The Youth Ends - A Self-Confession and Confession of the 80s Generation

Author: Xiong Yuanfan / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
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The preface goes on until the night, whispering that love is asleep. Let’s say this morning, under the ambiguous sunlight of autumn, I woke up heavily from my dreams. Due to the unimaginably bizarre sleeping posture in my dream, causing poor blood circulation, I lay half-paralyzed on my bed, which could still accommodate a woman. Picking up the cigarette by the bedside, a mist of smoke enveloped me, and suddenly I felt like singing, singing loudly. To say I’m somewhat sentimentally entangled and reflecting, it’s a bit like feigning the taste of ancient scholars. Recalling this matter is as bad as lustful daydreaming; it must not be overdone. Because today’s shamelessness and destitution, those vulgar, base, and pale pasts are involuntarily processed into a grandiose beauty. However, at least now, thinking about it, it is beautiful. Because of that fleeting pleasure, then, let’s, while in high spirits, say a bit. Let’s start from when I was 19, that year I was in my sophomore year. At that time, I had no love; the streets of S City were blooming with flowers, yet love had nowhere to roam. Only that little bastard Liang Shao was having fun with two girls; Bo Bo and his girlfriend were separated, passing the with a phone call across the miles; Bai Wei was deliberately pretending to be proper in the teaching building of the academy, eyeing the passing beauties; Da Pei was missing; and I and Xiao Zhi were aimlessly and listlessly living by the side. This was difficult, requiring patience to grind it out, and enough composure to ignore the passage of time. Living is equivalent to coping, it can be copied, of course, and it can also be cheated. In such a season, I was timid, fearful, hypocritical, humble, and arrogant. I had no woman, this aura radiating from my skin’s surface or already penetrating into my flesh. I dressed myself as an innocent child, wearing a mask of ignorance. Concealment is a kind of affectation, mixed with hypocrisy. Vulgarity and selfishness intertwined are sin. I’ve seen women with heavy makeup and men with stern faces wearing black sunglasses, a bit cold, like a small steel coin, heavy yet cheap. If beauty is hope, it’s a substance that flows out between the hands and feet. I’ve seen tall women, like You Ning, so beautiful; stylish women, like Lin Fei, so elegant; innocent women, like Su Le, so fresh; and also contemplative women, like Hou Wen, so refined. Of course, most of these happened later. Perhaps I have an uneasy heart hidden deep within me. When wandering in the depths of the city, I wasn’t sincere, yet people felt a gentleness. Hah, maybe this is how the city is, that distant tranquility is a funeral offering in the era of neon and wine, so without soil, we are all exquisite products. Bright, dazzling, fragile, afraid of shocks. In peacetime, we suspect, despise, envy, are selfish, cruel, and boring, exposing every weakness and humility that grows from birth. I’m also a bit confused. I know the consequences of desire, yet I can’t refuse the desire that seems to flow from my body. I really don’t know where these desires come from, they mysteriously linger in the air, which I smell. Mixing with the countless restless spirits and souls rushing in the air, this hazy era. I’m a bit afraid of stability, like bright sunlight in winter, yet offering little warmth.
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