My Wanderings

Author: Lin Zhuo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: It was only at this point that I had the chance to take a close look at the scenery outside the train window. Gazing into the distance, I felt the train wasn’t moving very fast. Row after row of large, modern factories billowed with smoke, and the buildings stretched out in neat lines. The train quickly left the industrial area, passing by rivers and rail bridges one after another. The wild grasses in the ditches by the roadside grew as high as a person, giving off a somewhat desolate vibe. At night, I couldn’t see everything clearly and had thought the train was passing through city after city, constantly weaving through neon lights and towering skyscrapers. But it wasn’t like that at all. Now, the train was smoothly traveling across the North China Plain, with villages, fields, ponds, and crops flashing by in the window. Not far away was the national highway—a long, winding road lined with all kinds of vehicles speeding by. But few could match the train’s forward momentum.
This book recounts a true story of growth. The protagonist, “I,” harbors a dream of literature and comes to the capital. Here, he meets all kinds of cultural figures and agents, stepping into a completely unfamiliar world. He experiences the harshness of life for the first time, tastes the joys and pains of love, and goes from being astonished and rejecting the world to immersing himself in it with ease. He loses many things along the way, losing touch with who he used to be. Faced with so many temptations, his confusion and bewilderment deserve deep reflection. The path he walks is also one that many young people today have taken—a pursuit of freedom and life. This is the theme the book repeatedly emphasizes. However, in this idealized process, there are always some burdensome elements. On the blooming flowers of youth, a layer of gray dust settles.
“Sky has no tracks, yet I have flown over it.” Behind this faint melancholy, this subtle sense of loss, and this resolute certainty, what else can we read between the lines?