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发表于 2014-3-21 18:06:06
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首先贴一篇英文写作。
The Backwater Town
The little town comes round with melodious cries of the tofu vendor. It’s a frigid wintry morning, sunbeam barely peeping out of the horizon. The cold sinks its fang into every pore, yet the vendor’s hawking remains stentorian. By and by, housewives crane their necks outside, spring back, and then scurry out to the tofu tricycle, trays and plates in hands. By the time he finishes the last stoppage, the whole town is vibrant with life.
Chimneys puff out plumes of smoke, into the sky always endearingly indigo. Sunshine disperses more cold, and some children, heavily muffled, come out horsing around in threes and fours with sledges on their backs. They are heading for the frozen pool. Grown-ups seldom stay alfresco, except those who have to ply a trade in the open air. The town is a long strip, with many an oneness---one primary school, one middle school, one post office, one bank, and one bazaar, thus life here is perennially rustic.
Or parochial. Demos here are accustomed to how they are, where “how they are” stands as an oxymoron. Teachers cranked out by nonlocal secondary schools are the constituency of intelligentsia, civil workers make for real burghers, and only if you work with brawn you are called who you are. Whichever tier they belong to is bound to be self-blinkered. Teachers’ progeny tend to teach, officials’ offspring grow to officiate, while children of peasants and peddlers are destined to sell their muscle. Like father, like son.
Which doesn’t mean folks here have no aspirations. Their aspirations are thirty miles in length, at the far end of which stands the Grand County, where everything is all the more iridescent and incandescent. Townfolks occasionally find a respite at the Grand County, but they know they don’t belong there and end up more pathetic. True, living in pitch darkness is never tragical. That chink of light is.
Lowlife needs more phantasmagoria, which explains the wanton profusion of mahjong playing. This little town has no illiterate citizens thanks to mahjong playing which requires the minimal literacy of “万”, “东”,”西”, “南”, “北”, “中”, “发”. It’s a zero-sum game, so nothing short of great valor and brinksmanship could ever square it away. But that’s no subject, coz any youngster with a pedigree falling between the stools of intelligentsia, officials, and brawn vendors is sensitive enough to the dog whistle of brinksmanship. Thanks to it, the town boasts a number of nationwide illustrious criminals, ranging from Sino-US drug trafficker to DPRK-China kidnapper.
Cool hah? But such bigwigs, even in their dizzy heights, contribute little to local conversational fodder. People are more watchful of the “snake pits” within their earshot, so gulp down a jar of pesticide (No.1 choice locally) or develop a hide of the rhinoceros if your daughter-in-law is caught having an affair (something happening on a regular basis). Count on not that time may wash it away, coz folks here have a good memory and may dredge up your blot any time. Little wonder the annoyingly stable suicide rate here(with pesticide of course).
The backwater town is where I was born and raised, and I wonder at how little it has changed each time I brave a long journey home, it’s people still gossipy and organization flabby. Yet I keep longing for it and it seems a wrench to me to be apart for too long. Why? |
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