A Walk Around the Village

I went home today. I'm back in my hometown in Sichuan.

It's been almost four years, and nothing here has changed, except that the roads are worse. The road from the town to the village is visibly more broken up than the last time I came back.

The fields are as rugged as ever, and the trees are still there on the hillside. Every Spring Festival when I come home, the field in front of our house is planted full of rapeseed, and this time some of it has already started to bloom.

A walk around the village is a must after dinner. We call over all the neighbors and walk a loop along the nearby road.

The weather has been wonderful lately, and the sunsets are beautiful. After all these years the cell signal here is still terrible, but at least the air is as fresh as it always was.

When I look up, I can still see the stars hanging in the sky one by one. That's hard to see in the city. After all, who in the city looks up at the sky for no reason? Even if you did look up, you'd probably just see neon lights and steel and concrete.

Almost all the primary schools in the villages around here have closed. That's the trend. Fewer children are being born, so naturally the rural schools have no students left, and the kids from the whole township have to be gathered in one place for school.

The fresh air is what I find most comfortable about the countryside, because in a place like this I always sleep well, even better than usual.

All in all, this trip home has felt pretty good. The internet is just a bit bad.

If the internet were good, a village like this, far from the dust of the world, would actually make a fine quiet retreat.

As soon as night falls, everyone goes back to their own homes, and the whole world turns dark and still, without a sound.

The new year is here. Now and then I can hear fireworks crackling somewhere in the distant air.