Graphic Version 100 Fatherly Stories That Influence a Lifetime

Author: Zhu Ziqing, Lin Qingxuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: "Dad, don’t worry, that bike appears in my dreams every night. I’m sitting behind, my brother in front, and you pedal it as fast as you can"
The Father’s Bicycle by Yu Jie
Some say that 10-year-old children admire their fathers, 20-year-old young adults despise them, and 40-year-old middle-aged adults pity them. However, to me, my father has always been someone I admire throughout my life.
My father was an architect. All the workers on the construction site feared him. Even a slight mistake in the ratio of sand to cement would earn him a scolding. Yet, at home, he was always loving. His good temper even surpassed that of my mother.
In the county, my father’s bicycle was well-known. Every morning, noon, and evening, he rode his creaky old bike, regardless of rain or shine, to pick me and my brother up from and drop us off at school. Back then, my brother and I would run out of school together, spotting my father standing anxiously beside his broken bike, dressed in an old blue Zhongshan suit.
Along the way, the two little ones chattered nonstop, while my father managed to multitask—listening happily while carefully avoiding countless potholes on the road.
When I started middle school, one child was no longer on his bike; when my brother also started middle school, my father no longer had to make the round trip twice a day. Yet, my father seemed somewhat lost, realizing that his sons were growing up day by day.
The day I received my university admission notice, I couldn’t sleep all night. In the middle of the night, I heard movement in the living room and got up to see—it was my father, flipping through an old, yellowed photo album under the desk lamp.
Seeing me, he smiled slightly and pointed to a basketball photo, saying, "This is a picture of me when I first went to university!" In the photo, my father was full of vitality, his eyes bright and sharp—what a handsome young man! At that moment, standing behind him, I suddenly noticed that his back had already turned white.
My father had lost his own father at birth, and the painful experience made him deeply realize the importance of a father to his son. Therefore, in his life, everything revolved around work and his wife and children. He didn’t smoke or drink, didn’t fish or tend to flowers, living contentedly between the office and home.
Guiding his son’s studies was his greatest joy. Every day, he would check his homework meticulously, signing his parent’s remarks with care. At parent-teacher meetings, he was often praised by the teachers as the "most dedicated parent."
My mother once told me a story: When I was just one year old, I nearly died from a sudden illness. When my father, who was working far away at a mining site, received the telegram, the last bus had already left. He trekked through the mountains all night, risked climbing onto a coal-hauling train, and then took a local’s tractor, finally arriving back in the small town in the evening.
With a face covered in sweat and dust, my father held me in his arms, already out of danger. A few tears fell on my face, and I cried loudly.
"Those mountain paths were full of cliffs and steep slopes. Thinking back, I still feel a bit scared," my father said calmly many years later.
My father wasn’t good at expressing emotions, and we often spent time in silence together. Yet, I could sense the deep connection between us.
After I left home, I received a letter from my father. There was a seemingly casual line in it: "Remember that old bike? After you left, I went to the backyard and found it in the pile of junk—it had rusted into a heap of scrap metal."
I thought about it for a long time and wrote back to him one sunny morning: "Dad, don’t worry, that bike appears in my dreams every night. I’m sitting behind, my brother in front, and you pedal it as fast as you can."