Go back to the past New Years' memories

Updated: 2015-03-11 16:14

[Photo/People.cn]

By ampraxu123

Past is past, and it will never come back again. Some feel sorrowful, while others have a strong expectation of a good future, for the unknown will be nicer than the one that has already gone. Someone once said to me: “Forget the past, and look forward to the future.” I reasonably appreciate this idea because of the positiveness in it, but I still would love to go back to my memories that have long passed and that has left deep impressions on my mind.

Years before I left school were spent in a lovely mood always at home, especially during each New Year vacation. The 10 days or more before New Year’s Eve were long and tedious. However, as the Eve sluggishly arrived like an angel, I felt rewarded and relieved, for I could enjoy my parents’ harvest in the year without doing anything. More importantly, I could sit down with my family, in specific, with my mother and sister, sitting around a dining table making dumplings together while watching the Spring Festival Gala live on TV. At this time my father, like an immortal, lolling on our aged earthen bed, was only watching TV or napping like a child.

Or perhaps you think I can still do it nowadays. Sure, I can do it. However, the Spring Festival train rush has made my journey back home as difficult as anyone else’s during this period. Yes, a person over 1,000 km away from home has so much difficulty getting back by train at this time. This is the agony of graduation from school. You cannot think like a child anymore. Instead, you are forced to think like your parent, a man who struggles to live between heaven and earth. This is not complaint but a reality many college graduates like me have to face each year in China.

This year on New Year’s Eve I was on the train, traveling with my heart, drumming time and often and observing the circumstance where many young and old people were chattering like squirrels and sparrows. Sometimes they spoke of their happy memories, sometimes of their uneasy conditions in big cities, sometimes of their views about society and people, and sometimes of their wages. A harmonious chatting environment! I listened, watched, smiled, thought, and even laughed at them inside my heart when I thought their words were naive and pointless. Yes, this is a chat for killing time, not anything serious.

I phoned my mother and friends on the train, and watched the fireworks blooming sometimes outside the train. Dream after dream floated across my mind, and ideas of all kinds streamed like a river in the deepest pit of the brain where my sincere wish was criticizing my soul. I cried a little and I couldn’t stop my tears running out of my eyes, because I knew my mother and father were at home without me, their son around them. Chinese filial piety may not be something that foreigners can understand, while I think you understand me this moment. Maybe this is too emotional, but this is the real side of a young man.

Going back home and sitting like ever before on the bed with my mother at night, I couldn’t stopped talking about anything that flashed across my mind, and my mother just listened and shared her ideas, which were often not that wise but plain and real. Sitting together with my best friends and relatives, I drank alcohol as in Chinese tradition, and I felt the real and the unreal coming from the people around me immediately. Over each dinner, we chatted about our jobs, girlfriends, wives or even others’ kids. We lied to each other and also we spoke real stories too. Drinking makes people feel relieved, and I felt it each moment when fermented liquid ran down my throat to my stomach.

Mother also told me lots of stories of things that happened during the time when I was away from home, some happy and others sad. People came to the world decades ago, and people left the world just a few days ago without your expectations. I felt sorry for some, and my thread of thought had already gone somewhere unknown even by me.

Many things in that small village had changed a lot. Numerous new things had sprouted like new bean shoots, and nearly all the children running on the streets were unknown to me. People’s lives have already become colorful with great expectations. But everything in there seems completely strange to me. Yet, I can still feel the beating of a passionate heart from my past, for I know children are practicing their circle of life. Their sincere happiness has been revealed and it shares the same note with my past melody in happiness.

I got on the train back to Suzhou again, and now I still think about the joy I was granted by my hometown. I find the New Year has taught me a new lesson: Have hope in youself, and walk towards the future with courage and sincerity.