Chapter 223 Chen He’s Story (Part 2)
This place is called Yega Village, or Yega Village.
People here like to wear clothes made of earth-blue fabric, and the skin color of children here is the same as the earth, dark and yellow.
I drank a bitter, muddy yellow soup for several days at the home of the person who saved me. The soup helped me get rid of the discomfort.
It was not until later that I found out that the soup I drank was mixed with poppy.
When my body was able to stand up again and I walked out of the cabin, I saw poppies all over the mountains.
They are densely packed on the hillside, with plump green fruits on top. If you look closely, you can see several dark knife marks on each fruit.
This was my first time seeing poppy, but I knew what this thing was.
The family that saved me was named Zhang, a rare Han surname among outsiders in the mountains. They often went to the market outside, so their family members could speak a little Mandarin.
When the man of the house heard that I was here to teach, he shook his head with disdain.
I saw there were two other children in the family, one of them a girl, about sixteen or seventeen years old, she said her name was Da Nu.
There was another boy, who was younger, only about eight years old, and was called "Kid".
What surprised me was not that the eldest daughter said that she had several younger brothers and sisters, but they were not supported, nor that they didn’t even have names, but that they had never attended school for a single day.
The eldest daughter and her younger brother were old enough to work. Their job was to help their parents plant poppies, cut the pulp, pick them, and then take them outside the mountains to sell.
Occasionally, someone would come to buy them, but such opportunities were rare and they were sold very cheaply.
I told them that it was illegal to grow the plant, it was a drug.
The eldest daughter's father looked at me with the same look as the Education Bureau staff member before, and then asked his eldest daughter to take me out of the mountain.
I came here with great difficulty and insisted on not leaving. I told him that I could teach his children to read and write for free.
But the man wasn't interested and just kicked me out of his house.
The girl named Da Nu saw me off the hillside and asked me what I could do by studying.
I said that after you study, you won’t have to grow poppies anymore, you can go out of the mountains and see the world.
She asked me what was out there, and I said everything except poppies!
Then she asked me a question, if I had studied, would it mean I didn’t have to give birth to a child for my husband?
I don't know who 尜尜 is, I was just shocked that she would ask such a question when she was only a teenager.
The eldest daughter told me that she was going to marry Bao Bao, and in the future she would not only grow poppies, but also have many children and continue to grow poppies.
I noticed that this girl was different. She was not like the other mountain people I had seen. There was light and hope in her eyes.
I saw the longing in her eyes, and I knew she wanted to study, so I asked her to help me.
Later, my eldest daughter became the first student I taught in the mountains, and she also became the only person I could rely on and trust in the mountains.
After that, I went out of the mountains twice and returned to Qinchuan once.
I borrowed 20,000 yuan from my parents, saying that when the money was gone, I would come back, find a stable job, and marry Xu Xiaohui.
I also met Xu Xiaohui and told her about the situation in the mountains. She didn't quite understand me, but said that the separation during this period had made her think things through, and she still loved me, so she agreed to give me a few years.
In the following years, I became more and more familiar with this vast mountain range, and I could even understand several ethnic dialects.
But my progress in the mountains was not smooth.
I traveled back and forth between Dashan and the Mengmao Education Bureau countless times, hoping that they could provide some textbooks or give me some support.
But except for the first few months when I earned a total of more than 300 yuan, no one was willing to receive me anymore.
The money I borrowed from my parents had long been used up, and I was in a dilemma.
I wrote a letter to Xu Xiaohui and told her about my misfortune. Xu Xiaohui mailed me two months' salary and helped me get through a difficult period.
After that, I often corresponded with Xu Xiaohui, and in order to get her letters, I had to come out of the mountains every month.
He searched for books for the children, went to the post office to pick up letters, and then sat on the scorching hot street, writing her reply stroke by stroke.
This kind of life continued until the third year after I came to Nanzhan, when her father married the eldest daughter to a family that grew poppies.
The son of that family, whom she called "尜尜", is already in his twenties and still drools. I heard that he is not mentally normal.
I went to argue with the eldest daughter's father and told him that his daughter already knew a lot of words and that even if he sent her out of the mountains to work in a factory, it would be better than marrying her to a fool in exchange for two fields of poppy.
But her father insisted on doing so, so I got angry and ran to the poppy field full of beautiful flowers and set it on fire.
These enchanting flowers are like demons that eat people's souls. As an atheist, this is the first time I have such an idea: these flowers curse the people on this land.
Before the fire was fully started, the eldest daughter's father and people from the nearby village came running over.
They took sticks and hit me hard on the body and head. They cursed me in an incomprehensible dialect, but I could no longer hear anything.
I was badly injured that time because I tried to burn their only source of income, which in their eyes was equivalent to cutting off their livelihood.
As a result, they almost killed me, beat me severely, and threw me into the mountains to fend for myself.
Later, it was the eldest daughter and her younger brother who saved me. They took turns carrying me along the rugged mountain roads for dozens of miles and sent me to another village.
I stayed in a hospital in a small county town called Mengmao for more than twenty days and missed the chance to write back to Xu Xiaohui.
After I was discharged from the hospital, I went to the post office immediately, but found that Xu Xiaohui's letter was also late.
I called Xu Xiaohui's workplace and they told me that Xiaohui had resigned.
I didn't call home because I didn't know how to tell my parents. I have always been their pride since I was a child, but now I am penniless and living on the streets.
Even so, I had no intention of going back because I saw hope in my eldest daughter and her younger brother.
During these three years, I have traveled to many villages under the guidance of my eldest daughter and taught many children to read.
Going back like this would not only be embarrassing, but I also don't want these three years to be meaningless.
So I gritted my teeth and tried to hold on, and I started borrowing money everywhere, because I knew very well that only after I sent some supplies.
Only then would the adults in the mountains relax their attitude towards me and agree to let me teach their children a few words.
I don’t know if my persistence has any meaning, it seems like I’ve gone insane…
If I don't keep going, my future will be filled with lifelong depression because of this incident.
The money I borrowed from my old classmates was not much, and then someone introduced someone to me.
His name is Ma Dao, perhaps just a nickname. He wears Lisu costumes but speaks fluent Mandarin.
Ma Dao said he could lend me money, but I said I had no collateral.
He smiled and said that he knew me, that I was an educated and honest man, and that I would not default on my debt.
