The Great Yongshun Empire Living at Night

The development history of every five-lane town in China is a hundred years of loneliness.

The Great Yongshun Empire is the county seat of eight counties in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, and its population is second only to Jishou, the state capital. Take 55 yuan's bus at Jishou West Railway Station, and experience the nostalgic smell of leather, vomit and smoke in the car for three hours, including an hour of rocking the car from furong town to Dayongshun County. Welcome to the great Yongshun Empire.

My generation, whether it is a habit or a joke, almost every child of Yongshun will affectionately call it the Great Yongshun Empire, and those who try to deny the glory of the empire are often invited by others to talk to us in the alley in good faith.

Here, it is my hometown.

On 20 12, the empire successfully invited investment, and a group invested one billion yuan in the first phase to rebuild the old city. The first thing is to demolish the old government building and rebuild the commercial street. On the day of directional blasting, there was a sea of people around the government building The students in Yongshun No.1 Middle School took the lead in applauding and cheering, and the whole crowd was filled with peaceful joy.

A year later, the new government building was completed. Nanshan Road, with a total length of four kilometers and four lanes in front of the building and an investment of 62 million yuan, has become an ideal motorcycle training base for middle school students. At midnight here, one throttle of motorcycle can be pulled to 120.

On the night of 20021year, I set out from my home next to No.1 Middle School and spent an hour walking around the empire.

It's past eleven o'clock in the evening, and night market stalls, Internet cafes, hotels and adult goods stores are still open at this time.

After a lap, I passed 25 night market assembly points, a cafe called long ago, and two adult goods stores. Many buildings on the roadside are under construction, and sand piles are piled directly on the roadside. I took off my shoes and poured the sand inside beside a telephone pole. Next to another telephone pole across the street, a dog raised its hind legs.

From the intersection, Yongshun is the most prosperous area. There are two apples, two Samsung, an oppo, a BBK and a Huawei. In the Apple Store, Taobao flagship store sells 5999128GB iPhone13 at a price of 6999; In Huawei stores, Taobao flagship store sells 4999 128GB Huawei Mate 40 at a price of 5988. Three years ago, I bought a Huawei typeC data cable for 50 yuan. At that time, it sold only 29 yuan in Taobao flagship store.

The business circle with the old government as the core stays awake every night. There are 20 snack stalls, 1 1 Internet cafes, 3 billiard halls, 7 tea shops, a Dicos, a cafe and a KTV along the roadside within 200m. Pozi Street, a famous red light district in the county, is also here. Guess how many small hotels there are?

In the middle is the best hotel in the city, Mengdonghe Hotel. The hotel standard room is 22 1 night, and the time of Beijing, Shanghai, Paris, London and Dubai is hung in the lobby.

These eleven Internet cafes are only five minutes away from Yongshun No.1 Middle School, the best middle school in the county. When I was studying in No.1 Middle School, gay friends and I rushed to the school gate after class on Wednesday afternoon, put the trash can outside the school gate guard, played DNF (Dungeon and Warrior) in the Internet cafe for two hours, came out and bought two cakes to eat, went back to school to study at night, and took the trash can back by the school gate. If the teacher asks him what he did and why he was late, he will answer that he went out to take out the garbage.

At that time, I was the monitor of our class Every time the head teacher of the self-study class calls to ask about the class discipline, I always tell the class that the head teacher called. Then when everyone calmed down, I told the teacher that the class was quiet and everyone was studying. Then the teacher said "OK, study hard" with satisfaction. At the same time, a voice-over came from the phone: "Twenty thousand, touch".

Hang up the phone, continue to fight landlords at two tables in the class, stir-fry golden flowers at two tables, and have hundreds of running water on the desktop every day. People who don't play cards chat, and people who don't chat sleep. After the bell rang, almost all the boys in the class rushed to the Internet cafe.

Now, they run thousands of waters a day on the mahjong table of the classic collision mahjong hall.

However, corresponding to the thousands of running water on some students' mahjong tables every day, other students are extremely poor. The third-year students of Yongshun No.1 Middle School can apply for Hongzhi class, a poverty alleviation policy class among Jishou citizens, when they are in high school. Students in this class can get the living allowance of 300 yuan from the state every month. Some students only live on 150 yuan for a month, and the rest 150 yuan sends them home to subsidize their families.

After reading this, who can go to Zhihu to help ask a question: What is the experience of living for one month 150 yuan?

Many times, even the seemingly simple thing of filling out the application form for financial aid will stum a large number of students with difficulties. Once, a relative came to my house with a child to help my father fill out the "Hong Zhisheng's family situation questionnaire". On the morning of writing this article, I just took a distant brother to the government affairs center to help the poor freshmen in the county.

Many times, even the help given to them is beyond their power.

At the same time, there have been students swearing in the dormitory, because his sponsor didn't give him money in time that month, which caused him to have no money to play games online.

