A theory goes that the distinction between home and non-home is not clear at all. The so-called hometown is merely the last stop our ancestors made in their nomadic life. We will eventually become ancestors too, but where is the last stop of our own nomadic life?

I grew up in a little town in the great plain of Northern China. Do you know what great plain means? Let me tell you that. Beijing is about 150 kilometers north of our little town. And in this 150 kilometer expanse of land, not a single hill can be found! The vast and extensive plain encourages horizontal, straight and forward looking, but people there lack the capability of vertical viewing. You must have read literary descriptions like the golden wave of wheat, and such a scene is very common to us. In the spring wheat field looks pretty green and it barely reaches your ankles. When wind starts to blow from the south, wheat starts to grow like crazy and, before you notice it, it reaches you knees and then covers your waists. Finally the green field of wheat turns to light brown and produces golden waves dancing in the breeze. Then we know it is time for harvest. The golden wheat is permeated with the joy of life!

Unfortunately we often lived in poverty. Once I was hospitalized for malnutrition. So where was the wheat? It was collected for the sake of achieving the most beautiful goal of mankind. Everybody was told that hunger was necessary while we strove to reach the ultimate goal of mankind.

College promised to be a new world indeed. The most famous Fu Dan University, situated by the Huang Pu River close to the East Sea, seemed to have remembered my image of night study and my enthusiastic songs. It seemed to have recorded the dream of my youth as well as sorrow. A lot of northerners often carried a deep prejudice against Shanghai and its people. I disagreed. I often told them that if they had given themselves a chance to be part of it and a chance to feel its heartbeat, if they had attended its summer music concert in the Rose Garden, and if they had promenaded along the Fenyang Boulevard, enjoying the piano music that leaked out from the Shanghai Music Institute, then they would have known that Shanghai was actually enriched with its own profound culture.

Departing from Shanghai, I came to Guangdong. My youthful energy was mixed with a bit of confusion for the future. During the five years I was there, I got to know various social classes and various people, people who laughed at poverty rather than prostitution, people who spent money like crazy, and people who lacked trust. I also encountered people who quietly wrote poems or read books among the noisy metropolitan area. As I got used to its culture and language, the Divine Being sent me to yet another far away: Japan.

The moment I set my feet on the soil of a foreign country, the idea of hometown immediately turned into an abstract concept, a huge and yet confusing mixture. Hometown, now better known as home country. She laid at the other side of the sea, far beyond my reach, sometimes clamorous and sometimes tranquil, at times melancholy and at times joyous. And I, on the other hand, became a complete outsider, silently caring for her, watching her and repeatedly praying for her.

Too much news came in and I had to use my own judgment to filter out rumors. When Japanese people asked me when I planned to go back to China, I could only put up a forced smile: no idea. My remembrance of my home country had finally transformed itself into a kind of spiritual sustenance between my friends in China and myself. Last spring I wrote poem to my friends in China:

It is everybody's dream that our home country be a strong country. Nevertheless, the realization of this dream does not allow us to act like a superpower before we become a superpower.

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