Chapter 610: Living in Shichahai!!!

Yanjing City is not only a capital, but also the economic center of the northern part of Xia State, shouldering the important task of leading the development of the northern region.

The size of this megacity has far surpassed all northern cities, and it is still expanding rapidly.

During the nearly twenty years of reform and opening up, the development speed of Yanjing City has been quite astonishing.

In this historic city, you can see many old buildings combined with modern buildings, reflecting the history and epitome of a city.

In the past 20 years of reform and opening up, life in Yanjing has changed a lot. If bell-bottom pants and frog-eye glasses were the fashion in the 1980s,
The tool that the wealthy used to show off in the 1990s was the brick phone.
There had to be another person next to the brick-like cell phone, holding the phone exclusively. This was the posture that the first batch of bosses who owned mobile phones in the early 1990s had to have.

One day, Liu Zhiye was shopping in a mall with Gan Ning. He saw with his own eyes that in a department store, a guy was holding a large mobile phone and walking from one counter to another, talking non-stop. But after talking for a long time, he found that the phone was not turned on at all when he looked from the front.

This made Gan Ning laugh so hard on the spot. Everyone in the Liu family had this thing. In her eyes, it was just an ordinary communication tool. What’s the big deal?

The Liu family is a wealthy and prestigious family, and Gan Ning certainly does not understand the mentality of this nouveau riche.

Nowadays, mobile phones are not a communication tool at all. They are just a way to show off one’s status, and they cost more than 10,000 yuan each.

The interesting thing is that there is nowhere to hit with this thing, because there are not many people around who have it, so there is no place to hit.

From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, although the price of mobile phones has gradually dropped, they are still outrageously expensive compared to later mobile phones.

What’s interesting is that even though people who own mobile phones are all crazy about it, they still don’t dare to make calls as much as they want because the phone bills are so damn expensive!
In recent years, the city of Yanjing has undergone tremendous changes.

During the Spring Festival, the Liu family returned to No. 95 Nanluoguxiang, where they had not seen each other for a long time, to reminisce with old neighbors. Liu Zhiye discovered that there were not many familiar old neighbors left in this alley.

In the alleys of Yanjing City today, the original residents have begun to decrease gradually, while the number of people who have moved to Beijing from other places and tenants has increased.

People of different identities, classes and professions live here, including professors’ wives, rock youths, literary youths and poets, old-timers and street urchins, wild models and big names. They live next to each other, presenting a bizarre scene.

More than ten years ago, when Liu Shuxian first moved into Dongbuyaqiao Hutong, his neighbors were a young couple.

They rented a small courtyard next to Liu Shuxian for 500 yuan a month. The man was assigned to CCTV as a director after graduating from the Film Academy, and the woman was an artist.

Liu Shuxian saw the two of them going in and out of the alley every day, buying groceries and cooking together, showing their love, and they looked very sweet.

From the 1980s to the early 1990s, there were many avant-garde young people like them in the hutongs. Rock youths like Wang Fei and Dou Wei now live in the hutongs.

Because ordinary people in Yanjing at that time had not yet come to the concept of purchasing commercial housing, many people were queuing up to be allocated housing by their units.

These unconventional avant-garde young people had no jobs and did not want to live with their parents, so they rented houses in the hutongs. They could be said to be the earliest tenants in the hutongs, as a large number of people moving to Beijing had not yet arrived.

At that time, those who rented Liu Shuxian’s house in this alley included students from the music college, people working in the film industry, poets and painters, and many more people didn’t know what they did.

Liu Shuxian herself is a journalist. After she became familiar with these avant-garde young people in the hutongs, they often held salon-style gatherings.

Her house used to be a stronghold. After dark, people would sneak into the yard one after another and knock on the door three times as a signal.

We started chatting with people we knew or didn’t know. In addition to watching movies, it was also popular to talk about philosophy and poetry. Sometimes everyone looked very serious, and sometimes they all laughed.

The couple used to be regulars at hutong gatherings, but one day, only the man came.

After a series of typical painful behaviors of a literary youth, such as smoking, drinking, and silence, he finally said that his girlfriend ran away with an old man from Sam’s Club.

Soon, the man gave up the house, worked hard at the company, and soon became a model worker.

From then on, Liu Shuxian felt that not all foreign things were good but some were “poisonous”, and he gradually reduced his interest in these “imported products”.

