When he got off the train, He Xin let out a long breath. The air outside the car was cold, but not as fresh as he imagined. There was a familiar smell of burnt coal, as if he had returned to the big chimney where the smoke was billowing when he was a child.
The smoky small hometown town.
He looked up and saw that the whole sky was gray and there was no trace of sunlight. A gust of cold wind blew up a cloud of dust, which made him shiver immediately. He quickly turned his back and pulled up the zipper of his down jacket.
Put the hat on the back again.
Dragging the suitcase, he slowly walked out with the flow of people. He still regretted that he had known this earlier. He might as well have promised Ning Hao to send a car to pick him up.
Although the Chinese New Year is still a month away and the peak of Spring Festival travel has not yet reached its peak, the flow of people returning home has begun to take shape, especially in Zhangjiakou and Datong. Most of the destinations for working are in the capital.
He was on the train at 3:30 in the morning. It was already almost 10 o'clock. For more than six hours, he was trapped in an airtight carriage, crowded with people, and full of all kinds of smells. It tortured him to death. At the same time, he was also profound.
I feel that I have become much more squeamish in the past two years, and I didn’t have so many problems before.
As soon as he got out of the station, he saw Ning Hao wrapped up like a bear, holding a cigarette in his mouth and stamping his feet, waiting there.
"Haozi!" He Xin shouted.
Ning Hao came over after hearing the news, and looked among the crowd leaving the station. After seeing him, he quickly threw away the cigarette butt in his hand, jogged over, took the suitcase lever from his hand, and said with a smile: "On the way.
Did it go well?"
"It's not bad, it's just that there are a lot of people." He Xin forced a smile.
"Looking at you like this, I know it must be crowded on the road! It was the same every time I came back from winter vacation. This carriage was like a stuffy jar. It was so crowded that I had to endure more than ten people every time.
Hours. Your train is considered fast, it only takes less than six and a half hours."
When He Xin heard this, he immediately felt unhappy and said, "Then you didn't tell me earlier!"
"I said I would send a car to pick you up, but you insisted on not wanting to do it. You also said you wanted to see the scenery along the way, so what else could I do?" Ning Hao said, spreading his hands.
"..."
He Xin had heard that the scenery along the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway was particularly beautiful, so he wanted to take the train and enjoy it all the way. But when he bought the tickets, he couldn't buy tickets for the day at all, and the rest were tickets for the early morning departure. This time he
The bus at 3:30 in the morning is considered the latest one.
When the train departed, it was pitch black outside the window and nothing could be seen. When the sky started to lighten up, we were already approaching Zhangjiakou, and everything was covered with loess, which was always the destination of his trip - Datong.
"OK OK!"
Ning Hao raised his arms affectionately. He originally wanted to put his arms around his neck, but found that it was out of reach, so he had to lower his height, put his arms around his waist, and said affectionately: "I have been waiting here for you for almost half an hour. Everyone is here."
You’re almost freezing, so hurry up and take a shower when you get back. I’ll treat you to mutton for lunch. This is the real sheep here!”
Ning Hao still drove the Jinbei van, which was still new and not old. He drove this car all the way from Qingdao a week in advance.
The car came out of the train station parking lot and headed south, crossing the entire city. He Xin came to this place for the first time and looked out of the car window curiously.
His impression of Datong was still based on what was taught in geography class in junior high school. Datong is a city rich in coal reserves and an important industrial base in my country.
"The urban area is quite big, but there don't seem to be many people there!" He muttered until the buildings on the roadside gradually became sparse and low.
“Of course the urban area is big!”
Ning Hao pointed to the car coming from the opposite direction while driving, and said with a smile: "Did you see it, Jin B! This is the second largest city in Shanxi! The secretaries are all members of the Provincial Standing Committee!"
As he spoke, he said in a low tone: "But now resources are scarce. There were rumors some time ago that the big factories here are going to move to Xinjiang. I don't know whether it is true or not. It makes everyone panic. By the way.
, Chief Jia’s "Ren Xiaoyao" was filmed here."
He Xin nodded, but it seemed that what he saw was a little different from the city that appeared in the movie.
Ning Hao's hometown, Huairen, is only about 20 kilometers away from Datong City, less than half an hour's drive away. It used to belong to Datong, but a few years ago the local administrative system was reorganized and Huairen was moved to Shuozhou.
