Meeting Is Like Acquaintance for the First Time

Many years later, when Shen Huaiyuan's grandson stood under the half-burnt jujube tree, he would think of a person he had never seen before - one night many years ago, when more than half of the moon was missing, that person sat under the same tree, with only half a piece of dry biscuit and a child's shoe that had faded from blue to gray in his bag. At that time the village was in ruins. A big hole collapsed in the back wall of the kitchen. There is a piece of broken porcelain buried in the corner of the stove. Half of a blue flower is painted on the porcelain, and there is a thumbprint on the back. Shen Huaiyuan picked up the tiles and placed them on the stove. He planned to embed them in the brick joints of the new wall after building the wall. Later the wall was built. The roof is covered. A brick from Shenjia Village was built into the pier by the river. There is a nine-year-old girl in a tofu shop in Shiqiao who draws a horizontal line on the sand table every day - she drew it for three years and it became straight. There is an old man by the fire pit at Black Rock Beach who roasts sweet potatoes every day and buries them under the ashes of the fire. The ashes cover them very thickly. The ferryman at the ferry mended the same fishing net every day. The holes in the net became bigger and bigger, but he still mended them. Later, these people were gone. But what they said remains. These words were not written on paper - they were carved on wooden boards, written in the sand tray, pressed on the wooden handle of the trowel, and soaked in the river water at the ferry. The wind blows from the north every year. Jujube trees change their bark once a year.