Celebration

Author: Yi Sha
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: This is a work that depicts human (degeneration) starting from the body, and it well preserves the rawness of this state of (degeneration) in its description. In our era, it is so familiar, so rough, so unexpectedly and ubiquitously, presenting the process of a soul floating and struggling in the (destiny) of (degeneration) and struggle. Such a process is everywhere to be seen in these past (decades) when people have moved from poverty to prosperity; in the increasingly assembly-line-like film and television industry, it has already been half-concealed as raw material for profit and a stage for sensory stimulation, followed by a little preaching that any mainstream consciousness in any country would strongly endorse, squandering and corrupting it.
In late summer of 1995, the scorching heat shrouded this inland city. This afternoon was unbearably hot. Song Wangwang, PhD, squeezed himself out of an exhaustedly arrived public bus, his light blue T-shirt soaked through to a deep blue. The glasses perched crookedly on his nose were fogged up with steam after hastily adjusting them, making it impossible for him to see the surrounding reference points and making him doubt whether he had truly arrived at his destination. Standing under the bus stop sign, Dr. Song took out a half-stack of napkins (left over from lunch at a restaurant) from his black leather bag, selected one, and wiped his glasses. In his eagerness to see his surroundings, he wiped them rather clumsily, so when he put the glasses back on, the new signpost at the entrance of Lishicun village in the frame was a tangled mess of five or six directions.
Lishicun, located in the southern suburbs of the city, is one of those "villages in the city." When Feng Biao was rummaging through his messy room looking for clothes to wear, the doctor decided to go out instead, wanting to avoid the stimulation and quickly get some fresh air. He stood on the public balcony outside the door, waiting for Feng Biao, who would rather stand under the scorching noon sun, which showed no signs of weakening. Ten minutes passed, and Feng Biao emerged, his hair disheveled, wearing a crumpled and sweat-stained navy blue shirt over his upper body. They went downstairs together and arrived at the courtyard downstairs—this is when the swaying Feng Biao suddenly rushed straight toward a water faucet in the courtyard, twisted the handle open wide, cupped his hands, and washed his face and hair with gushing water. Then, tilting his head sideways, he drank it down in a series of gulps! Dr. Song couldn’t take it anymore.