In the winter of 1985, I was born in the workers' hospital of a large factory in the north. It was snowing outside and it was warm in the delivery room.
That year, my father was just an ordinary worker in the factory, but he spent half a year to a year's salary to buy a Qingqi for my mother who was working the night shift. It was many years later that I understood that the motorcycle that my mother downplayed as "there is nothing to love or not to love" was the longest love letter a silent man could write.
I grew up in the only heated building in this family-owned home. Downstairs is the cafeteria, bathhouse, children's school, auditorium and cinema. The wall enclosed a small self-sufficient kingdom, and also enclosed the first ten years of my life...
This is a novel from the perspective of "I". I have spent forty years telling you about the people who have appeared in my life one by one - my silent father, the first boy I met side by side in the nursery, my crush and first love in youth, my husband who later lived side by side, my children who have grown up, and my colleagues and confidants in the process of growing up.
They are mirrors that reflect me: an ordinary Chinese woman's origins, choices, and unspoken regrets. And the background that is bigger than people is the big factory behind him. It was once crowded with thousands of people and steaming with steam, but it also slowly died out, was demolished, and disappeared as the times turned. The factory is gone, the canteen, bathhouse, and auditorium are gone, but those days warmed by winter are still there.
If you also grew up in a certain factory or a certain red brick building, this book is about where you came from.
Purpose: From the perspective of an ordinary woman, I will show you the changes in the past forty years.