Liu Zhiye remembers that when he first returned to Nanluoguxiang, his impression of the old ladies in the alley was still the “bound-foot detective team.”

Little did he know that there were many hidden talents in the Nanluoguxiang alley, and any old man might have an extraordinary life story, like the only surviving “Old Lady Bai” whom he went back to visit during the Spring Festival.

The neighbors were used to calling her “Madam”. She looked like an ordinary old lady from the hutong, and she dressed very simply and cleanly.

She goes to the market to buy vegetables every day, buys honeycomb coal to light the stove in winter, and greets and chats with everyone she meets.

No one could have imagined that she was once a lady from a prominent family.

When she was 18 years old, she was studying at Fu Jen High School and married a man from a prominent family who was studying at a traditional Chinese medicine school.

The two were a perfect match, with both being talented and beautiful, but they held a modern-style wedding. Old Mrs. Bai wore a wedding dress and rode in a car, and the witnesses were high-ranking politicians and celebrities.

Liu Zhiye had seen photos of Mrs. Bai when she was young. She had a pretty face, modern curly hair, and an elegant floral cheongsam. She was not outstandingly beautiful, but her virtuousness was obvious at first glance.

Old Mrs. Bai went from being a young lady raised in seclusion to a young lady in a wealthy family. At the age of 19, she gave birth to her only daughter.

In the following half century, their family, along with everyone else, experienced war, the collapse and separation of the family, and… lost almost everything.

Liu Zhiye remembered that when he first met her, the old lady had become a typical Yanjing Hutong elderly person, poor but not worldly at all, extremely considerate in her dealings with others, eloquent and witty in her speech, and the most rare thing about her was her sense of humor.

When talking about the prosperous past, she would casually say: “It’s a pity that when I fled, I had a room full of mink coats and gold and silver jewelry…”

At this time, her hands, as a young lady, had become very rough, with thick joints and cracked nails due to a lifetime of hard work.

After visiting the neighbors, Liu Zhiye and his family did not return to Liujiazhuang immediately, but returned to a small house with two courtyards on the shore of Shichahai for a few days.

This courtyard has a dedicated service all year round, and Liu Zhiye and Gan Ning sometimes live in this house for work.

The Liu family has many well-preserved courtyard houses in the capital, but the environment of this one is more satisfactory to Liu Zhiye.

“Humans live near water, and cities are built along water.”

In the core area of ​​Yanjing, there is a piece of water, which was once the core of the capital planning in the Ming and Qing dynasties – Shichahai.

Lao She once described it as follows: “Willow groves surround the embankment, thousands of acres of lotus flowers, clumps of reeds, flocks of ducks, and the sound of cicadas.”

Shichahai is adjacent to the central axis of Yanjing City and is also the largest and most intact historical district in Yanjing City.

Legend has it that the name of Shichahai is related to Shen Wansan!

It is said that when Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, moved the capital to Yanjing, Shichahai was dug out in order to solve the problem of money for building Beijing.

In the early Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chengzu Zhu Di ascended the throne and moved the capital to Yanjing.

At that time, the war had just subsided and the whole country needed to recuperate. There was no extra money for large-scale construction, but he insisted on rebuilding the city of Yanjing.

So he asked Prime Minister Liu Bowen to come and seek advice and strategy.

Liu Bowen was an advisor who had followed Zhu Di for many years. He had long heard that there was a man named Shen Wansan in the capital who was very wealthy. If he could find him and ask for money, he would be able to build the capital.

However, since Shen Wansan was wandering outside for many years, few people knew his whereabouts. Prime Minister Liu had to post notices throughout the city and send people to inquire about his whereabouts.

As the deadline set by the Prime Minister was approaching and there was still no news of Shen Wansan, his subordinates became very anxious.

That day, the officials came to a small county town and heard from the waiter of the local inn that a man named Shen Wansan had registered to stay at the inn yesterday, but left early this morning.

The officials were very happy to hear the news. Thinking that he must not have gone far, they ordered their men to immediately launch a comprehensive search in the small county.

But by noon there was still no clue and everyone was very tired, so they went to a teahouse to rest and drink tea.

When everyone had rested enough and were about to get up and continue their search, they suddenly saw a conflict between two people at the door.

They immediately captured them and interrogated them, and found that one of them was the Shen Wansan they were looking for.

The officials were ecstatic. It was just like a piece of cake after searching for it for a long time, and finally they got it without any effort.

