Just as Ha Yue hurriedly locked the door of the convenience store, Xue Jing, two hundred kilometers away, was nestled in the back seat of a Toyota Coaster, half-asleep with his eyelashes drooping.
Suicheng has no airport. Xue Jing's flight landed in the nearest city, Lincheng, at 10:00 AM, and he was immediately picked up by local Suicheng staff and taken to this beige minivan.
There were sixteen seats in the bus. At first, Xue Jing was puzzled as to why the local propaganda department would send such a minibus to pick him up and take him to the hotel. However, as the bus drove into Suicheng and stopped at various locations to pick up people, Xue Jing realized that his arduous task was about to begin.
For adults, the prelude to work is socializing.
"Writer Xue, we are all very happy that you were invited here. We are just roughnecks who only know how to run a business and don't know much about culture and art. Director Zhao said that you have achieved great success in literature. Please say a good word for our wind power industry and ask the leaders to allocate more special funds to us."
The person who spoke was a member of the management team of the Suicheng Wind Power Company. He was short in stature and spoke broken Mandarin. As soon as he sat down, he used his snobbish triangular eyes to look Xue Jing up and down.
Sitting in the same not-so-spacious seat in the van, the people around them craned their necks to chat, their postures somewhat awkward, but Xue Jing, despite his tall stature, always possessed an air of pristine purity.
His ten fingers, clasped together on his knees, were ivory white, with neatly trimmed nails and delicate, rounded knuckles, as if he were born with the ability to write beautiful characters.
As for a beautiful face, it was even whiter than the fingers peeking out from under the sleeve. If it weren't for the calmness of her brows and eyes, she would have a delicate beauty.
Xue Jing graduated with a master's degree from Jilin University last June. He studied Chinese language and literature as an undergraduate, majoring in classical philology. Later, he studied under Professor Zhang, a senior professor at Jilin University, and spent two years studying overseas Chinese books and Sinology at Yale University. However, compared to the knowledge he has accumulated over the years, he entered the profession of author much earlier.
Even now, Xue Jing has been working in the cultural industry for many years, but he still looks much younger than his actual age.
No wonder this Mr. Huang used polite words to probe him.
Xue Jing was usually a man of few words, but he could talk a lot more when it came to literature. He disliked chatting with these kinds of old hands in the business world, but he had made a prior agreement with the Jicheng Cultural Bureau that he was here with a special quota, so he put on a very humble appearance and smiled slightly, "Mr. Huang, what are you saying? I just make a living with words, how can you talk about the difference between fine and rough? I certainly wouldn't dare to call myself a great writer."
"Tsk, Lao Huang, you're not suited for this kind of occasion. All you talk about is your little schemes. It's vulgar to talk about money with Teacher Xue. We should talk about planning, policies, the development of wind power in Suicheng over the past thirty-five years, and the bright future of Suicheng."
"Yes, yes, Director Zhao is right. We should have a couple of drinks at noon."
"Teacher Xue, do you have any dietary restrictions? Suicheng may not have much else, but we have plenty of beef, mutton, and liquor. You absolutely have to try our 'Beyond the Great Wall' Moutai."
"Let's have a welcome-back party for Teacher Xue today, and drink until we drop!"
"Hey, that's how we show respect by filling our glasses to the brim. Professor Xue can stop when he wants. Haven't you seen the interview? Professor Xue has never touched a cigarette or alcohol in his daily life. Unlike us?"
They listened to these people talking all the way, and then ate a table full of beef and mutton. By the time Xue Jing woke up from his drowsy state, Koster had already circled the most prosperous area of Suicheng.
At the banquet, Xue Jing couldn't refuse, and due to the atmosphere, he also drank a small cup of baijiu.
Because he wasn't a good drinker, he was slightly tipsy. He didn't remember any of the landmarks that Director Zhao from the Cultural Bureau had introduced to him. However, when he opened his eyes and saw the setting sun about to sink below the horizon, he was startled.
Xue Jing is a native of Jicheng. Although he has been studying in the ivory tower for many years, he often travels around the world during his two winter and summer vacations a year in order to better complete his works.
In addition to publicly funded archaeological internships in Dunhuang, Wudang Mountain and other places in the country.
