I want a piece by Mei Zihan. Want the full text.

The disappearance of childhood-May Zi Han

I returned to my hometown in midsummer and gave a speech to the children in my hometown. It was homecoming day. Junior high school students from two schools gathered in a trapezoidal classroom in a primary school, and their class teachers were training for the exam that day. There is no on-site supervisor, and it's summer vacation. The children are so excited that the trapezoidal classroom keeps chattering.

I sat on the podium, my thoughts drifting away-yes, yes, I saw myself 20 years ago. I was one of them 20 years ago. I thought there was a lot of time to waste. Sensitive, sad, a little wind and rain can be magnified to infinity. Of course, there is also happiness like dust. But-"When you are sad, the sky will comfort you. But there are too many sorrows, not enough sky, not enough butterflies and not enough flowers. Most beautiful things are not enough. " (Sandra? Cisneros, mentioned below)

In fact, it's not the first time to face the children in my hometown. Six years ago, I used to sit here and tell junior high school students in my alma mater about my boyhood and my study. The scene was quiet that day. My story is also very quiet.

The children who sat here six years ago should be in college now, right? Over time, they are also taking the road of "leaving". Always like this. When you are still on the road, you don't want to look back. You leave your hometown, and you go further and further.

I can't go back. Even children in "hometown" are completely different six years ago and six years later, and 20 years ago and 20 years later. The experience of "the past" may not reach the world of children now.

Then I remembered a book: The Cabin on Mango Street, a contemporary Mexican-American poetess Sandra? Cisneros's novels. -This is a novel, but in fact it is more like a poetic autobiography of a writer to me. The novel tells the story of the growth of a little girl living in Mango Street, which is simple but profound.

Mango Street is not as poetic as we thought. This is a poor street. Only people who are not rich live there. People living in Mango Street are looking forward to one day being away from crowded and noisy places and going to a more spacious and bright place.

One day, three old sisters "smelling cinnamon" came to Mango Street. The three sisters have the ability to predict the future and think that girls will go far away when they grow up. One of the three sisters suddenly picked up the little girl's face and looked at it again and again. After a long silence, she said, "Always remember to come back when you leave."

The little girl looked blank. The man added, "You will always be from Mango Street. You can't forget what you know. You can't forget who you are. "

The words of this woman with Oracle power hit me-and of course hit the little girl in Mango Street. But many years later-many years later, when the girl was "strong", Mango Street could not keep her forever, so she left her hometown and went to other places. Friends and neighbors don't understand. Why did she go so far? Only she understood: "I left to come back. For those who cannot go out. "

I'm not sure. At the moment, how many children in the classroom will be the mango street girls written by Heather Ross? Life is irreversible and unpredictable. However, what is certain is that without history, the beginning is the end and residence.

Of course, the novel is not as simple as I said. It also involves racial differences, skin color and race. Authors are in the minority in America. Being a descendant of Latin American immigrants often means poverty, discrimination and cultural estrangement and loss. Therefore, the growth of this mango street girl and the guidance of a mysterious witch-like figure in the process of growing up are more metaphors of life.

Talking about race, cultural conflict, "home" or "memory" with children who are still "walking on the road" seems a bit too heavy and inappropriate. However, every child has to grow up. The taste of growing up will always haunt their lives. It is only possible that when they are still growing up, they may not realize that the turning point of their lives, the maze of life where they don't know, is actually linked with their childhood and hometown.

I feel deeply that for rural children in my hometown, if the concept of "village" does not exist, is it a lack of childhood? Six years ago, I told my children in my hometown about my childhood, the vegetable garden, the well platform, the Lisan Bridge, the moss in the cracks in the bricks on the bridge, the women washing vegetables on the river bank, the long and deep alleys, the morning market mixed with rice balls and fried dough sticks ... All kinds of experiences and details of life in rural areas and small towns can still be heard. Six years later, great changes have taken place in my hometown. Once familiar hills, bamboo forests and countryside ... seemed to disappear overnight. What is constantly changing and extending in front of us is no longer the fragrant rice fields, but the high-density buildings and steaming construction sites.

The concept of countryside is changing. Children in the country are no different from those in the city. Accepted the same information, the same concept of life. "Our sofas are similar, our living rooms are similar, and our elevators are similar. We get up in the morning and open the window to yawn." (Writer Han Shaogong)-The question is, how can we find our unique self in an increasingly similar life?

Leave and come back. But if the experience and memory of "leaving" are not enough to reach the world of "coming back" today, what can you do with your pale childhood? Whose childhood has no memory? More and more patterned life is dissolving the poetic meaning, richness and innocence of childhood.

"I used to think that there was a promised land, hiding the darkest corner of my memory. From then on, I felt a kind of loneliness of adults, and I prefer the vague road in my dream. " As early as 1930s, the poet He Qifang lamented the loss of his former hometown "Promised Land". The so-called "loneliness of adults" is the loneliness of losing childhood paradise. So in today's ubiquitous process of modern society, how does the fate of hometown villages affect one childhood after another?

Losing one's homeland makes the wanderer who has "gone" and "returned" lose the initial starting point of life, which actually means losing the hometown of his soul ... Perhaps this is the paradox of modern life?