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a few years ago, hegang entered the public's field of vision with its low housing prices and comfortable pace of life. some people chose to flee to hegang to buy a house and settle down, while more people were envious and wait-and-see. now that the popularity of hegang has faded, how are those young people from other places who still live in hegang doing now? what kind of life are they living? why don't they return to their hometown? are they living the life they want here?

after paying attention to the news about hegang, veteran media person and writer li yingdi began to be curious about these "escapees". at the end of october 2022, she set out from beijing and went to hegang to deeply experience the life here, get close to these "escapees", and finally completed the non-fiction literary work "the escapers".

she found that in hegang, "people call each other by their online names, don't ask for their real names, and don't ask about other people's past. if there is trust and friendship, they also accept the possibility that it may end at any time." the psychological distance between people is extremely distant, and no one is willing to talk about the past. in this city that is often covered with snow, they choose to live a cave-like life.

this article is excerpted from "the one who ran away" and is published with the permission of the publisher. the subheadings are written by the editor and the content has been deleted due to space limitations.

01

"did you really come to hegang to buy a house?"

until now, i am still not sure to what extent people in hegang are willing to reveal their true inner thoughts. i am also not sure whether others really care or are curious even if someone is willing to talk. most of the time, people may care more about themselves. it is difficult for people to face themselves, and they have come to such a place where they don’t know how long they will stay, and they are in a temporary state. even if everyone sits together, talking and laughing, they have already drawn the line in their hearts. i quickly accepted the rules here: control your curiosity, don’t ask too much, and don’t delve into the truth or falsehood. everyone calls each other by their online names, don’t ask about their real names, and don’t ask about other people’s past.if there is trust and friendship, accept the possibility that it may end at any time.

one day, wang li said in the group that she wanted to play script-killing games. i didn't know what it was, but decided to go and have a look. wang li called the business and asked me and the girl a i had met before to meet up. after we met, we got into a taxi and went to erdao street, where there were bars, script-killing shops, and board game halls. we were a little excited and a little nervous on the way. wang li said that she loved playing these games and thought it was a good opportunity to meet new friends. but there are few young people in hegang, so you have to try your luck if you want to organize a game. it was the first time for a and me to play.

the business invited three young men to come - the business usually arranges an equal number of opposite-sex players. they are very broad and are sitting in the lobby waiting. we walked into a closed room and sat at a table. on the table were character business cards, potato chips, and carbonated drinks. the boys sat in one row and the girls sat in another. we took off our thick cotton coats and hung them on the wall. on the table were six scripts called "farewell poems." "this script is very popular all over the country." said the staff.

the script is very thick and is about six boys and girls. each person was assigned a different role. wang li's character is lin xingluo. her brother suffers from leukemia. she was born only to provide her brother with umbilical cord blood. after that, she lived with others until her parents passed away and then moved to live with her brother. my character is chu yunge, who suffered from school bullying. a plays su cheng, whose family suffered a fire in the textile factory and whose father suffers from uremia. we lived together on chenghua street and went to the same school. the boys were our brothers, classmates or people we admired. in the middle, boys and girls put their arms around each other's shoulders. the staff tried to make us laugh. there was a link where men and women were paired up, each holding a paper cup, connected by a red rope in the middle, and said "i like you" to each other. we did it. but i couldn't get into this atmosphere. i felt like i was being punished.

that day, wang li put a pink clip on her bangs. she held the script, very attentively, and read it word by word.

lin xingluo's mission:

show off your and lu zeyuan's disney summer vacation to everyone!

ask around and see what everyone is doing this summer vacation. it’s definitely not as good as the fireworks summer vacation you and lu zeyuan are having!

hiding the surprise prepared for gu yan.

when the plot reached its end - half of the people died in a subway disaster in the senior year of high school - we actually played some ghosts. when we met again ten years later, we - the characters - went to the cemetery to say goodbye to the past feelings.

the music started and everyone in the room started crying. the boy sitting opposite me was crying, as were a and wang li.

