This evening, after an early dinner, I picked some ripe peaches from the yard and planned to visit the neighbors. In the days when my parents left, they helped take good care of the family, the chickens and ducks in the pen laid healthy eggs, and the local dog "Hanako", which had been raised for more than four years, was alive and round in front of my feet.

It has to be mentioned that the current situation in rural areas is the outflow of young and middle-aged people, and there are basically no young adults aged 20-40 in the villages.

And this situation is a microcosm of China's rural areas......

It's still the evening after being busy, the neighbors are still like before, habitually sitting in front of their own doors, cheering for homework, grandpas smoking a cigarette, grandma choosing vegetables to prepare dinner, but this scene makes me a little sad, in addition to the New Year's holidays, they are only accompanied by the old trees in front of the door on weekdays, as well as those cats and dogs...... The light that has not completely dissipated shines on this aging village, its people, and its stories......

I will divide the bags of peaches and give them from door to door, and on behalf of everyone, I thank everyone for their usual care, this practice is not my whim, in my memory, every year when the peaches are ripe, my parents will pick them and share them with the neighbors.

At each house, I greeted first, then gave peaches, and after some excuses, the elders finally gladly accepted, and then they insisted on pulling me to stay for dinner, and after I said that I had eaten, they blamed me for being too foreign, but did not forget to stuff some pancakes and some vegetables in my basket.

In the grandmother's house, which has been very close since she was a child, she talked about cuteness and couldn't help but leave sad tears when she was old, because her daughter also died of leukemia...... I bowed my head and listened to her in silence, the elders in the countryside are not good at expressing their emotions, the language is simple and straightforward, but it is meaningful, and the words reveal the most plain truth.

I accompanied her to choose vegetables and lit a fire for her, and the grandmother, whose body was getting thinner and thinner, rejected the idea of her son in the city to pick her up, saying that she didn't want to cause chaos for the child, and she was reluctant to leave the place where she had lived for most of her life.

The brick and earth house is the most common dwelling in the Northwest, and this old house that has been around for many years is also holding on to its promise of time in its own way. I leaned over and grabbed a handful of grass and stuffed it into the stove, the fire in the hearth was not burning, because the grandmother insisted on frying some peanuts for me, and I kept looking at her in the free time, her face was engraved with wind and frost, wearing a very traditional, simple blue floral shirt, a row of black hairpins was especially obvious on the white hair, and she was already hunched back, unable to block the light of the sunset, and the sunset behind her seemed to light up the room without the lights......

In the small talk, she sometimes turned the peanuts in the pot, sometimes to me chatting about family life, I haven't wanted to talk so much for a long time, telling her about the two years of life in the city is not wonderful, but she is always curious, the older she is, the more like a child, and then the response to me is a hearty smile, and then for me to talk about her young days.

I only heard her sigh: those days are too far away, my days are gone, and I don't know how many times I can see my children......

As the sun gradually sinks in the west, the fire in the stove is extinguished, and the house is getting darker and darker, but the sunset is soft but not weak, and in the face of its fate that is about to be swallowed up by the night, it does not panic, but accumulates strength little by little, and gives the world the brightest smile before leaving!

In the face of this last beauty, I seem to have realized something from it: it is a strong man who never bows his head, telling the true meaning of life in his old age!

……

Carrying the peanuts that were still hot, I took advantage of the night to go back and send out a basket of peaches, but what I brought back was a heavy local favor.

The only change is that digital TV can be watched here, and the living standards of the villagers have also improved, but compared with the lives of people in the city, it is still far from the same.

This night, I washed a few peaches and sat in the yard while eating and playing a video with my parents, greedy Meng Meng yelled to go home, and my mother also said angrily: "I only care about eating by myself, and I don't know that while the peaches are crispy, I quickly send some to Li Shi." ”

I vaguely coped with the past, then changed the subject, and finally turned off the lights in the yard and lay down on the deck chair, there are no flickering neon lights in the village at night, there is no brightly lit world, quiet and dark, this is the real night, there are many more stars in the night sky than in the metropolis, and they are much brighter, as long as you look up, you can see the legendary Big Dipper.

In a trance, the text message prompt on the mobile phone sounded, I picked up the phone and looked at it, it was sent by Jingqi, and the content of the message was very simple, telling me that she was waiting for the flight at the airport, and then I was concerned about whether I arrived home safely.

I immediately sent her a message back, telling her that she had arrived home safely, and signaling her to pay attention to her body when she went abroad, and that she could send me some photos when she had time, and she simply replied, "Okay, I'm boarding the plane." After that, there was no reply, and she would face not only work, but also long flights and jet lag.

Although it took me a few hours to change from one place to another, some things still disturbed my mood, such as Li Shi, who appeared inexplicably as soon as I closed my eyes, her face I always lingered, and the pictures of those who got along were tangled together, which made my memory of the hostel more profound......

