Vent your emotions

Author: / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-01-01
Features: During my senior year of high school, one weekend, my mother rode in someone else's car to No. 1 High School in the county. After handing me two jars of pickled vegetables, she excitedly gave me a box of beautifully packaged nutritional liquid. I was surprised and asked my mother, "Our family is so poor, why buy this?" My mother said very seriously, "I heard this thing is good for the brain. If you drink it, you're sure to get into university." I rubbed the nutritional liquid and muttered, "It's so expensive, did you borrow money?" My mother smiled, "No! I traded my bracelet for it." That beautiful silver bracelet was passed down from my grandmother to my mother. It was a precious thing for the poor mother, and for years, she never dared to wear it, keeping it hidden at the bottom of a box. After my mother left, I opened a small bottle of the nutritional liquid and slowly drank the cloudy liquid. Unexpectedly, I was taken to the hospital that night. It turned out that the nutritional liquid my mother brought was a counterfeit. When I returned to school, I threw the entire box away. When I received my university admission notice, my mother said with joy, "That nutritional liquid wasn't wasted at all. Back then, your father was afraid someone would trick us." I nodded vigorously.
One hot summer day, while I was in university, I received a package from home. I rushed to the post office to pick it up and, before even opening the tightly wrapped, multi-layered small cardboard box, a strong sour smell hit me. Holding my breath, I opened it to find five cooked eggs inside. After traveling thousands of miles, they had already gone bad and smelled. I couldn't help but complain: "Why didn't you think about this? In such a big city, you can't get eggs from anywhere? On such a hot day, sending them all the way from the countryside—of course, they would go bad." Soon after, a letter written by my neighbor for my mother arrived. It turned out that recently, there was a saying in our hometown that if a mother bought five eggs, cooked them, and gave them to her children to eat, it would protect them. In the letter, my mother repeatedly reminded me to eat all five boiled eggs at once. At that moment, my heart felt warm, as if my mother was standing in front of me, watching me eat the five eggs. When I returned home for summer vacation, my mother asked if the eggs were bad. I smiled and said, "No, I ate them all at once." Then I saw my mother's face full of happiness, shining like the sun.
Before graduation, I wrote to my mother that I had a girlfriend. My mother was very happy and quickly sent me a red scarf. When I gave it to my girlfriend, she said disdainfully, "How outdated! Look, who still wears this kind of scarf these days?" She was right. In the city, almost no girls wear such scarves. Later, my relationship with my girlfriend grew colder, and eventually, we broke up. That day, I asked her, "Where is that red scarf?" "I threw that trash away long ago. If you want one, I can buy you a dozen." Of course, I didn't want a dozen, but my heart was filled with sorrow for my mother's innocent red scarf. Later, when I started dating my wife, I gave her a red scarf that was exactly the same as the one my mother had bought. I told her it was from my mother. My wife cherished it. Later, my mother proudly told many people, "A red scarf helped my son tie a good wife in one go." Seeing my mother's joy, of course, I couldn't tell her that my wife wasn't "tied" by her red scarf. The next day, neither of us mentioned the night's events.
While packing boxes in my new home in Singapore, I found a sealed small cardboard box under a pile of clothes. I tore off the adhesive and found a full box of candied chestnuts. In the hustle and bustle, I put the chestnuts in a plastic bag and stuffed them into the closet. Those days, I was busy making friends, learning the language, and adapting to the environment, so the bag of chestnuts was gradually forgotten. One day, I suddenly remembered it and dug it out of the closet. Below the plastic bag, a small pool of brown water had formed. When I opened the bag, a pungent smell hit me. The bag was covered in a thick layer of water vapor, and the brown chestnuts had a white, frost-like mold. I was sorry and threw them into the trash can, then went to wipe the small patch of grayish-brown stain on the closet. But no matter how hard I tried, a few streaks remained on the white cabinet, just like the complicated love of parents for their children—no matter how much you ignore, resist, or even get angry, it will always linger and be impossible to brush away. I remembered my mother's figure slowly turning around the stove in the firelight, and my father's white hair, almost caught by the flames, and tears stained by the smoke. I walked to the trash can, lifted the lid, and saw a large bag of candied chestnuts emitting a sour smell. I stared at them for a long time, tears streaming down my face.
When I was a child, I was a mischievous one. Things like climbing onto someone else's roof to steal walnuts and getting caught on the spot, fighting with classmates at school and being punished to stand facing the wall—these things happened often. I even deliberately drowned my schoolbag in the water to skip class. For having me as a child, my parents' hearts were broken, yet they were helpless. Relying on their helplessness, I became even more reckless. When my father was angry, he threatened to send me to a mental hospital. In my mind, a mental hospital was a very terrifying place, so I stopped eating, stopped talking, sat at the table, and waited for my mother to come home, then cried into her arms, making a mess of her clothes and pointing at my father, saying, "He's going to send me to a mental hospital." To force me to study, every holiday, my father would give me a lot of calligraphy and applied math assignments. At that time, the torment I endured from my father was almost unbearable. I would hastily finish the calligraphy homework and sneak out, and soon it would be dusk. After dinner, I would immediately climb into bed and pray that my father would have mercy and not wake me up. In my memory, my father always came home late, and upon learning that I hadn't finished the applied math problems, he would drag me out of bed. In a drowsy state, I would do the math problems while resenting my father. Eventually, in this resentment, I ended up getting the top grade in the class at the end of the term.
