How to celebrate the new year on the spot by the "retrograde" on the way home
Our reporters Chen Nuo, Hu Rui, Wu Huijun, and Dai Wei
Does your miss have a length?
Home is the homesickness home.
During the Spring Festival, we finally have a reason to put everything down and go home.
However, this year, there are countless you and me who sacrificed reunion for the sake of epidemic prevention and control and chose to celebrate the new year on the spot.
Countdown to the New Year, reporters walked into the villages, streets, construction sites and even the Spring Festival transport trains and other grassroots lines, and met "retrogrades" on the way home, "absentees" on the New Year's Eve dinner...the new year is approaching, how long are their misses?
2162 kilometers: My footsteps, pick you up "home"
"Hello, there is your courier, is there anyone at home?" This kind of opening remark, 32-year-old Li Hongqiang, can't count how many times he has to say it a day.
Li Hongqiang is a courier brother of SF Express Hefei Pharmaceutical Industrial Park. He is 2162 kilometers away from his hometown, Hulan District, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province. He is now at the forefront of the fight against the epidemic.
During the Spring Festival in previous years, Li Hongqiang would take his wife and children on the train to the north and travel 22 hours to go home for the New Year.
This year, he didn't even open the ticketing website, but took the initiative to apply to the company and stay on duty. "I definitely can't go back. It would be better to reunite colleagues who can go home."
Li Hongqiang's work starts at 7:30 in the morning.
As soon as the mail van arrived, he got into the carriage, moved and sorted the parcels skillfully, put on a helmet, jumped on the electric tricycle, and set off in different directions in the city.
Even if you wear a mask, you can smell the new year.
Li Hongqiang found that there were fewer people returning home in the city this year, and the express delivery he had to deliver increased—salted ducks, sausages, winter bamboo shoots...this is the New Year’s goods, but also nostalgia.
Li Hongqiang is also missing the food in his hometown: "I miss the local food and pork stewed vermicelli at home." He said, "The elders in the family also miss us very much, especially after my son was born in 2016, they were looking forward to the Spring Festival. I can hug him when we meet."
This makes him more certain of the weight of each courier in his hand.
"Although I can't go home, my footsteps can alleviate others' missing home." Li Hongqiang said.
1822 kilometers: reunion always has "time difference"
The sound of the siren of the Spring Festival transport train means returning home, but for Shi Fengrong, it is a departure from home.
She is a diner in the Taishen fleet of Hefei Passenger Transport Section of China Railway Shanghai Bureau Group Co., Ltd.
According to the plan, on New Year's Eve, she was on the K91 train from Taizhou, Jiangsu to East Shenzhen, covering a total distance of 1822 kilometers.
On New Year's Eve, this bus is approaching Jiujiang, Jiangxi, and will go all the way south, once again "leaving" his hometown of Hefei behind.
After the Spring Festival this year, Shi Fengrong will retire.
Take another look at the dining car that has accompanied me for 27 years-12 dining tables, 48 seats, pure white curtains... How many times during the Spring Festival, this place has been crowded, but at this time it looks empty.
"They are all advocating to celebrate the New Year on the spot. This year, the number of passengers on this train has been reduced by half." Shi Fengrong said, putting on his headscarf, wearing an apron, and wiping every table, even if few people came.
On the way home, food is the best comfort for homesickness.
For every meal, Shi Fengrong, who is no longer young, would push up the dining car and ran back and forth between the front and the rear of the car. The number of steps in a day often "dominated" the circle of friends.
Counting forward at least 16 Spring Festivals, Shi Fengrong's thoughts will continue to grow as the train progresses.
"In the past, there was no mobile phone. I just made a call at the station's public phone booth to report safety." Shi Fengrong said, listening to the son on the phone calling his mother, he had to hold back his tears when his eyes were red, hung up the phone and returned to the car. Pretend to be nonchalant.
Nowadays, the whole family is working on the railway, gathering little and leaving more has become the norm for Shi Fengrong during the Spring Festival.
"Last year because of the epidemic, everyone popularized video "cloud" gatherings. In fact, our family has long been used to it." She said that the railway people's New Year's Eve dinner was either advanced or postponed, and there was always a "time lag" in the reunion.
