Section 1 Frightened Hearts, Trembling Feet The crossing begins

A person pours a series of mold, and every time it is different. Thinking about it seriously, it's like a person farting, every time he feels that his gas is drained away, but it always squeezes out again and again.

The frustration that Serious encountered this time made his palms sweat, and he heard his heart snorting like a bellows. "What kind of moth is it?"

As an unsuccessful middle-aged man, his biggest wish for the rest of his life is to make money and make money. The paws of his feet are desperately paddling under the water, and he is blindly humble in front of people. However, he still can't get out of the typical midlife crisis. The mortgage, the children's schooling, the wife's nagging, and the work is not going well. He wanted to escape from all the trifles.

But I never thought that in such a way - as a modern person in the 21st century, I was "kicked" back to a small tunzi in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.

He was not a typical religious person. But deep down in his seemingly unfazed heart, every time he encounters something, he will communicate with a song called "God".

A famous person once said that he sought strength and courage, but God gave him difficulties and difficulties and taught him to be strong. He seeks love and friendship, but God gives him "fucked" friends and weak and helpless friends who come to him for help.

Anyway, God gave his prayer an answer in "somehow".

However, the shuddering and surprise, bewilderment and incomprehension brought to him by traveling to an era shrouded in misery and backwardness overwhelmed him with a flash of surprise and curiosity. He didn't understand why God would let him do this. God has countless options, but if he wants to break his mind, he doesn't think that he belongs to the warriors who have excellent endowments and abilities in time-traveling novels, can build houses and build equipment in tower defense games, or can take the head of the enemy among thousands of people in Wuthering Heights and forests after thousands of tempers.

He is a law student who graduated from a secondary college and is engaged in legal mediation. If someone comes to him for mediation with a contract of one million, he thinks he has seen a "big scene". Trivial cases of family relationships, marital relationships, dominated most of his career.

"What does God like about me?"

He asked himself. The traversal still made his legs tremble, while at the same time observing his surroundings with extreme vigilance, desperate to capture any information about when and where he was.

Several crooked carts, crushed by a few bags of grain, slightly rolled up a puff of dust on the dirt road with potholes. The road is very narrow, and on both sides of the road are the shops of the shopkeepers who are snoozing under the scorching sun. The outfit of the cart man is exactly the short dress of the laborers in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. The complexion was purple, with the typical cracks of the merchants and craftsmen, and if you looked closely, you could see the dust hidden in their wrinkles.

If you can't save, flee.

All his life he was on the run, away from people, away from work, running away from things. Escape from it all. If there were one or two bright spots in his life that could save him, he would definitely live faster than he is now. But no.

He is a middle-aged man who comes down from the production line of mediocrity, academic qualifications and vocational training, who is not willing to be mediocre but cannot resist the burden of reality.

He can't do any salvation. Thinking of this, he smiled bitterly, the heavens were playing a huge joke.

He then thought that if a person has a good way to live, who is willing to take on the role of "savior".

Except for those who have a "savior complex". They are born with an endowment that is different from others. The world's talents that can be embraced and save the world from upside down and the people from fire and water often make them secrete more adrenaline.

Seriously understand them, there were already before him, and there will be many more such "madmen" who claim to be "saviors" and take pleasure in them. It's natural. It's like eating chili peppers gives you a headache on your tongue and you get a headache when you drink too much spirits. It's just a physiological reaction.

However, he is not a savior. He wanted to live peacefully, even humbly.

He looked around again and saw a wilted middle-aged vendor who didn't look like he was napping but had been roasted by the sun, leaning against his glass tobacco cabinet.

He cast a skeptical look at the serious, just met with the serious searching eye. The tobacco merchant seemed to have more doubt than surprise in his eyes. The seriousness of a T-shirt and shorts didn't make him feel that there was anything big wrong.

With a serious and inquiring look, he slowly walked towards the middle-aged man who sold tobacco. He instinctively realized that he couldn't whine like a reckless outsider trying to invade the territory of the people here.

"Hello, what is this place?"

"Oh, so you can speak Chinese?"

Said the man who sold tobacco. "Where are you from? You don't look like Maozi, do you? ”

I listened seriously and reacted in my head for a few seconds.

"I am Chinese. Where is this in China? "Old Maozi......?"

It was the first time he had heard the word "Lao Maozi". But the word seems to have a less friendly connotation. He blushed a little in fear.

"This is Koto. Yao's shack. You don't look like an old man. The old hairy man has a bearded hooked nose......"

