Bronze Bells Can Be Heard from All over the Country
About This Novel
In the "East and West Grocery Store" on Duban Street in San Francisco, Xue Haoqing is always packing up some "four different things": The Guangcai porcelain bowl is next to the Mexican skull, my father's tangerine peel is mixed with the fragrance of my mother's Italian coffee, and even the copper bell on the lintel is strung with wooden signs in Chinese and English. He listened to sister A Zhen from Guangdong complain about the outrageousness of "avocado mixed with sand tea sauce", helped Rosita from Mexico resolve the taboo of Jewish weddings with red string peanut skewers, and had to deal with the new immigrants from Shanghai who went crazy about the "Li Bai Eating Corn Tortillas" textbook-- After all, he himself is a "cultural hybrid" who drinks coffee with condensed milk and eats steamed buns dipped in ketchup. When the old bricks of the Guandi Temple were about to be demolished, Xue Haoqing led the neighbors to build an arcade with dragon-patterned bricks, played "Jasmine" on the harp harp, and actually built a "One Hundred Music House": The barbecue stove dances with the tortilla pan, the kimono screen reflects the Spring Festival couplets, and the copper bells ring in a dozen languages. There is no pure hometown here, only the human world warmed by the smoke of fireworks - after all, nostalgia mixed with the fragrance of cinnamon is the most vivid appearance of life.
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