A Book Dedicated to Our Youth - Volume 3 - Chapter 5.2

V3C5.2
At the school gate, I said goodbye. “Which road do you take to get home?” he replied.

I pointed to the road I usually took. “I can reach my house from there as well,” he commented. “That means we can walk together for a while.”

In actuality, I wanted to walk by myself as I usually went over maths and physics questions as I went, but I found myself unable to reject Shen Yuanzhe’s friendliness, so I smiled and replied, “Sure!”

As he pushed his bicycle and walked with me, we talked about our experiences in middle school. I told him about my arguments with Song Chen, the chess I played with Li Shan, the blackboard I designed with Guan He…

During the talk, I suddenly realised that with them, I had many, many moments of happiness.

It was only when we had almost arrived at my house that I realized only I had been talking the whole time, just like that dream-like encounter back in the first year of middle school. I felt a little embarrassed. “I’m home now, bye,” I muttered and ran inside.

Inside my house, I felt a little bit of nostalgia and grief. Ever since we had gotten into different high schools, we had mostly stopped interacting with each other. Even though Guan He was still in the same school as me, if we ever passed by each other, we’d only nod and exchange some pleasantries.

Because of the Literary Performance, I frequently interacted with Shen Yuanzhe. We would work together, and when the work was done, he would accompany me home. 

Shen Yuanzhe was a very good listener, and it was as if he could understand everything that I had described. I would tell him about all the people and things that had happened in my life underneath the starlight in the silent night. I told him about the reluctant leaving of Chen Songqing, about the talent and genius of Song Lan, about my superficialness and fickleness in middle school, about Ju Baopeng, Zeng Hong…

But I kept my mouth shut about Xiao Fei and Xiao Bo. Those were the wounds and secrets I would never touch upon. 

As time went on, the relationship between us got better and better. Gradually, I started to see him as a good friend.

Sometimes, I would worry that I would speak too much. When I was with him, it was as if I was always, constantly talking whilst he would patiently listen, but when I saw his gaze and smile, my concerns would dissipate.

The second semester of the first year of high school was really a very happy period. The entire class worked together to help prepare for the Literary Performance. Those that could help helped, those with ideas contributed ideas, those with items gave props, and even those with nothing to do helped me and Wang Qian mix and dry paints.

Everyone was in high spirits, and even Yang Jun who had been failing at his attempts to woo Tong Yuzhu was feeling happier.

And during our class’ period of noisy and hard work, the time for the Literary Performance arrived.

The head teacher for the high school sector was fairly young, but because of that, he was even more fearful of making any mistakes and his criteria was even harsher than that of the middle school head teacher.

Under his strict supervision, and the theme of ‘healthy and active’, all the ideas from other classes stayed strictly within the box, and the styles weren’t different from those in middle school. The only changes were from the improvements in the skills in singing and dancing from the art scholarships.

Guan He stayed true to her words, focused on studying, and didn’t participate in the Literary Performance.

The performances for Class 4 was a partner dance from two dance scholarship students, and a hip-hop dance from six boys. Looking back at Zhang Jun’s performances before, he was quite good at dancing, and being the class captain he would definitely have to contribute to the performance, but for some reason, he wasn’t participating.

Apart from the surprise, I also felt slightly uncomfortable. It was almost as if he chose to move at the same pace as Guan He. 

But soon, I had no time to feel uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be performing on stage, but I was in charge of preparing everything behind stage. Thanks to the fact that I had worked with Lin Lan for two years, and had been an extra with Song Chen, I was quite familiar with how things worked.

Shen Yuanzhe and I busied ourselves with worrying. Sometimes we were scared that the flag wouldn’t open up, sometimes that maybe the reel at the top of the hall might be broken.

It was only when our performance was about to start were Shen Yuan Zhe and I able to finally calm ourselves. We watched nervously from the side of the stage.

Behind me someone called out softly. “Qiqi.”

I turned around and realised that coincidentally, on the other side of the corridor was Class 4. Guan He smiled and waved at me, whispering. “You’re participating in the performance?”

Next to Guan He sat Zhang Jun. Just the thought of them sitting so closely to each other in the dark for nearly four hours made her smile seem like a knife, stabbing right into my throat, making me unable to speak. Nevertheless, I kept a bright smile on my face and shook my head.

