to 笨笨

"I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown

In '65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown
My hometown
My hometown

Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown"

——Bruce Springsteen“My Hometown”

Every time when we mention about hometown, my grandma used to tell us a small story that had once happened to her. It was on her trip to Thailand. She and her friends got lost in a small town and tried to get some recourses. The problem is the language. People cannot understand them and they soon became helpless. And then there came a woman who is about 50 years old; she stared at my grandma on the other side of the street for quite a while. And finally, she came to them and tried to speak with them in Putonghua(the official language in China). My grandma was so exciting and asked whether she could show them the way. Ignoring the question, the woman kept on asking them where they came from. “Guangdong, China.” My grandma answered. “Chaoshan area?” she doubted. “Yes. Puning, Jieyang.” The moment my grandma pronounced the name of our hometown, the woman became extremely exciting. She cried out and suddenly put my grandma on her arms strongly. At the end, she explained that she came from Puning too, and she had never met people from the hometown for more than 20 years. So my grandma and her friends were hosted by this kind woman and she even offered them a free ride to their destination. My grandma finished the story and said: “Hometown is the thing that can go across all boundaries.”

Hometown is the thing that can go across all boundaries. I like this kind of saying. Hometown is the only place that you have no right to choose, but you are destined to love it during your lifetime. I once dreamed to bore in a beautiful place with blue sea and sun-kissed vineyards. But I am not. I was born to an undeveloped town in the east of Guangdong, with no place of neither interest nor grade scenes of nature beauty. It is just a small town with odd-looking buildings in the center and a polluted river with a strange name, the New River.

Even so, it’s the place that I missed most. I miss those traditional houses with a hypaethral patio in it and the pointed roof. My grandma has such a house. I used to pick up a book, most of the time a novel, enjoyed myself sitting on a cane chair in the patio and spend a whole Sunday afternoon. The sun went across the roof and kissed the characters on my book. Wind came from everywhere with the scent of newly mown hay. Sometimes that made me sleepy and I just laid down on the chair watching the blue sky with buoyant clouds changing their shapes. When the rainy season comes, water flow down the declining roof to the patio and forms a waterfall in front of the entrance. That’s a curtain made by nature. In the town, People like growing jasmines in their yards. I miss those white small blooms. On May, after the first big rain in the town, jasmines begin to bloom here and there. The town soon changes its color. Kinds of buildings, yards, roads and schools are all speckled with thousands of small white blooms. The whole town suddenly immerses into seas of fragrance of jasmines. I love that kind of smell: a sweet and pleasant odor which can bring you out of the annoying rainy days and offer you a bright mood.

In the suburban area, we have a mountain named “Nanshan Mountain”. It’s not a famous one and not even a high one. But it is quite large and people in my town used to separate it into three parts, the outside part, the middle one and the inner. My junior high school is on the foot of the outside part of Nanshan Mountain. That was some impressive days and I miss it much. We went to school riding bicycles. Every morning, quite a number of bicycles marching towards the sun and our school is just the place where the sun raise up. After school, the way back also has the sun before us. On the way to school, there are large fields growing kinds of rice and vegetables. The color of it changes from season to season: green, yellow, golden and brown. We all liked those small paths in the field. When our bicycles went across the field, groups of birds resting on it got frighten and all flied into the sky with the sound of the rings of our bikes. There is a reservoir named Sankeng in the middle of the mountain. The water is clean and tasty. The reservoir once used to provide drinking water to the whole town. The inner of Nanshan Mountain is just a place of nature scenes. There are streams, rocks, jungles and hot springs in it. It’s the best place to enjoy the weekends there and you can never be disturbed by others but just scenes of nature and sounds of birds.

The food is delicious and the snacks are tasty. The most famous food of Puning is bean curd. It’s quite different from bean curd in other place of China. It is soft and white inside, but the cover is yellowish and chewy. People say that you can only use the water in Puning to make such delicious bean curd, if not, it tastes different.

Anyway, though it is not a place that travelers will come and enjoy it, it’s the town that I miss much and have my wonderful memories. As the song sings: “Now main street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores, seems like there ain’t nobody want to come down here no more.” We still can’t help to take a good look around and say to ourselves that this is my hometown.