The legendary “Doomsday” happened to coincide with the traditional Chinese Winter Solstice. Its arrival did not cause us panic; instead, it gave me a calmer heart to enjoy the pleasures of “spending the winter.”
The Winter Solstice is a very important festival in our rural areas. Generally, the whole family gathers for a meal, and we also make Zongzi (sticky rice dumplings) and other treats. After coming to Guangzhou, it is naturally not very convenient to go back, but I still wanted to find that festive feeling. So, in the afternoon, I went to the West Gate of South China Normal University to see if there were any Zongzi for sale. However, I found that the West Gate mostly offered various local snacks, lacking the long-lost fragrance of Zongzi. But then I suddenly remembered Xiaofei mentioning that in her hometown, they eat Tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) for the Winter Solstice. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do; I also bought two bags of Tangyuan to cook back in my dormitory.
After finishing the Tangyuan, I packed some up and brought them to my high school deskmate, Huang Jin, at South China Agricultural University. I chatted, laughed, and ate with him, and we played chess all night long. Good brother, cheers! May our friendship last forever! I know that in reality, nothing can last forever, but this is our ideal and our belief. If we don’t even aspire to it, how can it ever become real?
Huang Jin was my deskmate for all three years of high school. Perhaps I will never find another good brother who was “face-to-face” with me day and night for three years. I cherish every bit of that friendship. Similarly, during those three years of high school, I made many rare friends and shared many precious moments with them. Although university has scattered us in different places, I believe we are still connected. If someone says there are no lifelong things in this world, I simply won’t believe them; I insist that there are. What do you think?
To those I deeply miss: are you doing well? The weather is getting cold; don’t forget to wear more clothes. However, since winter is here, spring cannot be far behind.
Doomsday did not take us to the “Pure Land,” but it certainly brought us great joy!
“Doomsday” also brought unusual traffic to my website. On that day, there were actually more than 2,000 IPs that entered my site by searching for “Mayan calendar” (I suspect they might be bots? But the problem is the IPs were different...). It seems this record will be hard to break... If this is real traffic, then I can only say that the “bandwagon mentality” of Chinese people is still widespread. I hope everyone takes this as a lesson.
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