The ten-plus days of military training have officially come to an end, and I finally have some time to record the various feelings I’ve had since the start of the semester, look back on the people and events I’ve encountered over these days, and share some inexplicable thoughts.

Coming to School

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, I decided that I would come to Zhongshan on the 14th to spend a day there, then go to school to register the next day. I drove the whole way, avoiding the hassle of taking public transportation. If I remember correctly, it was my first time in Zhongshan, so everything felt quite unfamiliar. I first went to Daxin Xinduhui to eat Haidilao, and ended up spending several hundred yuan (my heart hurts ing).

The original plan was to visit the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall after eating Haidilao. Unfortunately, we wasted a lot of time on the way there, and if we had gone to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall after eating, we wouldn’t have had much time to enjoy ourselves. So we went back to the hotel to rest. That evening, we walked around the park near the hotel, ate a little, and then returned to the hotel.

I got up early the next day because an upperclassman had said that the dormitory assignments were already arranged, but the beds were first come, first served. I wanted a top bunk, so I wanted to get to school and register as soon as possible. We set off from the hotel at seven o’clock, avoiding Chenggui Road, where an elevated bridge was being built. Taking a longer route actually got us to school faster—it took a little over half an hour.

Although I had already seen the school’s scenery many times on Tieba, I still felt a little excited when I saw the Polytechnic in person for the first time. It wasn’t much different from the university I had imagined. All in all, I was quite satisfied. Many enthusiastic upperclassmen and upperclasswomen came to help carry my luggage and take me to register and collect my dormitory key.

The stretch from the teaching building to the dormitory was simply maddening—up hill and down dale, with a long road stretching endlessly ahead. Only then did I realize how big the school was, almost ten times the size of my high school. Carrying my heavy suitcase, I arrived at Dormitory Building 9 and climbed to the sixth floor, only to find that nobody else had arrived yet. I was the first one.

I picked a clean bed and started settling in. After being busy in the dormitory for a while, I remembered that I hadn’t eaten breakfast, so I took my parents to the First Canteen to try my first breakfast at the Polytechnic. I ordered a bowl of preserved-egg-and-lean-pork congee for seven yuan. The portion was quite large and filling.

After eating my fill at breakfast, I started wandering all over the campus. I walked from Teaching Building D to Building A, and then to Buildings E and F. With a campus map in hand, there was no way I could get lost. After walking until I was tired, I sat in the lounge of a teaching building for quite a while. By then, it was almost lunchtime, so I went back to the First Canteen once again to see what delicious food was available on the second floor.

The second floor wasn’t decorated as exquisitely as the first floor. It looked a bit like a high school canteen, but there were an especially large number of shops, with more delicious foods than we could count. My parents and I found a place to sit, while my sister went to Yihe Tang to buy milk tea. She waited in line for a long time before finally getting two cups of Yihe roasted milk tea.

While we were waiting for the milk tea, something my father said brought tears to my eyes. When I was admitted to the Polytechnic, my father knew it was a junior college. In his mind, junior colleges were just like certain vocational schools, with a poor academic atmosphere and a terrible campus environment. He was worried that I wouldn’t have a good university experience.

After my father came to the Polytechnic himself, he said to me, “I can finally relax now.” It was clear that he was quite satisfied with the school after all.

After lunch, we returned to the dormitory, and it was almost time for us to go our separate ways. My sister had booked a ticket back to her school, and my parents were also preparing to go home. My father kept reminding me to study hard, saying that only by learning useful skills could I establish myself in society. My mother simply told me to make sure I ate well and took care of my health.

Every time we part, you always pretend to be carefree Smiling, you say, “Go on back,” then turn around with tears wetting your eyes

A passage from “Father,” which I used to listen to often, had finally appeared before my eyes. Tears filled my eyes.