Although this man was dressed in coarse cloth and did not look like a rich man, his name was Shen Wansan, so he could be used to report to the prime minister.

Liu Bowen took a look and saw that Shen Wansan was an old man, not very tall, and wearing a ragged jacket and trousers. He did not look like a rich man at all.

Seeing that he was not rich and even lived in poverty, he asked, “Are you Shen Wansan?”

“Your Excellency, it is me.” Liu Bowen then asked him to sit down.

“I heard that you have a fortune, so I want you to donate some money to help the emperor build Yanjing City.”

After hearing this, Shen Wansan panicked and said that he was a poor man and had no money at all.

At this time, someone told Liu Bowen, “If you want to ask Shen Wansan for silver, you have to beat him hard. Beat him so hard that he will point to a random place. Go ahead and dig. You will definitely find it.”

Liu Bowen had no other choice but to order his men to drag him out and beat He Hou with a stick until he told him the whereabouts of the money.

Shen Wansan was beaten so hard that he cried out in pain, but he still said, “Your Excellency, I am innocent. I am just a poor man.”

When Prime Minister Liu Bowen heard this, he became furious and ordered him to be severely beaten, but Shen Wansan still said that he had no money.

Three days passed like this. Seeing that he could not get any results from his investigation, Liu Bowen ordered his men to parade him through the streets and then search for him at his residence.

On this day, they walked to the west of the back gate bridge, and the soldiers who were guarding him wanted to beat Shen Wansan again. Shen Wansan could not bear it any longer, so he pointed randomly in desperation and said, “You guys just dig here, there is silver underground.”

The leading soldier smiled and said, “Why didn’t you tell us earlier? Why do you have to suffer this?” So he quickly sent people to dig down, and not long after, they really dug out the silver.

Shen Wansan was dumbfounded. He didn’t expect that there was really silver in the place where he pointed randomly.

The officer asked again: “Is there any other place to hide the silver?”

Shen Wansan made up his mind and pointed to nine places at random.

The leader ordered people to continue digging.

Sure enough, nine more cellars of silver were dug out, each containing 480,000 taels of silver. Together with the previous cellar, a total of ten cellars containing 4.8 million taels of silver were dug out. The funds for building Yanjing were now secured.

Later, many people obsessed with money came to dig. Over the years, the pit became bigger and bigger and rain water accumulated. Liu Bowen found Guo Shoujing, who opened up the Yongding River and injected the water into the big pit through the Jishuitan, which formed a lake in the city of Yanjing.

People called it Shijiaohai, and later it was erroneously called Shichahai.

……

Residents in the alley always get up early.

It is just daybreak and the breakfast shops are already steaming. People are rushing to school and work, while people are walking their birds, warming up their voices, and exercising by the Shichahai Lake…accompanied by the water vapor from the lake, the ancient city of Yanjing seems to wake up from a dream.

In winter, the trees on the shore of Shichahai are covered with a layer of silver, as if they were works of art carefully crafted by nature.

Those once lush willow and locust trees, with their bare branches swaying in the cold wind, have a unique charm.

The icicles hanging on the branches sparkled brightly in the sun, adding a touch of color to this cold season.

On the lake, a thick layer of ice covered the entire Shichahai Lake, turning this once sparkling lake into a huge ice rink.

Wait until the afternoon when the weather gets a little warmer.

There are pedestrians walking on the ice, some are skating, some are playing, and some are doing various ice activities.

The laughter of children like Zhong Xiaowei and the lively conversations of adults make this cold winter warm and lively.

Two months passed in a flash and it was the spring of 1995.

In fact, what Liu Zhiye is most satisfied with is the spring in Shichahai.

When the spring breeze quietly blows across the lake, this ancient body of water awakens from its slumber, playing a spring melody with a unique Beijing flavor.

As you walk in from Liujia’s residence on Yandaixie Street, the old stone streets are glowing in the warm spring sun, and there are many small shops on the street.

The red lanterns hanging at the door of the store swayed in the wind, contrasting with the newly sprouted willow branches. Tradition and rebirth collided in this narrow alley to create a unique style.

As you stroll through the restaurant, the aroma of grilled lamb skewers and the sweet and sour taste of Lao Yanjing yogurt permeate the air, mixed with the faint fragrance of plants and trees, instantly awakening your taste buds and making you feel the strong Beijing flavor.

Walking out of Yandaixie Street, Shichahai suddenly comes into view.

