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Chapter 2 Palace Garden (1)

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    Suzhen, Gong Xiaojun's mother, was standing at the gate of the courtyard, quietly watching the scene performed by Gong Xiaojun.  One of her hands is holding on to the mottled door frame, and the other is raised high above her eyebrows, like an old sheep herding man looking for lost lambs on the hillside.  This kind of performance by Gong Xiaojun was no surprise to his mother.

    Gong Xiaojun's home is a small courtyard house, which was called the Gongjia Garden before liberation. The house is the kind with black tiles, gray bricks and red windows.  The four words "Gongjia Garden" tell people who its owner is.  This kind of courtyard house was more common in our northern city in the past few years, just like the tube buildings lined up on both sides of the road today, but it has become less and less with the reconstruction of the old city.

    The Gong Family Garden has never seen a single flower in the past or now, just like the gardens built by countless real estate development companies have not seen a single flower.  There is only one tree in the courtyard, a pomegranate tree that blooms but does not bear fruit. It is red in summer, like a huge parasol; in winter, it is bare, like a bamboo broom that has been used for a long time.

    There used to be a pair of white marble lions at the door. They are exquisitely carved and realistic in shape. They are both mighty and cute. When passers-by pass by them, they can't help but stretch their hands and touch them, so they are even more radiant.  When "*****", this pair of stone lions will naturally hinder the eyes of the revolutionary rebels, it is a product of feudal capitalism.  One day, Li Ernuo, who was armed with a red armband on his waist and a yellow military cap on his head, led a group of Red Guards to the door, stood around the stone lion, and shouted hoarsely.  After shouting slogans such as "destroy the four old and establish the four new" for a while, they smashed it into rubble.  When the lion fell on its side, it happened to hit Li Ernuo's right foot, and his skin was torn apart, and blood flowed out, making him scream in pain, like a black pig being pushed into a slaughterhouse.  He was quickly sent to the hospital by his revolutionary comrades, and was diagnosed with a comminuted fracture by the doctor who recited a large section of Chairman Mao's quotations before seeing him.  Li Erhao stayed in the hospital for more than ten days, and every day he would lie on the hospital bed and sing a song of quotations "make up your mind, not be afraid of sacrifice, overcome all difficulties, and strive for victory".  Later, the skin and flesh were healed, but the bones were not connected. The doctor may have made a small mistake, just like a clever tailor who sewed the right pocket to the left pocket.  Li Ernuo paid a great price for the revolution, and he became lame from then on.

    Now there are two pedestals for lions at the entrance of the palace garden. The pedestals are not flat, but concave, so people often urinate in them at night, making them angry.

    Gong Xiaojun's daughter-in-law is Liu Yang. She married into the palace family with her nose covered. People in Guangming Street still remember the scene of her jumping out of the car with her hands covering her nostrils and frowning, as if she had jumped into a cesspit.  It was the first day of the first year in the 1990s. At this time, the city was already covered with ice and snow, and the wind was howling, and the night urine that had been frozen into a mound of ice could hardly emit any smell.  Both Gong Xiaojun and his mother Suzhen think so, Liu Yang's move is a kind of contempt for the Gong family.

    This kind of contempt made the Gong family always brood.

    It has been nearly half a century since the Gong family was despised by others. Of course, half a century ago was a different scene.

    No matter from which point of view, Gong Xiaojun's grandfather should be the pride of the Gong family. In the 1930s, he made his fortune by baking pancakes and sweet potatoes on the road, and later opened a small shop on Changmao Road.  The only son, Tianfei, was sent to the university, while he himself lived frugally, was honest and dedicated to "selfishness", and devoted himself to accumulating wealth. Before his death, the inheritance handed over to the college student Gong Tianfei was already well-known in the city.  Prominent Kung Kee food shop.

    Gong Tianfei, also Gong Xiaojun's grandfather, inherited his father's business after graduating from university. He collected the recipes of some local snacks, processed them, refined them carefully, and further developed Gongji Food Store. More than ten kinds of local famous foods became  Many high-ranking officials and dignitaries often visit these gifts for people visiting relatives and friends in this city to add luster to them.  In this way, Gongji Food became a smash hit, and opened several branches, and the business was also booming.

    Gong Xiaojun's father, Gong Daren, was born in the late 1930s.  From the day he could remember, he remembered that his father Gong Tianfei was a man who could cry very much.  Gong Tianfei cried like a wronged child, his red eyes reminded him of an injured rabbit.  As the signboards of Gongji food store fell from the store door one by one, the property of the Gong family was also reduced one by one, and Gong Tianfei's crying became smaller and smaller, just like the moaning of mosquitoes.  Finally, one day, when Gongji Food Store put up a big signboard of a public-private partnership and renamed it "People's Food Store", Gong Tianfei left his wife and children and hanged himself.

    Death is an easy thing for a person, and it is also not an easy thing. In other words, the process of dying is easy, but the prelude to death is not easy.easy.

    Gong Tianfei chose a night with a full moon to die.  On that day, the members of the Gong family suddenly noticed that he had stopped crying, his face was as calm as water, and he was not surprised by favor or humiliation.  He drank a jug of wine with dinner, burped loudly, and went to bed early in the bedroom.  At that time, the family members were afraid that he would have problems, mainly because they were afraid that he would have neurological problems, because there were already many business owners like him in the city who were crazy or stupid, crying and laughing in front of their shops all day long.  When the family saw that he was asleep, they quickly closed the door, turned off the lights and went to bed, not daring to make any noise.  Actually, Gong Tianfei didn't sleep, he closed his eyes and thought about the plan he had thought about for a few days, which was death.  Of course, he also thought of many reasons to live, but there seemed to be more reasons to die.  The family business of the Gong family disappeared in his hands, and his shameless face to his ancestors was the most powerful reason for his death.

    Gong Tianfei got up from the bed at one o'clock in the middle of the night, when there was a tabby cat standing on the archway at the gate of the courtyard and croaking.  He glanced at his wife and children beside him, and tiptoed out of the room.  He sat down under the pomegranate tree in the courtyard.  He spent most of his childhood under this pomegranate tree, whose trunk was no bigger than a wrist.  He played under the tree, caught ants climbing up the tree, and listened to his mother telling stories.  Gong Xiaofei remembered that he once caught a cicada monkey under a tree, and there was a piece of mud on its yellow head.  He put the cicada monkey on the screen window at the head of the bed, and watched it shed its cicada shell little by little under the moonlight, turning into a black cicada.  He couldn't put it down a little bit, and when his mother told him that if the cicada couldn't drink the dew, he would die, he let it fly without hesitation.  Gong Tianfei thought at that time, what a terrible thing to die.  (Remember the site URL: www.hlnovel.com
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