In my dreams, there is a city!

Always in my dreams, I wish to live in that city. Just like a farmer who is used to living in the countryside, longing for tall buildings, longing for all kinds of cars in either wide or narrow streets running like water, longing to stand on a high loft with a spire, enjoying the autumn moon, wide as a bat's sleeve filled with breeze.

I do not want the city to be a city for the ages, nor do I expect the city to have a population of hundreds or tens of millions. Maybe just a few hundred or a thousand names, these familiar or unfamiliar enough to fill it to the brim, like the moon, so that the earth is bright and full.

The city must have brick walls, not so high that there is no need to look up and see the battlements stealing kisses from the moon and the sun. It only needs to be four-square, enclosing a piece of piece is good. Outside the city, there is idyllic scenery, the naughty wind chasing the clouds, the tender pastoral flute ruffling the willow leaves. In the city, there are a few stores with flashing neon signs, a few bars that are noisy and playful at night and refuse to sleep, hundreds of lights, hundreds of doors that are either open or closed and from time to time, the sound of laughter.

There must be a river that protects the city by the walls, a jade belt that girdles the waist of the small town. There are golden carp spitting bubbles in the river, and on the river, lotus flowers are burning with fire. A small but solid moon bud, hanging just there at the city gate, occasionally bends down to welcome travelers from afar into the city.

The city has a middle-aged king, a hard-working and generous queen, and a mischievous and lovely prince and princess.

The king was very serious, and the years had carved deep fatigue on his forehead. He sometimes sat on his throne, fondling his jeweled scepter in his hand, his gaze distant and absorbed. He had a lot to worry about, thousands of people in the city, the boundless fields outside the city countless small and large cities of the same size. He would also step down from his throne. Wearing a crown inlaid with gold and jade, walking into the crowd in his magnificent royal robes, with firm feet and kind eyes. He talks and laughs with everyone, he settles disputes that are full of chicken feathers. He tells everyone that this is everyone's city, that everyone has a mission, and that everyone has the right to be the head of a small city.

The queen is very busy, she does not appear in the crowd. A pair of slender hands press the black keys of the piano white keys also manufacture pots and pans of the song. She cooked food for herself, for her husband, for the little princess and the prince, and she would give the palace a good laugh. Her laughter was crisp, like a string of silver bells swaying in the wind. Every citizen who hears it will feel that the city is very warm, the street sycamore sough dance as full of peace.

Happy Prince, the princess who has changed her habit of sleeping peas sleeps in a small and lovely room at night and runs into every corner of the city as soon as it is light enough to go to school. Play with children, and invite favor from familiar aunts and uncles. When they meet strangers, they also stay alert enough to bow courteously in greeting and then run away, like the bright and shy winds of March.

Live in this city, there is no one to shelter you from the wind and rain because the city is everyone's, all the sun, moon and stars together to browse the bath, so have to ice and snow wind must be altogether to resist. I can't be your piece of the sky, you can't be my umbrella, but everyone is part of the sky, a square inch of the umbrella. You hold me and I warm you, so why call out each other's names?

Every day, farmers would go out of town to plow, workers would toil in their workshops, merchants were busy in their stores, meat sellers were grinning with their lapels open, children were chasing on the road, singing in the playground, and books were being read in the classrooms, and kings and officials were consulting their codes.

Everyone was busy, including some gray-haired old men. They sat in warm, thick leather chairs, busy watching the clouds in the sky, busy remembering the tender love they once failed, the time when gold was consumed. There are so many days gone by that one must hold on to them, pacing with memory every person that passed by on every road walked, and if one slack off a little, one may forget a flower, an old song, a leaf of tender green and fresh grass.

There is no deception in the city, no cold, no one who drinks and sings in the lonely sleepy streets, smashing cars and windows with slices of knives, which is an unforgivable mistake and must be expelled from our small town.

At festivals, everyone came out of their houses and partied in the downtown square. Bonfires light up the city that never sleeps, songs break the crystal goblets of the day, and dance steps pound the green slate. The old people in the slow four, children in the "wow ha ha", girls and boys some in the shy some in the longing, a beautiful night, will there be love to polish each other's eyes of youthful splendor?

The city is small, sometimes noisy and sometimes quiet. There are cities outside the city, there will also be disputes and wars will break out. But this city is the love of my dreams, even if at some point it may be annihilated by a volcano and destroyed by war. But I always love it, hoping to shout across the moat to get the attention of the soldiers guarding the city, and then put down the small bridge like the curved moon, open the heavy gates and let me in, to be a happy and vulgar little citizen, busy with my busy, longing for my longing.

In my dreams, a city may be small, maybe a little poor, but always in my dreams.