Author: Yu Xia

1In the autumn of 998, I moved my hukou from the east of Beijing to the west. The West District is a high-tech zone, and there are many things that make me feel close, such as Haidian Book City, the famous Peking University and the magnificent green belt, which fascinates me. I am a stranger with limited formal education. I didn't take a college class. Refused to enter in the early years and refused to be brainwashed by the education system. Later, I wanted to enter, but I didn't have a chance to enter. So when I moved to the West District, my main wish was to see the famous schools that had been surging. I know that generations of outstanding people with excellent minds have been born from there, and those people make me feel like I am on the top of the mountain. When I passed in front of those universities, I felt that I was crossing the border of the kingdom of thought.

I found a farmer's house in Xiyuan Township and settled down near Peking University. I was quite proud of my position. I think I can enter, attack, retreat and defend from now on. When you want to write, you can retreat to the residence in the country, and when you want to go out to play, you can enter the bustling area of the city. I have both quiet and noisy, simple and prosperous. I am so close to the central territory of a country's culture and thought, and all these are my boyhood dreams. Being so close to my dream, I am very satisfied with myself. For a writer from other provinces, I think this is the most ideal state in my freelance writing career for several years.

But there will be a problem in this state, that is, I lost my mailbox again. For many people related to me, losing my email address means that I have disappeared from this city. My parents, lovers, brothers and friends couldn't find me, so I became an absent person. Although I am still drifting in it, no one knows my whereabouts. I was poor at that time. I don't have a pager, a mobile phone, and all the communication means of modern people in a city. As a result, I was completely cut off from the outside world. I am like a grain of sand in the desert, lost in the crowd. In that state, people can easily see their helpless, fragile and lonely nature. I understand that freedom is a double-edged sword. I experience the joy of stretching, ecstasy and breaking through restrictions, but also bear loneliness, threats and insecurity. People need to communicate with their relatives and be remembered by friends. Without these people, their existence will become nothingness.

Losing my email address makes me feel abandoned. Before I start a new life, I want to find a new email address.

Just like a ship needs to be close to a new river bank. A new postal address I found is the township government of Xiyuan Township, Haidian District. I was told that all the letters in this area are concentrated there. I walked two kilometers to find that place, and I saw that the so-called post office was actually the window sill of the township government office. The windowsill is covered with dust, and letters from the post office are piled there every day. I also saw a three-foot-square bamboo basket full of overdue letters that I haven't taken away. Due to the weather and sunshine, those letters became crisp and yellow, and their handwriting became weak. Those undeliverable letters remind me of the fate of the writer and the recipient. These people are similar to the folk artists I saw singing in the subway and migrant workers sleeping in the underground passage in the city. They come from the same background as me.

Migrant workers and all kinds of exiles have the same fate, from bad places to better places, from political and economic backwater to advanced society has become the tide of the century, and human displacement and dislocation have become the most common phenomena in the 20th century and even in the 20th century. Compared with Ansheng, drifting is another state of human existence. Some people are destined to live on the road. They pursue their dreams and are not content with the status quo. They are rootless people, floating people.

As the most classic scene in Beijing, I once saw them in Chongwenmen labor market on the west side of Beijing Railway Station. They are haggard and dusty, with empty eyes and blank expressions. Their names are marked on their skirts: chef, bricklayer, painter, butcher, electrical appliance maintenance, computer sales and nanny. Those people are waiting in long lines, either in the hot sun or in the cold wind, waiting for their chance. The most spectacular picture is the tide of returning home every holiday. People who come home from work are pounding the stations, ports and airports like a mighty tide. These vagrants, who are far away from their homes, wander around looking for their dreams and gain the capital to make a living by selling their physical strength or IQ. Some of them have surfaced in the city by struggle and struggle, while others are still homeless.

After the new postal address was established, I often read my letters. As one of the civil rights, freedom of communication is guaranteed. The situation and experience of the wanderer made me distrust this new place. I'm worried that important letters will be accidentally disposed of and lost by the management here, so I'm the one who reads them most frequently. My diligence annoyed the township managers and made their attitude towards those letters even ruder and worse. The newly arrived letters were only left on the windowsill for a week, and then put into the bamboo basket, mixed with the old undeliverable waste letters. I think in the eyes of township government personnel, people who come here to get letters are people who have no fixed place to live, and these people can be ignored. The more powerful people will think that those who have no fixed residence or economic security or household registration security must be vagrants, and vagrants, who abandon the household registration restrictions and try to move freely without the protection of their units or original communities, have become a group of people whose personal dignity and civil rights have been arbitrarily violated on the way to freedom, and have become the most humble and lowest-level people outside the system in this society.

