27 我的“长生果”

Lesson Twenty-seven

My “Longevity Fruit”

1. Book is known as the “longevity fruit” of human civilization.

2. I find this metaphor very kind.

3. Like bees and butterflies flying over flowers, like springs flowing through valleys, I can’t help feeling happy every time I recall my boyhood.

4. In the heart of memory, the reading life in my youth is just like a colorful picture page, and it is also like a movement with joyful notes.

5. My earliest reading material is a small picture called “Cigarette Man” by children.

6. It is a kind of cardboard slightly larger than a matchbox, with pictures on the front and words on the back, as a bonus to each pack of cigarettes.

7. When adults ask their children to buy cigarettes, this cushy job is often robbed by boys, and we girls are only envied by our eyes.

8. When the collection is much more, the competition starts to scratch the “cigarette man” with his palm to see who can scrape far away.

9. At this moment, I shouted and cheered hard, in order to finally enjoy the big stack of pictures in the hands of the winners.

10. These small pictures with stories of Heroes of the Marshes and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are the comic strips I first saw.

11. At first, I watched it with relish, but as time went by, I felt addicted.

12. Later, I saw some real comic books.

13. A primary school teacher who loves fine arts has several comic books, and I was fascinated by them, Seven Colors of Flowers attracts my imagination, and Vengeful Feelings Nurtured By Blood And Tears makes me cry.

14. Later, my brother’s friends gave me some small books, Biography of Liu Hulan, The Story of Zoya and Shula, Guliya's Road ... As long as I have a book in my hand, I could even forget to eat and sleep.

15. Gradually, little books like comic strips can no longer satisfy me, and I found an oasis—there are hundreds of books in the cultural station of the town! I ran there every day as soon as I put down my schoolbag.

16. In the past several months, I have borrowed almost all the literature and art books in this small library.

17. I read very fast, and swallowed them up, with a taste of “not seeking a solution”.

18. The first thing that attracts me is the story, which is the fate of various characters. Their joys and sorrows often worry me.

19. Shakespeare said, “Books are the nourishment of the whole world.”

20. For teenagers who are hungry for reading like me, its function is self-evident.

21. I was rewarded for being addicted to reading.

22. Since the third grade of primary school, my composition often ranked first in the whole class.

23. Reading also greatly expanded my imagination.

24. At home, facing a stone wall with complicated patterns, I would stay for half a day and conceive all kinds of myths and legends; when I meet a disabled person on the road, I will feel dejected and think about his miserable life experience.

25. The title of my composition I remembered was Autumn is Coming.

26. After the teacher read a model essay, when most of the students started to write “Autumn is coming, leaves are yellow, floating to the ground one by one”, my heart suddenly crossed the restless thought: It was boring for everyone to write like this!

27. I wanted to see autumn with my own eyes and write autumn with my own feelings.

28. I compared autumn to a fairy in a golden dress. Her light sleeves brushed away the scorching heat of the sun and sprinkled brightness and freshness on the earth; she used her broad clothes to keep out the cold, but she took heavy fruits and offered them to the world.

29. People all love autumn, and love her with a bright sky, a light cloud and a beautiful fragrance.

30. In autumn, farmers’ smiles are especially bright.

31. Therefore, my composition got “A+”, and the teacher marked the excellent words and sentences, and read it as a model essay in class.

32. This little glory has made me realize a little truth: to write a composition, we should first conceive it in a unique way, and put it down with a little distinctive “flavor”.

33. These understandings are naturally gifts of extracurricular reading materials.

34. Later, I was not satisfied with reading only ordinary story books, and the abundant books in the school library attracted me like a magnet.

35. The voluminous novels at all times and in all countries made me so intoxicated that I spent all my spare time borrowing books.

36. At this time, I developed the habit of taking notes: copying beautiful words and wonderful paragraphs from books.

37. Taking notes exercises my memory and enhances my understanding.

38. Once I wrote An Unfortunate Past Event, I was extremely excited, and I felt that I had a good opportunity to show my talents: I suffered a grievance when I was a child, and the words that usually accumulated to describe my distressed mood played a role like yeast.

39. I started writing from a cold evening, reflecting the loneliness of a wronged little girl with the beauty of the moon and the laughter of people around me.

40. I couldn’t help crying when I wrote.

41. This composition, which was full of true feelings, has been praised again and copied out in large characters and posted on the wall of the classroom.

42. However, I blushed when I saw my teacher circle the words “the moon is like a round jade plate embedded in the blue sky” with a red pen, saying that the word “embedded” is particularly vivid.

43. I can’t accept this praise with peace of mind, because this description and the word “embedded”, which is “especially vivid”, were words that I never forget after reading Mr Ba Jin’s The Family.

44. Then, I realized another truth: to write a composition, I should write true feelings; writing practice cannot be separated from reference and imitation, but what really touches people’s hearts should be their own painstaking creation.