Chapter 192: Snow in Taoranting (only one sentence to promote the plot, the rest is scenery)

"quick!"

“It’s snowing again!”

"I can't wait to go to Taoranting to see the snow!"

The world's sorrows and joys are not the same. Some people feel that it is too cold when it snows and feel depressed; others particularly like snow because it purifies the air and they can enjoy the beautiful scenery after the snow.

I don’t know why Diana, a Soviet comrade who grew up in the ice and snow, is so obsessed with watching the snow?

Wang Deming had just taken a bite of the dumpling in his mouth when Diana rushed in like a gust of wind, sat down on the dining table without any hesitation, and took the bowl and chopsticks brought by Zhang Ma. Although she was not very experienced, she could at least put the food into her mouth.

Dianna, who moved to the east wing of Qinlao Hutong, now finds it more convenient to find Wang Deming. It is only a few steps away from the small economic factory, and she can come here to eat or play mahjong when she has nothing to do.

In addition to the Beijing delicacies, she is also obsessed with mahjong, the national quintessence. Language is not a problem at all. She speaks mahjong, peng, chi, and giving money fluently.

It’s just that she loses more than she wins, and she keeps fighting after repeated failures.

There is no way, because her favorite poker partners are Zhang Shouchun, Jin Yuqing and Qin Huairu.
Their eyes met and they casually adjusted their temples, all of them showing great gambling skills.

"Don't you need to take your classmates and friends to visit the capital today?"

"A bunch of nerds, more boring than Alexi! They woke me up early in the morning and asked me when I would officially start work!" Diana was like a master of weapons, with quick eyes and hands. She picked up two dumplings with one chopstick, dipped them in garlic sauce, and ate one in one bite.

"Oh my god, don't they know how important sleep is to me now?" She didn't stop eating while talking. She picked up the dumplings with her chopsticks and ate them again. She said vaguely, "I really regret letting them live in the garden to accompany me."

At this point, her eyes lit up, she sat up straight, took out a handkerchief and wiped the corners of her mouth, then turned her upper body 45 degrees, with a smile on her lips, and said, "Dear girls, please come and live in the garden with me."

"The rooms there are big and spacious. The fireplace is warmer than here, and the bathroom has been changed to a flush toilet. Also, I specially brought a few beds from the Soviet Union that I particularly like. They are very soft."

"Besides the bathroom, the thing I dislike most about Beijing is the bed. It's too hard. It's not the bed that ladies like us should sleep on."

Wang Deming looked at Diana speechlessly. "Do you know what you are doing? How dare you steal my girlfriend? You are so rebellious!"
Diana continued to sit like a lady, and said through her teeth, "Hurry up and translate!"

Wang Deming sighed helplessly and said to Zhang Shouchun and the other two, "Diana wants to invite the three of you to live in the East Courtyard Garden at No. 18 Qinlao Hutong."

The three women shook their heads at the same time. Diana was a little discouraged and turned into a martial arts master again, inserting, inserting, and inserting.

But there is really nothing to do today, so it is a good idea to go to Taoranting to enjoy the snow scenery. After coming back, you can also go to the flower market and temple fair outside Chongwenmen.

After breakfast, Diana called a jeep and the driver was Alexei.

Several women were crowded in the back seat, and Wang Deming was alone in the leadership position - the co-pilot. As soon as he got in the car, he heard Alexei muttering, "De, you should find me a house nearby."

“It’s really boring to live in the embassy”

"Sure, as long as you're willing to pay."

There's nothing wrong with that, the more the better!
"I want a fireplace and a flush toilet in the bathroom, too."

"No problem. As long as the money is in place, I will move the Kremlin to you."

"."

Going south from Xiaojingchang, passing the dark Zhengyang Gate and Qianmen Arrow Tower, along the straight Zhengyangmen Street, commonly known as Qianmen Street, is the most prosperous area in the south city. Langfang Ertiao, a street of ancient jade and jewelry, Dashilan, where people wear Ma Juyuan on their heads, Ruifuxiang on their clothes, and Nei Liansheng on their feet, Guozi Lane, where fruits are wholesaled, and the famous Eight Great Hutongs.
But once you pass Zhushikou to the south, it seems as if there is a dividing line between the rich and the poor. The old capital is commonly known as "Daoernan" and "Daoerbei". The "Daoer" here is Zhushikou. Daoernan is the slum area of ​​the old capital.

In the south of Daoer, there was a bridge during the Qing Dynasty: Yongdingmen Street, connected to Zhengyangmen Street in the north, and Jingsan. Because it was used by the emperor to worship at the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Agriculture, it was called the Tianqiao.

Before liberation, many street performers performed on the Tianqiao Bridge. The so-called "landing" means drawing a white circle on the ground as a performance venue, or "drawing a pot" in the jargon. With a pot, the performers could eat.