Finally got a bit of key information. Serious sighed in his heart.

The man who sells tobacco still wants to continue, but Serious already knows that "Lao Maozi" is the common name of a foreign white man.

The man who sells tobacco seems to have to dispute the serious "China" and "Chinese". But seriousness has diverted the topic.

"Can you get me something to eat?" Seriousness seems to ask oneself. After saying that, he glanced around, and walked towards the shop selling steamed buns.

"Thank you!"

The path is close to the water, and the river is covered with willow trees. This is probably the most common and hard-to-live tree in the Northeast.

The willow leaves are curled, and in the cool sun mode, they seem to maintain a rich amount of juice. This is the Northeast did not run. Seriously analyzed the Shandong accent of the man selling tobacco and his reply, together with the surrounding environment, and came to a conclusion.

He can't say "Is this the Northeast"? Because that's where the suspicion lies. Who else can ask this kind of question except those who have crossed over - you yourself don't know about the territory of the Northeast?

But when he thought that he had no money in his hand, he chuckled in his heart. How can I use RMB here?

Except for his own body, he can be said to have no body. He scolded himself in his heart, even if it was with a little gold and silver.

The owner of the bun shop came to his senses from his nap due to a serious conversation with the owner who sold tobacco. He met with the eyes of the patron expecting him and his serious eyes.

Seriously stunned for a moment, changed his pace, and walked straight forward instead of walking directly towards the bun shop. His face deliberately avoided the direction of the bun shop. As if he didn't want to buy buns at all.

Section 2 Settling down is not to save others, but to be saved by others

There are two voices in Serious's ears at this moment, one is the sound of the fear and trembling brought by the crossing that makes his heart beat faster, and the other is the sound of cooing on an empty stomach. It's like a stage for two people, one is better than the other.

He left the bun shop and secretly made an assessment of his strengths. As for the law he studied, it was just a slight weight on the scales. He knows very well that the law is of the times, and even if he is made a sword and pen, he will not be able to use the sword of modern law to break the shield of feudal law.

As soon as a person falls into deep hunger, his brain is empty. Hunger often drives people to make short-sighted choices. Seriously looking for a place where I can work part-time.

He asked from shop to shop, but the shopkeeper either shook his head and refused, or looked at him with a confused look.

Long-legged, thin, and with the white skin of an intellectual. Serious understands that he is an outlier in their eyes.

The seriousness of repeated rejections, frustration turned into panic.

He finally came to the door of a large car shop that is common in Northeast China. The boss had been staring at this "weird" man from the window before, seeing him rejected countless times.

The boss was wearing a robe and a horse coat, and he seemed to be busy with something in his hands. He looked serious with cold eyes, and seemed to have compassion for him as an outsider. The owners of the previous shops, in a serious view, may not know as many words as this one. He played a joke on himself.

The signboard of "Majia Big Car Shop" shows mottled handwriting under the hot sun, and behind it is the seemingly shabby N-in-one accommodation place for food, housing, entertainment (storytelling, two-person transfer, etc.), medical treatment and medicine in this era.

In the reader's familiarity and intimacy with the text, he looked at the plaque seriously as if he had obsessive-compulsive disorder for a while.

In front of the cart shop, there was a girl in her twenties and thirties, sitting in a wheelchair made of wooden planks. At a glance, she seems to be the same as the elderly people who have lost their physical functions seen in the countryside and are left out by their families.

Seeing that he was treated coldly several times, the owner of the big car shop seemed to have compassion for him.

"Come in, lad."

At the stall where he entered the door solemnly, the owner of the cart shop turned to his servant and ordered a few buns and a cup of hot tea.

"What's your surname?"

"Exempt from your surname Yan, serious Yan."

"Look at you, you've been to school. Have you ever tested your fame? ”

Seriousness is difficult. I don't know how to deal with it to satisfy the boss without making him suspicious.

"I haven't tested for fame. I studied a little bit of law in the South. ”

Serious didn't know that he was so agile and cunning under pressure.

"I can see at a glance that you are the one who has read the book." The owner of the cart shop proudly cast his eyes on a servant beside him, boasting of his knowledge.

"I want to work part-time ......"

"Eat and drink, people will have times when they are in trouble. I'm a person who doesn't ask where heroes come from, and I don't want to know why you're down. You can stay and write a paper for me. ”

The boss seemed unwilling to let go of this God-given opportunity to use his talents, and he didn't listen to the serious words, so he pressed down the serious words with strict words.

