Three or Two Things about Rebirth

The old man stood up tremblingly, with a look of surprise on his face, "It's exactly like them, so similar!"

Sergey smiled and explained to the confused Qiu Luming, "Excuse me, this is my grandfather. He was a photographer when he was young and had been to Harbin and Beijing in China."

The old man straightened his back with an effort, smiled, and said in Chinese, "Hello! My name is Vtolyak Ilyich Volkov. I came to Beijing in 1936 and worked as a photographer at Parkson Photo Studio."

When Qiu Luming heard about Parkson Photo Studio, her eyes lit up. She and her middle school classmates had taken photos there once, and she also had an impression of the young photographer from Russia. Could it be the octogenarian in front of her? She looked him up and down, but she couldn't find any trace of the handsome young man in him. It was Sergei who had some similarities with him.

The owner of Beisheng Photo Studio is a Chinese named Lei. He is very good at doing business. One of his means of competing with his peers is to send handsome Russian photographers to various universities and middle schools to drum up business.

That time, it should be this Volkov in front of us. He went to No. 4 Girls' Middle School to recruit people to take photos. The four girls were fascinated by the photos in his hands at the school gate. They thought that it would be great if they could take such beautiful photos of themselves. In addition, they were about to graduate and would go their separate ways, so they went to a photo studio together and spent half a month's living expenses to take photos.

It’s expensive, but the photos taken are really beautiful.

She still remembered that when the Russian youth introduced himself as Volkov, Qiu Luming asked, "Wolf?"

He looked at Qiu Luming with sparkling eyes. "Volkov means wolf in Russian, and the pronunciation is a little different. My name is Ftolyak Ilyich Volkov. Volkov is my last name, and you can call me Ftolyak."

Classmate Sun Jingzhen laughed and said, "Her name is Qiu Luming, but her last name is not Ming, her last name is Qiu!"

Qiu Luming was angry that she told a stranger her name and glared at her. "Her last name is Sun, as in Sun Wukong!"

Volkov didn't understand. "Sun Monkey? Her name is Sun Monkey!"

Sun Jingzhen was so angry that he screamed, and only then did Qiu Luming feel happy.

Thinking of this, Qiu Luming laughed. He was very harsh with his words back then and had offended many classmates.

She shook her head helplessly, for herself back then.

When he came to his senses, he saw that the old man was still looking at him eagerly, so he slowly said, "Hello, Mr. Volkov, my name is Qiu Luming, and I am Chinese."

Of course, she couldn't say that she had asked him to take photos of her. Who would believe her if she told him?

Unexpectedly, when the old man heard the name, he immediately became excited. He covered his chest and breathed rapidly, which scared Qiu Luming. But Sergei quickly took out a small medicine bottle from his pocket, poured out a pill, put it into the old man's mouth, and then helped him half-lying on the sofa in the hotel.

After a while, the old man finally calmed down and said apologetically, "I'm sorry, I'm old and I made you laugh."

Qiu Luming was very moved that more than half a century had passed and the old man could still speak Chinese, although his pronunciation was not accurate in some places, which was not easy to come by.

The old man pointed at Sergei's backpack, and Sergei quickly took out a beautiful book-sized photo album from it and handed it to Qiu Luming.

Qiu Luming was confused and took the album with doubt. The album was exquisite and simple, and it was obvious that it was quite old. She carefully opened the first page. On the black album page, the first photo was a photo of the snow scene of the Qianmen building fixed with golden corner stickers, which immediately brought Qiu Luming back to that era.

The second page is a photo of acrobats on the overpass, a pair of teenagers, one holding a knife and the other holding a stick, fighting each other, surrounded by a cheering crowd;

This album has only ten pages, with a total of about fifty photos of various sizes. In addition to some landscape photos of the Temple of Heaven, Shichahai, Xiangshan Mountain, etc., there are also rickshaw drivers, storytellers in teahouses, famous Peking opera actors performing, soldiers in uniform, and so on.

When she turned to the last page, she was stunned. The top photo was a group photo of the four girls. She was standing on the far left, smiling slightly. Her short hair was curled and she was wearing a modified cheongsam with mid-length sleeves. The other three girls were dressed almost the same. They were obviously 16 or 17 years old, but they tried their best to dress maturely.