What is surprising is not the gap between the rich and the poor, but the homogenization of the rich and the poor.

The price of Internet cafes is one hour in 2.5 yuan from Monday to Friday and 3 yuan on weekends. The seats in all Internet cafes add up to almost all the students' seats. Here, the most popular games have evolved over time, from DNF (Dungeon and Warrior), CF (Crossing the Fire Line), Fan Qi to LOL (League of Legends). Open the door of any internet cafe, more than half of them are students playing games. San Francisco, the most luxurious Internet cafe, is full day and night even during the summer vacation when students return to China.

More than half of internet cafes can enter without providing ID cards.

More than half of Internet cafes do not install Microsoft office office software or Adobe Photoshop and other design software. Many people are proficient in online games from grade four or five to the whole junior high school, but they have never heard of C++.

But they have heard of JAVA, because in the era of non-smart phones, many mobile games will open with the JAVA logo.

At the same time, there are three bookstores in the county, the largest of which, Peak Bookstore, occupies most of the market share in the city. There are three rooms in the bookstore, one selling novels, one selling junior high school teaching AIDS and one selling senior high school teaching AIDS. The main consumers are students. They can find Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Jing M.Guo's Tiny Times here.

These students, as well as their parents, are the main consumers of 20 food stalls in the old government business circle. Teenagers are eating kebabs and drinking beer, discussing today's five kills. Their father talks about the world political situation, Sino-US relations and national development by drinking and bragging. When they talk about this country, the tone is like talking about their relatives.

On one occasion, the school leader of a top local middle school held a mobile phone on the wine table and forwarded a WeChat circle of friends to everyone present. The content is that there is a superpower behind the Tianjin explosion, aiming to blow up Tianhe-1, a supercomputer in Tianjin.

They not only analyze the rise and fall of the world, but also the development of the region. Speaking of Yongshun education pattern, they said that although they swept the top liberal arts students in the autonomous prefecture this year and passed the four subjects in northern Qing Dynasty, the form was still grim. One of the reasons is that there are too few middle schools in the county, too many rural students go to the city, and the resources are seriously insufficient. At the same time, there are too few young teachers and their development potential is worrying.

After worrying about the country and the people, check out and play mahjong.

Mahjong also constitutes a typical day for so-called bad students: they get up at noon 12 and spend the afternoon in the best classic billiards mahjong hall. They play billiards outside, or LOL in the rainforest Internet cafe downstairs, or play mahjong with their girlfriends in their rooms.

Classic collision 1 billiards table, playing games all year round, 100 yuan a set. The legendary Yongshun first shot will appear when people don't know it. After playing three sets, he will beat 300 yuan and leave three cigarettes.

Other tables are usually friends' offices, and the losers can check out. Sometimes I will bet on a five-dollar bottle of red bull, because red bull is the most expensive drink here. Or 25 yuan a pack of gold hibiscus king. And the players themselves often eat 72 packs of cigarettes and the world. When gay friends handed me a cigarette before, I asked gay friends how much it was, and gay friends said three dollars a cigarette, but I said I didn't want it. A second later, I realized that it was three dollars a piece instead of a pack, and I quickly took it.

There is a high school couple who got married after graduating from high school because their children are sophomores. So people can see that on the mahjong table, a kid sticks to a girl who is almost twenty. When the girl is bored, she cries for your father. Then the child went to the other end of the table and stuck to a boy who was almost twenty years old. The boy felt bored and said, "Go to your mother."

At 7: 00 or 8: 00, the winner of the mahjong table pays off the money for mahjong and billiards, and invites the guests to the food stall. Five or six people ate two bowls of shredded pork fried rice, two bowls of noodles, a string of 30 yuan, five grilled squid and five bottles of Wang Laoji.

If I were here, it would be five bottles of Wang Lao Ji and one bottle of Wangzai milk.

During the midnight snack, we discussed how many subjects the driver's license was tested, how the driving school master was, and how much it cost. My friend who got the driver's license at the same table told me that he took the second interview twice and spent more than 8 thousand. The other called an acquaintance every exam and finally spent more than 10 thousand to buy a driver's license. When I asked myself if I wanted to learn to drive, another deskmate strongly recommended me to study in Beijing. There is a driving school in Haidian, 3500. I can get a driver's license if I study hard, so as not to send cigarettes to the master here.

And 100 meters away, the light in front of Pozi Street Hotel shows a faint red color.

My deskmate told me that the market price there is 15 1 times, but many contents are not included. Value-added services such as night packages need to be negotiated by themselves, and the price is negotiable. When he went to Beijing to study in university, he found that the industry suffered great setbacks due to the popularity of social software such as WeChat Shake and Momo. He visited every station of Beijing 15 subway line and found only a familiar figure in Yanjiao. Of course, because this kind of demand is just needed, there are familiar figures in high-end clubs in Beijing, but the price is more than 10 thousand a night, so he will choose to fly home. The round-trip ticket is only 2000.

