In middle July, peasants begin to put down the work on their own fields in scores and go to Wuwei to harvest. There it is hot and the crops ripe one month ahead of time. Of course, they are not to harvest for themselves. Their own fields already have little hope. By the end of a year, it is not enough even for grain ration. They have to buy more grain for eating. But going to harvest for several days, they can only earn 10 odd yuan per day. Removing come-and-go traveling expenses, how much is the income?

    One afternoon not long before, I together with my students went out. Under the setting sun, the field near Dananchong turned out quite beautiful. The rape flowers shined in the sunshine. I couldn’t help saying, “On the field of hope……”，when a boy continued by saying, “We already have no hope……”I knew what he meant.

    Looking northward along Huangyangchuan’s long and narrow plain, the protuberance of the continuous mountains is first of all like one and another yams, one part of which has been cut out. Yes, it is of that shape. The part that is not cut is still of the color of Yam skin. The place that is cut is where the mountainous area is. It has been June for a long time, but it seems that the mountain is painted only sparsely with a thin layer of green. It doesn’t conceal a little to reveal the original color of under loess. In the patch of sparse thin green that has no third dimension at all, the loess color that makes people anxious is inserted.

    Is begging rain simply a superstition? At the mountain foot of Gangoukou, some grandmas have put up tents. On the tents hang some broken poplar wattles; on both sides of tent door sit two water urns, on which also hang poplar wattles. That gentle, bleak but still leisured songs and the sprinkling around the poplar wattles all indicate that the all of these can’t lead to sorrow only. People admit fate and they feel sorry for it. But they know there is no need to be sad excessively because -----that is fate. To them, what needs doing is to pose a stance to the ether, telling him our request. As for whether it is consented to, it appears of no importance on the contrary. It is only a necessary ritual and that’s all. In Dananchong sere dam, I saw a dead baby for the first time. In the half year, many people around died. I have gone to see two families’ funerals and have seen those instants of souls across the bridge as well as flickering candlelights. In many moments, I feel that people really have already accepted fate, or fate ----foreordination----has already made them habitual. The grand and cockamamie ritual seems more like a punctilious performance. Between numbness and calmness, the difference is so subtle. However, these are the effect of fate, too. But this fate is consequentially a fate full of tribulation. The schools, for many people, seem like a house on the roadside of the path they are walking and they are passengers. They walk around on the inside simply, and then go out of the door betaking their fate successively. The fate is the same as their parents’; the fate is universally recognized by the people here. No matter whether it is fate that compels them to go out of the door or it is themselves that decide to go out of the door, the results are the same.

    In Huangyangchuan, there are many sorrowful and poignant things. But I almost have never shed a drop of tear. I know that I am not a callous man, absolutely not. It seems there is no time and there is also no energy to sorrow. I only ought to do something, try the best to do something. For those things that you can change, there is no need to sorrow; for those that you can’t change, what is the use of sorrow? However, at the other inessential moments and on other trifling occasions, for example, on the bus from Gulang to Huangyangchua, bending at the bus window while seeing the continuous chain of mountains on both sides, noticing green cornfield and golden rape fields interspersed therein, watching the not abundant river shining in the narrow river channel in the sunshine gaily flowing northward, I don’t know why tears gush out of my eye sockets. No, I know, this is not sorrow. This is a completely different emotion from it. It melts sorrow and conviviality, making them not appear so contradictory. It eulogizes human lives, eulogizing both their happiness and their hardship. I think that it is in these moments not other moments that existence makes its secret clear to all. In those many people’s hearts are memories of hardship and sadness deeply hidden. These secrets are all the time hidden deeply, seldom being poured out from mouth. However, careful watching shows that everybody’s face generally carries this kind of memory, full of memories of grief. It seems that it is they that make these eyes both dim and bright. Is fate universal? Maybe it is. Fate takes tribulation with it. But isn’t life so? Your suffering, my suffering, or others’ suffering, they are not particular; they are contained in mankind’s universal fate. Nobody is able to exist by breaking away from suffering, because if it was that case, his or her life would no longer appear real. We live along with suffering of life because we know it is on account of existence of suffering that we seek for happiness, questing meaning of life. Only in alternation of man’s suffering and happiness can we find the dignity of man in front of fate. Some people, even though they are gone, we still say that they live in our hearts and will live forever. That’s because they have left image and impression of their souls on ours by what they have done. They left a history of a soul’s development among people. One will surely die, but won’t disappear completely. He will leave something by what they have done. Where are souls? Firstly, they are in our hearts. But at the same time, they are omnipresent, in rivers, on mountains and plains, in land and sunshine, in other people’s eyes and in the immense star rivers of night. They are everywhere. They want you to find out. In a certain point of view, we are all some external forces and factors. If we want to change the internal state by these, it is doubtlessly negligible all the same. Facing the depressive reality resulted in often by numerous particulars, I can only preach to myself the above-said facts once and again ceaselessly. After all, this is only the life chosen by me. It is a sort of substantial life in itself. I’ll spend such time, but not believing this sort of life is eternally changing others’ lives. In fact, that is impossible and quite nonsensical. Perhaps my life in the city is more comfortable than those peasants’, yet it is maybe much more mournful. Therefore, in the future years, what kind of life do you think that I should try to change? Perhaps, in any place there exists some holy life. But I still believe and am more willing to believe that, in a place where a life way is close to nature and soil, it is more possible to find this kind of life. ……

