"Looking at Hometown from a Distance" is a collection of classic prose works by the contemporary local writer Langzi Wenqing. It collects representative articles such as "My Old House, My Hometown", "Double Memories of the Old Alley", "Writing Nostalgia on Hometown", "Fireworks of Hometown", and "Reminiscences of Autumn". The collection of essays is based on the hometown of rural areas in southeastern Hubei, relying on the author's personal experience of traveling to Zhejiang and Hubei for many years and wandering for half his life. He uses simple white descriptions of old houses, rural craftsmen, pastoral fireworks and changes in his hometown, and depicts the realistic picture of the slow disappearance of local customs in the wave of urbanization. Among them, an excerpt of the famous article "My Old House, My Hometown" was selected into the mainstream education platform's junior high school Chinese reading question bank and has become a reading comprehension material for middle school teachers and students across the country. The text is plain, gentle and full of nostalgia. It is a collection of rural prose that engraves the rural years and stores the nostalgia of wanderers.
Purpose: This collection of essays is based on the rural hometown of southeastern Hubei, combined with the author's life experience of traveling in foreign lands for many years, to record the scenery of the old house, local customs and changes of the times. Through the real rural daily life and wanderer's mood, it depicts the gradually disappearing rural memories in the process of urbanization, conveys the sincere attachment to hometown, homeland, and old friends, adheres to the simple and pure humanistic feelings, and entrusts ordinary people's long-term watch for their homes, time and human warmth.