Walking City:Xian

2021

http://thewalkativeproject.org/event/walkative-xian/

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Wenyi:

The weather has not been so good in the past few days, and the air was gray. This is a rare thing. In the past, the sunshine in Xi'an always made people feel like they were going to be dried out. The car drove all the way from the airport to the hotel in the city center. There was a straight road with yellow lights. The houses on both sides began to get denser. The houses were all the same height, like gray boxes with no extra shapes. I told her ,I went to the hotel first,. The sleepy eyes and lazy service attitude of the lady at the front desk let me know that I really came back. I swiped the room card to open a strange door.

 

I met her at People's Park. The crowd has occupied the former royal garden. A thin middle-aged woman wearing a red bellyband with plastic flowers, the lipstick on her mouth seems to be dusty red candle oil. In a girl with Down syndrome, the inflatable white flesh on her body leaked out of the clown's clothes. The explicit love songs, the amused crowd clapped and applauded. Politics, the Hui nationality, and grass-roots groups invaded this once serious royal garden.

 

I stood in a conspicuous place in the center of the square and waited for a long time. Although I had expected her non-punctuality a long time ago, my heart became uncontrollable impatient.There were hot factors floating in the air. I thought about the next arrangement in my heart, and opened the mobile phone memo in my hand. It was two years ago, when I just started to write some short poems and text fragments in the memo.

 

 

The moldy drapery in the bathroom was blown up by the wind

Bulging

Like a moth about to fly

It's eight o'clock

The sky and the trees outside are still white

Black is black

I seem to have been sitting here waiting for a long time

Just sit on the edge of this bench

Small compartment like a container

People in pink cartoon pajamas came out

dripping sweaty water on the body

I shook my feet

 

Before i finished reading, she came and greeted me loudly with her backpack on her back. I blamed her, why let me wait again.

She took me to eat Willow Shoot noodles. On the way, I found it strange that something as delicate as willow shoots shouldn’t be here in Xi'an.

 

Haha, this is really funny. Whether I like it or not, Xi'an has achieved colonial rule on my body very early through food. My mouth, throat, and stomach felt the hard noodles, mutton, spicy and sour taste. I need to chew a lot before I can grind a bite of noodles and swallow it. My jaw was constantly biting up and down. There was also yogurt with yellow crusts.

 

I still remember how much you hate Xi'an. she said.

 

Haha. I was a little embarrassed to face local in such conversation. You know, I always want to run home, and I always cry secretly every time I get on the plane to come here, especially the moment the plane takes off.

 

I don't know what it feels like.She said. I have always stayed in this city, and I have never lived in another field for a long time.

 

Actually, it's not all because I don't like this place. It's just at the border of the sky. I always feel that I will be trapped there. I haven't gotten to the ground or fly to the sky. I don't belong anywhere. I am afraid of going back to school and also afraid of going home. I always don't know what stability means. Every time I rolled around on the plane, the orange light hit the stranger's forehead through the small window. I hate the feeling of being on an airplane so much that I cry every time I fly.

 

But Xi'an is very solid, as solid as the noodles we eat now.She said.

 

Yes, do you remember the poem I wrote. When I first came to Xi'an, the city confused me as soon as it came up. I was very rebellious at the time.

I wrote it like this

 

I am a person who likes to be a fugitive

Generally speaking, I ran away in a plane

I asked Jin to cover me

Ask mom to find me a broom

The whole world is willing to give me a small channel

Let me run away as a coward

 

Usually at night

The night is dark and the wind is high

It is a time suitable for secretly flying up and down

I fled from Xi'an to Wuxi

Fled from Wuxi to Xi'an

I think again

The long-winded Wuxi people are really annoying

Why are the people on the plane so calm and comfortable

I've been on a plane for almost a thousand times

I can't learn to be so sophisticated

Where did the plane send me this time

Where is my hometown

Maybe I don’t have any hometown

I don't respect the land

I Don't love nature

I only defect in the jungle

It's time to have some fun

Fuck the Wuxi dialect and Xi'an dialect

 

She said,I remember you had said that, but you came back after graduation, and then came back again.

