Chapter 222 Chen He’s Story (I)
My name is Chen He, and I was born in Qinchuan in 1976.
That year was an extraordinary year. Many major events happened. It was a year that changed the destiny of the country.
Perhaps because I was born in an extraordinary time, I naturally feel that I am an extraordinary person.
It’s just that I have always lived an ordinary life. My parents are both working. They have given me all their love and made me believe that life in this world is so beautiful and ordinary.
In life, I am a positive and helpful person.
No matter who I see is in trouble, I am always the first one to rush over to help.
From childhood to adulthood, I have always been the child who was compared with other children.
I can feel that my parents, relatives, and teachers are all proud of me.
The walls of my home are covered with award certificates and banners, which gives me great satisfaction.
But another strange thought occupied my heart. I always felt that these were not enough and I was born to do great things.
When I was 18 years old, I was successfully admitted to Qinchuan Normal University. At school, I finally met the person who changed my life.
One is my teacher, Chen Zhongen, and the other is the girl who made my heart beat faster, and also my first love, Xu Xiaohui.
Teacher Chen Zhongen teaches sociology and I really like his classes.
It was also through Teacher Chen Zhongen that I realized that not everyone lives the same life as me.
He had been to Nanzhan and took many photos. The poverty and backwardness in those black and white photos shocked me, who had never seen the world at that time.
When I was 22 years old, the school launched a voluntary education and literacy campaign.
Faced with countless choices, I signed up to go to Nanzhan without hesitation.
At that time, Xiaohui and I had already established a romantic relationship, and we had agreed that after graduation we would stay in Qinchuan together to teach and educate people.
But that trip to Nanzhan completely disrupted our plans and also changed my ordinary life for the past 22 years.
The chaos in Nanzhan is more serious than I imagined.
I once saw someone hack another person to death with a knife on the street, although he was quickly subdued by the police.
The senior students who were traveling with us told us not to be afraid, but actually I was not afraid of the pool of blood.
On the contrary, it was the indifference of those passing by that deeply stung my soul.
That year's activity lasted for ten days, and we left the city and headed for the mountainous rural area of Nanzhan.
But that's only on the outskirts. It's said that there are still many people living deep in the mountains. However, due to the terrain, there are also many places with miasma in the mountains.
The local department leaders were afraid that we college students would be in danger and did not agree to take us with them.
However, this outer area has broadened the horizons for us kids who grew up in the city.
It was already autumn, the season of harvest, and all I could see were children with little clothes on.
There are also those old men smoking long pipes with numb and dull eyes.
The village we visited had a row of classrooms that were temporarily built on the site of the village committee.
The village cadres promoted the event for many days in advance and only then managed to get ten children of different ages to attend the class.
Looking at the children sitting below, they were all disheveled and their faces and hands were the same color as the mud under their feet.
But as I was teaching children for the first time, I was still full of passion.
I carefully wrote the pinyin letters on the blackboard and asked several times if anyone had learned them.
The children just looked at me curiously and warily, but no one answered the question.
It was only after half of the class that I realized that they didn’t understand what I was saying.
Looking at the adults gathered outside the door, they curiously stuck their heads in, and some even sat on the doorstep, smoking opium and watching the fun.
I was young and energetic, and I was always positive and optimistic, but I experienced the first setback in my life.
Later, an experienced senior gave me a handful of candies. It was these small candy beans, ten of which could be bought for a penny, that finally pried open the children's mouths.
No matter if they understand what I'm talking about or not, at least they are willing to make the "ah ah ah" sounds with me...
The experience of those ten days was very frustrating and helpless, but it also aroused my fighting spirit.
If I am destined to be an extraordinary person, then I must have the ability to change everything here.
At the age of 23, I graduated from the Normal University, declined the offer to stay in school, and decided to go to Nanzhan.
Xiaohui didn't understand my decision, and she had an argument with me for the first time about this matter.
But I didn't choose to stay because of her. I only went home for a few days and then went to Nanzhan with all my certificates.
If I had just been an ordinary primary school teacher in the city of Nanzhan, perhaps the things that happened later would not have happened.
But I have a big heart. I am not satisfied with being just an ordinary primary school teacher. That would lose the meaning of my being away from home.
After learning that there were no schools or educational centers where I was going, I chose the most difficult path: I would go to the deep mountains alone to teach.
That was in 1999. With my graduation certificate and teacher’s certificate, I walked into the Education Bureau of Mengmao City, Nanzhan Province and obtained the qualification to teach in remote areas.
But there is no subsidy for those who come here to teach. I remember that the comrade who received me looked at me as if I were an idiot after he knew that I was going to the mountains to popularize educational knowledge.
He repeatedly told me not to go into the deep mountains because there were no cadres in the villages there and no one would cooperate.
They only gave me the contact information of the village committees of a few outlying villages.
But I've already been to the outskirts, and I want to see places that are worse than there.
I saw myself as a savior, and based on my previous experience, I used all the money I brought to buy daily necessities, including clothes, shoes, candies and new stationery for the children.
At the market entrance to the village, I hired two local people as porters to help me carry my things in.
As a result, after taking me into the mountains, the two men circled around and finally found me in a woods deep in the mountains, where they knocked me to the ground, robbed me of all my belongings, and ran away.
I should be thankful that they spared my life, otherwise in that place, no one would know until my body turned into dry bones.
I lost my direction in the dense forest and walked aimlessly for several days. When I was thirsty, I licked the dew on the dead leaves. When I was hungry, I ate wild fruits that had been pecked by birds.
Until one day, my body, which was swollen from being bitten by various insects, was so swollen that I couldn't even open my eyes, and I fell heavily on a pile of rotten leaves.
I thought my life was over. I hadn't finished what I wanted to do, Xu Xiaohui and I hadn't broken up, and I had no chance to bring back any certificates of honor to my parents.
I struggled to crawl out unwillingly until a vague figure approached and I lost consciousness.
It was July of 1999, during the hottest weather, and I, a person with no wilderness survival experience, survived in the wild forest deep in the mountains of Nanzhan for six days.
After waking up again, looking at everything around me, I knew that I had finally arrived at the place I wanted to go.