Actually, my father loved me very much. At that time, my mother was working far away, so my daily life was entirely taken care of by my father. Every morning, he would clumsily tie my pigtails for me, following a picture of a little girl, and comb a row of bangs in front. After finishing my hair, my father would give me mutton stew with noodles. On cold winter mornings, there was a foot-thick layer of snow outside the house, while inside, the stove was simmering with mutton soup. My father was busy cutting carrots, tearing off flatbread, and adding coriander. I drank the mutton soup mouthful by mouth, thinking it was the best food in the world. The place I went to school was far from home, and I had to walk along the river for over half an hour. I was often fascinated by that magical little river, pulling up sweet grass, picking up stones, or collecting pieces of clay that could be carved. Every day, my father checked my homework, but each time, he had to rummage through my bag for a long time to find the wrinkled, dirty homework book. My father glared at me and repeated the same thing every day—"For the last time, don't put all this nonsense in your bag." I ignored him, thinking it was unreasonable for him to rummage through my bag so arbitrarily.
Now I have grown into a young woman. The from childhood has long faded, replaced by new, more troublesome problems for my parents. I love traveling, and my father warned me that there were many human traffickers outside. As if I were still a little girl of four or five, but when I was four or five, he never worried that I would be taken away by strangers. I love a free and easy life, but my parents think only they can give me happiness. I no longer scream and cry like I used to, and my parents no longer shout at me loudly, but the conflicts have built up like a volcano, seemingly calm on the surface but ready to erupt at any moment. When I was no longer woken up at midnight to do math problems, I still couldn't sleep, staring at the dark shadows of trees outside the window and the sparse moonlight, tears filling my eyes. The conflict reached its peak after I got a boyfriend. My father was especially furious—he couldn't tolerate his young, elegant daughter dating such an unremarkable guy. My usual stubbornness and stubbornness were even more pronounced. For a while, I nearly came into conflict with my parents, fighting, fasting, and even attempting suicide, using every method I could think of. My mother couldn't bear to see me growing thinner and fighting alone, so she gave in first. But my father seemed unmoved, instead waiting to see what tricks I would pull next. For a long time, I didn't fight, didn't make a fuss, and didn't talk to my father, because indifference was the best way to torment him. One day, I came home from work and saw my father riding his bicycle back with groceries. I had planned to bow my head and pass by, but my father turned around and said, "Get on, I'll take you home." I hopped on, and the bike wobbled violently. My father struggled to balance.
When I was a child, my father used to take me like this. But back then, no matter how hard I tried to hop on, the bike never wobbled. In that moment, I realized my father was getting old. Looking up, I saw a long-tailed magpie standing on an oak tree, emitting a mournful cry. It was an old magpie, with no young ones by its side. I knew the war between me and my father wasn't over, but at that moment, my feelings were sincere. My father loved me very much, no matter what I did, he would never really blame me. It had been like this for over 20 years.
Gradually, I grew up and got my own name. As I got older, I grew to resent my childhood nickname even more. One day, when my mother called me "Nao'er" again, I suddenly got impatient and said to her, "Mom, please don't call me by my nickname anymore, okay!" Then, I turned around and walked into the room, leaving my mother speechless. In the days that followed, my mother started calling me by my full name, "Guo Qiang," but a few days later, she forgot again and went back to calling me "Nao'er," "Nao'er."
That day was my birthday, and many classmates came to my house to celebrate. My mother was especially happy and was busy running around the kitchen. When a plate after plate of fragrant dishes was served, my best friend brought the cake I had received and placed it on the table. I eagerly opened the cake and yelled to the kitchen, "Mom, get the knife!" My mother took a fruit knife from the kitchen and handed it to me, reminding me, "Nao'er, be careful with your hands."
"Huh!" My classmates asked curiously, "Your nickname was 'Nao'? That's fun." They laughed kindly, and my face flushed red to the roots of my ears.
That night, before going to bed, I stormed into my mother's bedroom and yelled, "Don't call me by my nickname anymore, okay!" At that moment, a complex expression appeared on my mother's face: "I'm sorry, Guo Qiang."
From that day on, my mother never called me by my nickname again and only used my full name, "Guo Qiang." But for some reason, ever since then, whenever I heard those two words, "Guo Qiang," from my mother's lips, I felt a strange sensation in my heart.
A female teacher raised her glass and said, "Mr. Wang, you're in Beijing. You came to our poor place, and we are deeply moved. I ask you, when you go back to Beijing, if you could please advocate for us to build a Hope School here. The children here are too pitiful—so many kids can't go to school. What should we do?" I didn't know how I drank the cup of wine.
The children in the mountains all had big eyes. When I passed in front of their homes, they looked at me with big eyes but no expression on their faces. At that moment, it was easy to think of the children in the city, but the strong contrast made you doubt whether your heartfelt feelings were a bit fake. You saw it, you were moved, but you knew you would forget tomorrow and continue living as you always had. That was us.
That day, we visited a family in the mountains. When they said "home," as my friend put it, it was really just a under the sky. The sunlight shining outside entered the dark and damp thatched hut. Inside, there was an earthen stove, two beds made of wooden planks, covered with a pile of old, colorless bedding, and a few primitive farming tools. That was all—this was the entire home. Their food was corn mixed with wild greens, and a basin of boiled pumpkin was considered a delicacy. When the host saw us enter, they found a few small wooden stools and didn't know what to do, until they finally remembered they could offer us roasted pumpkin seeds. We sat for a while but didn't know what to say, so we got up and left. My eyes had already adjusted to the dimness inside, and at that moment, I noticed a child less than a year old lying on a small wooden chair near the stove. The child was wrapped tightly in a cloth, with a red face. The weather was still hot, so I asked how they could put the child near the fire. My friend asked again in the local language, and the female host said, "The child has a fever." My friend said, "This isn't right. Take the child to the town to see a doctor. If you go to the forestry station later, I can get medicine for you—don't delay this." The female host nodded, but her face remained expressionless.