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墨書 Inktalez
The biggest difference between university and high school lies in the abundance of time. In this era, getting into college means breaking free from the confines of rural life. Besides attending classes, we no longer need to prepare for the next day's lessons or review what we learned days before; we have plenty of free time.
Aside from visiting relatives and friends on weekends, I didn’t immediately immerse myself in the card games and poker circles that many of my classmates fell into. Nor did I join the few who were either dominating the sports fields or cheering loudly. Instead, I quietly slipped out beyond the walls to explore the world outside.
Gongzhuan is located in the outskirts, where the main roads connecting Shaoyang with Huaihua and Xinhua intersect just beyond the school walls. The roaring vehicles on these roads hardly piqued my interest; however, between the school's wall and a nearby construction company’s wall lies a narrow alley about two to three meters wide. Walking through this alley leads to a true rural landscape, a place that carries a hint of my hometown's essence, which became my favorite spot to spend evenings after dinner. Every evening, I would invite my fellow classmate Lin Gaoxiang from the Chemical Engineering class or my dorm neighbor Xiang Ni Hua from Wugang to explore it together.
Though it is called a rural area, this suburban countryside differs greatly from the hilly regions of my hometown. The small hills here are mostly covered with orange trees; the pines, firs, and various other trees that accompanied me through childhood are seldom seen. In flatter areas of the hills, patches of dry land have been cultivated into various shapes, growing an assortment of vegetables and fruits.
Our semester started later than others, and the orange trees were ripe for harvest. The bright red fruit was enticing, but the local farmers kept a close watch over their orchards. They had set up makeshift shelters on the hills to guard against thieves. Even under the dim light of the moonlit night, I dared not pluck any oranges hanging within reach as I would at home; instead, I had to avoid drawing suspicion while passing by. Whenever I spotted a branch reaching out towards me, I would quicken my pace and raise my hands for any vigilant farmer lurking nearby to see.
The first time I walked through that alley outside the school walls, I discovered a few rice paddies not far away. Just as I thought this place was no different from home, I looked up and realized these fields were among the last remaining "Lazy Fields." Alongside the road ahead were neat rows of vegetable plots where farmers busily worked—pulling weeds, watering plants, picking melons, and harvesting fruits. What surprised me was how orderly these plots were; they were arranged in long strips or squares without any chaotic appearance. Each plot had a small square pond at its edge filled with dark liquid. The farmers here didn’t carry buckets like those at home; instead, they used long-handled scoops to draw water from these ponds and pour it onto their crops with ease.
Walking along the village paths for several hundred steps, I noticed that the sparse farmhouses became even more scattered. The ridges between two small hills had been transformed into vegetable plots as well, but each plot was gradually increasing in size, with more people working within them. Suddenly, I spotted several raised mounds among the vegetable fields ahead. Although they weren’t as grand as our Long Family Old Tomb Mountain Toad Rock back home, there were certainly more than those at Zhushan Bay. Did they not fear wasting arable land? Did they not worry about startling passersby?
After wandering through this rural land beyond the walls evening after evening—sometimes hurrying past, sometimes stopping to watch farmers sweat in their toil, and occasionally pausing to pick a few blades of foxtail grass or roadside daisies—I began to notice a pattern: on paths near the school and by small groves, there were always two or three classmates around—some like us simply walking to pass time aimlessly while others strolled arm in arm toward more secluded areas. Strangely enough, regardless of which group they belonged to, very few greeted or acknowledged the farmers working in their fields; it seemed we didn’t regard each other at all. We failed to see one another as equals?
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