"why aren't you crying?" the boy opposite me asked me.

the boys and girls wiped their tears with tissues. the performance was over, and we returned to reality from the script. the scripts were taken away and the conversation began. the boys were in their early twenties. two boys said they had just graduated last year. one said that all the young people in hegang were running away and they couldn't find a job here. later i learned that one of them stayed in this script-killing store as a clerk, and the other went to a chicken farm. the last boy was the "rich second generation" in hegang that i mentioned earlier. he said he had just returned to hegang from other places and was going to work as a civil servant.

"it's compiled by the province, not the city," he emphasized.

"do the local people in hegang own three or four houses per capita?" wang li asked.

the boy didn't hesitate. "i have four apartments, one high-rise, one duplex, one multi-storey apartment, and one villa." no one else said anything, so he continued, "i will transfer another apartment tomorrow."

"how much is a villa in hegang?"

"about one million yuan," he said, "but the house in hegang is not worth much."

the attention turned to the girls. "you don't look like locals." said a boy.

"we are all from other places," said wang li.

"what are you doing in hegang? are you here to buy a house?" said another boy.

"yes, we all bought houses in hegang," said a.

"you really bought a house?" they were a little surprised.

however, the conversation ended there. after the activity, we created a group. the "rich second generation" shared his daily life in the group: his car broke down and he was planning to repair it, and he might also change to a more expensive car. these two days, he could only ride his tairong motorcycle to buy egg burgers on the street. he asked us if we wanted to go horseback riding. the other two boys stopped talking later.

“when a man shows off his wealth, he probably wants to pick up girls.” said wang li on the way back to jiuzhou songhe.

02

in hegang, cats are always the best topic to start with.

in the following week, every night, after wang li finished his comic book work and a finished his game work, we went to the script-killing museum to play horror stories and mystery stories. one day, we sat in a room decorated in blood red, talking about murders, ghosts, curses, and detective cases, and screamed in a ghost room played by a staff member. after three experiences, we quickly lost interest. a went out once every two weeks again. wang li often said in the group, "it's so boring."

but humans are social animals after all, and they still want to be with others. even if it's just a script-killing show together, being able to sit at the table, play a role, recite lines, pretend to have feelings, and leave at any time after the show is over is better than always being alone. it's the same in hegang. people meet in clean and bright restaurants, eat greasy pork belly slices, drink foamy beer, play a game of karaoke, and play diamonds or clubs on the card table. people in the group call this kind of relationship "rice partner".

that day, the ningxia guy organized a party. wang li, a, and a boy met for dinner for the first time. the ningxia guy picked up everyone in a baojun nanny car and went to a music restaurant. the restaurant was very noisy, and a middle-aged man and woman were singing on the stage. after everyone arrived, people sat together, but they didn't seem to know what to say. while waiting for the food, people were still typing on their phones and chatting in the wechat group. the singing on the stage covered our silence. after dinner, the ningxia guy suggested going to karaoke together. we continued to sit in his car, the car was shaking, and the sound system was playing "stillness" by the huaer band. at the karaoke, we ordered a dozen snow beer. the ningxia guy was a microphone master and sang "the love of the boatman". others didn't sing much, so they took out poker cards and kept playing cards. finally, we came to the "hegang xiaochuan" barbecue restaurant, and people started talking about jokes in the group, such as wang li's previous love experience.

"you are a love-brained person." said the ningxia man.

"what's wrong with being in love? i want to meet true love, what's wrong with that?" wang li said again.

"but wanting to fall in love in hegang is like picking up gold in a trash can," said a. this is a joke, but it also speaks to the reality. there are few young people in hegang, and even fewer "ideal boys" who can attract wang li.