"Are they similar?" Sergei seemed to have been waiting for this moment. Seeing her stunned look, he was very satisfied.

Qiu Luming nodded.

"These photos were taken secretly by my grandfather. His boss didn't know. He developed the photos secretly in the darkroom and hid them. He liked Chinese culture and Chinese people. He said he wanted to marry a Chinese wife the most.

However, later on, war broke out in your country, Peking fell, the Japanese killed people everywhere, and my grandfather was accidentally injured. He didn’t return to China until the following year. He only brought back these dozens of photos, which he kept as treasures for fifty or sixty years.”

When I left the police station yesterday, I immediately went to my grandfather and told him that I had seen a girl who looked exactly like the one in the photo. He didn’t believe me and said that I had never seen many Chinese girls and must think that all Chinese people look the same. I asked him to take out the photo album, turn to this page, point to the girl and say, “That’s what she looks like!” He was very excited and insisted on coming to meet you.”

Qiu Luming looked at his watch and said, "I still have an hour before I have to go to the train station."

"Don't worry, I'll take you to the train station!" said Sergei.

"I'm fine now. Can I chat with you for a while?" Volkov sat up straight. He knew Qiu Luming could communicate in Russian, so he switched to Russian. "Thank God, you have the same name as her! I know a lot of Chinese people, but not many of them have the same name. Is your name very common? Or is it a homophone?"

Qiu Luming thought to himself, my name is not ordinary, your name is ordinary.

Ftolyak means second in Russian, so he should be the second son in the family.

It's like Qiu Jiashu's friends sometimes call him "Qiu Er", and He Manshu would often affectionately call him "Er!". The name of this Ftolyak basically means Wolf Two.

She couldn't say what she was thinking, so she said politely, "There are a lot of Chinese people, but there shouldn't be many with the same name as me. Oh, I wonder what the specific three characters of your friend's name are?" Qiu Luming smiled slyly.

Mr. Wolf II was immediately at a loss, "Uh, uh, sorry, I can only speak some Chinese, but I can't write it, and I don't know what the name means."

"After so many years, you are still in a hurry to remember the Chinese language and that name. It's not easy!" Qiu Luming felt that it had only been six or seven years since he last heard of this person, and he almost forgot about him. It was amazing that he could remember him for more than fifty years.

She pointed to the photo below and said, "The bride in the middle is the second girl in the photo above. Her wedding dress is very beautiful and the groom is very handsome. This is the photo you took." She pointed at herself in the corner of the photo and said, "Oh, this is the girl on the left."

Sergey spoke for his grandfather, "Yes, my grandfather liked that girl. He liked her oriental eyes the most and fell in love with her the first time he saw her. This photo was taken when he was taking wedding photos for a client, but he told the client that the bride had closed her eyes, so take another photo! Then he took a photo of only the bride and groom. Later, he often went to her school to peek at her, and when he heard that she was admitted to university, he was happy for her."

Mr. Wolf II blushed, "How is that peeking?"

Sergei laughed, "If it's not peeking, then what is it? You don't even dare to tell her what you're thinking!"

Lang Er sighed, his face full of sadness. "I really didn't dare, because I didn't know if she liked foreigners. Also, I was too poor and I was afraid she didn't like me. When I finally got up the courage to look for her, Peking had fallen. There were Japanese soldiers everywhere, and dead and wounded Chinese everywhere. I was so worried, and then I finally heard that she had fled to another city."

The grandfather and grandson were talking to each other, and no one noticed that Qiu Luming was a little uncomfortable just now.

Yes, how could they have imagined that the girl they were talking about decades ago was sitting opposite them!

Qiu Luming had only met this Ftolyak once or twice, and then she forgot about him. Who would have known that he would keep thinking about her for decades? Moreover, she had only had a crush on a boy from another school who was very good at riding horses. He seemed to treat her differently, but he also said that he only wanted to serve his country with all his heart, to be a pilot, to defend his country, and to let the people all over the world live and work in peace.

Mr. Volkov continued, "I knew I would never have the chance to see her again, so I brought these photos with me when I returned home, and I have looked through them often over the years." The old man's eyes lit up when he talked about his youth.

Qiu Luming sighed again, his mother once said that most men have a first love complex, and they can remember their secret crush or first love in their youth for a lifetime, but at the same time, they do not cherish the girls they get easily.