Lychee Didn't Wait for Me

My name is Chen Yuesheng, and I was born in 2003 in a lychee-growing village in western Guangdong. When I was three years old, there was a village festival. My second uncle was reciting "Crabs are red and lychees are as big as lanterns" under a century-old lychee tree. I lay on my grandma's shoulder and drooled. Grandpa scolded me for being worthless and having no connection with the land. Five years old, riding a bull. After Ah Huang took two steps, I fell off. I cried for ten minutes, then got up and continued riding. Grandpa knelt down and touched the cow's head and said, "I won't let you do it for another two years." Later, Ah Huang really stopped doing it. It's not two years later, it's just that it's old. At the age of seven, the first walking tractor entered the village. Grandpa said, it's so noisy that it's not as good as a cow. The next year, the village bought three more units. Grandpa didn't say anything. He led Ah Huang to the field ridge and touched his head. Later, the cow disappeared. The tree-headed male was removed. The annual festival has turned into a tourism festival, with tourists wearing Hanfu taking photos at the entrance of the ancestral hall. Grandpa left, my second uncle left, and grandma also started to forget things. The village is still there, but it is not that village anymore. In 2026, I returned to Lizhiping. The lychee forest is still there, drones are flying in the sky, and you can adopt a tree by scanning the QR code. I climbed up the same tree I climbed when I was a kid, and sat on the branch to look at the village. Very quiet. Not peaceful silence, but empty silence. I jumped down from the tree, squatted on the field ridge, and patted the dirt on my pants. Then left. Didn't look back. This is a book about the disappearance of the countryside. There was no crying, no heartache. It's like a young man who goes back and finds that everything from his childhood is gone one by one, and he can't even find someone to complain to. Quite boring. But I wanted to write it down. ——Chen Yuesheng