Shen Yuanzhe smiled. “Luo Qiqi is our director.”

“Then I will clap extra hard for your class,” Guan He replied.

Just after she finished speaking, the host announced the next act and our class began their performance. We turned around to focus on the stage and stopped talking.

Our class was sorted into one of the last few classes to perform, which wasn’t a very favourable position. Everyone had already watched an entire night of performances and had become tired in both body and mind, but our class was quite relaxed as we weren’t looking to achieve any awards, so our condition was fairly good.

We had edited the song and instead of playing it from the start, we chose to play it bridge first with the gongs and drums from Peking Opera, combined with the vocals of youthful girls and old men.

As the gongs shook the ceilings and erhu* music surrounded the entire hall, all the sleepy students and teachers were shocked awake.

I laughed and thought, no wonder it was known as one of the quintessences of China. It really should be listed as an essential product for one’s morning.

In the darkness, singing started: “That day grandpa took me to Peking saw, on the stage so many big flowery faces, red, white, yellow and green, sometimes smiling sometimes glares, sometimes singing sometimes shouts, ahhhhh, like grenades right next to me ears…”

With the music, the backdrop of the stage turned into a very classic Peking stage. This was made from a projector that the class teacher borrowed from another teacher. 

“Blue-faced Durton stole jade horses, red-faced Duke Guan is warring at Changsha. Yellowed-faced Dian Wei, white-faced Cao Cao, black-faced Zhang Fei chirping away…”

During the singing, five giant scroll arts were let down onto the stage one by one, each representing the faces mentioned in the song. Blue, red, yellow, white, black, underneath the lights, the colours were extremely vibrant and eye-catching.

As the scrolls slowly dropped down, Wu Hao and another boy with two other girls wearing fashionable clothing walked onto the stage. Whilst they were walking, they also performed their rap: “To be honest Peking opera doesn’t look too bad, but all the singing and speaking in dialects, how do we understand? Slow yi-yi-a-a the whole time, with only gongs as background, bombing and clapping three big devices, how will it catch up to the times, to the trends, and attract modern teenagers?”

Wu Hao’s pretense at being a rich young master was done extremely well. He wore his hat crooked with a pair of sunglasses through which he peered down at the audience.

“Purple king upholding towers, green monsters fighting yashas, golden monkey silver demon, grey fairies laughing hard, ahaha…” 

“My grandpa got angry, saying stop messing around. Such brilliant and beautiful art is this Chinese gem, even the westerners would clap and cheer, singing, dancing whilst fighting is really no easy task, you don’t understand opera, stop your nonsense…”

Wearing an old-fashioned long shirt, holding onto a walking stick and occasionally touching his beard, another student walked on stage. As he walked, he would point at each of the delicate faces. The four boys waved the flag in unison and through the dancing flag, Ma Li wore his martial arts uniform and flipped all the way from the left of the stage to the right. The audience was alive with the sounds of cheering and clapping.

Both Shen Yuanzhe and I let a breath out, smiled at each other and high fived. This was the hardest and most technical work of tonight, and Ma Li was able to pull it off perfectly.

“Grandpa, grandpa don’t be angry, allow me to explain. Even the most delicious foods can be boring. Art and times cannot be apart, innovations and developments, so that the old, the young, the male, the female, everyone would love to watch, cultural inheritance passed along each generation.” Wu Hao bowed to the grandpa as an apology whilst the two girls supported him on either side.

“Frames of distinctive mandarin ducks, crowds of lively buddhas, each brush lined them, slowly exaggerated them, pictures of faces, a beautiful sight…” Wu Hao and the other three walked towards each of the four flag holders, taking hold of the corners of the flag, extended the flag as they walked. The four flag bearers turned their bodies around, the painted faces on their back conspicuous.

The song ended with the bright sounds of a jinghu.* The light slowly dimmed and as the lighting changed, the different sized faces also changed, as if they were alive. The grandpa held his walking stick with his back to the audience, and gazed deeply at the cultural essence of this nation. 

In front him stood four youths, some with their head up, some with their head twisted. Some smiled, some confused. But they were all looking at the faces, on their hands the inherited national culture.

T/N:

*erhu and jinghu are both classic Chinese instruments. They resemble the western strings family in that they are both string instruments. They are like a smaller cello with a much longer bridge but the sounds are very different.