The sounds of childhood

My childhood was spent in Taipei City between Wenzhou Street and Yunhe Street, which is a very special place, like Casablanca or Istanbul, where many civilizations meet and create a different kind of spark.

On both sides of Wenzhou Street, most of the people living there were professors from NTU, and I remember most of all that when an old calligrapher surnamed Chen passed away directly across the street, his scholar son cried, "Father! Father!" He cried for more than half a month.

My right neighbor also makes me nostalgic. The first couple to live there was an old couple, probably a teacher-student relationship, and the beautiful young wife always called out "Teacher! Teacher!" When she shouted, my father would say, "Again! Again!" And my mother would glare at him, "I'm not calling you, why are you listening?"

It didn't take long for the young couple to immigrate to the United States and move in with the director of the inpatient unit at NTU Hospital, also named Liu. His family had three daughters, who often played and screamed, causing me to prick my ears.

The left neighbor was a general, his wife chanted Buddhism, and every day came the sound of wooden fish, and the general's mmmm, probably with hemorrhoids, his hard mmmm sound, I could hear it through the wall. When I was a child, I was naughty, and I helped him to make the sound. Later they moved away, my mother said it was all because I was angry.

The house of the dean of the College of Agriculture of NTU lived across the street to the left and had a very rare blossom. His house is the official residence of Minister of National Defense Yu Dawei, surrounded by a group of stars, and many children would chase after the black-headed cars to smell the gasoline. The jeeps were more interesting because the driver was a soldier and was more likely to play with the children. But one time I poured sand and dirt into the gas tank of the car, and the soldier caught me, twisted my ear and scolded me severely, and to this day, I don't allow anyone to touch my ear, including my wife, because of that painful memory.

Behind my house was the military family area of the "Military Industrial School", where it was said that there were many backbone of the Hanyang Arsenal in the early years, all of whom were arms experts. They were also extraordinary in their control of children, snapping "bamboo shoots and fried meat" and telling them "I don't dare! I don't dare!" The sound of wailing, so that every time I see those beaten children are in awe, think they are after all the characters who survived under the whip. I also admired the way people in my family stir-fried vegetables, probably using spatulas made of steel from the arsenal, which were ten times louder than my mother's. Although I couldn't see the aunts who handled the spoons and knives, I could imagine the "Gongsun Damsel dancing with a sword".

When I was thirteen years old, my family was burned to the ground in a fire. The family did not rebuild it for us because my father had died. My mother had to build a straw house on the ruins, and became the "most bull nail household". Although the room is simple, only a piece of straw hut on the wall, the top of the head almost touched the eaves, but the surrounding wood ventilation, coupled with the ruins outside the weeds, insects chirping, quite a sense of country residence. The toilet is the only brick place in the whole Japanese building, and when the surrounding area is sunken, the pit looks high up. On rainy days, when I used the toilet with an umbrella, the sound of rain was constant above and dripping below. At that time I was reading Li Qingzhao's collection of lyrics, and naturally I remembered that "dripping mournful, dripping mournful, sorrowful damage to the people who left, not used to get up to listen." As for the sunny days feel good, the deep blue night sky embraced, look at the stars and the moon moved over a charred pillar, reminiscent of the ancient Greek theater, and then look at the four neighboring windows in the yellowish light and a crowd of people, and Li Yi'an "to the curtain under the child, listen to people laughing" realm.

When I was fifteen, we finally gave in and moved to a small two-story wooden building on Jinshan Street. The downstairs is a girl's English secretary class, for me as a boy, the sound is really extraordinary. At one time it was as if I was in a foreign country, downstairs is the English conversation; a moment click click click click high heels, must be teaching walking etiquette; a moment of music, the original is a social dance. Occasionally, when I pass downstairs, I can see a group of frightening white-faced female ghosts, which is a beauty class using cucumber juice, flour and hydrogen peroxide to bleach the skin.

Across the street from the building, there is a large illegal building on Jinshan Street, where every day the dumpling store minces its fillings, the thump-thump-thump-thump is the bowstring vibration of the cotton popping store, and the car horn blasts from time to time because customers waiting to buy handmade steamed buns are blocking the traffic. At night, it gets even more lively, with people shouting at the top of their lungs, selling deep-fried noodles and stinky tofu, and noodle stalls pushing carts. The steam smoke from steamed buns, boiled noodles and dumplings, illuminated by the misty lights, had the hazy beauty of Xin Jiaxuan's "The Green Jade Case" and "Looking for him a thousand times, but when I look back, the man is at the end of the light".

Although the small building I live in is not high, the back of it overlooks a large area of bungalows, and there is a mixed chorus of wild cats barking and cold dogs in deep alleys. Probably because the doors of Japanese-style houses were not strict, there were many homes with dogs, and most of them had large dogs to watch the doors.

Late at night, when all dogs and people were sleeping, it was surprisingly quiet outside the back window, and in the large gray tiled houses, you could even hear the clattering of mahjong, the chirping of the tricycle brakes, and the long flute of the blind masseuse.

Outside the front window, the sound of splashing water was always heard first, probably the closing routine of the steamed bun and dumpling store, followed by the heavy sound of the door slamming. Fortunately, the door was thick enough, and there was a night of shouting, a fire across the street, followed by sirens wailing and many rescue trains. It turned out that a daughter's boyfriend went crazy and poured gasoline in the gutter to ignite, but fortunately the fire was quickly extinguished, except for some black marks smoked on the door panel, but no damage.

There is also a night to break the silence is an old man from Shandong crying, from a low unauthorized construction between. Probably drunk, he was crying and shouting, and his shouting was so intermittent that several repetitive phrases could be heard: "President Jiang! Didn't you say you were going to take us back? How come you still not go back? If you don't go back to ......, my mother will die!"

The man's cries, late at night, very sad, so sad that I will never forget.