There are those who pull bows: they use hard bows, and first let the audience who think they are strong try to pull it, and those with red faces and thick necks can't pull it open, and then the artist can pull it open easily, and get a lot of applause;

The one holding the sword: the one or two hundred jin Qinglong Yanyue Sword dances with the wind;

Pole climbing: using a pole, performing pulling the windward flag, handstand, and pole standing;
The flag-blower uses a thick bamboo pole that is more than ten meters long, with a red umbrella on the top and a flag with embroidered characters under it. It is held in the palm of the hand and then connected to the elbow, shoulder, back of the neck, forehead, and the most amazing one is to connect it to the front teeth, and the pole still stands upright.

As for bicycle acrobatics, hard qigong chest-breaking stones, chain-breaking, and strip-pulling
Of course, there are also artists such as crosstalk, storytelling, drums, and sticks.

In the old days, street performers in Beijing also had to have a certain status. Only those who could enter the inner city could be called stars. It was the same as movie stars. Whether you were popular depended on whether you could appear on the big screen or on the Spring Festival Gala.
Otherwise, you can only be called an unknown artist.

There is a Tianming Theater in Zhushikou. In addition to the main performance of opera, they also invite crosstalk, bangzi, pingju and drum artists to warm up the audience. If you can gain a foothold in the Tianming Theater, it means that you can continue to make a living in the city.

For example, Hou Baolin, a crosstalk artist, Xin Fengxia and Bai Yushuang, who sang Pingju, and Li Guiyun, who performed Hebei Bangzi, all became famous after they performed Tianqiao Dengtianming.

Otherwise, the theaters in the city would not accept them, and neither would the Zhonghe, Guanghe, and Qingle theaters outside Qianmen.

On the other hand, if you used to sing in the theater in the city and then fell to performing at Tianqiao and the Temple of Heaven, you will never have the chance to return to the inner city.
The southernmost end of the road is Yongdingmen, formerly one of the Outer Nine Gates, and the end point of the central axis of the capital.

Of course, the Yongding Gate, which is dozens of meters high, is still there, and the gray city wall, which is wide enough for horses to run, is still there. Following the ring railway under the city wall to the west for a short distance, passing the Xiannongtan, we reach our destination this time: Taoranting Park.

Wang Deming had been here before, but he felt that Taoranting was actually nothing special.

On the small island in the middle of the lake, there is a small courtyard with a corridor. In the courtyard are three rooms that are transparent from east to west. You can sit in the room and look out through the glass at the West Mountain in the distance, the wilderness, the kiln where bricks are fired, and the tombs: the incense tomb, the parrot tomb, the tomb of drunk Guo, and the tomb of the famous prostitute Sai Jinhua.
This pavilion was originally built by a Qing dynasty kiln supervisor out of boredom. Later, intellectuals discovered that it was a good place to warm up by the fire in the winter and enjoy the cool in the summer. Then, you can look at the surrounding fields and the working people, which is full of wild fun.
As time went by, the surrounding area was filled with a stinking smell, which literally means it really stinks.

But the current Taoranting Park is different. After the Longxugou was renovated in 51, the capital focused on regulating rivers and lakes and filling up waterlogged areas in 52, and Taoranting was dug out to create an artificial lake of more than 280 mu and 3 meters deep.

The silt piled up into mountains, flowers and trees were planted, roads were built and embankments were laid, and this is what the scenery should look like.

A group of people wearing black and gray cotton jackets were skating on the lake, mostly children in their teens and teens. Different from Shichahai, most of them were kneeling on wooden boards nailed together, with a few iron wires tied under the boards, and skating back and forth with their hands supported by two wooden sticks with nails.

"Hurry, let's change our shoes!" Diana was very excited. She got out of the jeep and pulled out many pairs of ice skates. "There are few people here, but there are too many people over at Shichahai. I felt like I was being watched when I went there."

Damn, I thought you really had artistic talent and came all the way here to see the snow scenery, but it turns out you came here to skate. Wang Deming took the ice skates with a disgusted look on his face.

After tying it, I stepped onto the lake surface with a few clicks, and then I sped away in an instant. Just kidding, I used to be from the Northeast.

"Come on, let's have a competition, haha."

Zhonghai and Nanhai were also frozen, and a swimming pool nearby was also frozen, but no one was skating there.

Several elderly people were enjoying the snow by the swimming pool. One of them, holding a cigarette without a filter, said, "In the past few years, everyone has been liberated, including opera singers, but Chinese medicine has not been liberated and is looked down upon."

"I have been earnestly advocating the unity of Chinese and Western medicine and the promotion of Chinese medicine. But some comrades have turned a deaf ear to it..."

(End of this chapter)