Being human

Author: Qing Xue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-09
Features: This girl, who had always been nurtured by her mother like crystal glass, suffered a devastating blow on her eighteenth birthday. This blow not only left her with lifelong physical and emotional scars but also shaped her character and fate. It wasn’t until many years later, when she had a passionate romance with a married man, that she truly found release and understood everything that had happened between her mother and the village head. At the age of eighteen, however, she only harbored hatred and despair for her mother. On that dark night, the image of her mother, who had always relied on her, collapsed like a lighthouse in her heart, shattering in the darkness. With a wounded heart, she gazed at the vast, desolate world in the endless night, questioning the meaning of life, doubting everything beautiful, even scrutinizing every love she had received during her upbringing—she grew up in this barren land, in a remote mountain village in northern Guangdong. The mountains stretched endlessly, one after another, with layers upon layers, offering no glimpse of the world beyond. Those few winding shepherd paths, curving and endless, were all that could be seen. At the foot of the mountains, scattered were a few earthen houses, occasionally dotted with wisps of smoke drifting gracefully from the valley to the midmountains, blending with the white mist. The occasional barking of dogs in the village only added to the mountain’s solitude and tranquility. In the fields, one could often see villagers working diligently under the scorching sun with hats, or under the rain and fog with raincoats, bending their backs and bowing their heads, so meticulously and devotedly, that their labor often revealed an elegance beyond hardship. After living here for nearly two decades from the 1970s to the 1990s, she felt no change in the place. There were so many mountain villagers who had never stepped outside the forests in their entire lives, born and raised in the mountains, and buried in the mountain soil after death, nourishing the weeds, which in turn gave rise to new life, a cycle of generations, repeating endlessly. And she—Lin Chenxue, abandoned by her parents in the wilderness at birth, was destined to leave the mountains! From a very, very young age, she loved standing on the peak behind her house, gazing at the distant mountains across the valley, imagining the world beyond the mountains—though she couldn’t quite picture what it would be like, she believed that one day she would spread her wings like a fully feathered bird and soar into the world beyond the mountains. Before the age of three, she grew up mostly in her mother’s back carrier, as there were no grandparents to take care of her. Her father worked away, leaving her mother to handle all household chores, tending to the fields while raising her children. Whenever her mother went out to farm, she would tie Chenxue to her back. Starting at four, she began to take care of the house independently. Once, while playing house with her friends, she accidentally knocked over a mud house her friend had built. A bigger boy shoved her hard and said, “Get away, you’re a bastard, a wildling picked up from the mountains—we don’t want to play with you!” The other children chimed in, “You’re a bastard, we don’t want to play with you.” She cried and ran home. Her mother wasn’t there, so she sat on the doorstep, tears brimming, waiting for her. Her mother returned, carrying her hoe.