"River City": Walden Pond in He Wei's Heart

On the bank of the Yangtze River, Jialing is my hometown of Chongqing. From the intersection of the two rivers, follow the Yangtze River downstream, about 100 kilometers east, and arrive at the intersection of the Yangtze River and Wujiang River, which is Fuling, where the story takes place. In the 1990s, an American followed the Sino-US Friendship Volunteers and settled in such a quiet and vivid town, but relatively far away from the frontier of the world, and lived there for two years. At that time, Fuling was not an administrative district of the municipality Chongqing, but a small prefecture-level city in Sichuan. He had a job teaching English literature at Fuling Normal College, he learned Chinese and even the Sichuan dialect, and he lived like a local. Most of the time, he and his partner were the only two foreigners in the city. Although they were in a busy city, they seemed to be isolated from the world. In his spare time, he would wander around the city or go camping in the mountains, and experience the strange and lively life in this strange country from his own unique perspective. Fuling, a small city at the intersection of the Wujiang River and the Yangtze River, was like his Walden Pond, allowing him to have a kind of tranquility amidst the hustle and bustle to examine himself and the world.

His name is Peter Heisler, and I prefer to call him by his Chinese name He Wei. The Fuling in the 1990s that he wrote somehow has a kind of vitality, traveling through time, appearing in front of our eyes, and making me believe that this is what it really looked like. He Wei's language always carries a kind of simple and delicate thinking. He is not arrogant about profundity, but is meticulous. The vendors and footmen on the street, the rice fields in the mountains, and the honking of cars outside the window, he took them all into his heart, chewed them slowly, and tasted some long aftertaste. He silently observed and tried here, and then everything turned into this autobiographical novel "River City". But I think there are thousands of his thoughts outside the book, which cannot be written in a book, and are difficult to describe and describe.

When I first read this book, I was still in college in Hangzhou. I was young and lacked experience, so I put it down after reading half of it for various reasons. When I watched it again, I was already in a foreign country, a rare foreigner just like him. The people around me would also look at me with curious and somewhat disturbing eyes, just like the people in Fuling looked at He Wei. Once when I returned to China, although I had long forgotten what the book said, by chance I stuffed this book into my bag and took it to Germany. I had nothing to do and read a few pages. I couldn't help but sigh, isn't this my life now? So I read on. The strange thing is that an American's words actually bring some comfort to my homesickness. They are like the water of Wujiang River, which makes people read it clear and soft, and they flow slowly to the end of time.

He Wei spent part of his life in Fuling working and teaching, and most of his time was spent exploring the city and talking to people. He would camp by the Wujiang River on spring nights in March and read Ted Williams' autobiographical novels. Under the dim light, in a simple tent, a person can examine his own heart in the clearest way. This kind of life is a bit like farming and studying in a fishing bridge. Just like Thoreau's seclusion by Walden Pond, when external stimulation is isolated, a person's inner world will thrive.

Of course, he will also deal with many different people, students, teachers and leaders of the school, and friends he met through chats outside of school. These interactions were marked by a mix of warm goodwill and sometimes distance. But he was very brave, like Don Quixote who went to fight the windmill, and walked into the hearts of some people step by step. But as a "foreigner", he often feels that he will probably only be an outsider forever.

The language barrier will be a hindrance at first and may even make him feel clumsy. This was also my feeling when I first arrived in Germany. Language barriers make people feel that this kind of clumsiness is not only in terms of language, but also as if they have degenerated into an immature toddler, stumbling and babbling. But it is precisely because of this that we can observe a different world with the clear eyes of children. In our eyes, there is no prejudice or experience. Everything is the first time and everything is fresh.

While reading this book, I often reflected He Wei's experience on my own. When I first arrived in Germany, the biggest pressure was that things that had been done easily before had become several times more difficult, not to mention things that were already difficult. Take shopping as an example. As a girl, shopping in China is a matter of entertainment and even enjoyment, but in a foreign country where you are unfamiliar with the place, it becomes a task.

First of all, the types of stores in Germany are somewhat different from those in China, which makes it difficult to know where to buy many daily necessities. Fortunately, you can still ask some seniors. For example, trash cans and brooms are not as ubiquitous in Germany as they are in China, because their supermarkets only have food and daily chemical products, and only a few home furnishing stores carry these two items. The second step is to understand the packaging and labels. Since the brands and types of products are different, you have to read the text on the packaging and labels of each product carefully to understand whether it is what you need. This resulted in me spending more than two hours every time I went to the supermarket without buying much.

Then there is the feeling of being a "foreigner" in a small city. Although Asian faces are not rare in my small city, it is enough to make many people stare at me curiously, just like we observe giant pandas: Oh, this is how they eat! Most middle-aged and young people in Germany are still very polite, but this may not be the case for adults over 50 years old. Even if he is sitting across from you on the bus, he will stare straight at you. Even if I notice him, he will not look away. This is probably slightly better than He Wei's ability to attract thirty or forty people to watch in Fuling. As a foreigner, it will always feel difficult to integrate, but sometimes you will feel a friendly warmth. Due to the lack of a different cultural atmosphere, many things German friends talk about are confusing, such as movies, celebrities, and childhood memories. Their jokes are also a bit hard to laugh at. Even if you understand them, it's hard to understand why they laugh so hard. But maybe the driving force to get closer between people will always overcome the barriers. I also made some good friends in this strange country, and they patiently corrected my German and drank and chatted with me. I also receive kindness from strangers from time to time. Sometimes when we take out our mobile phones to navigate, there are always old men and women who think that we are tourists and either want to go to the train station or the main church, so they enthusiastically give us directions, but in fact we want to go to the mall. Of course, generally speaking, I feel lonely much more than I did in my hometown. I don’t have any old friends I’ve known for many years, and I don’t have the uncles and aunts who watched me grow up. After all, I still felt attached to this small town where I lived together day and night.

At the end of the book, He Wei was leaving Fuling. He took the time to say goodbye to everything here. I also felt a sense of loss in my heart: Will he just go away and never come back? Will the people and places he cares about never see each other again? I couldn't help but wonder where he went after leaving Fuling and what his life was like. After searching on the Internet, I learned that in August 2019, his family moved to Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and he began teaching at the Pittsburgh College of Sichuan University in the fall of 2019. Somehow I felt moved by seeing a happy ending. He finally came back and was no longer separated from the landscape characters he cared about.

To him, Fuling is no longer the elusive Walden Pond in his dreams, but a hometown he can return to frequently.