Teacher Xiao Zhong's adventures in the countryside

Xiao Mingye only had one class in the morning, and he didn't want to come back, but yesterday he heard from his six sons that the corn harvest had started at home, and if he didn't go back, only his elder brother Yuan Baochang would work alone.

He couldn't help himself, so he went back to help him after class and worked for him for an hour. At noon, he carried corn and sent it back. Before Wang Guizhi cooked, he could leave quickly. He really didn't want to eat at home.

Unexpectedly, as soon as they entered the village, they saw Zhong Yiqiu and Li Hongfei squatting by the side of the road. When they saw him, the two of them were still muttering, not knowing what to say.

Zhong Yiqiu's fair face was tanned like a ripe tomato, her hair was wet with sweat and stuck to her forehead, and her eyes were dark and bright.

"Mr. Xiao, I'm lucky to have met you. We've been waiting here for a long time but we haven't seen anyone." Li Hongfei started calling him from afar.

Although he worked in an office for nearly a year, Xiao Mingye hadn't talked to Li Hongfei much, but he was rather shy and blushed after speaking a few words.

Today's warm greeting, maybe I was a little anxious.

Xiao Mingye stood still and looked at Zhong Yiqiu, the kid puffed up his mouth and didn't speak.

Li Hongfei hurriedly explained the situation, "We went to Yuan Bing's house. When we came, I forgot to ask where his house lived. Everyone in the village has gone to the ground, and there is no one to ask for directions."

After finishing speaking, she sneaked a glance at Yuan Yulan who was beside Xiao Mingye, her face turned black and red.

Xiao Mingye pointed to a small path between the two houses in front and said, "Go down from the right, turn left at the main road, go until the end and turn right again, the first house in the second row is there."

Zhong Yiqiu silently remembered it in her heart and nodded.

"There are two mulberry trees at the door," Yuan Yulan added suddenly.

Zhong Yiqiu didn't know who she was, but she heard her voice clear and gentle, speaking to herself again, and thanked her earnestly with a smile.

Li Hongfei laughed out two deep dimples. He didn't know whether to say to Xiao Mingye or Yuan Yulan, "Thank you so much. We have been looking for it for almost half an hour, and..."

"If you don't leave, you should forget your way." Xiao Mingye interrupted his hospitality.

Li Hongfei scratched his hair in embarrassment and said, "Then let's go."

Seeing Zhong Yiqiu's absent-minded look, Xiao Mingye wondered what inexplicable things he was thinking.

After hesitating for a while, he still said when he turned around, "Go back early, I'll leave a meal for you."

Sure enough, within a few minutes, Li Hongfei completely forgot the way Xiao Mingye pointed out just now, or didn't remember it at all, and he didn't know where he went?

Zhong Yiqiu led him to turn two corners, and came to the first green brick house on the side of the road. There were two tall trees at the door, Zhong Yiqiu guessed that they might be mulberry trees.

The first time he saw a mulberry tree, he looked up for a long time but didn't see a single mulberry.

"It's over, wait until spring," Li Hongfei told him.

There was no one at home, so they could only squat under the tree and wait.

Zhong Yiqiu took a closer look, the house is not big but it is a red brick house, it should be newly built for a few years.

There were bags of fertilizers, bean husks, and cut grass all around in a mess. Zhong Yiqiu even saw weeds growing under the wall, like a deserted house that had not been inhabited for a long time.

No one came back until 12 o'clock, and Li Hongfei was anxious, circling back and forth like a donkey pulling a mill.

"Could it be that we found the wrong one?" He confirmed to Zhong Yiqiu for the third time.

Zhong Yiqiu was a little uncertain when he asked him, the midday sun was extremely violent, and his skin hurt a little even after hiding in the shade of a tree, how could it be possible that he was still doing farm work outside at this time.

The two were discussing whether to ask someone again, when they looked up, they saw a little boy turning around from the side of the road, barefoot, with a big bamboo basket on his slender arms, full of freshly picked mung beans without shells. His body was bent into a bow.

