几乎是在进入小镇生活的第一天,我便朦胧生出这个念头,便是为小镇写一部类似史传的文字。当时我是怀了很渺茫的希望,从插队多年的乡间到小镇来求职,盲目地在小镇虬曲狭窄的街巷中寻找能帮助我的人,却首先被小镇本身迷惑了。这之前,我在省城长大,读了不足十年书,便去了长江中游的一个水天浩淼的沙洲。在我的生活里,还从来没有过这样一个小镇的经验。一切对我都那么陌生而新鲜:它的带了雕花的骑楼的歪斜破落的房屋,它的凹凸不平的每一石块都磨得极其光滑的麻石路,它的因为逼仄而造成的焦躁和嘈杂,因为幽深而带来的潮湿和静谧,以及在所有这一片老旧而又明亮、古雅而又粗俗的光和影 Almost the first day I entered town life, I made the idea vaguely by writing a text similar to the history of the town. At that time, I was harboring a slim chance of hope. Looking for someone who could help me in the narrow streets of the town blindly looking for jobs from the countryside where I had been going for many years to the small town was first confused by the small town itself. Before that, when I grew up in the provincial capital and read a book of less than ten years, I went to a vast sand bank in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. In my life, I never had such a small town experience. Everything was so strange and fresh to me: its carved arcades’ crooked houses, each of its rugged stones, were polished to a very smooth granite road, and its cramped and noisy , Because of deep and moist and quiet, and in all this old and bright, quaint and vulgar light and shadow