This night, I thought a lot in the silence, from the city back to the countryside, the biggest feeling is quiet, especially at night.

It was a very heavy sleep, and the next day it was almost noon when I woke up.

……

On a whim, I picked up an axe and chopped some firewood, and while cooking noodles, I gave some food to the chickens and ducks, and then put a small table under the loofah shelf in the yard, filled two bowls of noodles, and served the rest of the soup and noodles to Hanako.

Before I ate two bites of noodles, there was a sudden noise of cars at the door, Hanako immediately rushed out and barked, I carefully distinguished, and the sound didn't sound like a tractor, but like the sound of a sports car, but after thinking about it, it would be really strange to see a sports car here.

But the noise outside the door did not weaken, the dog barked more and more fiercely, I quickly put down the chopsticks to the door to look, this look does not matter, the important thing is that my jaw is about to fall.

Surrounded by a pack of dogs, Qu Sen looked at me innocently, in addition to the Volkswagen next to him, there was also a red Porsche 911.

Qu Sen ignored my doubts, and after squeezing his eyebrows for a while, he looked at the car behind him and said to me: "Yu Hang, don't blame me, you kid, I'm also forced to be helpless." ”

"What the hell is going on, you have to make it clear!"

"You'd get the brutes out of the way first!"

I immediately called the barking dogs, and was about to ask Qu Sen what was the matter, but he was relieved, got into the car, turned around in the empty barnyard, and when he passed the Porsche, honked his horn, and then left in a puff of smoke.

At this time, Porsche's door opened, and the person who came was not Jiang Laiyue, who else, after getting out of the car, she closed the car door in a chic manner, carrying her bag, and playing with her capable short hair in the wind while walking, it seemed that she had a strong workplace atmosphere everywhere.

She stopped not far away, and before she could take off her sunglasses and pose, she was once again besieged by the dogs in a red dress.

This woman, who is accustomed to calling for wind and rain in the workplace, may not have experienced this kind of welcome ceremony in her life, so she was frightened to scream loudly and lose her demeanor.

The neighbors by the door poked their heads out one after another, looked at this girl with an extraordinary temperament and was extremely embarrassed, and called back their dog by the way.

I stood stunned and looked at Jiang Laiyue, she was still full of haughty expressions before, after the dog evacuated, her face turned cold for a moment, she looked at me, and the atmosphere stiffened in the silence of each other.

"You're dead, I don't know how to help call the dog!"

I didn't pay attention to her words, thought about it for a while, and asked straight to the point, "Why are you here?" ”

Jiang Laiyue didn't care about my question at all, and said with an angry face: "It's your business." ”

"I said Jiang Laiyue, you chased me to my house just to choke and talk to me?"

Jiang Laiyue glanced at me dissatisfiedly and said, "Yo, don't you call me Mr. Jiang?" ”

"I'm still putting up a shelf here, believe it or not, I let the dog bite you, you think it's ......"

Before I finished speaking, I was interrupted by Jiang Laiyue: "I came from afar to listen to your foolishness, my brain must have entered the water, what kind of dog do you use to bite me, if you want to bite, come and bite me to death!" ”

I don't care what the purpose of her coming here today is that I don't want to teach her a lesson, so I take Hanako and walk forward and say, "Hanako, bite her!" ”

Hanako seemed to understand what I meant, jumped back and forth around Jiang Laiyue, and after only a few calls, she lost her face again, walked quickly to me, pulled my sleeves tightly, and her words had reached the limit of unbearable, and warned: "Yu Hang, if you don't get this dog away again, believe it or not, I will drive it to death?" ”

"I don't believe it."

Jiang Laiyue pushed me away and said, "Then don't get in my way, let me run back to the car." ”

Her posture really didn't look like a joke, how could I let her succeed, took a few big strides, blocked in front of her, and then stopped her, and said in a threatening tone: "If you play hooligan here, I guess you won't be able to get out today." ”

"I, Jiang Laiyue, have been afraid of something, and I am not afraid."

"You have such a great ability, can you let go of your hand?"

"Damn, this is loose!"

Jiang Laiyue seemed to have lost her patience, really let go of her hand, and then pushed me away heavily, waving her bag, free and easy to the point of having no scruples about her image, learning to bark like a dog with her teeth and claws, and after scaring off Hanako, she walked quickly towards my yard proudly.

My thinking suddenly stagnated, I couldn't think anymore, even the arrogant Hanako was frightened by this woman, her bark was intermittent, full of grievances after being conquered, and her momentum was much weaker than just now, this woman can make dogs afraid of her, it's really not simple!

……

In the courtyard, a beam of sunlight through the loofah shelf fell on Jiang Laiyue's neat hair, fluttering in the wind, she put on her sunglasses again, and lay on the recliner as if she was used to it, and smiled contemptuously when she saw me come in.

I looked at her a little distractedly, still a little incredulous, and thought: How did this president of a travel company, who is a first-class tourist company except for his bad temper, think of running here?