Mountain·Rainwater·They·I
（一）Mountain
In Gansu，your head won’t occur to the word “earth”. The mountains are mother that nurtures all. From the time that I first saw Loess Plateau on the train, I started to watch these unadorned mountains. They are so alike, so negligible, that you have difficulty saying to yourself that I am seeing a picture. As I arrived at the school, the mountains are in front, its leanness and dryness presented nakedly in front of you which makes you hard to look directly. Just like facing mother lying on one side with open bosom, you lack of courage and at the same time one direct thing starts to grow in your heart. It is imposed on you without asking for your agreement. In a long succedent period of time, I still watch the mountain, I long for learning it and understanding it, as if only thus can I know what is life. It no longer makes me shock by the sight. It is like skin, like a heap of elephants that pile up together. It attracts me to touch it. It causes a feeling of rough, burly and warm on my hands.
This feeling is along with sunlight. Such a winter, such sunlight, make your skin black, your health good, you happy like the transparent sunlight with calm heart. The past has disappeared. Dryness, drought and wrinkled skin, at this moment you haven’t realized how powerful it is, haven’t understood how sunlight and loess nurture as well as torture people here, haven’t known why the mountain is so silent. Yes, it is silent, even is calm. As the villages lie in the valleys, as the color of loess blends with villages and skins, you don’t know its past, present and future, just as if you had never known man’s fate, as if you had already gazed it for a century. You are silent as the mountains, seeing the people both old and young die and be born again, seeing green fields turn into wasteland. Habit, what a horrible power it is!
（二）Rainwater
After May, spring comes. Just like there is a naughty child who colors Huangyangchuan overnight, the black-and-white photograph becomes colorful. The scene is changing everyday. I notice for the first time that even green color can be so rich, different stratum having different shade, like a watercolor painting. Perhaps it is more like a wash, wet. Only now do you begin to know what is hometown beauty told by students and it is not only this. The sceneries of different places are quite distinct. Getting across a mountain, there will be the different scenery. It is a period of time that I do the most home visits. Every weekend, I, together with students, will either walk or take a small tractor to visit their homes. The picture below was taken on my way to Quangou production brigade. It is also one of my favorite pictures. They are students of Class 3, junior Grade one. I like the fresh colors and the feeling on the way. It is one part of my life.
Students usually live far away. The journey to Datai Village of North Mountain is the most tiring. It needs to climb the mountain for three hours. According to what village cadres said, Datai lies in a remote area, the mountain path is steep and narrow, the vehicles can’t enter it at all, never a leader has gone there, it is a free village with “three no controls”. The economic condition of Datai is very bad. The gradient of many fields is over 45 degree. Last year, because of drought, the first seeds sowed hadn’t come out and only 50 to 60 percent of the second seeds came out. Most of families didn’t harvest even grain ration. In every student’s home, the topic couldn’t drop rainwater, which gave me profound impression. Their expectation, complaining and no way out also deeply affected me. I care more than ever for the amount of rainwater, the growth vigor of crops in the fields. I indeed have seen one thing could so profoundly influence the fate of hundreds of thousands of people. In dim lamplight, on the earthen bed, among the people who play finger game, drink wine loudly and their shadows, I myself gradually disappear. I have turned into the dim ray, noisy drinker’s wager game and the shadow on the earthen wall. All are numb, mechanical. Only the gearwheel of time is rotating voicelessly. In the memory of numerous home visits there is no flow of time but only pieces of black-and-white yellow picture gazing at those instants: the shadows on the wall and excited ruddy faces when they drink to their hearts’ content. Over these shoulders, I saw the silent mountain in vast dark night, saw that fate of ourselves had been clearly shown, saw endless unyielding figures in history continuously fell down, and saw under especially bright stars there is a huge soul form, who says, “ don’t believe in dream, don’t believe reality, either. The only believable is that time will take us to the same step. What you want to do and long for is only to choose a way of goofing for yourselves, that’s all.”
Submit to the will of Heaven.