"i have already told my parents that i will take care of you in your old age, but don't even think about asking me to get married and have children," the ningxia man added.

a clinked glasses with him. "great minds think alike." wang li also clinked glasses.

however, no one talked about the past, and there were not many common interests and topics. after a dozen beers, only the ningxia man was still talking. he said that he used to work in a bank, and after resigning, he went to teach in a rural primary school in pingdingshan, henan. the village was too poor, so poor that there was no running water, and people could only collect rainwater to drink. i even thought about building a road for the village at that time. do you know how much money it would cost? the power of an individual is too small, really, he kept saying, and now he regrets it a little, he might as well have stayed in the bank.

i was the only one at the table listening to the ningxia people's story. wang li and a lowered their heads and checked their phones. they were not very interested. wang li just wanted to go home. it was almost 12 o'clock in the evening. since we last met to play script-killing, a has not left the house for almost ten days. today, she brought four bags of garbage downstairs. i wanted to talk to a, but she retreated. she always used jokes to cover up the distance between her and others.

a week later, the ningxia man invited us to his home for dinner again. he loved to take care of everything, and we didn't have to worry about anything. he prepared meals, washed vegetables, cut meat, and cut mushrooms. he had a large double-door refrigerator with many meal packages in it - braised pork rice, japanese curry potato rice, cured fish, and durian ice cream. we took the food out of the refrigerator, and he just smiled. but precisely because people living in hegang don't talk about the past easily, people don't know what is true and what is false. someone mentioned a woman's love story. another person said, but is there any evidence for this?

"maybe one day someone will say, 'i'm actually divorced and have two children. who knows whether it's true or not?'" said the girl.

"then what are you doing in hegang?" wang li asked her.

"selling gaming equipment online." the girl said. she continued browsing her phone.

after the meal, people didn't know what to talk about, so they went to the ningxia people's gym to see the cat. a long-haired tabby cat, only the size of a palm, was picked up by the ningxia people from a decoration store a while ago. the cat hid in the corner of the fitness equipment. "oh my god, this is so cute." wang li always spoke with high spirits. she pinched egg yolk for it to eat and took out her mobile phone to take pictures. the ningxia people added food and water to the cat. everyone came forward to touch the cat.

the atmosphere became relaxed.in hegang, cats are always the best topic to start with - let's talk about cats.how did this cat come to you? why is it called this name? is it friendly or annoying? does it like to play with cat toys or cardboard boxes? does it like to hunch over and run around the house, or does it lie in its nest all the time and be too lazy to move? does it sleep on your chest? let's talk about cats, so far, safely, and without the possibility of causing offense. people know what to ask and what to answer. almost everyone who comes to hegang has a cat.

03

"don't interfere in my life"

speaking of cats, we have to mention the girl c who was present. c held the ningxia man's tabby cat in her arms. the cat grabbed her sweatshirt with its claws. c was 29 years old, with a ponytail and some severe hair loss. she wore a pair of glasses and looked like a tired bear. she opened an online game studio and sold virtual items in the game. half a year ago, she came to hegang with six cats. a while ago, on her birthday, the ningxia man gave her a little teddy. now she has six cats and a dog at home.

among the people at this table, c was only familiar with people from ningxia. she always looked alert when facing other people. later i found out the reason. when i first added her as a friend, my wechat account did not indicate my gender. her wechat profile picture was a slender woman with her belly button exposed. a strange man added her in the group before. "he asked me if i was being kept by someone since i never went out and spent money lavishly. i said you were sick and it was none of your business." such annoying things happened many times."don't interfere in my life."

the first time i met c was at a barbecue party, and the ningxia people were there. raw beef, tenderloin, and sausages sizzled in the grill. the straight-tube range hood sucked away the fumes from the grill, making a dull roar and the aroma of meat. on the table was hegang's local drink "little champagne", with ice cream-flavored soda bubbling in a green glass bottle. c took out a lighter and lit a jiaozi cigarette. the cigarette butt lit up with an orange flame and then went out.

c was talking about her cat and how to bathe it in hegang. i heard that she only goes out once a month.

