Seeing cCountryside in the Distance | Teen Ink

Seeing cCountryside in the Distance

March 15, 2013
By MichaelZhang PLATINUM, Guildford, Other
MichaelZhang PLATINUM, Guildford, Other
29 articles 1 photo 7 comments

Favorite Quote:
The purpose of competition is to eliminate the competition.


After the train set out from the south station of Beijing. I was fortunate to buy a ticket allowing me to take a seat at the window and appreciate the scenery. Only 5 minutes later, with the exciting speed of high railway, the tall dwellings and buildings with glass wall had gone out of sight--countryside scene came to the window.

Observing how countryside looks like was my hobby while taking any type of transports, especially car, bus and train as countryside is as mysterious as Antarctic to me. For several generations in my family, all of them had lived in Beijing and Tianjin and run their own companies or had occupations in the the urban government. They had friends among government official, successful businessmen and professors in universities; they had many places of villas, which were all inherited by family members; however, they had not known how countryside really looked like, including the latest family member, me. I always love to imagine a picture of the villages modeling after the countryside in Swiss, where I once lived for a short time though Chinese countryside is rather poor indeed.

I stared at the tiny houses passing by, and imagined how it might feel walking past the narrow roads traveling among the houses. The people there were probably leading a life without the confrontation with different temptations: When the express train was rushing besides their home, did they have the excitement to desire to board the train and have an experience of the feeling of flying? Were they eager to have a try on iPad Mini or at least iPhone 5? Did they have the concern on working or studying? Everything in the village seemed to be quiet and auspicious. Perhaps they had no idea about what the urban were worrying about; and, of course, as an urban student, I could not figure out the chores or the pressures living in the countryside or being a simple and warm-hearted farmer.

The peers were the group who I was more curious about. I was absorbed into guessing the middle school students' life in the village. The village was only at most 10 km out of the urban zone of Beijing, however, I assert that students in both areas were put into two worlds. What the classrooms looked like? Scanning from the train, playground could not be seen in the village. Was the school was out of the village? Or, even worse, the school wasn't able to afford the cost of constructing a basic playground for students? When the sun set down and the bell rung, what the scene of the school would be? Would the teen boys and girls were still studying at school for the cruel examinations in China, or just like what I tended to think, went back home directly with friends?And how about their getting back home? Riding an old black bike on the poor-built narrow roads or just passing among houses on feet? If I was put into that case, I was sure to find that environment was just similar to a dream scene. After all, it was totally reserving my whole consideration of the life between home and school. In the village, is that process a travel, or a type of torture in simple transport measures?

More and more villages went back behind the train. When the dark fell to the horizon, I guessed my peers in countryside were working for their homework, playing with the animals or enjoying other forms of entertainment which didn't appear in the cities, or just dreaming for their future life in the cities.


The author's comments:
Gap is always apparent between the urban and the countryside and it is especially obvious in China, my homeland. As a pure citizen family member, countryside life is a mystery. I'd like to guess how villagers lead their life there?

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