I asked him why he knew so much. Another deskmate said that he still had two phone numbers in his mobile phone. How could he not know?

Speaking of which, let's have a bite of Wang Laoji. After this meal, we will go back to the tropical rain forest Internet cafe to spend the night LOL, 15 yuan for one night. It should be noted here that playing computer all night in internet cafes means staying up late, not staying up late, because staying up late is the hotel's saying.

In the past, the machine in the tropical rain forest Internet cafe was broken, and LOL card was stuck. It is said that after a man of the hour smashed the mouse and keyboard of computer 12345 in the "bad friends group" (dialect, referring to a group of students who are not easy to learn), the owner of the Internet cafe finally changed the whole machine of the Internet cafe. After the machine was completed, the business doubled, and the boss was very happy. At last, the man of the hour could play games comfortably without typing. At this time, he won't have to spend money online. Sometimes he will open a bottle of red bull and take another bottle. He felt a little embarrassed after thinking about it, so he told his boss that he didn't need another bottle.

The gold chain around his neck sparkled in the flashing screen light.

I'm thinking, if I hadn't studied abroad in high school and been admitted to Peking University in college, I must be one of them now. And many of them, no matter before or now, are my good friends, regardless of their lifestyle and social class.

Many of them are happier than many people around Beijing.

All this makes me feel that I am living in a magical reality.

Later, when I came home, there were four women at the entrance of the commercial street of the Grain Bureau. Three women helped one, and the one who was helped threw up. The air is filled with the smell of Lai Mao and tears. After vomiting, keep crying.

In the KTV next to it, love songs continue day and night.

The food stalls and KTV will last until one or two, and then slowly disperse. At this time, people who stay up all night in internet cafes usually take a nap, and people who package nights also sleep at this time.

At this moment, the street lamps of Nanshan Road Bridge also went out. Looking up, the sky is full of stars.

Looking down, it looks like a swamp.

The empire finally rested in this quiet midnight, and the fog and the moon were gone. Suddenly looking back, the Mengdong River gurgled and the lights on Pozi Street faded.

The next morning, everything woke up from calm as if nothing had happened. Only the vomit in the dirty ditch and the used needle in the dark corner silently told the story of last night.

Once, I felt that this small town was sinking into a quagmire, leaving only emptiness, glitz and debauchery. However, the glitz of the city is ultimately the glitz of people, men who drink and brag, teenagers who eat, drink and gamble, and women who vomit and cry on the roadside. After reading these, people always want to ask whether there is something deeper behind these flashy surfaces.

Later, I finally slowly discovered the hidden order in chaos.

Perhaps this great Yongshun Empire, as a national poverty-stricken county, can only selectively and fatally accommodate all ordinary or empty, flashy or dissolute people at the bottom. In the poorest area of this country, the gap between the rich and the poor is staggering, no less than any super city. It seems that people are content with mediocrity and indulge in debauchery, whether rich or poor.

Or, after seeing this flashy appearance, those outsiders simply and rudely killed the city with a stick, leaving the city and people here unable to extricate themselves?

Or do people here simply don't want to extricate themselves?

Or do you want to extricate yourself but have no strength to help?

Can't see, can't think of, don't know.

Perhaps, only by understanding the most basic needs or desires of human nature, the reason why poverty is poor, the gap between the rich and the poor, and the homogenization between the rich and the poor, and the most basic principles and rules behind this glitz, can we understand this city.

And this town is just one of thousands of five-lane towns in Qian Qian, China.

However, two months ago, this small town just successfully declared the United Nations World Cultural Heritage for the archaeological and cultural site of Laosicheng in this county, and the site park with a total investment of 450 million yuan is under construction. At the same time, there are a series of large-scale industrial and agricultural projects and urban infrastructure with a total investment of 4 billion yuan, such as furong town eco-tourism construction, 3.29 billion biomass power plants, 50 million shale gas development, two expressways and seven ordinary highways. The car rocking experience a year ago has also become history. Now it takes two hours to reach Jishou on a flat and wide expressway. On the website of government information disclosure, people have seen the infinite bright future created by various projects.

Can you see this future, too

A small individual, after walking through this grand narrative, seems to be only able to sigh deeply, light a hibiscus king, and watch the Milky Way all night without thinking about the mud.

In the great Yongshun empire, in the brilliant starry sky, can you see the future?

Another night, under the bright starry sky in the Great Yongshun Empire, a senior asked me if I had seen a meteor.

I didn't see it, I didn't expect it, I don't know.

All I know is that maybe it is more important to do something. Later, together with several brothers and sisters, I opened a bookstore in front of my high school alma mater.

At the opening ceremony, the teacher elder sister said that we should plant stars in the mud.

Now, another night, I wrote its story in the night of the Great Yongshun Empire.

At this moment, looking down at the starry sky in the swamp.

Here is the Great Yongshun Empire at night.