He was once suddenly drenched in a downpour on a sunny London street, and had his wallet stolen by a gun-wielding teenager wearing a beanie late at night in Paris.
He had seen the sea in Sicily and witnessed the aurora borealis in Iceland, but at this moment, as he gazed at the vast, desolate landscape before him and the enormous windmills slowly turning beneath the distant mountains in the blood-red sunset, he suddenly felt a unique tremor within him.
There are no magnificent natural landscapes here, nor are there prosperous and bustling urban areas. But on the edge of this town, which is almost abandoned by the people, in this place where once one could find no one when leaving Yangguan, one can see groups of three-armed windmills, some hundreds of meters high, tirelessly whistling in the wind.
This is not a relic of an ancient civilization, but an industrial miracle created by modern humankind.
Just as Xue Jing turned around to ask his fellow passengers some questions about wind turbine power generation, a loud bang suddenly erupted from the front of the car, followed by thick smoke billowing from the windshield, and the car, which had been bumping along the dirt road, came to an abrupt stop.
"What's going on, Xiao Jin!" Director Zhao of the Cultural Bureau leaned towards the driver, adjusting his glasses.
The driver, Xiao Jin, scratched his head, pulled the handbrake, and awkwardly pointed to the dashboard before turning back to him, saying, "No, I'm sorry, sir, the car, our car seems to have blown an engine."
As autumn arrives, the days in Suicheng become shorter and shorter.
It was just past five o'clock, and the sky was already beginning to darken.
Ha Yue rode her electric bike around the city four or five times an hour ago, and finally found Zhao Chunni wandering around in front of an abandoned primary school.
After settling her silently into the car and taking her home, the taciturn Zhao Chunni suddenly flew into a rage upon seeing her aunt waiting at home. She shoved Ha Yue, complaining that she had brought her home, and insisted on going out to find her pig.
The mother and daughter exchanged a few words, and with the neighbor taking sides, Zhao Chunni suddenly burst into tears.
She sat on the ground, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes with her rough fingers, sobbing that if the pig was lost, she didn't want to live anymore.
With his hair disheveled and face dirty, Ha Yue had no choice but to set off again on his tricycle, following the route Zhao Chunni had given him, to find the two piglets who had escaped from prison together.
Zhao Chunni didn't seem to care about her daughter's exhaustion. Instead, the aunt who was trying to mediate the fight took off her headscarf and tied it around her head, saying that the night wind was cold and she was afraid it would give her a migraine.
After passing through a busy residential area, there was a desolate farmland ahead. Just before sunset, Ha Yue finally found the two little guys gnawing on rotten fruit among a few jujubes.
She was furious the moment she saw the two creatures. Regardless of whether the pigs were fluent in Chinese or not, she grabbed the ear of the leader and gave it a good scolding.
Having found the lost pig, Ha Yue, who had been running around all afternoon, finally breathed a sigh of relief.
On the way back, she drove her tricycle quite fast, but her mind was not at ease. She was considering whether she should take Zhao Chunni to a top-tier hospital in Jicheng for a follow-up visit to check on the progression of her condition.
Zhao Chunni was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease three years ago. At first, Zhao Chunni scoffed at the diagnosis from the county hospital, believing that she was strong and healthy and could not possibly have such a disease. In addition, the mother and daughter had had disagreements in the past, so she did not immediately tell her daughter about her condition.
Ha Yue received the phone call that made her decide to move back to Suicheng two years ago in the afternoon.
Just like today, the call was from my neighbor, but she used her mother's phone number.
At that time, Ha Yue was on a freelance basis, working for herself. To put it nicely, she had free time, but in reality, it meant that she could work anytime she was not sleeping.
In the initial stages, registering a company, handling bookkeeping and tax filing, buying a domain name, and building a website cost me nearly 20,000 yuan of my savings.
Although it's not a huge sum of money, the rate of return is extremely low.
Ha Yue did everything she could to attract customers, even spending every minute on Facebook and Instagram sending out direct mail ads. But even so, she didn't get many orders. Then a patient appeared in her neighborhood, and during the lockdown, the prices of all necessities, including rent, skyrocketed. Her meager savings were already very tight, and she had hardly any income in the six months since registering her company. