"My" spin-off

  I have never seen so many people.

  People with black hair, black eyes and yellow skin, who speak loudly, often make me think they are arguing or quarreling. I watch them curiously and nervously, worried that the argument might escalate into further action. But then they stop talking, lower their eyes, and sometimes, while "arguing", they burst out laughing, so I realize this is just a way of daily communication for them. After getting used to it, I think this way is primitive, simple, yet lovely.

  This was on November 11th, 2000, the Saturday right after the beginning of winter, I was at Shanghai Train Station waiting for a train from Shanghai to Nanjing.

  I'm holding a pink train ticket in my hand, the train number on it starts with the letter T. The locals told me that this is currently China's fastest train, and some people call it "Bullet Head". From Shanghai to Nanjing, the whole journey takes two hours and thirty minutes.

  The red electronic display screen flashed the train number on my ticket, and at the same time, a female voice came from the broadcast, suddenly, a large crowd of people stood up with a "wow" and rushed to the ticket gate.

  I pulled my small suitcase, following the flow of people, slowly moving into the queue. People were packed tightly around me and my small suitcase kept bumping against the pants leg of a man behind me. I felt embarrassed and would occasionally turn back to apologize to him, also hoping he could take a step back, but he seemed not to mind.

  Finally, I stood on the platform, my nose had already sweated a thin layer of sweat. It was November, but it was surprisingly warm, probably around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Even though I wasn't wearing much - just a hoodie, leggings, and flat shoes - the people around me were all bundled up, some even wearing light down jackets. Occasionally, someone would glance at me, and I knew maybe I looked different from others, or perhaps my exposed calves were too eye-catching in this crowd of warmly dressed people. When I was young, every time the weather turned cool, my grandmother would remind me not to go around with bare legs, saying "cold comes from the bottom up".

  Not far from me, there were three or five young people standing, looking about the same age as me, each carrying a backpack. I thought they should be college students, perhaps traveling together for autumn, or perhaps taking advantage of the weekend to return home and visit relatives. They were enthusiastically discussing mobile phone models.

  "My cousin just bought a Siemens, white screen, shining brightly." said the girl in the pink down jacket. She spoke Nanjing dialect, which I could understand but not speak. This dialect was familiar to me as my maternal grandmother and relatives at home used to speak it, so it was easy for me to comprehend.

  "Wow, rich people! My dad said he would only buy me a cell phone if I got a scholarship this semester. Why am I so unlucky!" A tall boy next to him said.

  "Nothing's going on, just messing with him!" Another girl chimed in, her hair was particularly smooth and straight, reportedly due to a special chemical treatment called "ionic perm".

  A few young people chatted with each other, and to me, these small losses behind them were actually supported by the peace of the peaceful era. I remembered the sentences written by my grandmothers in their letters, "Even if we sacrifice this entire generation, we must let our future generations live with dignity on their own land." This week, what I saw and heard in China made me think of these words all the time. The sacrifices of my grandmother's generation have brought autonomy and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people today. I turned around and smiled at those young people, hoping that Chinese people can learn to smile at strangers, give roses to others, and leave fragrance in their hands.

  The white "bullet head" train finally arrived at the station, I bought myself a first-class ticket, entered the carriage, but did not see the kind of wide sofa chair described by my grandmother in her autobiography. In today's China, perhaps the gap between classes is not advocated for public facilities.

  The train sped through the fertile plains of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, with two-story small villas in every village, with white walls and black tiles, elegant and charming. Every time I was about to enter a city's station, rows of high-rise buildings would suddenly appear before my eyes, leaving me amazed. This is completely different from the China I imagined.

  I knew that Nanjing Station was just ahead, and suddenly, my heart started racing with a feeling similar to "homesickness".

  As the crowd flowed out of the station, there were many people waiting to pick up passengers on both sides of the exit. I walked forward from the platform, looking around, and occasionally someone would stop me and ask, "Miss, do you want a ride?" The first time I stopped in my tracks, thinking it was Xu's family member who had come to pick me up. Later, I realized they were just private cars soliciting customers. When someone asked again, I smiled and shook my head, ignoring them. Until a man around fifty years old carefully identified me, then looked down at the photo in his hand.

  "Are you still young?" the man asked.

  "Right." I stopped.

  "From America?" He seemed still unsure and further confirmed.

  "Not bad, you are Uncle Xu, right?" I had already recognized him.

  "Right, right," the other person nodded and smiled warmly, "Come on, give me the box."

  He helped me pull the suitcase and also tried to help me carry my backpack, I declined. A middle-aged woman stood beside Uncle Xu, smiling and sizing me up.

  "This is your Aunt Xu."

  "Hello, Aunt Xú."

  "Hey, hey, tired? Cold?"

  "It's not cold. Thank you Uncle Xu and Auntie Xu for picking me up, I've troubled you."

  "This child is so polite! Mandarin is spoken so well!" said Mrs. Xu with a smile.

  My "Mandarin" was taught by my grandmother since I was a child, word by word and sentence by sentence. Those classmates from China were amazed at the standard of my Chinese pronunciation.

  At the first meeting, they couldn't help but exchange some pleasantries and after chatting for a while, they followed the two elders to find a taxi. That year, private cars were not yet popular in China, and even someone like Director Xu, who was the director of a museum, did not have the economic ability to afford a private car.

