Xi cha Wu di 268 Jia
In the north of Beijing, at the foot of Yanshan Mountain outside the Sixth Ring Road, there is a simple rural courtyard-No.268A Xichawau. This is the place where Wu Mou settled in Beijing. In some people's eyes, it seems a little humble, but it is my Eden.
Xichawau is the name of a village, and No.268 is the house number of the yard. The yard is divided into two small courtyards. I live in the backyard. Eighty-nine bungalows form a courtyard of sixty or seventy square meters. In the middle of the yard is a piece of grass and mud, which is the first yard The landlord lives in the front yard, and the house newly built a few years ago is for the second hospital. The two small courtyards are independent and do not interfere with each other. The landlord is a family of three, honest, and occasionally meet to say hello, with good intentions in their eyes.
In the east, Mr. and Mrs. Tang live across the hall. They are over seventy years old, and their children are married and live in Huairou City. I visited his yard last year. Inside the blue iron gate, there is a huge yard with vegetables planted in the mud, a melon shed and several apricot trees full of fruits. This year, his family demolished an old-fashioned bungalow and built a three-story building, which is being renovated.
The courtyard of the old Tang family is located in the easternmost part of the West Teahouse, separated by a road paved with cement slabs, and there is a village-you may have guessed it, yes, it is called the East Teahouse. What you may not have guessed is that there is a village separated by a wall in the south, called Qianchawu.
Qianchawu, Dongchawu and Xiqiaowu are all big villages with 700 or 800 families and a population of nearly 3,000. The three villages generally form a "pin" shape, and the villages are connected into one, with no obvious boundaries. This village is very quiet. Young people mostly go to Beijing or Huairou to work and live, mostly middle-aged and elderly people living in villages.
When the weather is fine, I often go out for a walk after supper. People here call walking a turn. The streets and lanes in the village are criss-crossed, and strangers can easily get lost. After living for a while, I found a pattern. The layout of the primitive village is like the plaid painting of mondriaan, which is horizontal and vertical, so it is easy to tell the direction. Through the deep alleys, through the gray courtyard walls, most of the brightly colored courtyard doors are affixed with huge couplets. There are often vines and branches swaying in the wind in the yard, which is a quiet and serene northern pastoral scenery. After crossing the street, you can see some messy and intertwined wires overhead. The village looks a little messy, but it still retains some wild and rough flavor, which is very local and China. This is what I like. On the other hand, some villages in the south, after repeated transformation and dressing up, are clean and exquisite, but the local flavor and the smell of fireworks have disappeared.
Chawu belongs to Ziqiao Town, Huairou District, just at the junction of Huairou, Changping and Shunyi, and its geographical location is relatively remote. Fortunately, the population is relatively concentrated, and daily life and travel are quite convenient.
There are several small supermarkets in the village, ranging from fruits to fresh vegetables, eggs and daily necessities, as well as a drugstore and hardware store. If you want to buy meat, fish and the like, you can go to Ziqiao Town, three miles away. The two big supermarkets in the town can buy more goods, but the prices are higher. There is another option to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, that is, the small farmer's market in the Chawu Railway Community, which is 500-600 meters away from the yard and can be reached by bike in five minutes.
Chawu Station is the largest freight marshalling station along Daqin Railway, located between Datong Station and Qinhuangdao Station. The frequency of trains passing by is very high, and a train passes by in almost five or six minutes. Chawu Railway Station managed by taiyuan railway administration is responsible for the renovation of locomotives and the disintegration of arrival and departure trains. Many railway workers and their families work and live here. Therefore, the popularity of the farmers' market in the Chawu Railway Community has been relatively strong. Every morning, the surrounding villagers will bring some self-grown and self-picked fruits and vegetables to sell here, which are cheap and fresh, and there are also some relatively fixed stalls providing vegetables, fruits, cakes, daily necessities and so on.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) 942 is the main means of transportation from Chawu to Beijing. It starts from the railway community and ends at Dongzhimen, stopping near 40 stations along the way. But most people will get off at the first three stops in shaoyaoju, because crossing an overpass is the subway station. Once you enter the subway, it's like entering an underground world. More than 20 subway lines extending in all directions can take you to every corner of Beijing in two hours.
The year before last, I used to work in an art magazine in Chaoyangmen. I took the 942 bus at dawn and didn't go home until eight or nine in the evening. I personally experienced the hardships of an office worker in Beijing. For people living in small counties, it is unthinkable to spend five or six hours on the way to and from work every day. On the way to and from work, I always think of a word "throughput". Beijing is like a huge machine. Every morning, a large number of energetic migrant workers living outside the city are swallowed up by Rolls Royce, and at night, all kinds of tired people are spit out again, day after day, year after year.
There is a Lanzhou Ramen Restaurant in Ziqiao Town. When I was working in Beijing, almost one third of my dinner was spent there every month. Ten dollars for Lamian Noodles and fifteen dollars for mutton skewers are enough. I have always been short of food, and even less this year. I rarely go out to eat, and I basically solve it myself. Fried onions, fried eggs, chopped green onion slices, pork ribs and potato soup, and stewed mushrooms with chicken are my best dishes. Usually the first three are the main ones. First, cooking is simple and easy. Second, the ingredients are easy to preserve and cheap. Going out, away from familiar people and things, everything becomes simple, and material desires are hard to stir up waves.
It has been raining in Beijing since July this year, like a nagging old woman. This is not normal. The old Tang opposite the door said that it hasn't rained like this for decades. As a southerner who hates the long rainy season, he finally broke free from the fetters of the secular world and went to Beijing to pursue his artistic dream. It happened that he caught up with the rainy season once in decades, and his mood was indescribable. Some time ago, the weather in Beijing failed, obviously copying the rainy season in the south.
Continuous rain has a bad effect on the mood, but it is a big plus for plants. Several small seedlings of Toona sinensis in the yard grew at a speed visible to the naked eye, and grew more than 30 centimeters in half a month from breaking ground to stormy weather. There are also various unknown herbs, which stand out from the newly ploughed land. full of green has gradually become a climate, bringing infinite vitality to the small courtyard. Even more gratifying, check the weather forecast, the long-lost sunshine has arrived by express, and it will arrive in a few days.