When the car was driving in the dilapidated county town, Ning Hao saw He Xin still looking out curiously, and couldn't help but smile and asked: "How is it here?"
"It's a bit like "Three Entering Three Cities"."
"Haha, that makes sense! "Three Entering Three Cities" was originally filmed in Pingyao. This place used to be an ancient city like Pingyao, but it has a much longer history than Pingyao. It was called Yunzhong in ancient times. Have you heard of it?"
"So this is Yunzhong County!" He Xin suddenly blurted out.
He had read "Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty" several times in his previous life, and the most impressive thing about it was that whenever Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty wanted to attack the Xiongnu, he usually divided his troops into two groups, one from Youbeiping and Yuyang, and the other from Izumo.
middle.
You Beiping and Yuyang Hexin estimated that they should be in that area of the capital. Only then did they realize that Yunzhong was here.
"Oh, I can't tell, but you still have some knowledge?" Ning Hao unexpectedly forgot about him and said.
"Fart, I was very good at history, okay?"
While they were joking, the van stopped and turned into the courtyard of a guest house.
The exterior of the guest house looks very old and its scale is not large. It has three floors and only about a dozen guest rooms on each floor.
It is estimated that the business is not very good at the moment. Ning Hao stood downstairs and shouted twice, and saw people coming down one after another. Even his girlfriend Sister Na was already here.
There are only about a dozen people in the entire crew, and Ning Hao is also a screenwriter, director, and photographer. In addition to his partners in commercials, there are also his classmates and actors at Nortel, and He Xin is the only one behind the scenes.
People, quite a bit like a grass-roots team.
Although the guest house is small, there is a separate bathroom in the room, and the heating inside is very strong. The water in the bath is very hot and the volume of water is large. After bathing, it is enough to stay in the room wearing autumn clothes and long trousers.
This lunch was at a small restaurant next to the guest house, which was a welcome treat for him.
This small restaurant is called a restaurant, but it is actually a mutton restaurant. There are very few cooking dishes, and the main business is mutton. And the mutton here is quite unique. It is boiled mutton, and the large pieces of mutton are boiled from a mouthful of 18 tons of water.
Take it out of the big pot, chop it, put it in a big basin and serve it directly to the table. It doesn't matter the size or thickness, but it's all a pretty big piece.
The dipping ingredients include soy sauce, vinegar, oil chili, minced garlic, coriander, chopped green onion, etc. You can mix it according to your own taste, and then there is a large pot of mutton soup, with a solid alcohol stove underneath, and various kinds of things in it.
Put the offal, cut into pieces such as lamb's blood and cabbage vermicelli on a plate and put it aside. You can eat it while eating, which gives it a bit of a hot pot flavor.
The wine is loose wine. It is said to be pure grain wine brewed in a local winery. Although the taste is average, you will not get sick if you drink too much.
Because everyone is about the same age, some have just graduated, and some are still students, the atmosphere quickly became warm after a few sips of wine.
Some of them are just doing it for a job, and some are taking advantage of the winter vacation to practice and make some money, and at the same time to add to their resumes. However, from their conversation, He Xin can still tell that they all
They are a group of people who love movies.
There is no industry in this small place. Apart from a few coal mines, it mainly relies on agriculture and breeding. The sheep here are very famous. Just like the meal they had for lunch, the mutton has no smell and is very delicious.
He Xin once worked in the canteen of the Chinese Theater Company. He got up early every morning and went shopping with Zhang Qilin. He knew a little bit about whether mutton had a bad smell. It was mainly because the mutton had been exposed to the air for a long time and had oxidation.
It will make the mutton taste tainted. If the lamb is just killed and put into the pot directly, there will be no taint at all.
The monk that He Xin will play in this film comes from a village called Nanxiaozhai below the county seat, which is Ning Hao's real hometown. It is said that this village is the administrative village with the most sheep in the county. The history of sheep farming
Even dating back to the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, almost all the men in the village were sheep-killers. It was precisely because they had committed so many crimes that there must be a temple in the village to relieve them and give them psychological comfort.
Ning Hao said that if his father had not left his hometown to become a glorious steel worker, he would definitely be a member of the army of sheep-raising and killing sheep in the village now, and he himself is most likely a sheepherder.