Emotional stories: Could You Give Me the Time for a Song?
The alleys are paved with bluestone, Beijing’s hutongs flattened the red bricks, even the layers of wind and sand in the northwest buried the ancient roads. Circling around, I still remember the end of the tree-lined path where the crooked words were carved on the wall: Alley / winding and long / no door no window / you hold an old key / knocking on the thick wall.
That’s the poet Gu Cheng’s “Alley.”
20xx, I wrote my love for you in the year before Christ.
20xx, Ge Bei was 12 years old, in the final grade of elementary school, and the classroom was moved to the highest floor of the teaching building. The rows of poplars swayed like turbulent youth at the end of August. From the sixth floor, jumping over the rows of towering poplars, the entire playground’s bright green came into view.
Including those two teams with an average height not yet taller than the fence, all the boys wore loose jerseys, filled with the wind, galloping on the field.
Ge Bei’s class and the neighboring Class 61 were playing a friendly match. As the top student in the grade, Ge Bei didn’t need to attend PE class. She just sat in the classroom, twirling her compass, sketching and solving math problems. The shouts from outside came in waves with the swaying poplars.
Ge Bei’s concentric circles grew larger and larger. She folded the test paper and, hiding behind the classroom curtain, saw a boy from Class 61 kick the ball into the face of a boy from her class.
In the heat of youth, it was unclear who made the first move, but the two teams tangled up, and chaos ensued. The test paper in Ge Bei’s hand fluttered down like a paper airplane. From afar, she saw the PE teacher grab a boy like an eagle catching a chick, dragging him aside while he still fought fiercely.
The fight was serious; boys from both classes were punished to stand in the hallway. The narrow corridor was overcrowded. Ge Bei was the only girl. The test paper she dropped was special homework from the homeroom teacher, hitting right on the gunpowder barrel.
The young female teacher demanded Ge Bei be the last to leave. Amid the high decibel scoldings, the homeroom teacher of Class 61 pointed at the so-called “hero” Xue Tingkai, refusing to let him go until he admitted his mistake!
That evening, the classrooms on the entire floor successively turned off lights, locked doors, and became empty. The emergency light’s green glow was faint. Ge Bei moved her sore legs and heard someone softly singing, “I wrote my love for you in the year before Christ / buried deep in the Mesopotamian plains / discovered after several centuries / the writing on the clay tablet still clear.” It was Xue Tingkai, his face bruised, grimacing in pain but still humming.
Listening, Ge Bei smiled, and the hallway where they stood together suddenly felt less scary.
20xx, the rain hadn’t stopped, but you opened your umbrella to leave.
20xx, Ge Bei was in her second year at the best key middle school in the city.
A beautiful girl sat behind Ge Bei, attracting boys who constantly hovered at the classroom door from the beginning of middle school. Each time, the girl buried her head, pretending to tidy her desk, while the boys threw folded love letters shaped like paper airplanes, hitting Ge Bei’s head or flying over her head.
Xue Tingkai said, “Hey, make way, everyone.” He didn’t peek in or write love letters folded into airplanes. On a sunny day, he walked up to the podium, facing the beautiful girl, and declared, “From today on, I want to take you to every class on my bicycle.”
During the bustling recess, Ge Bei, along with many others, heard it clearly. The beautiful girl didn’t answer, but Ge Bei saw her head down, tidying her desk, nodding slightly.
No boys hovered around Ge Bei’s classroom anymore, and all paper airplanes landed quietly. In the hectic exam preparation days, Ge Bei hurried every day, but she always saw Xue Tingkai’s bicycle swaying in front of her, the beautiful girl on the backseat with her long hair flying and skirt fluttering.
On graduation day, the school broadcast station’s speaker sobbed along, but Ge Bei still heard clearly, “Turn off the corridor lights / put down the schoolbag / walk to the window and look outside / think about the newly bought book / called Peninsula Iron Box.”
Xue Tingkai had sung that song at the graduation party, imitating Jay Chou perfectly, “The rain hadn’t stopped, but you opened your umbrella to leave.” That was 20xx, and Ge Bei’s eyes were red under the auditorium lights, as the boy who always talked about Jay Chou left with the passing time.
20xx, draw you with the flowing sand in my hand.
The small city had only two high schools, one dominating the east, the other the west. The main road from east to west had white tall street lamps lined straight, with locust trees blossoming with clusters of white flowers all summer, hanging all over the trees.
