A Song a day: 8th Jan 2014 (童年時

Today I went for a bike ride, on a trail that I never been on before. Riding alone, seeing all the trees and flower, it reminded me of my childhood. I remember around 13 years ago, me and my cousins loves to ride our bicycles. Back then all of us were happy and worry free. We play for the whole day, racing each other, we talked about our future. We used to make fun of our youngest cousin, he said he wanted to be an astronomer, and the rest of us didn’t really know what astronomer does, we laugh at him, saying that all he will be doing is to write book for star sign. But I don’t know from what time onward, we started to lost interest in bike riding. We meet less and less probably got hold up by our homework. Slowly our gathering change from once per week to once per month, then once every few months, and now perhaps once a year. Don’t know from what time, we started to face questions and expectations in life. Aunties and uncles start asking whether we have got a girlfriend/boyfriend, then when we are going to get married, if you happened to ‘achieve’ the first two, they will ask you when you will have kids. I guess this is call grown up, and without knowing, my youth have slip by already. The cousin that we laugh at, he is now already married and he became a civil engineer. What was once his dream is now completely forgotten, and we have all got to the age where we need to be responsible for others. We always seem to feel that there is tomorrow, so we can just be lazy today and make it up tomorrow. But without knowing, we push and push and we have now completely missed the time for it. I once thought that me and all my cousins could go on a trip, no adults (as in our parents) just the seven of us. But it seems impossible now, we all have obligations, some of us have our own family to take care of, some have health problem that make it difficult to travel, others are just too busy with work, all of these make it hard for the trip to become possible. But I am glad that the seven of us still keep in touch and are still close friends. These make me think of the song “童年時” by Leslie Cheung. Although the song is about love, but it mention that their childhood memories have imprinted in their heart. The direct English translation of the title is “Childhood time”.

The lyrics of the song are about love. The protagonist said in childhood, him and her always see each other before sunrise. They both have feeling toward each other. He wonders when he would be able to see her again before sunrise; every day and every night he would think about this question. In their childhood, they like to walk into alley in their village and she would ask him to pick some flowers for her. He wonders when he would be able to go to alley again; every time he saw flowers, he would think of her. In their childhood, they play on the swing and wanted to climb the moon; she wanted him to hang his heart on the sky (in a way this means to show his love to her). He wonders when he would be able to play swing with her to get to the moon; every time he gazes at starts he thought of her. In their childhood, they engraved their dreams onto a tree; she once said that their heart will always be one. He wonders when they would be able to revisit the tree, and see whether these two hearts would be able to stay as one forever. Hope you will like the song.