later i went to c's home. she lives in a very remote corner of hegang. you have to leave the city, pass through low villages, and some vegetable greenhouses built with gray film to reach her home. the greenhouse is set up on the roadside, like a glowing cocoon. following the main road, we came to a group of buildings without boundaries. her home is at the edge of the edge. behind it is the bottomless snowfield. neat and dry pine trees are lined up like sentinels. the pink sunset is not far away, and a small moon rises. the train whistle that can often be heard in hegang city is not heard here.

six british shorthair blue cats hid in the house. the cats all looked the same, with dark grey fur and whiskey-coloured eyes. two of them had folded ears and one had short legs. she loved british shorthair blue cats. i looked for those dark shadows in the house, under the bed, behind the curtains, and the last one hiding under the bathroom sink. teddy was very noisy and was very small after being shaved. whenever we tried to touch the cats, teddy got jealous and hit them. after a while, the cats got used to strangers, and the dark blue shadows jumped from one corner to another.

introduced by the ningxia people, i met c twice alone. but it was still difficult to talk to her more. she got up at 3 pm, didn't eat lunch, had just taken a shower, and her hair was wet. she went to the kitchen and made potatoes, roast pork ribs, clam soup, and fried pork belly with dried tofu. after cooking, she returned to the computer.

“where is the cat when you sleep?”

"it depends on their mood."

"what did you do today?"

"i didn't do anything, i just woke up."

"what time did you go to bed yesterday?"

"i played "super strike breakthrough" all night long."

"are you going to play by yourself or with someone else?"

"others play with me, i give them money, and they entertain me. isn't that great?" she was silent for a while and continued smoking."it's boring. not having a job makes me boring. i feel like i can't find the meaning of my existence, and i feel very uncomfortable."her eyes turned to the computer and she tapped the mouse with her right hand.

the computer screen displayed games and yy channels. messages kept popping up in the virtual room. she watched for a long time - the gossip about the boss arranging a meeting with a playmate, the intrigues between the playmates, and so on. she loves to order playmates to play games. recently, when she was playing a shooting game, she ordered three playmates every night: two boys and one girl. four people formed a team. the price of playing with someone was 50 yuan per person per hour. she could spend 700 to 800 yuan a night. when she first came to hegang, she looked for playmates to play games almost every day. she spent 20,000 to 30,000 yuan on a boy. later, the boy said he would come to hegang to find her.

she smiled. "i said, then what identity do you use to come to me? if i didn't give you money, would you talk to me?"

after the call was connected, she and her playmate shared each other's lives, game strategies, and chatted about trivial matters. relationships built on money are stable at certain times and can also be exchanged for the right to speak. she is always fickle and will change people when she is tired of them. she does not know what her playmate looks like, and their understanding of each other is limited to voice, game, and money exchanges. she is very satisfied with the three people in her current fixed team, "anyway, on valentine's day, all three of them gave me red envelopes, and on my birthday, everyone gave me gifts."

04

“my past won’t get in the way here.”

at a previous dinner, she talked about the past. she said that she was born in a village in chongqing and her parents worked on a farm.

i remember it very clearly. the sentence i heard most often was, if you were a son, your brother would have nothing to do with you. but can i choose whether it is a boy or a girl? my parents worked away from home, and i didn’t see them until i was four years old. i don’t know why, but i remember it so clearly. when my mother came back, she bought me a skirt and a flower in my hair. i was so happy, but when she came back, the flower was taken off. when my mother saw that the flower was gone, she slapped me in the face. it seemed like she realized for the first time that she had a daughter who could be beaten. when i was thirteen, my brother went swimming in the river. my mother thought it was my fault. i didn’t watch him. she filled a pool with water and pressed my face into it. if my relatives hadn’t stopped me, i would have drowned.