Seeing them, the child stopped and stared vigilantly.

Zhong Yiqiu has never seen a darker person than the child in front of him. When a face is silent, only the whites of the eyes can be distinguished, and the rest of the facial features are simply black and mixed together.

"Are you Yuan Bing?" Li Hongfei took a step forward and asked.

The child didn't answer, his body couldn't hold it up anymore, so he squatted down and carefully placed the bamboo basket on the ground.

"I'm the school teacher, the head teacher of the second grade." Li Hongfei said again, and then pointed to Zhong Yiqiu behind him to introduce, "This is the math teacher of the second grade, a new college student."

Yuan Bing shook his sore arm, looking at Zhong Yiqiu curiously with a pair of small but energetic eyes.

"Where's your grandfather?" Li Hongfei asked helplessly.

"Behind," the child finally replied.

After being silent for half a minute, Yuan Bing pulled the key around his neck and said, "Go into the house."

Zhong Yiqiu could tell that he knew Li Hongfei as a teacher at the school, but when they first met, he still guarded against them like he was guarding against bad guys, and he must know the purpose of the teacher's visit in his heart.

Li Hongfei helped him lift the bamboo basket on the ground, and followed him into the house.

The floor of the house is muddy, as if two rooms have been converted into one. There is a wooden bed on the left hand side of the door, and a tattered dark gray mosquito net is hung, which should have been white.

The half room on the right-hand side seemed to be tied to cattle. As soon as the door was opened, there was a smell of fermented animal dung, and a group of flies the size of soybeans buzzed and flew together.

Yuan Bing brought them two chairs, and just sat down at the door when he saw a thin old man come back with a big basket on his back.

Yuan Bing ran out to support the basket on his back, and helped him squat down and put him on the ground.

"Uncle, we are school teachers, we are here to visit." Li Hongfei and Zhong Yiqiu stood up and said hello first.

An uneasy smile appeared on the old man's dark face, as if he had rubbed his dry skin into a ball. He rubbed the ashes on his hands and said, "Sit down, sit down—" and called Yuan Bing Go pour water.

"Uncle, don't bother." Li Hongfei stopped him and went straight to the topic, "I'm the head teacher of the second grade. Yuan Bing should be promoted to the second grade this year. It's been a few days since the start of school and he hasn't signed up yet. Let's find out the situation."

The old man sat down directly on the short threshold, and said angrily, "I told him to sign up a long time ago, but this kid just won't go, he's so stubborn!"

Yuan Bing sat down on a small bench in the room, with half of his buttocks hanging outside, his body crooked and his head bowed, not speaking.

Li Hongfei turned around and asked him, "Why don't you go to school?"

"No reason, I just don't want to go," Yuan Bing said calmly, with indifference on his face.

These are completely children's words, Zhong Yiqiu thought.

Li Hongfei raised his buttocks, leaned his body forward, and slowed down his voice, "What do you want to do if you don't want to go to school, you are so old, you can't do anything, so you have to go to school."

Yuan Bing stopped talking, just turned his head to look around, and looked at Zhong Yiqiu several times with his eyes seemingly unintentionally.

"Look, he's stubborn, he doesn't listen to what he says!" The old man stretched out his hand and nodded Yuan Bing.

Zhong Yiqiu practiced what she was going to say several times in her heart, and said, "Do you not like going to school? Or do you not go to school for other reasons?"

He spoke Mandarin, which stunned both Yuan Bing and his grandfather. From their point of view, only people on the radio and TV spoke Mandarin.

"This is Mr. Zhong, a college student sent by the city, to teach Yuan Bing their mathematics this year." Li Hongfei emphatically recommended it to the old man.

Yuan Bing stared straight at Zhong Yiqiu, as if watching some circus, both curious and envious.

"Ms. Zhong just asked you, is it because you don't like going to school?" Li Hongfei urged him to answer.

His small palms were mixed together, and his black fingers were picking at each other indiscriminately.