    Looking westwards, on the left side of the road, the mountain ridge is of desolate stone yellow. On it sparsely intersperse tufts of vegetables of strong life force. Above, the sky is so blue that the desolate and cold-blooded hillside looks so grave. In such a stance in commanding position, it looks down the under working people in the fields under the burning sun. It seems to be laughing at the people with such a sobriety. But man’s life is great……

……

    Let’s become gold miners. They panned granules of gold from sand, and then cast these little gold particles into a piece of heavy gold. This may be what one should accomplish in his life.

    City life has already been pulled apart from me to a further distance. I am an escapee form city life. For me, city means void, loneliness and ice-coldness. Ah, that piece of sere concrete floor, perhaps I am about to come back, back on you. But except registered residence, my body and soul don’t belong to you. I feel my heart is more close to the outside mountains in dark deep night; my feet are more willing to walk on uneven bumpy earth roads; my eyes are more pleased to see the blue sky and those simple and crude houses, more pleased to see frugal people and my children; I care more for walking in cornfields, anxious at harvest with them. I feel that all to me are no longer strange, so all are real and ordinary as in a dream. I feel I have returned to my own heart once again. I begin to love life and love people once more. Whether one is happy doesn’t directly connect to the environment where he was born but directly relates to his effort. If one dropped his soul, no matter whether he is lost in city streets or in mountains, he won’t be happy and joyful forever.

    What is reading books for? If one still hasn’t thought about these problems, it shows that he or she is only wasting time. Reading books is to make one’s life more meaningful. Reading books is to enrich one’s living. Reading books is a sort of spiritual need. Reading books is to see through the world. In the parents’ words, reading books is to open one eye. Reading books is an important means to release oneself from poverty and blind condition. Reading books is to contact the past world of grand souls, to hear their voices, to gain instruction from them. Reading books is a fun in life. Reading books is ultimately for man’s life and make him understand and hold his own life clearly. Is reading books simply to break away from poverty of life? Absolutely it is not. Poverty of life has two kinds: spiritual and material. The ultimate motive of reading books is to free people from spiritual and incorporeal poverty. And it is this that is the essential way of breaking away from material poverty. And education, wherever it is----in big cities or poor villages, the aims are identical without any particularity. Education (real education) is to indicate your way for you. But all material things require yourself to finish for your own. Education exists for minded people. Souls, like lives, can grow. However poor land they are on, souls can grow all the same. A soul is such a thing: it cares only for whether you yourself are patient at it and whether you are looking for sunshine for it everyday. Soul is life itself. Even if you are standing on a piece of poor land, your soul may be rich yet. Never complain, for it is of no use; as long as you do, do it well. It is the best way, the best way of life.

    Frequently, when students come back to school on Sundays, they will carry some home-braised buns, rolled buns，baked bread…… I think what I have sown is language and what they return me is the most precious thing on this land----grain. I don’t know whether the seeds I have sown can grow, harvest or resist drought, but I am sure it will. The gatherers are not me but the seeds themselves. All are left to your own selves. Who will knock at your door? Is it the familiar figures? They seem to disappear and conceal in the darkness slowly. It is they that give meaning to books and this room; it is they that bring comfort; it is they that carry steamed buns and put the on the tables in front of the window; it is they that make you happy or sad: they are where meaning is.

    Perhaps it is not sadness, but a sort of dissociative mood that lets me feel that all are so light. One and another people come and they go like some shadows again. And I don’t know what I have left, what I have done. All things call out of their own hearts. They ask for time, ask for going into lands and people’s hearts to grow gradually. They ask for being combined with fate and becoming one body. As human beings, we are one constitutional part of fate. We can’t transcend fate. I leave my language, leave to you, and pray that it can take root and shoot up in your hearts, or at least help other hope seeds take root and shoot up in your hearts.

    Who is looking up to the blue sky day and night…… I think it is everybody because any person can’t neglect the sky here. Whoever it is, whether you are peasants or others, everyone yearns towards the sky. They are all the time full of eagerness for the sky, for there comes the rain, for there is sunshine and for children yearn for flying…

    I deeply believe, for everybody, under the sun or in the dark night, there is one way of life belonging to him. Few people can walk past easily. For most people, they not only need to believe devoutly that the sun will direct their way but also have to accept endless dark night. There isn’t any other way because this is man’s life. Sing for man’s life.

    What is the life that one man wants to live? What kind of life do you want to live?

    What can be called one’s aim?

   If I am a child in the mountain, how will I dream about the outside world?

Author：Cong Feng