Touching Love Story: A Warm Love on New Year’s Eve
This is an unnamed street, just a dozen meters long, not even marked on the city’s map. On the left side of the street are tall buildings, while on the right side stands a simple and low wall. At the corner of the wall, there is a barely habitable building, with a roof covered in tarpaper and windows without glass, only covered with blue plastic sheeting.
Living in this small house are a couple from the countryside, working to pick cotton for the city folks, and they’ve been living here for 5 years.
The couple has a two-year-old daughter, taken care of by their parents back in the village. As the Spring Festival approaches, they plan to return home for the New Year. With plenty of work to do before the festival, they work tirelessly day and night. When they finally finish picking the last batch of cotton and pack up their tools, they realize it’s New Year’s Eve.
The woman says, “Don’t worry about anything else, hurry up and buy the train tickets for tonight. I’ll take care of the packing, and we should aim to be home by the first day of the lunar new year!” The man, covered in cotton fluff, hastily leaves the house.
When he returns, the woman hasn’t packed anything and is fast asleep in bed. It’s a worn-out single bed, with an added board for width, supported by some bricks. The woman sleeps like a tired child, one leg hanging off the bed, her foot touching the ground. Obviously, she fell asleep as soon as the man left…
The sleeping woman, with rosy cheeks, drools from the corner of her half-opened mouth. Like him, her face is covered in cotton fluff, making her hair and eyebrows look grayish-white.
The man’s eyes are a bit moist as he leans down and gently presses his cheek against hers.
The woman wakes up, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and says, “You’re so annoying! Oh my! How did I fall asleep without packing anything…”
The man says hesitantly, “Today… we can’t leave anymore…” hesitatingly.
The woman finally looks at the man’s face and her expression changes abruptly, “Have you been crying?”
“No… no…” the man tries to hide, turning his head away.
“You’ve clearly been crying! Why can’t we leave tonight? Did you lose the money for the tickets? Speak up!” the woman gets anxious.
“I didn’t lose it! The tickets for today are sold out…”
“You’re lying!” Tears start welling up in the woman’s eyes. For them, three hundred yuan is a considerable amount of money, and the woman can’t help but worry.
“I’m not lying. Since we got married, when have I ever lied to you?” The man quickly takes out the money to show the woman.
Relieved, the woman lets out a sigh, but the disappointment of not being able to return home still shows on her face.
“There are tickets for tomorrow… but I didn’t buy them. Tomorrow is already the first day of the lunar new year. The main celebrations are on the thirtieth and the first day! If we arrive home only on the afternoon of the second, it’s as if we didn’t go at all… Let’s just spend the Spring Festival in Beijing! We’ve never spent the Spring Festival here before…”
Suddenly, the woman covers her face with her hands and starts crying. Throughout the year, they work day and night, hoping to return home for the Spring Festival. At this moment, the woman feels an overwhelming longing for her parents and her daughter, more than ever before… But the man’s words also make sense.
The man walks up to her and hugs her, using a tone as if comforting a child, “Don’t cry, we’ve missed going back home only once in the past 5 years, right? Be good, stop crying, or I’ll be upset.”
The woman stops crying, and the man sits at the small dining table, starting to write something with a half-pencil on a piece of paper. Then, he hands the paper to the woman. She walks over to the table, takes the pencil, crosses out a few names, adds a few more, changes some numbers after the names…
Then, they count some money, put it in the paper, and without changing their clothes, they rush to the post office. It’s already past four o’clock, and they are afraid the post office might close early, so they hurry there. After sending the money, the woman wants to make a long-distance call home. By this time, the post office staff have started carrying out mail parcels.
The man glances at the phone, feeling a bit embarrassed. The postal worker says, “Go ahead and make your call, say whatever you need to say, we’ll wait.” This simple gesture warms the hearts of the couple.
Returning home, the couple starts cleaning up the house, wanting to celebrate the New Year cleanly. When everything in the house is tidy, their faces are already black as coal.
She says, “No matter what, we must take a bath.”
He says, “Right! Let’s enjoy ourselves for once, let’s go to the sauna!”
So, the wife rinses towels with cold water from the hose, wipes their faces, and the two of them quickly head out… When the man steps out of the bathhouse in clean clothes he brought, he can hardly recognize his wife—sitting on the bench, looking at him. Is that really his wife? Her hair is wet, her cheeks rosy, and she looks radiant. And her eyes, they are so bright, as if they’ve been washed with soap…
On the way back home, the man confesses to his wife: he actually had already bought the train tickets, but he canceled them. Because he really wanted to be with her—just the two of them, celebrating the Spring Festival. Although he also missed his family, his parents, and his daughter…
He asks, “Did I do wrong?” She leans against him, not saying a word, but feeling sweet inside.
When they return “home,” it’s already dark. She takes out clean sheets, duvet covers, pillowcases, one by one. So, their shabby and simple “home,” which barely looks like a home, gradually fills with warmth…
The small house has no electricity, so for 5 years, they’ve always used candles for light at night. Today, the candle on the lid of the old box is just about to burn out.
The man takes out a newspaper package from a small basket hanging from the ceiling. Inside are a pair of red candles—thick red candles that emit a festive atmosphere. They were bought by the man for 5 yuan not long ago, intending to light them on a special day.
As the candlelight flickers, they prepare a simple meal and have a few sips of wine. When the CCTV Spring Festival Gala begins airing, the man and the woman are already asleep.
There’s no music, no sketches, no songs, no hosts chatting away. In this bustling city, in this semi-legal, semi-illegal little house, in a quiet moment, under the glow of two matching red candles, the man and the woman hold their own New Year’s Eve celebration with love.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