"I don't have money to go to school, and my grandfather needs to take medicine. After going to school, I have no money to take medicine." Yuan Bing replied in a low voice. He was a little embarrassed to say this in front of his grandfather.

Zhong Yiqiu looked at the crack on Yuan Bing's arm, the white dead skin turned out, the thick black mud in the long fingernails, and the two bare legs covered with white scars.

A pair of feet wrapped in mud, under Zhong Yiqiu's gaze, cautiously and humblely looking for a hiding place.

He felt that he could no longer persuade this child. He had never felt such a predicament, and he was not qualified to guide him to choose.

His throat was stiff and sore as if blocked by a ball of cotton, and he couldn't speak a word.

"You kid, why worry about it, you're still a kid" the old man scolded.

"This is an adult's business. You should go to school at your grade..." Li Hongfei seemed unable to persuade him.

Several adults were blocked by a child's words.

Zhong Yiqiu swallowed her saliva, and said to Yuan Bing like an adult, "Everyone will encounter many difficulties... Although you are still a child, you have already encountered many difficulties that adults would not encounter..."

He was a little bit speechless, paused for a few seconds to reorganize, "Grandpa's health is very important, you save money for schooling to buy medicine for him, you are a filial child... But this is not the best way to solve the problem... If you want grandpa to live a good life, you have to grow up quickly..."

"Go to school, learn knowledge, be a capable person, earn more money, and stop making grandpa so hard." Zhong Yiqiu is not a person who knows how to reason, and after speaking intermittently, he didn't know what he was talking about.

"The teacher is right, that's the reason! You don't have a father or a mother, but you have a grandfather, so you can be educated when you go to school. Otherwise, you will spend your whole life, and I will rely on you in the future!" the old man said excitedly.

Yuan Bing buried his head in his chest, his thin shoulders trembled slightly, Zhong Yiqiu didn't know if he was crying.

When going back, walking on the wooden bridge at the entrance of the village, Zhong Yiqiu looked back at the village under the shade of green trees, and the humming of cicadas was dull and powerless.

Zhong Yiqiu suddenly felt a little homesick, and hadn't contacted her family for so many days.

At the beginning, I didn't find any phone, but then I thought about where I could make the call?He used to call his dad's unit when he was in school, but now he is the last thing his dad wants to see.

Otherwise, you have to call the reception room at the door and ask the uncle in the reception room to call his mother, and his mother must be at home.

"This is the case in rural areas. Each family has its own difficulties," Li Hongfei sighed.

"How much is the tuition fee per semester?" Zhong Yiqiu suddenly remembered and asked.

Li Hongfei replied: "The tuition and miscellaneous fees for the second grade are 65 yuan."

Zhong Yiqiu asked the next question as if he didn't need an answer, "What if he doesn't sign up tomorrow?"

Li Hongfei chuckled lightly, his eyes trying to cross the cornfield beyond the roadside, "If you don't go, then you just don't go."

Zhong Yiqiu didn't dare to speak lightly anymore, he felt that many of what he said today were like naive jokes, like an ignorant young man speaking self-righteous truths.

It was past one o'clock when we returned to school, and Li Hongfei didn't have time to go home, so Zhong Yiqiu took him to the dormitory for dinner.

Uncle Yi made stewed noodles with beans at noon, and left two large bowls in the pot to keep warm.

Everyone was taking a nap, the door was closed, and they squatted lightly at the small dining table in the kitchen to eat.

After running for a long time under the scorching sun at noon in midsummer, I didn't drink a drop of water, and my lips were dry and cracked.

I don't know if it's because the braised noodles are too dry, or because there is an inexplicable emotion in my heart, Zhong Yiqiu can't swallow it.

There was no hot water bottle in the kitchen, so he took out an empty bowl, scooped a bowl of cold water from the water tank and poured it down, still feeling a bit dry and sore in his throat.

Xiao Mingye heard the voice coming out of the room, walked to the door of the kitchen and saw Zhong Yiqiu pouring cold water, his delicate Adam's apple trembled up and down as if he had been wronged.

He felt himself trembling too.