The outgoing year of 2020 has happened a lot, a lot.

On the day Wuhan was locked down at the end of January, I took two days off to spend the Chinese New Year with my family in Cape Town on weekends. Table Mountain, Simontown, Cape of Good Hope, wineries, botanical gardens, penguins, seals, we were left with a wonderful impression. Although I have concerns about my hometown, I am surrounded by quiet years.

I went on a business trip to Kenya in late February, and I originally planned to return to South Africa at the end of March. I didn't expect the pandemic to intensify around the world, and in late March, when Africa fell and Kenya entered Lockdown, I was quarantined in an apartment in Nairobi until the early hours of October 7.

At the height of the pandemic, there was a month of barely going downstairs. Working from home, delivering a boxed lunch to the elevator, watching the Premier League during a break, brushing Faye Wong's previous concerts on station B, standing on the balcony and watching a local family in the next neighborhood kill sheep.

And then I started writing this book again, telling these stories.

Returned to Johannesburg in October. ，

On November 25, when the last chapter was written, it was reported in the news that Maradona had passed away.

In 1991, Lao Ma was banned for the first time, and CCTV's "Football Night" made an album for him, accompanied by a song, Zhao Chuan's "I finally lost you", which made me think of Lao Ma every time I heard this song.

In the summer of 1994, at the foot of Yuelu Mountain, in front of a small grocery store in the school's staff dormitory area, I watched the World Cup in the United States, Argentina vs. Greece, and after scoring the goal, the old horse yelled at the camera and made my blood boil, and then he was banned again.

I watched a movie last year, "Young and Vigorous", and there is a character in it, obviously the old and fat "Maradona".

I once said to a friend that I don't feel that I am no longer young at all, but that the world and people around me are slowly getting older.

I'm finally leaving the "Weihua" in the story!

In May 2000, he resigned from his original unit, rested at home for half a month, re-watched "Xiaoao Jianghu", and then went to the "Central Market" to buy a suitcase, bid farewell to his parents and friends, left his hometown, and went to Shenzhen.

At that time, it took nearly 20 hours to take a train from Huaihua to Shenzhen, a green train.

I still remember a couple of people in the same group of sleeper cars on the train that night:

An old gentleman, who was rehired after the retirement of a company, left a phone number when he said goodbye, saying that if he could not adapt to the new company, he could still contact him.

A lady with a big belly, a medical representative of a pharmaceutical company, accompanied a customer to Tibet not long ago, and talked about what she had seen.

A tall guy is a doctor in a town health center in a certain county, and he can't stay in his hometown and wants to go to Guangzhou and Shenzhen to find opportunities.

A girl who looks like Chen Huishan opened a clothing store by herself and was asked by a friend to go to Yunfu to play. But from her description, I think her friend should be doing MLM.

When they arrived in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, they said goodbye one after another, ran to their respective paths, and never saw each other again.

On my first night in Shenzhen, I stayed in a double room in a high-tech guest house in the Science and Technology Park, and the roommate was a stranger. At two o'clock in the evening, there was a knock on the door, and the joint defense team came in to check the border guard card.

The next day, I went to the company's new employee training center in Shiyan Lake and joined the company.

Then he went to Chengdu and then resided in Guiyang for more than three years.

In April 2005, I went to the Middle East and North Africa, met some of the people in the story, heard, saw and experienced some of the things in the story.

I hope more people will read this book.