During my internship at Luxiang Market, the work was easy, but after a long time I felt bored. I rented a bookstore nearby and applied for a library card, covering martial arts, romance, biographies, literature, and world classics, which were better than those in the school library. There are still a lot of books, and I am happy to miss Shu, reading and excerpting them at the same time.
It was an era when poetry was in full bloom. Poems from the Republic of China such as Xu Zhimo and Dai Wangshu were relatively rare. Poetry collections by Shu Ting, Xi Murong, Wang Guozhen, and Zhou Guoping were all the rage. And I liked to practice calligraphy with poems and copy them in regular script. The free-style text is of different lengths, making it catchy to read, and the fonts express more emotion when copied.
I remember borrowing a copy of Dai Wangshu's "Rain Lane" and turning to the first page of "Rain Lane". I got up and walked around the office with an umbrella, chanting "Hold the oil paper" "Umbrella, alone, wandering in the long and long", immersed in the beautiful realm of the rain alley, I was reading enthusiastically, but was disturbed by the applause at the door. I turned around angrily and saw a young man wearing a green military uniform, with a handsome face and a tall head. Thin, standing in the sun with a smile on his face. I was stunned for a moment and asked in a panic: Who are you?
He said politely, are you reading "Rain Alley" by Dai Wangshu? He speaks standard Mandarin and is pleasant to the ear. I invited him to sit in the office. He was not polite and came in gracefully. He saw several books and handwritten poems on the desk. He picked up the exercise book and flipped through a few pages. He asked curiously: Is this the word you wrote? My face turned red, I grabbed the notebook and admitted it. He smiled and said, little girl, your handwriting is very beautiful! I held my breath in Chinese Mandarin: Thank you!
So, on that autumn afternoon, I met a soldier from Jinan, Shandong. He had been a soldier in Wuhan for almost three years. He told me that he signed up to join the army after failing the college entrance examination. The days were very boring, and reading became a way to pass the time. Later, after we got to know each other, I asked him to write a handwritten calligraphy for me to see. He refused to start writing, so I joked, "Are the handwriting ugly?" After being coy for a long time, he finally wrote down a line of words, which he copied from "Rain Alley". I took it over and read it for a long time. Judging from the font alone, the structure of the words was not correct enough, and the overall look was barely neat. I was also bold at the time and wanted to be a teacher. I pointed at his calligraphy and said: You should practice regular script more, Tian Yingzhang, Pang Zhonghua, you can choose any one! He was not angry and accepted my criticism humbly.
During my internship, my life was enriched because I got to know Brother Bing from Jinan. In order to show off my strength and be a teacher in front of him, I also worked hard to practice calligraphy after I returned home. After a while, we checked each other. He checked my poetry recitation and corrected my Mandarin pronunciation. I checked his writing homework and pointed out that his handwriting was irregular. Gradually, we became good friends, and gradually, I saw something different in his eyes.
The second year of internship was over and I was leaving. A few days before leaving, he borrowed a bicycle and took me to the bookstore opened in Guangbutun Central China Normal University. In the afternoon, I didn't buy a suitable book, so he bought two copybooks, a hard-pen calligraphy copybook by Honda Yingzhang, and a calligraphy copybook by Ouyang Xun. I jokingly said: If you write to me, I can tell whether your handwriting has improved?
Before his military service expired and he was demobilized and returned to Jinan, he gave him a book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera and an art pen. The title page read: I wish you good luck. ! The font is much smoother than the first time I wrote, I am very relieved and happy.
Looking back suddenly, making friends through writing and making friends through words turned out to be the most innocent way of making friends in our generation. Attached is a handwritten grid of characters: Rain Alley.