The city of drama——Leping
In my WeChat circle of friends, a piece of CCTV4 international channel broadcasting "Leping, the City of Chinese Drama - Verona, Italy" that was frequently forwarded by friends from my hometown swept the screen. I was trembling and surprised. I clicked to watch this program with joy and pride for Leping. Reading it twice gave me a better understanding of my hometown county, and I felt a sense of curiosity and exploration about my hometown. For this week’s assignment, I tried to talk about my hometown Leping to my fellow Ten O’clock friends through the information from the program.
First of all, let me focus on one thing. After watching the show, the biggest change for me is: when someone asks me, where are you from? My answer will not be Jingdezhen, but Leping; when it is my turn to introduce myself to everyone, I will no longer say that I am from Jingdezhen, but will answer Leping with a straightforward and joyful answer, Leping, which is known as the city of drama. I always chose to answer Jingdezhen before, or from a small county near Jingdezhen, because I wanted to be famous for Jingdezhen. I guess it was because I felt a little inferior to the lack of fame of my birthplace, and part of the reason came from the vagueness of which time I came from. Entering my mind, I tend to choose this standard answer whenever I encounter this problem.
Perhaps, during a certain class in middle school, a teacher got into a conversation, and no one was interested in listening to the questions he asked while looking at the books. The enthusiasm was not high, so he asked about extracurricular topics casually: When you are asked outside Where are you from and how would you answer? Human psychology: First, they hope that if they say it, others will know it, instead of having a confused look on their face, and the second is that they want to say it, everyone will know it, and they will ask you this and that, A look of envy where you come from; the third one is the fear of saying it yourself, you are so-and-so. I heard that people there often do such-and-such bad things and are famous... When teachers and adults face this problem, the answer they give is in my The impression in my mind is that Jingdezhen is, firstly, famous, and secondly, many people have heard and believed many things about Leping people outside doing bad things without doing any research themselves, giving outsiders a bad impression.
Perhaps, many fragments of stories about Leping people flashed through my mind, including stories from teachers who liked to talk about extracurricular topics, stories I heard chatting with classmates, etc. Why do many Leping people work as loan sharks and thugs in nightclubs? This kind of story sounds like a gangland atmosphere. Good things don't go out, and bad things spread thousands of miles. People's ability to tell stories about bad things is even more creative. Nine out of ten stories they hear are bad things. Breaking the rules is a warning and contains aspirational meanings. envious.
These fragmented memories and old ideas directly made me inclined to answer the question "because it came from Jingdezhen". After saying this, I felt some embarrassment and embarrassment in my heart. But now that I think about it, my understanding of my hometown is very pitiful. I only relied on the information I heard from the dozen or so villages I visited. During the few years I went to school in a small county town, I felt that I had lived here since I was a child. I learned about Leping, a county-level city with a population of 800,000 and more than 200 villages, and it was like a frog sitting in a well looking at the sky.
Perhaps, I should remain curious about everything, clear my existing concepts, and look at everything with unknown eyes, so that I can discover potential changes.
CCTV4 city one-on-one program introduces Leping and is labeled as drama. The old village stage that I once disdained has become a new business card for the world to know Leping.
The 200 villages in Leping County-level city have more than 400 village stages, with an average of two per village. It is the city with the most stages in the city, and it has preserved quite complete ancient stages.
This piece of information surprised me and made me realize that I don’t know much about my hometown. Many things that we take for granted are extremely interesting and precious to outsiders. From this point of view, traveling more to the outside world will allow us to discover that things that we have taken for granted have many other undiscovered sides.
As a Leping person, the village stage has become the most precious scene in my childhood without even realizing it. When I was a child, the village stage invited the stage troupe to sing operas. It was the most solemn, lively and festive day.
It doesn't happen every year. In my impression, there have been opera performances in the village only once every few years. If I really think about my vague memory, there are only three times. The closest one was when I invited the theater troupe to sing on the eighth day after the Spring Festival this year. What is the name of the opera? The meaning of the play seems to be that the women of my generation have basically gotten married, ushering in the period when the new generation has entered adulthood, and there is a big celebration. Unfortunately, I have to go back to Shenzhen for work and cannot go to the theater. The night before returning to Shenzhen, I caught up with the opening of the show and took a look at the stage. It was renovated and renovated to make it look more precious and full of historical atmosphere. A new change in theater viewing is that everyone takes photos with their mobile phones and sends them to WeChat Moments. I think it was about ten years ago when I last saw a village singing opera. It was an era before mobile phones.
This made me suddenly realize the importance of the village stage. I thought that many years later, when the world changes rapidly and I grow old and return to my hometown from the outside world, everything in my hometown has changed beyond recognition, but there is one place that remains unchanged, and that is the village stage. The night I watched the theater before returning to Shenzhen, I was struck by the atmosphere on the stage. I felt safe, comfortable and full of memories, but I also felt that time was passing by and my experience was like a dream. I felt confused and lonely about where I would go.
I remember the first time I went to the village to watch a theater. I was very young at that time, probably in elementary school. The lively scene always attracts people, especially children. The village stage is even more fun. It has a second floor with the best viewing angle, attracting children to climb up and down and play.
Thinking about the architectural style of the stage, it suddenly occurred to me that the old houses in the village also inherited this style. The stage is shaped like a courtyard and is usually located in the center of the village. Now that I think about it, its location is the best for Feng Shui and convenience. Throughout the year, it is basically closed to the public and full of mystery. Only during the Respect for the Aged Day every year, it will be opened, a water table will be set up, and the elderly in the village will be invited to have a meal here. My father's generation was very poor, and few people could build a big house by themselves. It often took several brothers to devote all their efforts to building a big house. The brothers lived in separate rooms, with a living room in front of the hall. At that time, we really lived under the same roof and could not see each other without looking up. The relationship between family and relatives was definitely very different from today's scene where we rarely get together throughout the year. After all, the world is constantly changing, and people really need to constantly update their cognition and make iterative changes.
The ever-changing world requires a conservative and unchanging place like the stage. This unchanging meaning is to preserve traces of the past, which can be compared with coordinates, and even serve as a warning reminder at critical moments. Let people recall the past, slow down and think carefully, who am I, where do I come from, and where should I go?