Old times

Went out with a cousin tonight, to Raohe night market (饒河夜市). The many food stalls, vendors hawking clothes, jewelries and imitation goods were definitely a feast for the eyes and taste buds.

Somehow, without knowing it, we walked into an area which seemed strangely familiar. The YMCA neon lights, which pointed to where I went to kindergarden...the barber shop where I used to get my hair cut, and laughed whenever hairdresseres trimmed the hairlets on my neck...the police station where I once spend the night for having wandered away from my parents...the train station where I enjoyed watching the trains pull in and out, and passengers come and go, and where I once wandered to alone and worried my parents sick for hours... and the wide tree-lined street, on which dingees and cockroaches once floated during a period torrential rain and flooding.

Yes, this is where I used to live. Where I lived since my birth, to the age of five or six. I couldn't remember the exact number I lived at, just that it was one of the many-storey appartments at nr 300-something.

Have those trees on the traffic islands and pavements grown? I never realised we used to live so close to the Xinyi district, where the new financial and shopping area is located. I remember in those days it was just vast tracks of fields and paddies...now, in the night sky, blocks of strucutres of steel and glass radiating in everchanging and mesmorising rainbow colours stand in their place.

Being there again sure brought back memories.

------

台北的天空 The Sky of Taipei
陳克華 Ke-Hua Chen

風好像倦了　
雲好像累了
這世界再沒有
屬於自己的夢想

我走過青春　
我失落年少
如今我又再回到
思念的地方

(The wind seems to be weary,
The clouds seem to be tired
This world no longer has
Dreams that belong to me
I walked through youthhood
I lost young ages
But today I again return
To the place I yearn for)

台北的天空　
有我年輕的笑容
還有我們休息
和共享的角落

台北的天空　
常在你我的心中
多少風雨的歲月
我只願和你渡過

(The sky of Taipei
Bears the smile of our youth
And also the corner
Where we rested and shared

The sky of Taipei
Is often in the hearts of you and I
However long the times of rain and wind
I only wish to spend it with you.)