On second thought, it's okay to do so.

It's not a stay, it's a stay.

God gave him the first course - the appetizer, and it was already so difficult. What else can happen next?

Seriously grateful, he tried to kneel again - he couldn't tell which action he was doing - the boss got up from his seat and supported him, "We don't have that many courtesies here. ”

Section 3: Chinese Residents with "Temporary Residence" status

After the signing of the 1958 Treaty of Aihui, an unequal treaty between China and Russia, the Russian government promised on paper the right of "permanent residence" for the Han, Manchu, and Daur ethnic groups in Jiangzuo, but privately only allowed them to live for a "certain period of time." Under the treaty, 600,000 square kilometers of land north of Heilongjiang were assigned to Russia, and the Manchu government enjoyed "permanent jurisdiction" over the inhabitants.

A dark historical curtain opened, only waiting for the other boot of Tsarist Russia's monopoly on Jiangzuo to slowly fall.

The Yao family's shack is located on the left side of the river. One of the sixty-four tuns in Jiangdong. These villages were developed from the military cantonments set up by the Qing government when they cleared out the Russian invaders in Yaksa.

In 1894, in accordance with the 1860 Sino-Russian Treaty of Beijing, the Russian official Ma Chunin submitted a report on the complete settlement of the "Manchurian problem on the banks of the Jieya River (i.e., Jiangdong 64 Tun)" and decided to cancel the Qing government's jurisdiction over the residents of Jiangdong 64 Tun and the right of abode of Chinese residents in the territory.

In 1893, the Russian officers and soldiers "smashed the patch tun", destroyed more than 30 liquor shops, "gathered wine in the tun into a canal", and lost "more than 3 million yuan". In 1898, Russian officers and soldiers "investigated the people's household registration, housing industry, and the number of six livestock" in various banners in an attempt to forcibly collect taxes.

Seriousness is the "transient" among this group of "transient" people.

In mid-1895, Serious settled here and managed to mingle with the guys at the big car shop.

The Majia Carthouse is made up of many adobe houses connected together. Although it is not very large, and the decoration is also cold, in the long winter of Tohoku, as long as you hang a thick curtain outside, you can isolate the cold from the outside. The room was warm like spring, filled with the laughter of cart pullers, vendors and cart shop guys, overflowing from the thick curtains.

Serious is particularly pleased that the big car shop has a special earthen toilet with a door and a curtain. He still remembers someone saying that to look at the level of civilization of a country and region, you should look at its toilets. In a rural village in the south where he lived about 2010, there were even such jokes spread: during the Spring Festival, the sister-in-law held the child and walked through the open-air squatting pit where her brother-in-law was solving. ”

In early winter, Yao's shack was already icy and snowy.

Seriously and dimly, I know that in a few years, Jiangdong 64 Tun is about to usher in the tragedy of the slaughter of the city. Here, the superiority of the modern man in the 21st century does not seem to play any role, and the little modern culture he has mastered seems to be a square chisel and a round sheath for this problem. He wanted to warn those around him of the impending storm, but he was stuck in a quagmire of great panic.

He often sneaked out quietly when he had nothing to do, and went to the top of the back mountain, where he sat for most of the day. There was no home planet, no mother ship, no equipment to send and receive signals, no people sent by headquarters to connect with him. Everything seems to be very different from what science fiction and time-traveling novels say. He is like a frog in warm water, not knowing what the consequences of what kind of choice he makes.

Faith is when you can't be 100% sure that it really exists, but still trust it.

Seriously wearing a heavy cotton jacket and felt bumps, he struggled to climb to the top of the mountain. The mountain is densely covered with camphor trees, redwoods and some bushes. The cold air of early winter enveloped the early morning mist, and the people were scattered in groups of bushes. There are no trails leading to the mountain, and in all seriousness it is judged that few people set foot here. The half-waist-high shrub branch was crushed under the feet of the serious leather boots, making a whooshing sound, and the seriousness kept moving forward, accompanied by the overpowered bush branch in front of it like a spring, full of blood, bouncing back to its original position, producing a greater "whoosh" sound. The tops of camphor trees and redwoods, above his head, obscured his vision.

Serious sat on a large rock at the top of the mountain.

"Should I get out of here?"

"Or should I flee with these people?"

Seriously remembered the moral paradox taught by the Harvard philosophy professor.

The Ethical Dilemma of Train Triggers.

