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The Distance
This is an essay I have read in http://www.r618.com/new/Article_Show4165.html. Maybe it is some blue, but I think many people, especially those peasants still live the lives the essay bewrited. So I translate it to English. I like the essay, and I would like you will also.
A peasant longed for going to Beijing for a long time. 30 years ago, it cost 30 yuan from Hangzhou to Beijing by train. He can’t go to Beijing because the cost would be one year’s harvest for him.
30 years passed and the peasant is old. He chared for others and could save 600 yuan a year, but he could’t go to Beijing just because the average ticket which from Hangzhou to Beijing had rised to 200 yuan.
Last year he was sick. He was told in the afternoon of cancer after health examination. The household tried to borrow money to cure him. He said,
“ Don’t spent money on curing me. Can I go to Beijing to see Chairman Mao with the money, please?”
The family consented. The relatives summed up two thousand yuan and sent him to the station. In the platform, he suddenly changed his mind. He said it is two thousand yuan, so much money that he would chare for three years to save up.
The night before May 1st this year, he died. Before he went to the other world, he murdered to himself,
“ It’s so strange! It has passed so many years, but it seems that Beijing is more and more further away?”
Is it strange? The distance between Hangzhou and Beijing has been still the same for so many years. If we see the distance from the faster and faster speed of the train, the distance should be closer not farer away. The old peasant had chased his dream for going to Beijing, but Beijing is still in the northern far away, remaining an unrealizable dream for him, for so many peasants, for so many average people. |
