Seeing the three children choosing a restaurant, Lao Ma also got up and prepared to go out for dinner.

He first went to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his hair, and then shaved his beard seriously. After washing the old towel around his neck a few times, he wiped the sweat stains on his body, and then used the sweat towel to scrub the crutches, and after wiping the crutches, he washed the towel several times and hung it on the pole. Finally, Lao Ma used a brush to clean the dirt on the plaster on his right foot, and after processing, he went back to his room to change clothes.

After returning to the house, Lao Ma took off his shorts and vest, changed into loose boss pants made of good material, and fastened his belt, with a key chain and a mobile phone case pinned to his belt. Find a close-fitting white vest with a light blue short-sleeved shirt over it, button it up and tuck it neatly into the belt. In the pocket of his shirt, he had a neat, boxy scarf folded in all directions - it was used to wipe sweat when he went out. Put on a clean black sock on her left foot, and then put on Gui Ying's newly bought black sneakers. Fetching the hat from the hook behind the door, and putting on the thick peaked cap, the old horse went out of the house.

As soon as they left the house, the children looked at the old man's strange outfit, and each covered his mouth and snickered.

"Grandpa, you don't match the sneakers!" Tsai Boy pointed.

"You don't care if I can match or not." The old horse patted his trouser pocket.

"What are you doing with that phone case when you use your smartphone? The earth is dead! The boy was disgusted, Xuemei lowered her head and pursed her lips and snickered.

"Oops, I'm used to it, I've been wearing it for more than ten years. Boy, go get a plastic bag or something, grandpa put hookah and fan! ”

"Smoking is not allowed in shopping malls, and smoking will be fined!"

"If you don't smoke after eating, you'll die! You don't care, if you find the bag, you will find it! The old horse glared at the boy, then went to the sofa on crutches, and sat there waiting for the children to go out to eat together.

"My grandfather stinks so beautiful! Every time I go out, I dress up seriously, you see - I just shaved my beard! Long pants and a hat, I just want to ask how cold is he on a July day? Tsai muttered quietly.

Xuemei and Xuecheng didn't answer, they each lowered their heads and bit their lips and held back a smile.

It was five o'clock, and after the three children had packed up, the old and the young went out together. Tsai Tsai and Xuecheng walked in front, Xuemei helped the old horse, and the four of them swayed all the way to the restaurant in the mall. The children chose a Hangzhou dish, after eating at seven o'clock, before the time to broadcast the movie, the children took the old horse to the game hall of the shopping mall, and the three children went in familiarly, and each chose what they were good at playing.

The old horse sat at the door of the game hall, watching the rows of machines playing all kinds of strange music, the machines in the hall were full of red, green, and green lights flashing, and the people playing the game were jumping and croaking...... The old horse couldn't understand what the people inside were doing.

The seventy-year-old man, dressed in forty-year-old clothes, sat motionless at the door of the game hall, holding his cane in both hands, like a dried lime sculpture, looking at the inside of the game hall, his eyes full of doubts, and he saw a group of small monsters in a cave. This is the first time in his life that Lao Ma has returned to the game hall.

The old man looked forward to the people who belonged to the new world who came and went, and people also looked at the ancient him who was out of place. It is like the intersection of two eras, with great differences but peaceful browsing of each other - like city people visiting the old revolutionary area, like country people looking at the tallest building.

Movie - it's not that Lao Ma hasn't seen it. There are often movies in the village, and he himself has organized them a few times. has watched "The Devil is Coming", "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" and the like, and the most played is of course the Qin opera. He is no stranger to movies, but cinema ...... The old horse really hadn't heard of it, and he hadn't seen it.

At 7:50, the four of them arrived at the cinema. The old horse looked left and right, and the cinema did not even have a door, and as soon as he entered, there were paintings everywhere on the walls and on the ground—very large paintings, so big that they had no boundaries. Inside, there is the rest area and exhibition area of the cinema - Lao Ma understands it so. The walls inside are still full of paintings, and the rotating colored lights hit the old man's face from time to time, reflecting the appearance of an old man only in a movie. The children were wandering around, and he sat down to rest.

