according to them, there is still a net income of fifty or sixty thousand yuan a year.

What a small street this is! Lessors and tenants have an annual income of 50,000 or 60,000 yuan, and they are either from the bottom of the city or compatriots from the countryside.

In one corner, there is an unlicensed lady who sells salted duck eggs almost every day at a stall of a little more than a square meter. All year round, the cold and heat are unhindered, and it has been stationed there for more than ten years. If that little income is not very necessary for her, people in their seventies must not hold on.

Opposite the eldest lady is a girl from the countryside in the northeast, who started selling big dumpling porridge around the corner last winter. A bowl of three yuan, the corn is very fresh, and the porridge is fragrant! She only occupies a little more than a square meter of pavement. Naturally, the occupation of the road is an illegal operation, but according to her, she can earn four or five thousand yuan a month! Because the corn is produced in her own land, there is hardly any other cost except for a little freight. She once said to me, "I'm twenty-seven years old and unmarried, and my family is poor, so I have to come out and help him earn money to build a new house!"

A dozen steps further, there is a peasant woman who sells soy milk and tofu on a three-wheeled flatbed truck, and has been there for more than ten years. Next to it, there is a couple who sell baked cakes in a cabinet cart, the husband makes it, and the wife sells it, and they are also old businessmen on the side street. During the winter and summer vacations, two girls from both families, both elementary school students, also came to help the adults with their livelihoods. On a hot summer day, the little face is tanned. And in the cold winter, the little hands are frozen and swollen. The faces of the two girls showed the precocious vicissitudes of life.

I once asked one of them, "You two must have known each other for a long time, can you play together?"

She actually said: "I don't have time, and I'm not in the mood to talk about it!"

The answer is very realistic, and it is really distressing to hear.

Before the "May Day" festival, a man in his fifties appeared around the corner, squeezed between the lady who sold salted duck eggs and the lady who sold insoles, and only occupied a small piece of space about a foot wide, squatting there, guarding a small wooden box with a hard sponge, on which five or six wind wheels were inserted, and the wind wheels made of colored glitter paper were inserted. He caught my attention not only because he sold things that cost so little and certainly didn't make a lot of money, but also because he wore a white but now dirty black thread glove on his right hand—a cheap labor protection glove.

I thought to myself, "You foreigner, no matter how much Beijing can make a living, and no matter how much this street can feed people, you still won't be able to earn a day's food by selling wind wheels! You big man's brain is in water? What kind of work do you have to squat here to sell wind wheels?" However, I saw him once, twice, three times, four times squatting between the two eldest women, squatting there, and he disappeared when May was almost over.

When I bought the insole, I asked my aunt, "Does that man's wind wheel sell well?"

The eldest lady said: "What's the matter! It's been almost a month, and only a few have been sold, and one piece is only sold for one yuan, which is less than my insoles!"

The lady who sold salted duck eggs continued: "When he was working in the countryside of his hometown, one of his arms was broken and disabled, and his right hand was a prosthetic hand. It's not that I feel sorry for him, but we don't want him to squeeze in the middle......"

I was silent.

The lady who sells salted duck eggs said that in fact, she can't sell many salted duck eggs a month, and can only earn five or six hundred yuan, and the five or six hundred yuan is only half of her. There are relatives in the countryside who raise ducks, who are responsible for bringing her duck eggs every month, and she is responsible for pickling and selling.

"The children earn very little, and now the cost of schooling for the children is too high, and we old people who have never worked and have no pension," she said, pointing to the lady who sells insoles next to her, "Even if we can earn a little pocket money for the third generation every month, it will not be considered that the children will support us in vain......

The lady who sells insoles nodded vigorously.

I can't help but think of those who sell soy products and those who sell baked cakes. Their daughter is already helping them earn money. Parents who work must have some pocket money every month for their children - there seems to always be a difference between the children of people in the city, especially those in Beijing, and the children of people in rural areas.

My temper has changed for the better. The street taught me day after day, year after year, and gradually made me realize how bad my temper was with this little street. When I encounter something that makes me angry in my heart, every time I can suppress my anger, I come forward and say good words to resolve it. If he was too lazy, he ordered himself to pretend not to see it, turned around and walked away.

And this little street is not much worse without my scolding. As I've scolded a few times, it hasn't gotten any better.

I think a lot of people have become as good-tempered as I am.

I once met an acquaintance who said he wanted to drive a tank from the street to the end of the street.

I said, "Do you think there is still a rule in our little street?"

He smiled bitterly and said, "What can I do? Long live understanding, compassion, and harmony......

From his words, I suddenly realized that this small street, which had been tight for more than ten years, naturally generated a character, that is, compassion between people. The so-called harmony is, first of all, tolerance for this small street.

The hardships and hardships of some compatriots' livelihoods, lives, and survival are vividly presented in this small street. There is also a primary school on the side street - on the tile wall, there is a portrait of Tao Xingzhi and the four big characters of "love all over the world". The holly bushes with low roots of the walls hide dirt and dirt, and phlegm often sticks to the leaves. Mr. Xingzhi looked at this small street from the wall all day long, and I felt that his gaze seemed to become more and more melancholy, but also seemed to become more and more gentle.

Despite the tension at times, there have been no blood-spattered violent clashes for more than 10 years -- this is really a small street with admirable character! Some hateful things that happened on the side street are, after all, tolerated by the human heart. Some hateful things that have happened in China cannot be treated lightly with the word "tolerance." "For the sake of the undone, the cure for the unchaotic. This is worth a thousand words!