However, leaving the old and welcoming the new is still very exciting.
The 6 staff members of the dining car, old and young, are already close to each other.
Chef Yang Hongwei wrote the New Year's Eve dinner menu, "12 dishes, every dish is hard!" Waiter Hu Nannan calculated the arrangement work, "Paste window grilles, hang lanterns, and the new year will be enough."
At that time, the dining car and the whole family will get on the train with the whole family and enjoy a lively year.
1363 kilometers: the little sun rises and shines towards home
At this moment, next to the Dongpu Reservoir in the western suburbs of Hefei, a large construction site of 600 acres is in full swing.
Tower cranes are strewn, muck trucks enter in file, and more than 200 construction workers are working day and night. In a few days, they will welcome the New Year on the construction site.
This is the site of a comprehensive research facility construction project for the key system of the fusion reactor.
The fusion reactor can be called the most precise and complex project made by mankind, used to simulate the nuclear fusion of the sun, so that it can obtain a steady flow of energy from it.
For Zhang Yuan, a steel worker, cutting-edge technology may be obscure, but he is full of expectations for the "artificial sun" that is about to rise.
When the reporter saw him, he was wearing an orange vest and a yellow safety helmet. He squatted on the ground and carefully tied the steel frame used to lay the foundation: the iron wires were firmly tied to the joints of the steel bars to increase the strength of the steel bars. .
"This is the first time I spent Chinese New Year in a foreign country, saying that it is impossible not to miss home." This Mongolian guy from Harqin Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region said. In the twelfth lunar month of the past year, he and his brother had already sat around their home. On the kang.
And this year, after he was off work, he looked at the phone calendar and found out that this day was a small year.
Apart from the epidemic, the one who kept Zhang Yuan's return to his hometown had a simple wish: to earn more money.
"Stay on the construction site, you can get three times your salary, and you can earn subsidies." Zhang Yuan said that the money will be saved for his parents. "I hope they will not work so hard. My brother and I have grown up."
Since coming to the construction site in June last year, Zhang Yuan has hardly left here. The city is still unfamiliar to him, but no matter where he is, he can always accurately find the northeast-his hometown is 1,363 kilometers away.
"2021 is my birth year. My parents called several times to urge me to buy red underwear to wear." Zhang Yuan said that the first time he spent the Chinese New Year alone, his family inevitably missed it.
This concern fell on the minds of site managers.
One month before the Spring Festival, Xu Hui, secretary of the party branch of the Anhui Company's Fusion Reactor Project of the China Construction Fifth Engineering Group Co., Ltd., was busy celebrating the New Year for the two hundred brothers.
"New Year's Eve dinner is more abundant than at home, and New Year's Eve is more lively than hometown." Xu Hui said, "More than 30 project managers will accompany them to celebrate the New Year together."
When the reporter asked Zhang Yuan to write something to his parents, he placed the wooden board on the construction site and wrote, "After the epidemic stabilizes, after work, I will also find time to go home and bring you some Anhui specialties." He joked. Said: "Maybe it's the rising sun under my feet."
105 kilometers: "I don't love home, but family members love me"
In just 21 minutes, Bai Yuting can zero the length of missing.
However, this year, 105 kilometers away from home is an insurmountable distance.
In August last year, Bai Yuting, who graduated from the medical school, joined Hefei Dean Medical Laboratory Co., Ltd. as a nucleic acid sample information processor.
This is a dangerous chore: Wear protective clothing, count the samples sent from each collection point, and send them to the laboratory after inactivation.
The more returnees, the greater the frequency of nucleic acid testing.
Thousands of samples are sent at one time, and Bai Yuting's inventory entry work often lasts from the afternoon to the night.
Accompanying her grandparents to walk around, slumbering their heads to sleep until "the wasteland is old", and pestering their parents to make a big meal, Bai Yuting’s Spring Festival "wish list" lists a long list. Originally, he booked early tickets for returning home on the 30th morning of the New Year. Nucleic acid testing tasks were arduous during the period, and the company’s sample room had to ensure that the personnel were on duty. Bai Yuting gritted his teeth and returned the ticket.
