Ordinary and strange precious

about a year ago, I came to Shanghai on business and lived beside Century Avenue. One night after dinner, I went for a walk with a friend to a place called Lujiazui Central Green Space. I have been to Shanghai so many times, but this is the first time I have found this green space. The green space does not light up at night because the lights of all the surrounding buildings add up to illuminate the small park. There are many exciting things along the way, first the Shanghai center, which has surpassed everything but has not yet been capped, and then the global financial center in the shape of a bottle screwdriver, often flashing jingling lights all over the body. Next to it is the Jinmao Tower, and the post-80s Shanghainese will be interested in telling the story of it as the tallest building in those years. If you go on, you will see the big square square, opposite to the world-famous Pearl of the Orient. After the Oriental Pearl is the Riverside Avenue, standing on it, you can get a panoramic view of the Puxi Bund.

but it seems to me that buildings that are taller than each other look like just a building after all. But when all the buildings are linked together, the night skyline of the city is formed with the red flashing lights of the highest warning aircraft, and the tight siege is a towering iron wall, so high that I look like a frog in a well. This is shocking. At that time, I believed like a weight that this was the only place to do great things. Not far away, the sound of heavy traffic was riding on the hot wind of midsummer at that time, which made people feel that this was where the tide was. I even fantasize that in those buildings, maybe, maybe, on that day, there will be one that belongs to me. In the cities I have stayed in, I always find some scenic spots that ordinary travelers don't care about, or even belong to myself. For example, the square above the exit 5 of the Trocadero station in Paris, the open-air bar on the top floor of the Goliath residence in Guangzhou, and Savile Row when it rains in London.

if there is such a place in Shanghai, I think it should be the central green space of Lujiazui. So when I was transferred back to Shanghai, I rented a place not far from Century Avenue without hesitation. I could go out from home every day and walk northwest along Century Avenue to Lujiazui, which is only 20 minutes away. Just moved to a city, always have to be busy for a while. After gradually settling down, Shanghai should have ushered in the hottest season, but it drizzled. I took an umbrella and planned to walk to the green field to see the place I used to love. I still walked the same part of the road at that time, but when I got there, I was disappointed: I found that once I accepted the fact of living in Shanghai, the scenery there would be completely different. The scenery itself is not much different, but I have changed from a traveler to a new local. When you are on a journey, you don't have to take much responsibility for the feelings you feel when you see the scene. You can be completely like a bard, send a sigh of emotion, and then look for the next destination. But living here is different. Standing in the crowd of Century Avenue, I suddenly realized that I was no different from the 30 million people in this city-I was just an ordinary one. So I began to have an inexplicable inferiority complex in this city, perhaps because I finally realized that I could never own one of those buildings. It doesn't matter to be an ordinary part of the city, and it was the same when I first went to Guangzhou.

but because I don't have any expectations for Guangzhou, I feel comfortable. It's different when you come to Shanghai. this is a big Shanghai. It's almost eight o'clock when you stand on the Riverside Avenue, just in time for the lights on the Bund on the other side to come on, and when the clock tower rings "Dongfanghong", you will keep asking yourself: is that it? Come to Shanghai, earn a salary and live a normal life, just like everyone else. But is it really like everyone else? I have a friend, a Frenchman with a lot of money, who lives in the 15th arrondissement of Paris all the year round. You can see the Eiffel Tower from the window. I envied his house where he could see the tower, but he said that it was not all the same after living for a long time, but it was just an iron tower. I used to regard his remarks as showing off, but now I seem to understand. Walking back from Binjiang Avenue, I specially chose a path away from the busy city.

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outside the neighborhood, aunts in pajamas and slippers greet each other. In Lanzhou Ramen Restaurant, several young people dressed as real estate agents are talking loudly; the little sister of the newsstand leaning on her head seems to be dozing off, surrounded by information from all over the world, which seems to be not new after a day. A bespectacled foreign youth, dressed in a cool tracksuit, stopped at a traffic light, fiddling with an Ipod; taxi passing slowly, and the open window said, "Welcome to today's Shanghai Night talk." A peddler pushed a cart with charcoal fire burning on it, which flushed his face and the whiteboard in front of his face: baked gluten, five yuan and two strands. The overtime white-collar workers just got off the bus, dragged their tired bodies, stepped on the porch with clattering high heels, and then walked into the gentle light; the hair dryer in the hair salon was still blowing off and off, and the shampoo girl stood at the door, as if the number of "welcome" was not enough today; the hardware store sent off the last guest and was about to close the door. After a busy day, the hostess of the dry cleaning house patiently asked the children how many ducks were plus two ducks; the clothes in the foreign trade shop were dazzling, but the shopkeeper was making a more colorful cross-stitch; the old man, with flower glasses, came to the fruit stall and asked how much mangosteen was per jin. When he learned that there was a slight sulk after 15 yuan, he raised his voice and said, "Kagyu!" Turn around and walk away. It was only then that I found that in real Shanghai, there were always two sets of plays staged at the same time. One is the version of the busy Avenue, where there is Shanghai, which represents the speed of China, the Shanghai in the posters of the world, and the noisy and crowded Shanghai. The other is the version of the zigzag path, where there are Indus dancing in the wind on the giant deer road.It is the old villa on Yuyuan Road and the crayfish on Laoshan Road. This seems to reflect my work and life in another way. When I first arrived in Shanghai, I worked in a beautiful building that I was not used to, wearing an ironed shirt and doing something somewhat classy in the eyes of the rest of the company, although this may not be the case. However, when I get home every day, change into more relaxed and comfortable clothes, make a simple dinner, hold a book, or find a movie, or go out for a drink with friends. Aren't they two sets of plays that I performed at the same time in Shanghai? In my understanding, "ordinary" has a similar meaning to "home". When I just welcomed the ordinary life into my house, I didn't want to go back every day. When I was in college, I used to travel in different countries, alone or with friends.

at that time, from the glaciers in Iceland to the Sahara Desert in Tunisia, the last place I wanted to go was home. What was home at that time? That's the place where freedom is bound! Once upon a time, I thought, no matter what, don't go back to my hometown. Although it is not a small city, because I have seen the fancy world outside, I am not willing to go back to the origin. However, when I got off work and all my colleagues in Shanghai packed up and went home, I went back to a house not far from Lujiazui. Slowly, however, when I learned how to share a room with ordinary people, the house didn't seem so bad. It turns out that to adapt to a city is to adapt to the ordinariness of the city. The process of integrating into a city is the process of turning this strange place into another home. So, Shanghai, good night.