The ground of the city was smooth and dusty, and the old horse was not used to this kind of too clean environment, which made him feel unreal. Tsai Zai bought three buckets of popcorn, and such a delicate box was actually filled with popcorn, and the old horse shook his head, thinking that it was inappropriate. When asked about the price of popcorn, the old man was so frightened that he fell backwards, a handful of corn kernels was less than three cents, and it could be sold for twenty yuan in the city. The old man's internal organs were twisted for a long time, and he still couldn't accept the fact that the corn turned into aristocratic popcorn.

At eight o'clock, the movie was about to start, and the four of them entered the viewing room with their front and back feet. It turns out that the movie theater is not much different from the large conference room where the county holds meetings - a curtain and a dozen rows of chairs, but the curtain is a little bigger, the chairs are softer, and the room is a little darker. They take their seats according to the number on the movie ticket and wait for the movie to play.

Before the movie was played, advertisements and music were played on the screen, and the sound was loud and bright, and the old horse's muddy eyes were a little unbearable. After the movie began, the three children watched it while eating, and they watched it very well. The curtain was so bright that the eyes he had used for seventy years couldn't stand the light, and the old horse could only squint sideways. The sound in the stereo popped from time to time, which frightened the old man.

The people in front and behind and left and right all looked in one direction seriously with one face, but the old horse couldn't do it, he couldn't understand it. The old man couldn't laugh when they laughed, and the old man didn't know what others were calling when they called. In the dark, stuffy, noisy, and dazzling room, it seemed that the old horse was the only one left, gasping violently.

An hour later, the old man gave up adaptation, disgust, and struggle, his eyes were fixed on his knees, his hands on the armrests, his ears turned off his hearing, and he just waited for the movie to finish and go out to breathe. At this moment, the old man especially misses the scene of the movie in the village. At that time, as soon as the movie was played, half of the village people went out, the children sat on the ground in the front, the women and the elderly held benches in the back, and the men stood on either side. Smoking smoking, snorting melon seeds, chatting chatting......

The summer evening breeze blows gently, and the people after work are extraordinarily quiet, and the expressions in front of the curtain are very reverent. Mosquitoes and fans play games, crickets and sparrows say goodnight to each other, and cattle and old sheep hide in the distance to peep into movies...... Open-air cinema, cool and natural.

Times have changed, children have also changed, their words, deeds, and hearts belong to this era; Their joys and pastimes, their rivalries and their efforts are all in tune with this era. Back when Gui Ying was a child, the children mostly played on the wheat field after school. Five or six-year-olds - making pictures, playing clay figurines, watching cartoons; Eight or nine-year-old - learn to ride a bicycle, herd sheep in the ditch, and play poker; A teenage group - catching scorpions, playing softball, snowball fights...... The boys threw cannons, cockfights, kicked balls, and rolled hoops, and the girls jumped rubber bands, played with stones, threw sandbags, and kicked shuttlecocks......

Lao Ma remembers clearly that at that time, Xingcai rolled the hoop best, and there were almost no opponents in the alleys in the south, and he could roll for dozens of minutes without falling down in one breath. I heard that the kid won a drawer of colorful pinballs, in order to prevent his brother from stealing, he locked a lock all day long, and the key was tied to the waistband of his trousers, even so he still couldn't prevent his brother. Xingbo's slingshot is the most popular, every summer people who want to shoot sparrows to eat most people have to ask him to ask him for a good slingshot, a good slingshot plus good craftsmanship, a dozen and a quasi, it doesn't take much effort to hit seven or eight, three or five people in the wheat field to build bricks, mud, fire, around the circle to eat called flower sparrows.