（三）Children
“Unable to go to school”，these words don’t seem so stimulating as we imagine, nor do they mean a heap of statistic figures and pairs of big eyes thirsting for knowledge. However, before I came here, my knowledge of being unable to go to school was only this. There are brother and sister in the picture, the brother being called Wang Zhanji and the sister being called Wang Jiaoxiu. Although the little sister doesn’t have moving big eyes, I can’t look into her eyes. That is the most intelligent and most docile eyes I have ever known, without smile, without joy, only compliance to fate. She doesn’t speak, helping her mother make dinner, busy in and out and skilled very much. Later in other families, I have seen such eyes and bodies more than once. They induce my love, a passion from deep heart. But that time, when I was sitting on earthen bed (kang) eating potatoes that are toasted on stove, I cried. During more than 10 years for the first time I cried. I know it is neither out of sympathy, nor out of her family circumstances, nor because she no longer goes to school when she is in Grade 4. I don’t know why I glimpsed at myself on her, feeling extremely sad. She has just left school last year. This year she is 20 years old. Her mother can’t speak and her grandma can’t see. If I had read about her condition in newspapers, maybe all would have been just a deep sigh and nothing more. Society has made us stony, even let us take stoniness as firmness. But at that moment, authentic emotion came to in my body. Tears uninterruptedly flowed out, washing my heart where crusted garbage accumulates.
Later, still I cried twice. One time is that one student’s mother talked of her own experience, she said she couldn’t finish her study at that time and she regretted and complained like this for all her life. And she really wished to live once more in order to finish her study but it is improbable in this lifetime. The thing that is called fate flashes once again at the moment. The same thing on her mother making me uncontrollable, I, hearing this, ran to the courtyard to shed tears stealthily. The latest time is that when one parent sang hill songs and toasted, I was moved by that atmosphere. For all these, I can only say, I don’t know what emotion it is that made me shed tears and I only know this emotion has turned into a child of this patch of land both in spiritual and in body. In my blood too there flows dryness, expecting days of raining. If rainwater is poor, crops will be little. In the next year, children will leave school largely. Although almost every family has the father or mother work outside or do business all the years, keeping a student studying is still quite difficult. Especially for going to senior school, many families have given up this idea thoroughly. One senior student needs 10 to 20 thousand yuan in three years. For a peasant whose yearly income is less than 2 thousand yuan, this figure is nearly unbearable, not to mention going to college. So for a girl who can still study in school in junior Grade 3, her family circumstances, generally speaking, is OK. The girl in the picture is lovable very much and still studies in elementary school. On her face is still simple and brilliant smile. Who knows how long she can still study?
In two classes which I teach, the one that studies best is a girl, Chenshuhua. Her math got full mark in the final exam of last term, which was uncommon in a class whose average mark is 50. But she is going to leave school next term. I have been to her home and my mood is extremely heavy. I said to her mother, I help her. Her mother shook her head with a forced smile. Yes, in her class only, there are many students. How many can I help? In China, there are so many children that are unable to go to school. What I can do is just an insignificant thing.
A classmate, my friend, who is studying in Lanzhou University, came here to see me. He wanted to do something. I told him that, just 50 yuan per month can help Wang Jiaoxiu return school. He did, which made me feel slightly gratified.
（四）My friends and I
As a one of Huangyangchuan people, I know what students need most. Therefore, I went to company to ask for help in winter holiday. Books and computers made students very excited and happy. Believing that this is also the original intention of the company and every associate, I share in their joy and excitement, too. At the same time, as a person of Yingyeda, I also know the good intention of the company and every associate, who don’t expect hollow acknowledgement letters or embroidery flags, only wish to carry out their own goodwill in practice and make a difference, and meanwhile maybe want to get to know the land and life here more. So I asked the students of three classes that I teach to write letters introducing their own hometown and state of their own life and study. Though there are many wrong characters and wrong sentences in their letters, they are simple and lovable. They also want to make friends with all of you and getting instruction and help. This is my original intention of writing this long letter, too. I want to send you every share of sunshine and emotion that has fostered me on this land. What I feel sorry is that this letter has been written for too much a long time, and it has been prolonged till now. But the deposit is also more. As for me, blacker, thinner, the life busy and rich, I have too little time, but things I want to do are too many. One year’s time, has passed in the twinkling of an eye. There was joy, happiness. Also there was agony and melancholy. All these make me moved, unforgettable and still make me reluctant to leave. Here is the hometown of my emotion, homestead of my dream. The picture below was taken by Cong Feng when I was visiting home of Huyun. Cong Feng is my best friend in my college. He resigned his job in Central Weather Bureau, and has been here for two months. His lecture is greatly welcomed among students. Mr. Cong affectionately mentioned in students’ letters is him. Thank him for taking some life pictures for me, which has left me with some reminiscent forms of life on this land.
Peng Haina 2000. 5－6 At HuangyangchuanGulang, Gansu Province
This is a acknowledgement letter to Yingyeda Company written by him. Out of appreciation of him and support for Hope Project, Yingyeda donated 1200 books and 11 computers to Huangyangchuan Vocational Middle School where he is teaching.
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