Under the Hawthorn Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

it’ll be fine. Don’t put so much energy into writing this stuff.’
    She checked there was no one else around, and asked him, ‘You say “don’t put so much energy into writing this stuff”. Well, what should I spend my energy on?’
    â€˜What you want to write. Have you ever written any stories, or poems?’
    â€˜No. How could someone like me write a story?’
    He was amused. ‘What kind of person do you think writes stories? I think you have the makings of a writer, you have a good style, and more importantly, you have a pair of poetic eyes, you can see the poetry in life.’
    Jingqiu thought he was being ‘aerodite’ again, so said, ‘You’re always talking about being “poetic”, everything’s “poetic”. What exactly do you mean by “poetic”?’
    â€˜In the past, I would have meant just that, “poetic”. Nowadays, of course, I’m referring to “revolutionary romanticism”.’
    â€˜You seem to know what you’re talking about, why don’t you write a story?’
    â€˜I want to write, but they’re the kinds of things that no one would dare publish. The kinds of things that can be published, I don’t want to write,’ he laughed. ‘The Cultural Revolution must have started just as you started school, but I was at senior high school at the time, I’ve been more deeply influenced by the capitalist period than you. I always wanted to go to university, Beijing University or Qinghua, but I was born too late.’
    â€˜Workers, farmers, and soldiers can study, why don’t you do that?’
    â€˜What’s the point? You don’t learn anything at university now,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What are you going to do once you finish school?’
    â€˜Work in the fields.’
    â€˜And after that?’
    Jingqiu was upset – she didn’t see that she had an ‘after that’. Like all the other youths from the city, her brother had been sent down to the countryside a few years ago and had no way of returning. He was very good at the violin, and both the county performance troupe and the Army and Navy Political Song and Dance Ensemble had invited him to join them, but each time he came up for political review, the invitation was withdrawn. Hurt, she said, ‘There is no “and after that”. After I get sent to the countryside there’s no way I’ll get to come back, because my family’s class status is bad.’
    He reassured her. ‘That’s not true, of course you’ll be able to come back, it’ll only be a matter of when. Don’t think too much about it or that far into the future. The world is changing every day. Who knows, by the time you finish school the policy might have been revoked, and you might not get sent at all.’
    Jingqiu felt she had nothing else to say to him – he was the son of an official, and despite having suffered a little as well, everything was fine for him now. He’d never been sent down to learn from the peasants, but had been assigned to the geological unit straight away. People like him can’t understand people like me, she thought, can’t understand why I worry.
    â€˜I want to get back to writing,’ she said, picking up her pen and pretending to start. He didn’t say anything else, but left to take a nap and play with Huan Huan until he had to go back to work.
    One day, he gave her a thick book, Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland. ‘Have you read it?’
    â€˜No, how did you get it?’ Jingqiu asked him.
    â€˜My mum bought it. My dad is an official, but my mum isn’t. You probably already know this, but just after Liberation, in the early 1950s, a new marriage law was passed. Lots of cadres abandoned their wives in the countryside and took new, pretty, educated city girls as wives. My mum was one of those young girls, the daughter of