At that time, girls also had the ability. Xinghua is the best at dyeing her nails with impatiens, and her nails will not get on the skin, unlike Gui Ying, who is dyed red with her fingers when she stretches out her hand, and she doesn't dare to put her hands on the table when eating. There is a large patch of purple jasmine in the backyard of Huihui's house next door to Xinghua's house, every year after the seeds are ripe, many boys go to her house to pick up seeds, the seeds of purple jasmine are hard and small after they land, and the bullets used to make toy pistols are better than the original. Gui Ying's classmate, Honghong, is especially good at weaving garlands, pumpkin vines, dogtail grass, and sweet potato leaves, which are handy and beautiful when grazing sheep in the field, and are very rare to hang at home. Yingying and her third aunt can also weave, but she only uses dogtail grass or wheat straw to weave, bracelets, garlands, rings, and small dolls...... Coincidentally.

The children in the countryside play with heaven and earth and play with all things; Children in the city only have mobile friends and mobile training classes. Children in the countryside see spring red, summer green, autumn fruits, and winter white, year after year, living a busy spring, summer ease, autumn harvest, and warm winter days; The children of the city see the buildings one after the other, and the figures of the people gather the shadows, year after year, living a life of panic and no four seasons.

Children in the countryside have large yards, while children in the city have a small living room of only a few square meters; Children in the countryside have wheat fields, and children in the city only have commercial squares; Rural children have all kinds of big trees and fruit trees planted in their own homes, but urban children have any special feelings for trees? At the end of the day, God is fair.

Picking wild vegetables in spring, looking for shade forests in summer, looking for sour dates in late autumn, and snowball fights in winter, such a childhood seems to be still yesterday. The weapons to choose are cang-ear thorns, paulownia flowers for blowing trumpets, folding sweet potato vines with earrings, soaking sesame leaves in shampooing, elm bark for whistles, and acacia flowers for snacks...... Flooding ant holes, flying stones hitting birds' nests, bravely poking honeycombs, swimming naked to catch crabs...... This is a chic childhood that belongs to a rural child.

When children in the countryside go out, they go out on hillsides, valleys, and farmlands, and when they go out in the city, they go out on streets, squares, and subways; Children in the countryside spend a lot of time in sesame fields, sweet potato fields, and wheat fields, while children in the cities only have schools, training classes, stadiums, and shopping malls to go to at home. Children in the countryside can play with wild grasses, wild flowers, insects, livestock, crops, vegetables and fruits, mountains, rivers, ravines and ponds...... What can be done for kids in the city? No non-industrial products.

Urban children are born in contact with industrial products, and they are the new masters of the industrial age, they meet and are competent for all the needs and missions of the industrial age, and in order to better survive in the industrial age, their character is also consistent with the characteristics of the industrial age. What are the core qualities of the industrial age? Urbanization, segmentation, homogeneity, intelligence, capitalization...... Also, the chase for efficiency and competition.

The old horse regretted in his heart that the direction of the times had changed. Before, the world was one by one, like grapes, piece by piece; Now, the world is layered on top of each other, like an onion, there are small worlds in big worlds, big circles in small worlds, and small circles in big circles...... The world has changed, but how can the countryside not change? The bottom or tail end of all patterns is often the most agitated and the most radically changing.

A funny childhood is gradually moving away from people. With the change of living environment, children in the city and in the countryside have gradually lived an American-style childhood, and even the left-behind children in the countryside can no longer enjoy the interesting childhood of the past. The city, for children, is a desert; For adults, it's an ant's nest.

The old horse was walking in the desert, sitting alone in a black ant nest.

The movie is over, and the group rushes home. Along the way, children chatted about movies, playgrounds, bumper cars, skateboards, Lego, anime, ...... Lao Ma has infinite sympathy for the children of the city, and there is no doubt that they are pitiful, and all their happiness is based on other things, not on ego. They lack the experience of exploring themselves through other objects, and they are lost in the nine-square grid of the city and the material.

The endless flow of streets, the dense buildings, the non-stop noise, the excessive dazzling lights; One intersection after another, one shopping mall after another, row after row of snack streets, bar streets, arch after arch of luxury and exquisite flyovers; Smiling faces, novel and beautiful costumes, dialects from the southeast and northwest, and rhythmic steps...... Luxury, advertising, fetishism, consumption, Lao Ma's simplicity can hardly contain the prosperity in front of him.

