Foreword

      With the college entrance exam behind me, I had many articles I wanted to write before the test, but none had a solid structure or content. So I might as well take this opportunity to write them all down here at once. Please forgive me if they feel incomplete.

P1 Cast a Stone, Watch the Ripples

      Eighteen years ago, I cast a pebble into a lake. Ripples spread outward from where it landed, circling wider and wider—it all feels like a lifetime ago. Eighteen years later, here I am. The gaokao is a white lotus floating on the water's surface, carrying my dreams, yet also a demon's fruit gnawing at my body and mind.

      The gaokao—a heavy sword hanging over the hearts of contemporary Chinese people. You and I alike have been cut by its edge, yet we also long for the power it holds. As that power is gradually drained away by the hands of the people, it inevitably loses its sharpness. But today, perhaps we no longer care whether it still has its edge, for it carries the lingering might of its glorious past.

      A thousand words crowd my heart—where do I even begin to describe this ordeal? People no longer wish to speak of that chapter of their lives. I just wave my hand and smile, sleeves catching the wind. Perhaps it's a touch of youthful arrogance, but I don't believe my future self will respond to his own experiences this way. Yet once I've lived through this history, I too no longer wish to bring it up, nor even to hear others mention it. I take it for granted as a rite of passage into adulthood, but after the fiery trial, the fear of an unknown fate always floods into my heart in the dead of night. Perhaps the god of fate simply delights in mortals' fear of the unknown?

Let him be strong, let him be strong—the breeze brushes the mountain ridge.

      The stone stirs ripples in the water; the gaokao stirs gentle waves in my heart. Perhaps because I've let go of everything from the past, everything I hoped for now echoes back with thunderous clarity. The night before the exam, I wrote: What kind of ending could possibly be worthy of this journey's hardships? Here, I will write my resounding answer. What the final answer will be, I do not yet know—but I have savored every flower and leaf along the way.

      I don't like the fear of an unknown fate, so I kept making the stone bigger, and when I finally cast it into the water, it no longer stirred gentle ripples but surging waves—and the fear of the unknown dissolved away.

      Whatever the outcome, I have cast my stone into the lake and written my resounding answer.

P2 The Flatbread

      My hometown town—so distant in both memory and geography—haunts my dreams. And the most beautiful memory of my childhood there belongs to a single flatbread. I left my hometown years ago and have never since tasted a flatbread that captured my heart the way that one did.

      As a child, I never liked eating meals. My grandmother would chase me around trying to feed me—a little kid's nature is to love playing, after all. I'd take two bites, tell the adults I was full, and run off to play. Then halfway through the afternoon, I'd be whining: "Hungry! Hungry! I'm hungry!" My mother would be at her wit's end. They always thought snacks were unhealthy, and if I ate, I wouldn't be able to eat dinner, so they'd make me wait until the evening meal. But every market day, my grandmother would take me to the stall everyone called "Lei's Flatbreads" to buy one. Because the man's surname was Lei and he baked flatbreads, everyone called him "Lei the Flatbread Man," and the townsfolk used the same name for his stall. As a traveling vendor at the market, a stall usually had no name—but his earned one because he showed up at nearly every single market without fail.

      His flatbreads came in just two flavors: sweet and savory. The sweet one—I took a single bite once, couldn't get used to the taste, and never tried it again. But even that one bite left a deep imprint on my heart. Its flavor was a unique kind of beauty; its method seemed different from the savory kind, using more oil and giving it a slightly grainy texture. The savory flatbread was my favorite. Its crust, baked over charcoal fire with perfect control, was golden on the outside, with a hint of the dough's original white showing through the gold. One bite and it crunched, releasing a distinctive flatbread aroma that kept rushing into my nose from the moment I held it. The outer ring of the bread was slightly higher than the inside, so biting into it revealed a small hollow section—this only added to its unique texture. The dough itself was soft yet chewy; as I kept chewing, I could taste the savory richness of the dough and salt, with some seasonings inside adding fragrance. When I bit into those seasonings, even more flavor bloomed on my taste buds. I could never tire of it.

      That kind of flatbread can no longer be found—at least, the flatbread of my childhood will never exist again. In a small town like that, where everyone knows everyone, news of any family's affairs spreads quickly. What happened to Lei the Flatbread Man? He left, I suppose. He won't be coming back. My mother said it was years of working beside the hot oven that gave him cancer. And what can I do about it? Only write an article to commemorate my childhood. But thinking back, the flatbread that bore his name has always stayed in my heart.

      Perhaps what I miss isn't really the flatbread—it's the New Year of my childhood, one part of the New Year, a New Year tradition. I haven't returned to my hometown town in a long time. The last time I went back, it had already lost its New Year flavor. A community where everyone knew everyone is slowly becoming a place of strangers. When will I ever see my dreamtown again?

P3 A Train

      This train stops at West Station, a desolate stop. I heard it used to be a flag-stop station where you could wave the train down, but it was changed for the sake of formalization.

      This station has no electronic display screens, no loudspeakers announcing train numbers. Just a staff member holding up a sign with the train number and calling it out through a megaphone—it feels like stepping back into the last century. In the fast-paced life of the 21st century, it paints a stroke of a different color.

…To be continued