What Chinese Maradona fans did in Beijing during cold weather.
Chinanews Beijing, November 28 (Reporter Li He) On the 27th, 5:00 p.m. It’s not too late, but it feels like night.
In Beijing in winter, it is always very early.
In front of the Argentine Embassy in China under the darkness, fans still gathered to mourn Maradona. After five o’clock, fans will no longer be admitted here. Embassy staff said he was not sure whether the memorial platform would be kept tomorrow.
Several college-looking young people holding flowers and looking at the lights in the embassy yard and the memorial stand under the flagpole across the fence.
In fact, they came before five o’clock. Looking at the others who started holding flowers, the group of young people also went nearby to buy bouquets, and it was time to turn back.
They can’t get closer to their idols.
Maybe they are not very skilled at saying goodbye, or maybe they always think that there is still a lot of time to make up for their regrets.
After all, for the fans of the “post-90s” or even the “post-00s”, most of them know “Lao Ma” from videos and documentaries, and can recall the legendary “King of Balls” over and over again in the future from video materials.
And the group of “teens” who chased Maradona when he was truly magnificent have become solemn and skilled in saying goodbye.
Lao Wang arrived just after 9:00 a.m.
“I got up after three o’clock that night and went to the toilet. I sat on the toilet and saw the news. Then I looked around and looked at other reports, and I couldn’t sleep.
The next night, after learning that the Argentine embassy had set up a memorial platform for Maradona, he suffered from insomnia again.
It is the satisfaction of many middle-aged people who can sleep peacefully after a busy day. But for Lao Wang, these two sleepless nights are one of the few moments that really belong to you after getting a family.
“I didn’t do anything, just with a cigarette in my hand, and my mind kept flashing back to those classic pictures of Maradona, as if they were back to childhood and those years.”
So as soon as it was dawn, he set out. Crossing the city and alley, when I came to the embassy, the sun just rose, and the wind was still cold.
He knelt on one knee, pointed his index finger to the sky, pulled up the sweatshirt on his chest and kissed him.
This is a common gesture made by Maradona when playing football, representing faith and love for Argentina. Lao Wang is also expressing his love for Maradona.
“Is he your faith too?” The wife who came together looked at him as if he understood.
Compared with Lao Wang, Xiao Yang is younger. Born in the late 1980s, he wore a silver down jacket and a blue “MARVEL” on his chest, which was the symbol of the American comic book company Marvel. It seems that he is also a fan of superheroes.
He went straight to the memorial table, put a white candle with blue No. 10 on it and lit it. Then take out the mobile phone and record everything in front of the souvenir table from far to near, from left to right, from all angles. This is the way he misses Maradona.
“Whether before and after him, few people in the football world can represent an era, but Maradona is an era.” Xiao Yang sighed like this.
Recalling that era, recalling Maradona in that era, he only said a few words: “Hero, the kind that I have never seen before.”
Xiao Yang said that although he only witnessed the end of Maradona’s career, the stories received from his parents and videos in those years still shocked him very young: “At first, there was no live broadcast, they were all videos. Later, with the live broadcast, I felt that he was more ‘god’, especially the publicity personality, which I really didn’t see at that time.
In Xiao Yang’s world, there used to be superheroes.
Among the people coming and going, there are not many mourners who stop for a long time like Lao Wang and Xiao Yang. Most of the fans came in a hurry, put down the flowers in their arms, silent for a few seconds, and then turned around and left.
Perhaps at this age, I have long been used to saying goodbye. So the whole set of procedures is concise and proficient: put down the souvenirs brought, several acquaintances go out of the courtyard door, smoke a cigarette where the Argentine flag can be seen from afar, and then leave.
They still need to continue to travel because of their lives, but they also insist on saying goodbye to the years they once loved freely. Therefore, someone put down the bouquet in their hands and immediately picked up the phone. While dealing with the work arrangement, they carefully watched their volume and the distance from the memorial table, and kept their eyes in the direction of the person in the painting.
In the crowd, another middle-aged man came with a helmet and thick knee pads, which was a dress that he met dozens of times a day. He put down a bouquet of flowers, took some photos, and sent it out.
Soon, a voice message came from the other end of the phone: “Everything, as long as it’s a blue and white bouquet.”
The middle-aged man said that he received the order to take the flowers in a florist not far away and sent them. The customer asked for no more, just asked for a photo.
Friday morning is not free for many people. The picture from others is their last journey to send the “King of Balls”. I can’t tell what it’s like. It’s just that those free and unbridled love years finally came to an end in this handful of blue and white.
Their love for Maradona is set with the outline of the times. In the era when TV pictures began to enter thousands of households, and in the era of rapid spread of mass media, the rapid integration of that generation’s exploration desire with the outside world, Maradona became one of their brightest memory lines.
Asshole Diego and the angel Maradona, poor teenagers and national heroes. He is not a flawless idol, but an immortal legend. He belongs to that era, fascinating.
A white uncle said that in those years, he liked Argentina and the splurling and unrestrainedness of South American football. But now he loves Germany more, and he respects the toughness of German chariots.
He said that this is certainly related to Maradona’s retirement. Then he smiled. “Maybe it has something to do with getting older.”
At this point, he thought for a moment and spit out: “At that time, I liked the flowing long hair of South American players.”