Which is more in line with good morals and ethics, one person saving ten thousand people, or sacrificing the more "small" ten thousand people and saving one person?

Section 4 Wet Wool Tempting the Existence of God

Seriousness is an ordinary person, possessing some qualities that go beyond the ordinary. He clings to a lot of trivial little "superstitions" that he tries to hide from outsiders: he must go out with his right foot first (this comes from the English word for "right")

ight" means "correct"), the objects and books on his table must be neat and tidy (because "oblique" and "evil" are the same sound), he treats small animals such as ants, pigs, sheep, rats, fish and shrimp with compassion, never harms them, and even when he is forced to eat fish and shrimp, he first has to say that he did not "kill" to avoid the blame on him. A person in his forties is not yet an idealist, he must have lived in vain. He didn't know where he saw this sentence, which gave him good "corroboration" for these "quirks".

He didn't believe that if there was an Almighty God, there would be so many tragic events in the world. He also thinks that this question is very low, and everyone will feel so. But there must be a higher wisdom and purpose that his intellectual level cannot achieve, hidden in the concepts and teachings of God. However, there must be a reason for ordinary people to think so. He thought.

Raise your eyes solemnly and look down the ravine. At the bottom of the back hill of Yao's shack is a plain coveted by "Lao Maozi" and extremely rare in this area, with a small river winding through the middle. The water of the river is crystal clear, and I seriously remember the last time the river in the village was so clear, before the village was building a large number of buildings and factories. When I moved the rocks at the bottom of the stream, I saw small crabs the size of my thumb coming out from under the rocks, like a river in a water. Further afield, there is a family that raises "roe deer", a characteristic of the Northeast, which is kept in captivity in a wooden fence around it. The reason why Yao's shack is crowded with merchants is because it is a key road for traders to temporarily rest in Aihui City, and it is also a "land of fish and rice" with abundant wheat, soybeans and even rice.

A flock of sheep grazes at the bottom of a hillside.

Seriously, it is natural to think of the elective course "Selected Readings of Bible Knowledge" in college, when Gideon asked whether God really chose him to lead the Israelites against the oppressors of the foreign nations, and chose to test God's will by whether the wool on the threshing floor would be dry or wet the next day. Many people who know this story will probably naturally think that if God really exists, or even has some kind of connection with himself and other extraordinary people, then "I called you and you agreed" or "You showed me a miracle" is a good way to test whether God exists.

Seriously planned to give it a try, after all, if this experiment failed, he would not have anything to lose.

Serious looked down the hill again. At the bottom of the hill there is a small Slavic "church" building. The scale of the "church" building is extremely small, which makes the serious feel that it only has symbolic meaning, more like a Chinese "shrine", and like the smallest of a Russian nesting doll. Serious and natural are not very sensitive to things that look glamorous on the outside, and seeing such seemingly ornate but actually rustic designs of buildings and objects is like his stomach turning upside down when he has a full stomach and has to endure a dozen fried eggs in a pot.

This must have been left by Lao Maozi.

Not far from the "church", there is actually a "temple" that seems to be empty. In all seriousness, it seems that the builders of the "temple" did everything possible to build it much higher than the "church", and it is not clear whether there is incense in it.

Seriously understand what the purpose of this "higher than" means. The culture of the West and the culture of the East collide at the forefront of Russia and Northeast China. What seems to be a struggle to maintain one's own cultural traditions is actually a kind of resistance, and even seems to be a "provocation".

Seriously remembered the Russian servicemen who could be seen on the street by chance.

Most of them were Slavs, and occasionally you could see the faces of the soldiers of the various ethnic minorities of Tsarist Russia in the Far East, which made the serious look feel naturally cordial. The guns they carried on their backs were long and seemed to be very different from modern firearms. He also carries a military kettle around his waist, and everyone wears a typical 19th- and 20th-century masculine mustache.

However, their clothes seemed to be older than they had been when they had been enlisted—probably because of the wrinkles and accumulated dust on their uniforms, and the wrinkled and rusty color of their guns due to lack of maintenance, made him feel as if they had been inherited from a previous sergeant.

There is no arrogance in their eyes, but there is still a sense of superiority due to the dominant national identity.

Seriously returned to the cart shop and pulled a handful of wool from the sheep fostered by the cart shop.

He wanted God to say, "I am." If so, he is willing to give up his more than 100 catties and escape from this place of right and wrong sooner or later with his companions.