1965. The frost has passed, but the beginning of winter has not yet arrived.
No. 47, At the bottom of the alley of Workers' New Village. One room, one bed, two people.
Zhou Xiangyang, thirty-one years old. When I came down in 1958, I worked in a brick factory hauling bricks and writing poems secretly at night. No one saw those poems, except the person in the room.
Chen Weidong, 28 years old. Veteran, freight station worker. There is a photo under the pillow - my brother lost it at the train station when he was eight years old. I searched for it for thirteen years but couldn't find it.
They share a bed. The one-meter-two wooden bed has one person sleeping on one end. Five years.
In five years, not a word was spoken.
It's not that I don't want to say it. I don't dare to say it, I don't know how to say it, and I don't know where to start. One person, one worker, and what is separated between them is not the bed, but the entire era.
The days are like the north wind, blowing by day by day. Cold, but bearable.
Until one day, Chen Weidong cooked a bowl of porridge for Zhou Xiangyang.
Until one day, Zhou Xiangyang said to Chen Weidong: "I saw them."
Two people who had been crushed by the times began to learn to talk.
But they don't know—some words, it's too late to say them. The frost that winter was so thin that it melted when the sun came out.
But they said it anyway.
Because if you don't say it, there's really nothing left.
Intention: They were run over by the times and forgotten by fate, but in each other's eyes, they existed