 

I don’t know, there are various reasons for me to come back and come back again.

 

Hahaha, she laughed carelessly, what are you looking for.

 

We climbed on the wall.

 

Our locals seldom come to this city wall. She told me so. Most of them are tourists here. And you should have discovered that all the old residential buildings in the city can not be higher than the city wall. Now you see these extremely high shopping malls are all built later.

 

That's why the old houses we saw on the way we just walked over were basically only about 7 floors?

 

Yes, probably because this city wall was made by the royal. The end of this straight road is the next exit, Andingmen. Although I rarely come here to play, there are many stories about this city wall I believe in. When she said this, the surrounding air began to dim, and the lights on the walls illuminated the ground very brightly. She went on to say.Later, there is a tall bronze horse at the exit of Andingmen. The position of that horse cannot be moved at will. It is said that it will rain heavily every time it moves.

 

I listened and didn't speak

 

She went on to say, once before, I touched this horse when I was passing by. When I went back, I caught a cold and fever. Remember not to touch it casually. And did you see the location of the children's hospital in front? She asked me. I distinguished it carefully. The sign of the children's hospital in a city glowed with a striking red light in the direction of the arrow tower at Andingmen. It is said that there is a manhole cover there, which is the gate to hell.

 

I listened and didn't speak.

 

Once before, I touched this horse when I was passing by. When I went back, I caught a cold and fever. Remember not to touch it casually. And did you see the location of the children's hospital in front? She asked me. I distinguished it carefully. The sign of the children's hospital in a city glowed with a striking red light in the direction of the arrow tower at Andingmen. It is said that there is a manhole cover there, which is the gate to hell.

 

I laughed. This story is a bit exaggerated, I told her.

 

I didn't believe this Mysterious power before, so I spoke suddenly. Until one time, when I was walking, I flaunted to my friends that I hadn’t been sick for so long after coming to Xi’an, and then I went back that night and inexplicably developed a high fever. It’s strange that this place in Xi’an always makes you surrender to it from all aspects. Hahaha, first of all, it starts with food.

 

It's not the first time I walked up the city wall. The previous two were here at night. The city wall at night was more peaceful, and the fog in the air was heavy. You can't look back and see the way you came. And now, at sunset, the color of the sky changes all the time, and the colors in the surrounding air are constantly rising and falling. The space I live in is close to the world under the city wall, and the sound of Xi'an city constantly rippling up with the transpiration of the air.

 

The next day, I woke up at ten to five in the afternoon. The sky was gloomy outside the window. I was wondering whether this was yesterday or today.

Last night I drank with my friends until early morning. I usually seldom drank, only a little in Xi'an. The room was surprisingly quiet, and the noisy sounds and beer bottles seemed to be buzzing in my mind. Why don't you even tell me goodbye? You know that in the past few years, I have been tortured by desires. I thought this way in my mind again, every time I was quiet here, there was always no way to control my thinking well. The hangover made my heart beat faster and faster, and the space in the room seemed to follow my heart, pumping out from the center one after another.

 

I remembered that I met him in a barbecue restaurant last night. The urban villages of Xi'an are on both sides of the road leaning from side to side. The bare concrete windows are like black holes, and the air smells of dust. We entered the chain barbecue restaurant together. Although it was late, there were a few tables of beer-drinking guests chatting loudly. When we walked in, the two men at the next table looked at our combination unscrupulously. It is too difficult to speak at this time. The thick fog obscured the space between us, and no one could be the first to break the deadlock. I remember that there were beer bottles on the table and meat. The middle-aged waitress was wearing a gray sleeve.She said not very impatiently, poured the tea by yourself.

 

We still have no one to speak.

 

He seems to have only said  how you came back. But in my mind I seem to have forgotten how the process happened.

 

No need for cities and castles anymore.

Roads and squares no longer have a reason for existence.

Each point is the same as any other point.

An escape, a journey to regain freedom

I look at this city like I look at my own body.