Farewell to the Phantom

Author: Wang Kunhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: He wore a new navy blue coat and a pair of brand-new green ball shoes, carrying a full box of books and local specialties given by the villagers as he got off the long-distance bus. On his retinas, everything he saw seemed magnified from picture books. The streets and buildings in the city were all things he had seen in books beforehand, but when he actually saw them, Wang Xiaoshan still felt a strange sense of amazement. It was a feeling he couldn’t put into words. First, his eardrums, which usually didn’t bother him, seemed unable to adapt to the buzzing noise. Second, the sky here wasn’t as blue or as deep as the sky in his hometown. Despite this, Kunming was the biggest city he had ever seen as a young man stepping into the world. For nearly a whole month, he was in a process of adaptation filled with novelty and astonishment. What troubled him was that his classmates changed their clothes every few days, but no matter how hot the weather was, he always wore a black cotton jacket. What embarrassed him was going to the bathhouse—so many people casually standing under the shower with their bodies bare. Hey, how could city people not think of digging a pond for themselves? But as a newcomer, he didn’t dare to speak out recklessly. The only thing he could do was to endure and observe everything happening around him—