The accumulation of overdue letters has made me see the fate of some people. The fate of some refugees on the run.

One day, I saw a postcard among those mountains of letters. It's a very ordinary postcard with red or green flowers and lottery numbers printed on it. When the festival comes, such postcards will fly all over the world. What caught my attention was the words written on it:

Sister, winter is coming, and I am very cold here. I hope you can send me a cotton-padded coat.

Never, never.

I noticed that this postcard came from a juvenile detention center in the outer suburbs of Beijing. Seeing those crooked handwriting, I don't know why I thought of that person, that person who was isolated and helpless because of cold and sin in the severe winter.

The arrival of that letter made me feel like a great event in my life. I think that cry is like my cry. I hope to be heard, and I hope to get a response and echo. I began to worry about whether it would be taken away on time.

When I was still in my hometown, a man was serving his sentence in a prison near my residence. His wife is ill and terminally ill. Someone sent a message to that man. The sinner went home to visit his wife through complicated procedures, but her wife died on the way home, so we heard the cry of the most sad man on the night he came home.

As winter approaches, the streets begin to look cold, the sky is dark all day, and the dense Woods wither into bare branches. People who wander outside will be homesick at that time. Those days, I spent more time in the township government. I didn't even read my letter. The purpose of my visit is to see the postcard for help taken away, and then the cotton-padded clothes or quilts to keep out the cold will be delivered to the teenager trapped by the big wall, cold and crime when winter comes. That boy is not me, not my brother. It should be said that my concern should not be so strong, but my sympathy makes me feel like me, like my brother. I think the situation of that teenager may be my situation. Just because I didn't meet it doesn't mean I won't meet it.

What worries me is that no one has taken this letter for a week. I saw that postcard getting dirty. It's covered with new letters. Press it to the end. Every time I see it, all I can do is turn it out from the bottom of the pile and put it on top of a pile of letters. I hope it can be read by its owner, or at least seen by people who are familiar with its owner, and then told.

But these two weeks, I saw that the letter was still there, only dirtier and haggard. When winter comes, it is covered with dust.

A few days later, I saw a similar postcard with the same crooked handwriting, the same address and the same signature. The difference is its pleading tone. I saw it read:

Sister: I'm sick. I had a fever yesterday. The weather here is colder. I hope my sister can send me cotton-padded clothes.

Never, never.

Looking at those crooked handwriting, I even think that the author may be a sensitive child, maybe a boy who lives alone with his sister. I used to be such a child. In my poor, barren and lonely childhood, I have always loved my sister who is five years older than me. When I was a child, I got lost. I went home from far away at night and couldn't go back. It's getting dark, my panic is getting bigger and bigger, and the shadows of trees make me afraid. I always wanted to go home, but I never did. Until I saw crossing the desert to find my sister, I suddenly burst into tears, which was suppressed in my heart. 16 years old, my sister went to the distant border to jump the queue. I stayed at home alone with my parents, but I just longed for and missed my sister. At that time, my desire for my sister was similar to this. To me, my sister is warm, loving and caring. This is an element that I couldn't leave when I was a teenager.

I am more and more worried about these two letters because their appeals are more urgent. But I saw that a week later, the two postcards were still among those old letters, covered with dust, and the handwriting had begun to fade, while the sender and receiver of the letters were still sleepy and insensitive.

At that time, I wanted to be a messenger. I finally want to find his sister instead of the child. I want the child's crying to reach its destination in cold and difficult situations. One day, I copied down the addresses of these two letters:

Room 0 15, Zhangzhongtang Apartment, Xiyuan Township, Haidian District, Beijing Zhou Jie

I ride a bike, and I am like a messenger who loves delivery. I went to the apartment called Zhang and found that it was full of mainlanders of all ages, occupations and genders. I found the owner of the apartment and I said my purpose. The middle-aged man in a brown fur coat and fox fur collar looked at me carefully and said:

You are late. Zhou Jie killed herself by cutting her pulse two weeks ago. I heard the man's description. He can't explain why. Zhou Jie committed suicide. She locked the door and lost a lot of blood. At dusk the next day, someone saw blood coming out of the door and knew that something had happened to her.

Middle-aged people show dissatisfaction in their narratives. He said: I was unlucky when she died.

I should say I'm not shocked. I'm used to wandering outside for several years or listening to stories like Zhou Jie.

Holding a piece of paper with Zhou Jie's name and address, I went back to the mailroom. I looked at the two postcards mixed with many letters and began to send the old ones, silently writing the cry of the child trapped by the cold.

This article is taken from the second issue of Reader in 2005.