Back to 80: My Literary Life

"That's it?"

Emily looked at the wooden bridge.

The vermilion bridge looks a bit old, perhaps because it has just rained and the river water is a bit turbulent and turbid.

"Minghua, is this bridge special? There are many in Iowa." Emily talked about the history.

Iowa is a famous granary in American history, with more than 90% of its arable area.

Madison's fertile fields are crisscrossed by rivers. To facilitate transportation, early people built wooden bridges across large and small rivers. Wood is prone to decay. In order to protect the wooden bridge body from rain and wind, people added roofs and side walls to the wooden bridges to form covered bridges.

"What's the name of this bridge? Let me go and have a look." The girl ran to the bridge and looked carefully at the words engraved on it.

"It's called Rossman Covered Bridge, Minghua." The girl shouted to him.

That's it.

This is the covered bridge in the famous American movie "The Covered Bridge".

"Covered Bridges" is adapted from the novel of the same name by the American writer Robert James Waller. It tells the story of Francesca, a housewife who meets National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid during a four-day trip with her family. After a brief romance, Francesca painfully broke up with Robert Kincaid because she was unwilling to abandon her family. But her love for Kincaid haunted Francesca for the rest of her life.

The movie became a hit, and actress Meryl Streep was nominated for Best Actress at the 68th Academy Awards.

This novel and this movie have caused huge repercussions in China. Although the movie has never been released in China, pirated copies have always been seen.

"Minghua?" The girl couldn't help shouting as she watched Fang Minghua driving on the bridge in a daze.

"No, it's nothing." Fang Minghua woke up from his memories.

The bridge is not long, only about 200 meters. The two of them walked back and forth on the bridge several times and took a few photos, but the original freshness was lost.

"Minghua, shall we go to dinner?" the girl said.

Fang Minghua nodded. It was almost twelve o'clock now and he was hungry.

As soon as the two people got off the covered bridge, Fang Minghua saw a funeral procession. They were holding wreaths and scattering paper money. They were wearing black suits and had a small white flower on their chests, but they didn't see the coffin.

The two of them stood on the side of the road and watched curiously. They saw the group of people walking to the bridge. The leader of the group, a young man, was holding an urn in his hand. When he opened the box, the ashes were scattered on the bridge. He looked sad and had something in his mouth. Talking about something.

However, Fang Minghua couldn't understand him because the other party's accent was too strong.

"The young man's mother passed away, and he was paying homage." Emily next to him whispered: "According to our Christian customs, father and mother died one after another, and the tomb should be buried together. I don't know why he wanted to scatter his mother's ashes on the bridge. Where’s the side?”

"Perhaps, by the bridge, there is someone whose mother's soul is locked in her dreams? So she is willing to be with him after death." Fang Minghua said lightly.

Emily glanced at Fang Minghua in surprise, but said nothing.

The two of them drove into the town of Winterset without staying here longer.

The town was very small, with only one street. The two of them drove to a stop in front of a small restaurant on the east side of the town, got out of the car and walked in.

The restaurant was also very small, with only three tables against the wall. An old man with a beard was sitting at the bar, bored. When he saw Fang Minghua and Emily coming in, he immediately greeted Fang Minghua and Emily warmly.

Fang Minghua couldn't understand the English he spoke with a strong local accent, but with Emily here, everything was no problem.

Emily looked at the menu and ordered. It didn't take long for the old man to come over with two plates full of food.

The staple food of American cuisine is just these few things, several combinations of meat, cheese, bread, and two glasses of cold beer to take away.

But at this diner, Emily also ordered two barbecue corns on the cob—a specialty of Iowa.

Fang Minghua picked up one and tasted it. It tasted pretty good.

It was probably baked in the oven, and it doesn't have the aroma that comes from being directly thrown into the fire back home.

Perhaps Fang Minghua's yellow face made the old man curious, so he chatted with Fang Minghua and the others beside him with his huge beer belly.

"Are you Japanese?" The old man tried to use authentic American pronunciation.

"NO."

"Korean? Taiwanese? Hong Kong people?"

"NO, I'm from mainland China."

"Chinese?!" The old man exclaimed, looking at Fang Minghua in disbelief, but the next words made Fang Minghua dumbfounded.

"I heard, do you Chinese all wear the same blue clothes?"

"No, that was before. Now we wear very bright clothes, just like what I wear." Fang Minghua explained.

The old man has no ill intentions. In the eyes of ordinary American people, this is how China is.

It can be said that the Chinese understand the United States far more deeply than the United States understands China.

Fang Minghua didn't want to talk about this issue anymore, so he changed the topic and said, "Just now we saw a funeral procession at the Rossman Covered Bridge, scattering urns beside the bridge. What happened?"

"Oh poor Widow Karen, her death is so pitiful!" The old man sighed and immediately started talking.

It turns out that this Karen’s husband died of illness twenty years ago. She took her two children with her and never remarried until the children were brought up.

"Not long ago, Karen suddenly suffered a sudden illness and passed away. Before she died, she asked her son that she would not be buried with her husband after her death, but that her ashes would be scattered by the Rothman Bridge. We all did not understand this. .”

"Yeah, why wasn't she buried with her husband when she died? Wasn't she a Christian?" Emily interjected.

"Karen is a devout Christian." The old man replied, suddenly lowering his voice and looking mysterious.

"I heard that Karen had a lover after her husband died. They were seen dating by the Roseman Covered Bridge. But the man was a tourist from afar. After staying for a few days, he left quickly."

"Karen missed him so after his death, he asked his family to scatter his ashes on the Roseman Covered Bridge as a mark of remembrance."

Emily was silent.

After hearing this, Fang Minghua felt a storm in his heart.

Isn't this the story of "The Bridge of Lost Dreams"?

It’s just that the heroine Frances in the novel had an affair during marriage, while the protagonist of this story is a widow.

Of course, from a novel perspective, marital infidelity is more story-telling.

Could it be that the author of "The Lost Dream on the Covered Bridge" also wrote this story after hearing it?

Fang Minghua doesn't know.

Before he came to this era, he had seen some reports on the Internet that Waller, the author of "Covered Bridges", passed through Madison County for work. On his way home, he drove his car through a sparsely populated road with high roads on both sides. After crossing several distinctive bridges in the high cornfields, Waller, who was driving alone, suddenly had an inspiration. During the rest of the journey, he mentally wrote down the draft of this novel.

It only took half a month to write this novel, which became popular throughout the United States, and the bridge became famous as well.

Ironically, Waller went from being an unknown writer to a millionaire by leaving Iowa, where he grew up, and moving to a farm in Texas. Soon after, he divorced his wife of many years.

I'm here today to write this novel.