The surface of the lake is like a huge mirror, and the spring breeze is like a clever painter, outlining layers of ripples and sparkling water on the calm lake surface.

Willows sway by the bank, their slender branches hanging down over the water, their tender green buds sparkling in the sun like emeralds carefully inlaid by nature.

From time to time, birds flit and play among the willow branches, chirping and adding a lively and noisy touch to the lakeside on this spring day.

Not far away, wild ducks were cruising on the water, sometimes diving into the water, sometimes floating up to the surface, creating circles of ripples. Their free appearance attracted tourists on the shore to stop and watch, and the sounds of camera shutters rang out one after another.

When Liu Zhiye and his wife are not busy, they like to stroll along the lakeside.

Qianhai, Houhai and Xihai are connected, the waters are winding, and the surrounding alleys and courtyards are scattered around.

During this period, the gate of their courtyard was half-open, and the roses and roses beside the door were competing for beauty. The pink and red flowers were so gorgeous that they poked out of the wall, as if showing the spring scenery in the courtyard to passers-by.

On this day, Liu Zhiye had a rare moment of leisure to spend time with his wife Gan Ning, so the couple walked into a teahouse by the lake.

They ordered a pot of Biluochun tea and sat by the window, enjoying the aroma of tea and the beautiful scenery of lake and mountains outside the window.

It was just like when they first met more than 30 years ago. I remember that they met in such a situation.

In the distance, people are coming and going on Yinding Bridge. This single-hole stone bridge connecting Qianhai and Houhai spans over the blue waves and looks even more simple and elegant in the afterglow of spring.

By the bridge, one can often see folk artists playing and singing Yanjing songs. The melodious sounds of the sanxian and erhu, accompanied by the artists’ charming singing, fully display the style of old Yanjing.

“The peach leaves are pointed, the willow leaves cover the sky. Grandpa Ming, listen carefully to what I have to say. This happened at the Indigo Factory in the west of Beijing. There was a man named Song Lao San in the firearms battalion of the Indigo Factory…”

Liu Zhiye couldn’t help but immerse himself in it, humming a few lines or tapping the beat gently. It seemed as if time had slowed down at this moment.

In the afternoon, Liu Zhiye felt like renting a pedal boat and going boating in Shichahai with Gan Ning and his wife.

The oars cut through the water, creating splashes of water. The cool lake water wet the corners of my clothes, bringing a hint of coolness.

There are bars and restaurants lined up on both sides of the lake, and the colorful signs and parasols are particularly eye-catching in the sun.

However, these modern elements have not destroyed the ancient charm of Shichahai. Instead, they blend with the surrounding ancient buildings and natural scenery, forming a unique leisure atmosphere.

When the boat arrived near the lotus market, although it was not yet the season for lotus to bloom, we could already imagine the magnificent scene of “the endless green lotus leaves connecting the sky and the red lotus flowers reflecting the sun” in summer.

At this time, the peach blossoms on the shore were bright, and the breeze blew, and the petals fell like snow, sprinkling on the bow of the boat and the lake. It was like a dreamy flower rain, so beautiful that it made people intoxicated.

As dusk deepened and the lights came on, Shichahai was shrouded in colorful lights.

On the lake, the colorful lights hung on the cruise ships flickered, complementing the neon lights of the bars and shops on the shore, just like stars falling into the earth.

Shichahai is extremely lively at this moment, yet it still retains the leisurely Beijing flavor.

After a busy day, people go out of their homes, stroll and chat by the lake, or have a drink in the bar, enjoying the beauty of this spring evening.

Liu Zhiye plans to retire completely in a few years, and after retirement, he will keep this yard for himself.

When I want to live in Beijing, I will return to Shichahai.

Liu Zhiye thought that although this courtyard was not big, it had a good location and was only a few steps away from Shichahai.

When you open the gate, you can smell the fresh scent of the lake and hear the sound of willow branches gently brushing the water.

He had already planned his life after retirement: in the morning, he would practice Tai Chi in the yard and feel the coolness of the morning dew;

In the afternoon, he would move a rattan chair, sit under the old locust tree in the yard, brew a pot of Longjing tea, flip through a few pages of a book, and let time pass quietly through his fingertips.

If he feels like it, he will walk to a nearby alley, find an old restaurant, order a bowl of noodles with soybean paste, or chat with neighbors to feel the bustling atmosphere of the capital.

(End of this chapter)