To look back was rather terrifying, because you could feel the solid carapace you used to protect yourself started cracking. You hurt deep down, for such a kind of fragility that had been hidden at the bottom of your heart for a long time was exposed under the sunlight again.
I started writing poems at nine years old and novels at 11. I then had my short articles continuously published in some newspapers. I was sentimental in my childhood and even looked delicate when I was at primary school. I belonged to this type of Baoyu-like little boys who were popular among the little girls (Baoyu was the hero of A Dream of Red Mansions, one of the Four Great Classical Chinese Novels). Loving writing novels and poems, I was introverted.
I wasn’t fit in my childhood, but my father was a basketball coach in our small city. As a result, I was asked by him to practice with those 17 or 18 year-old boys in his basketball team. It turned out I was tenacious. I couldn’t run 5,000 meters at the beginning, and then I ran 1,000 meters. After half a year, I enabled to run 5,000 meters. I wasn’t interested in basketball, so my playing skills were lame.
The high school I attended was a key one in our city. I was quite good at liberal arts, such as History, Politics, English, and so on. Even if I didn’t listen to teachers at classes, I could get scores as high as 95. However, my performance in science was really bad. I had basically failed each test, especially Mathematics, my average score of which was usually between 30 and 40. My compositions were often the models for the whole school, and I even signed up for the National Composition Contest many times, winning many prizes. Thus, I was always a headache for my teachers. They could completely overlook me if I was totally a bad student. However, they thought that I could be something.
My class adviser was my Chinese teacher who thought highly of me. He even wrote to his university professor who now was a vice president of a prestigious normal university and strongly recommended that I enter the university exempt from the exam. My father pulled the strings and contacted with the provincial College of Sport and Sport Departments of several universities, hoping to send me to learn Sport Management or the similar major. In other words, I could run a gym after graduation.
However, I dreamed of becoming a writer or an artist.
I participated in the professional examination of the Directing Department of the Central Academy of Drama in my senior three. Surprisingly, I passed it with a good grade, which meant that I could quit the Mathematics exam. As long as my score of the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE for short) wasn’t zero, I would absolutely become a university student.
I went to university after sitting for the NCEE. But I wasn’t satisfied, for I wanted to be famous and to write.
But I didn’t have a rich life as the source of inspiration, so I wanted to drop out of the university.
I would thank my instructor in the university forever for what he did for me.
Student entrepreneurs won popularity at that time. Although I didn’t want to start a business, he still strove for a rare opportunity for me. It meant I could temporarily be absent from university and experience what I wanted to undergo. This was a rather rare chance in those years, for I had just been a freshman for half a month.
I went back to my hometown, did a small business of selling pirated discs, but sustained great loss in the end. Besides this, I dated a few girlfriends, and that was all. I felt empty and boring, so I pursued unhealthy joy by constantly changing my girlfriend. I had to admit that I was precocious, because I was just 17 years old at that year, which was rather scary and caused my father to worry about me.
Time flew, and it was the end of the year. After I wandered for several months, the winter conscription began. Being a soldier wasn’t in my plan and was too far away for my life. I never wanted to be a soldier. I indeed enjoyed the American war movies, but they were just fantasies. At that time, I thought only morons wanted to be soldiers.
For me, being a soldier was a compulsion, because my first girlfriend Ying, who was also my deskmate in junior middle school, joined the army. When she called me to say goodbye, I went to see her who wore a loose winter training uniform and had her hair cut short. However, she looked still pretty.
I never had sex with her though she was my first girlfriend, for she was a chaste angel in my heart. At most, we held hands in classes, and I even never kissed her. Since I attended school at an earlier age, she was two years older than me and took care of me. She was the ideal sister and lover in my heart. After I went to university, she stayed at home waiting for employment, for she failed the NCEE. She wanted to be a soldier, because she could come back with a chance to work in a bank. Both her parents worked in the bank, so this was quite proper job for her. I didn’t realize how important she meant to me at that time and only saw her at junior-school reunions for several times.
I asked her where she would go, and she said the name of a military region. When I stared at her and held her hands, I impetuously told her that I would go with her. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I read too many poems at that time, so I could easily think of wars and disasters. Moreover, the situation was quite intense at that time. For example, it was rumored that there would be a war for the liberation of...
I couldn’t let her go alone. Not until this time did I understand that she meant a lot to me. She was my first girlfriend and my angel.
Thus, I went to sign up for the army. Those recruiters of the Armed Forces were astounded when seeing my resume, but my university backed me up.
My instructor was glad that I could experience some hardships and said they would be beneficial to me. Reform on the military service system allowed me to be a soldier for two years, which was also acceptable for me, so the Armed Forces approved it. My father felt very happy, for he was an army-man transferred to civilian work from the army.
I received many items, including winter training uniform, rubber-soled shoes, quilts, and backpack. Then, I boarded the train with a bunch of new recruits with shaved heads.
Ying was in the third compartment, and I was on the tenth one. We went to the same military region.
I felt relieved on knowing that she was also on the train.
The train carried my chaste angel and me to the distance.
I was still a boy who loved writing poems at that time.
I believed in love, so I joined the army.
I joined the army for love.