  I was arranged to stay in the daughter's room of the Xu family, their daughter is a few years older than me, studying in Europe and has no vacation to come back. Originally I didn't like this arrangement, although I knew that the Xu family and the two grandmothers were old friends, but after all, I was a stranger, I didn't want to live in a strange person's home, a hotel room would make me more comfortable, however they insisted again and again, as if I would stay in a hotel it would be an insult.

  "This is the human touch that Chinese people value, you should respond to them, it's just that when you live with others you need to be mindful of etiquette, you can't shut your door and leave others outside like you do at home." Mother said.

  I was rolling my eyes up to about two-thirds of the way when my mother stopped me: "Are you giving me the eye?" she said in English.

  The taxi drove south along Xuanwu Lake and stopped in front of a residential area, where the early autumn sunset shone on a huge stone with several large characters carved on it, which seemed to be the name of this residential area. I carefully identified: Xuanwu Chicken Crowing.

  There was a moment of daze.

  Uncle Xu rolled down the car window and greeted the security guard of the residential area, and the car continued to drive in.

  "Ji Ming Temple and the Nanjing Municipal Government are not far from here, your aunt used to work at the municipal government, now you should rest well today, tomorrow I'll take you there for a visit," said Mrs. Xu.

  I think she was referring to Yu Waipo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Wang Puppet Government is located in today's City Hall. And before I came to China, my mother had hinted to me that our old friends here did not know about the actual relationship between the two waipos, only knowing that they were a pair of good sisters who got to know each other in the midst of war and chaos.

  Back home, after everything had settled down, Mrs. Xu began to prepare dinner for the evening, as it was said that it would be quite lively tonight, with all of the Xu family's relatives coming over, and they all wanted to meet me.

  While Mrs. Xu was preparing dinner, Mr. Xu took me to his study, a traditional and elegant room, where he asked me to sit down on a red wooden chair, and he fetched something from the bookcase.

  That was a photo album, he carefully took it out and carefully placed it on the table, as if it were an invaluable treasure. He put on his old glasses, "Little year, you can come to China, come to Nanjing, our family is really too happy," paused, "Unfortunately, my parents are no longer here, if they could live until today, see you, I don't know how happy they would be."

  I was at a loss for words and just smiled.

  "I have an old photo album here, which contains some acquaintances of your grandmother. These photos are very precious and were secretly preserved by my parents at the risk of their lives. I want to show them to you before taking you to our museum tomorrow."

  "Alright, Uncle Xu." I had never been more curious than at this moment.

  Open the album, as I imagined, yellowed old photos, like a time machine, took me into a past event. It was an era of war and chaos, when people's lives were not easy to live. Despite the harsh environment, the ordinary people who lived in it still knew how to find joy in hardship. The first thing that caught my eye was a formal double portrait. A young woman sat in a chair, wearing a cheongsam dress with an indistinguishable color, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, smiling very brightly. The man was slightly older, standing on one side, looking somewhat awkward.

  "This is the wedding photo of my parents," said Uncle Xu. "My mother always remembered your grandmother and told me before she passed away two years ago that her only regret in this life was not being able to see her again."

  As I looked at the woman in the photo, although we had never met before and I didn't know much about her past, my eyes felt a little sour.

  Further flipping through, there are some family photos of the Xu's inserted in between. You can see Old Man Xu when he was little, followed by his sister being born, and then a group photo further on. My gaze fell on that photo.

  "This photo was taken in February 1942 at Plum Blossom Mountain, just two months after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the formal outbreak of the Pacific War. The Wang Jingwei government also formally joined the declaration of war against the Allied Powers led by the United States."

  My gaze swept across the faces in the photo, some smiling and others serious, carefully identifying each one.

  "Have you found your grandmother?" asked Uncle Xu.

  I've gotten used to it when they say "grandma", they're always referring to Yu Grandma. The photo isn't very clear, with varying degrees of blur on her facial features, but Yu Grandma's aura is still easily recognizable. I nodded and pointed at the woman under a tree with white plum blossoms: "Here."

  Uncle Xu smiled, "Good eyesight," and then pointed to a tall young man beside him, "His name is Ye Mingtian. At that time, he was in contact with your paternal grandmother, haha, but according to my mother's later account, it was fake, seemingly a strategy thought out by Huajin, Ye Mingtian was her deputy, and only through such arrangement could the two women have the opportunity to get in touch with each other.

  I blinked my eyes, "Does Ye Ming Tian know?"

  "He should not have known," Uncle Xu continued, "You know, in those years, doing anything was a risk to one's life. Your grandmother and Huaijin were spies, they had to get close to each other to exchange information, and in front of people, they must have had a plausible reason."

  I nodded, thought for a moment, and then smiled slightly.

  "This is my mother." Mr. Xu said, pointing to a young girl not far from Grandma.

  All I saw was her round face, smiling somewhat cutely, compared to the woman in that "wedding photo" I saw before, she looked younger and more innocent.

  I carefully searched for her in the photo, but couldn't find Grandma Jin's figure. Uncle Xu seemed to see through my thoughts, "Grandma Jin is not in this photo, she should have been away from Nanjing at that time."

  I'm only going to finish this one album, and when I flipped to the last page, there was only one photo on it. The photo showed two young and beautiful women sitting at a table, leaning slightly towards each other, smiling softly and movingly in front of the camera. In front of them was a table full of what looked like a sumptuous feast. On top of the photo was a handwritten note: "New Year's Eve, 1940, taken in Shanghai."

  Uncle Xu took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "The benefactor of the Xu family, without them, there wouldn't be our big family today."

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