Bai Yuting is the only daughter, and the treasure of the whole family.
"I don't love home, but my family loves me." On the phone, the parents were a little frustrated like her, and finally they were helpless to their daughter.
But grandparents couldn't sit still, clamoring to come to Hefei.
"I finally persuaded them to work normally during the Spring Festival, and I didn't have time to accompany them." Bai Yuting said.
Playful ponytails, nails painted with paint, eyebrows curled when smiling... When not working, Bai Yuting is a young and beautiful "post-00" girl.
Once she put on the protective clothing and goggles, she appeared calm and neat again, which did not match her age.
On the first Spring Festival after work, this "back wave" will stuff himself in protective clothing.
"Nianweier" is the taste of disinfectant water, and "new year's goods" are test tubes sent continuously.
The taste is uncomfortable, but it is a necessary "mature ceremony".
Having stuck to the front line of epidemic prevention for more than half a year, Bai Yuting suddenly felt that she had changed from an "outsider" to a member of this era, and "echoed" with this city and country.
"Negative nucleic acid is my New Year blessing to everyone." She said with a smile.
0 km: Together, it is reunion
"Don't come back for the New Year." Half a month before the Spring Festival, Jiang Congming issued a "dismissal order" to his son who was working in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and had not returned home for a year, but regarded the five "outsiders" as "seats" for the New Year's Eve dinner. Guest".
"Don't want my son?"
"Yes! How can I not want to!"
Faced with the reporter's incomprehension, the man in the Dabie Mountains slapped his thigh and hurriedly answered.
In fact, there is a reason for the inhumanity.
Among the 3,200 villagers in Yaotang Village, Qingshan Town, Jinzhai County, Lu'an City, Anhui Province, more than one-third of them work outside the country all year round.
Considering the prevention and control of the epidemic, the local advocates migrant workers to celebrate the New Year locally. As the secretary of the village branch, Jiang Congming naturally has to set an example, "When you come back, why do you dad do the work of everyone?" Jiang Congming once the village branch finished the meeting. He called his son to "give an order."
The son naturally understood, but the father was a little embarrassed.
Jiang Congming aroused his wife, hurriedly cooked braised beef, stuffed sausages, packed up the salty goods and eggs at home, and packed more than 20 kilograms of local specialties to his son for express delivery.
"You can at least taste the hometown when you are alone." Jiang Congming said this is the first time his son has grown up.
After his children were settled, Jiang Congming began to worry about "other people's children" and went to work from door to door.
Jiang Huanqi, 70, had his wife passed away a few years ago. Both of his sons worked in Shanghai. He originally planned to come back to spend the New Year with an elderly man.
Seeing Jiang Congming coming to the door, Jiang Huanqi smiled and asked: "How can I celebrate the Chinese New Year without coming back, go to your house?"
Jiang Congming took this joke seriously.
"Just spend it at my house!" He patted his chest and promised, and quickly sorted out the five elderly people in the village who spent the New Year alone, and invited them one by one.
Some old people were embarrassed at first and waved their hands again and again, but in the end they were so kind.
"That's it. I will drive to pick you up on New Year's Eve morning." Jiang Congming said.
When he got home, he and his wife put together a menu for the New Year's Eve dinner. In recent days, the couple went to the shops in the town when they were free, "I plan to buy new clothes for the old people." He said.
The closer the year, the stronger the closeness.
Jiang Congming found that the neglected New Year’s taste gradually evaporates in this special New Year’s Eve dinner, and the length of missing is no longer the distance between relatives, but the distance between people’s hearts, "As long as you stay close to your heart, you are always reunion." "
What the reporter saw during the interview was a different year from any previous year: it was a "hardcore" gift package sent to migrant workers to pay attention, stay on duty, and stay paid; it was a special package for empty-nest elderly, left-behind children, etc. The care of the group is enhanced; it is more for the "righteousness" to let go of the "little love" and do everything possible to help you and me.
This is a different Chinese Year, this is an amazing Chinese.
The mountains and the seas can be leveled by the mountains and seas.
Although the journey is long, we are intimate.
Our reporters Chen Nuo, Hu Rui, Wu Huijun, and Dai Wei