Can you believe that this wonderful moment on the cover is the result of a collaboration between three students who have already received free senior citizen cards?
The girl who is leaping high as if flying in the clouds is me, the boy is a high school classmate from over forty years ago, and the photographer is our female classmate Chen Moujian.
This was on December 16, 2021, when twelve of us classmates agreed to go on a trip together. Three cars set off towards Taishan. Laughter and joy filled the journey.
Most of us in this class were born over sixty years ago in the employee hospital of the Guangzhou Paper Mill. We then attended the Guangzhou Paper Kindergarten, went to the Guangzhou Paper Elementary School, and continued on to middle school and high school together. From our first words to graduating from high school, we grew up together in the Guangzhou Paper family area. Our parents were all workers, going to work together in the morning, having lunch at the employee cafeteria, and returning home for dinner in the evening. After dinner, we would gather at a worker's home to play chess or chat. This routine continued day after day, year after year. We experienced the country's three years of economic difficulties, went through the unprecedented Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and lived in times of extreme material scarcity. The great leader Chairman Mao Zedong once visited the Guangzhou Paper Mill, the Heavy Machinery Factory, and Tangxia Village for inspections. May 29 became the factory's anniversary. There were performances at the club, and the cafeteria offered extra dishes. Our parents and our generation will always remember this day.
After graduation, following the great leader Chairman Mao's teaching that "it is very necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education among the poor and lower-middle peasants," most classmates went to the countryside, while only a few stayed in the city due to policy implementation. Thus, we scattered in different directions for decades, and after retirement, some classmates had to take care of grandchildren, making it rare for more than a dozen of us to gather and play like we did in childhood for a few days.
We have arrived! Here is the beautiful Longqing Bay. Although the weather that day was not good, with a gray sky and sea, it did not affect the beautiful mood of the classmates at all.
The class leader acted as the director, asking me and a boy nicknamed "10 meters" to run towards each other on the beach and embrace warmly 😊
At the moment we ran towards each other, I dodged 😃 just like in football terminology, "the final kick" went off target.
Then I self-wrote, self-directed, and self-performed, completing this difficult masterpiece.
That evening for dinner, I went to the market to buy shrimp, fish, crabs, oysters, and many other seafood, which I handed over to the restaurant to prepare. It was a sumptuous dinner, and we feasted heartily.
That night we checked into the Mountain Spring Bay Hot Spring Hotel. We soaked in the hot springs, sang karaoke, chatted, and reminisced about the past and future… it was another joyful night.
Three days of gathering quickly came to an end. The reunion was joyful, and the bond between classmates is pure. Let us cherish the beautiful time today, and may you return still as a youth.