For the first time, he admired the scenery of the people in the city, and the old man found that there was a lot of surprise hidden everywhere. There are many dogs, but there are very few old ones; There are many melancholy, and few lone wanderers; There are a lot of cars, but very little work; There are many newborn babies, and there are few or even no old and quaint babies. It's a very young city, so young that it makes the hearts of the ancients beat faster. The streets were full of heads and feet, and the old horse's facial features were overwhelmed, and the traffic made him panic, nausea, and dizzy. The old man stopped and gasped, consciously admitting that he was old.

The urban society is the commercial society, the commercial society is the fetishistic society, and the fetishistic society is the vanity society...... The old man's brain could not bear the exaggeration under his feet, he was a little dizzy, and he had no choice but to walk and rest, so the three children gathered together and chatted and waited for him.

Times have changed, and people are bound to change. Here, children are born at the top. At the age of four, Yang Yang can use smartphones and iPads, and at the age of eight, he can use computers, play games, and understand some English. They are born to know how to enjoy the bustle of the city, and they are part of it. Urban children were born in the industrial age and will eventually fall into the industrial age.

The seventy years of experience that Lao Ma has accumulated in an agrarian society is worthless here. In the cities, most of the elderly born in the agricultural era are carried away by children born in the industrial age.

Children in the city belong to the city, and they are born more adaptable to the city than adults. Lao Ma had to religiously ask the children how to use the computer and how to order food. On the other hand, children in the countryside are still wearing open crotch pants and smirking around at the age of four, and at the age of eight, they don't know what or why they are learning, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen, they can't squeeze into the door of the college entrance examination and can only take the road of secondary school to junior college...... Lao Ma didn't know whether he should pity the boredom or loneliness of city children, or laugh at the backwardness and short-sightedness of country children.

When crossing the overpass with the children, the old man looked down at the red rows of taillights on the road - headless and tailless, very spectacular. Unhappiness is an innate trait of cities. The old horse's age restricts his steps, and the old man walking in the big city, he feels that he should be more tolerant, tolerant of the unhappy, tolerant of the dark cinema, and tolerant of the glitz under his feet.

The strong wind on the overpass blew off the old horse's hat, and the old man turned to fish. Xuecheng was alert, ran over to help Grandpa Ma pick up the hat, and the old horse who took the hat flicked off the dust on the brim, and when he was about to put on the hat, the old man realized that the wind was blowing his hair. He stroked his gray hair seriously against the wind—slipping and sliding, and felt smooth, before putting back on the high-end peaked cap he had bought at the bazaar for eight dollars more than ten years ago.

The old man with a peaked cap walked slowly down the steps from the overpass with a cane, and his back was as elegant and treacherous as the statue of Confucius in the high-tech garden. The shrewd and clever boy has already seen all this in his eyes, secretly photographed his grandfather throughout the whole process, recorded the various expressions and movements of the old horse, stepped up the editing of various pictures along the way, and added text to the funny pictures of the old horse: grandpa is so vicissitudes, what's the big deal, uncle in the wind, I refuse, I don't want to pay attention to you, I don't disdain, Lao Tzu is displeased, my grandfather is speechless, the king of facial paralysis, I can't get used to it, and the uncle is helpless......

In an instant, dozens of photos flowed into the WeChat group of the two families, and various laughing expressions appeared in the group. Zhiyuan was holding his mobile phone to show his mother-in-law's emoji in Hunan, Gui Ying enlarged the picture in the office and laughed, Zhong Neng and Hyosung each smiled at Lao Ma on their mobile phones, and even Bao Xiaotang, who had been worried recently, reflexively laughed when he saw this emoji...... The old horse suddenly became a celebrity.

Tsai Tsai blocked his grandfather, and specially posted a nine-square grid in the circle of friends, the content is all about Lao Ma's contempt for sentient beings and denial of the world, the three children bent down and laughed at the screen on the road, and for a while, dozens of people in Tsai's circle of friends liked and left messages.