From Ge Bei’s home to the west, in front of the 108th locust tree, there was a wide crossroads. The entire campus faced north, stretching along the east-west road. Standing outside the campus, Ge Bei saw the tall teaching building, the climbing ivy over the wall, and the students in loose uniforms coming and going.
Ge Bei heard that Xue Tingkai attended this high school and was the captain of the basketball team. He wasn’t the tallest, didn’t grab the most rebounds, and played just so-so, but so many people were willing to follow him, letting him command the basketball court like a general. Ge Bei believed it.
The students of the western high school loved to play and joke around. They weren’t students from the key schools and didn’t want to do thick exercise books. Boys could balance books on their fingers like juggling in Northeast China. They cleanly defeated the “honor students” on the eastern high school basketball court, with accurate shots and impressive jumps.
Xue Tingkai and his team made the cheerleaders from the east switch sides. They got carried away and ordered 3 dozen beers at the eastern school’s canteen. After those 36 beers, Ge Bei, wearing a canteen uniform and a little white hat, came out from the kitchen, “Here’s the bill.”
That was 20xx when Jay Chou and his junior sister Cindy Yen released the single “Drawing Sand.” During breaks, Ge Bei listened to it over and over again, “Drawing you with the flowing sand in my hand / the forever we promised will never be erased / my youth began in the clamor / because of shouting I love you till hoarse.”
Those bold and flamboyant words, Ge Bei silently kept them all through her youth, without saying a word.
20xx, the most beautiful is not the rainy day.
Born in 1990, entered school in 1997, graduated from elementary school in 20xx, proceeded to middle school smoothly, and entered university, by 20xx, Xue Tingkai should be in his senior year.
Ge Bei counted again and again, the cool September breeze blowing the locust flowers to the ground. The newly hired girl chirped while chopping vegetables, waving the knife, “Ge Bei, you were so good at studying, why did you stop?”
Yes, why did I stop?
After entering high school, Ge Bei’s math, physics, and chemistry worsened, but her writing got better and better. She once wrote an article about how good her hometown friends were, how beautiful the green mountains and clear waters were, and how long the alleys were.
But no one was willing to take her back down those long alleys. Her broken family, even living expenses, had to be saved bit by bit in the canteen. Poet Gu Cheng said, you hold an old key, knocking on the thick wall.
Ge Bei tried using the old key of life to knock on her parents’ hearts. But later, the door closed heavily. In 20xx, she failed the college entrance exam. When moving out of the school, standing under the bulletin board, the article she wrote was taken by someone who broke the glass.
Ge Bei shook her head, but still cried.
The cicadas chirped loudly in July. Ge Bei went south for work, drifted around, then returned to the small town. She took over a canteen window at the western school, closing the latest each day, making fresh soy milk for students coming late from basketball, with a warm smile and tasty soy milk.
When not busy, she liked walking along the tree-lined path by the playground. At the end of the path, the crookedly carved words of “Alley” still stood. She had encountered such messy handwriting years ago, and after all these years, he hadn’t improved.
At 12, for the first time punished to stand, it rained heavily that evening, and in the dim corridor, someone hummed Jay Chou’s song indistinctly. The boy said, “Don’t cry, I’ll sing for you, and lend you an umbrella to go home.”
At 15, Ge Bei held her report card, seeing the declining numbers. The boy said, “I can’t figure out if they were chasing the girl behind you or chasing you, how come so many paper airplanes hit your
head.” He had just finished fighting with students from another school for brotherhood and saw Ge Bei crying in the school grove.
In the warm spring of 19, with the pressure of the college entrance exam, he said he wanted to teach the “honor students” from the east a lesson. He had learned not to speak with fists anymore. Boys had many ways to win. Like a knight, he learned to be a gentleman, yet still broke the school’s bulletin board glass and took away an article.
In 20xx, Ge Bei was a bride-to-be in the small town, bringing all of Jay Chou’s albums to the blind date. The groom said, we used to hum his “Nunchucks” every day at school. Ge Bei laughed. That day, the coffee shop played a sentimental song, “The most beautiful is not the rainy day, but the eaves you and I hid under.”
Who said it, we made Jay Chou the “King of Pop,” but as time passed, you are still the most beautiful symbol of my youth. Could you give me the time for a song, to go back and see it again?
20xx, Ge Bei was 12, the most beautiful was not the rainy day, but the eaves she hid under with Xue Tingkai, that was the unspoken secret. Youth gradually fades away, even forgetting the boy!
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
