This article is from WeChat official account:Guyu Image-Tencent News (ID: ihuozhe), Author & Photography: Zheng Bing, Editors: Patrick, Jia Muzi, Zhou An, Production: Tencent News Gu Yu×OFPiX
I was born in Mudanjiang in 1995. This seldom mentioned old city in Northeast China, in my memory, is a place that is backward, cold, and young people try their best to escape. Only in the memories and stories of the elders can one glimpse its once glorious corner.
In 2020, due to the epidemic, I stopped studying in Italy and returned to my hometown. In the once lively factory community, now there are only a few old people who are stumbling and slurring, but the way they watch each other and pull at each other touches me and makes me know my hometown again.
Apart from the occasional elderly and wild cats, there is nothing else in the community
My hometown, Mudanjiang, is a typical old industrial city in Northeast China. After the factory was established, a large number of urbanized communities built around the factory appeared.
Qixing Community is one of these old factory communities. The workers have lived in this community for 30 years, sharing a movie theater, a bath, a school for children, a cafeteria, and even a courthouse. In this urban system based on production relations, people’s lives have developed and operated in an orderly manner, and most people thought that the sun would always rise as usual.
Later, the three-year wave of layoffs came surging, and what seemed to be eternal life came to an abrupt end. Young people in the Northeast have left their hometowns, and the urban birth rate has plummeted. Qixing Community, like countless old industrial communities in the Northeast, has become a community for the elderly.
The once lively community atrium, except for the occasional elderly and wild cats, there is nothing else. Here, the once young workers led the family through poor winters and spent most of their lives. Now their children are scattered all over the world, sending them gifts, funds, and blessings, but they can’t be around.
The advertising wall outside the community has existed for several years. Nowadays, small advertisements are not only for selling houses and hearing aids, but also for selling all kinds of “magic medicine” for all kinds of diseases that the old people like.
Across from the advertising wall is a small shop. When I was young, this small shop played an important role in the community, responsible for providing snacks and daily necessities for the entire community. It was also a gossip distribution center for the community. Now there are only a group of elderly and economical people left in the entire community, who would rather walk a few miles to a large supermarket to snap up discounted goods. The group of people who used to talk about gossip basically moved out of the community, and even I have never been to the small shop again.
There used to be