"i want some seaweed soaked in vinegar." she stopped talking here, called the waiter, and continued to peel shrimp. her voice was high and low, sometimes cheerful, as if she was telling some interesting things that had nothing to do with her, but sometimes she seemed to be immersed in those distant memories, as if she was thinking about something.

the ningxia man and i sat opposite each other, wearing disposable gloves covered with red oil, and just listened quietly. later, the ningxia man told me that they had known each other for half a year, and this was the first time he heard c say these things.

after i became an adult, my first job was in a printing factory, printing cardboard. cardboard is very sharp and it is easy to scratch my hands and make them bleed. then i returned to chongqing and looked for various jobs. i started to be a "thug" in the game, helping people level up and draw equipment on a web game. at that time, i could play games for 16 or 17 hours a day, staying up all night. i was young and had enough of the days of being broke. later, i did almost everything in the store, finding thugs, forming groups, putting things on the shelves, and making web pages. i learned there in 2017, and in 2018 i decided to start my own business, and in 2019 i became a boss... if you ask me how i have been through all these years, it is not that i jumped to this stage in one step. later, i stayed alone, rented a house in the city center, and usually did not go out. the longest time i did not leave the rental house was half a year.

then she bought cats, the first one, the second one, and the third one. two of the cats gave birth to five kittens. she sent two away, leaving three. but that day, when the door opened and someone was about to take them away, the three cats suddenly ran behind her.

"at that moment, you know what? it turns out that i am also needed." she said, "i won't send them off." she decided to live with six cats. later, she saw a video of a short video blogger in hegang, who bought a house and renovated it remotely, and then came to hegang.

"this won't get tangled up with my past."she said.

the ningxia man said, “but you also met some new people in hegang.”

"but i didn't have close relationships with them," she said.

"that's right." the ningxia man thought for a while and said, "come to hegang, no one will care about your past."

that night, i asked c on wechat if we could meet another day to continue talking about the past. she said forget it, most people who come to hegang don't want to talk about the past. when i sat in her house, i sat side by side with her in front of the computer in the bedroom. i looked around and saw a pair of teddy bears at the end of the bed. the two bears were about 1.6 meters tall. now, i can't remember the more specific appearance of the teddy bears, i only remember that their eyes were round black buttons and there was a layer of gray on their white fur. one of them said "love" and the other said "you". "did you bring this from chongqing?" the girl nodded. i guess they must have been given to her by someone who was very important to her, such as a lover who had broken up for a long time, or a friend far away in the south. i thought about her stuffing the two bears into a box wrapped with tape, carrying memories and past emotions, packed as luggage and shipped to hegang. i was about to continue asking, but then i remembered what she said before, don't talk about the past anymore. i decided not to ask more.

however, at the dinner in the ningxia family’s home, no one talked about these things. no one mentioned what happened before hegang. wang li didn’t ask c why he kept six cats, and c didn’t know what wang li did in hegang. people were busy picking up food or touching cats. so the dinner ended with a discussion about the neighbors.

"there is a crab shop downstairs from me. it's very noisy and complaining is useless," said a boy.

"the person downstairs seems to be dead. i can't hear any sound." said c.

"my neighbors next door are always quarreling," said wang li.

after dinner, we went to the pet store to pick up girl c's dog. c asked the clerk to bathe teddy, shave the baby's hair, and do internal and external deworming. because there were some bumps on the skin, she also took a medicinal bath and put on a pink dress again. after taking the dog out, c directly wrapped teddy in her down jacket. the dog was shivering with cold. we sent c home, walked through those white greenhouses, and then went to the building. we climbed to the sixth floor and came down. c opened the door, and a blue cat looked at us from a distance and immediately ran away.

on the way back, wang li and i took a taxi. the familiar scenery outside the window was still there, with black pine trees and solid snow. wang li and i sat in the back seat. wang li suddenly said that at 2 o'clock last night, it seemed that someone turned the door handle outside. she lay in bed, not daring to move, thinking that if it turned again, she would call the police, but she waited and waited and heard no sound, and she fell asleep.

i asked her why she didn’t say anything in the group?

wang li shrugged. she seemed to be used to facing everything alone. perhaps,in hegang, people are used to facing everything alone.

this article is excerpted from

the one who ran away

author: li yingdi

publisher: wenhui publishing house

producer: new classic culture

publication year: 2024-8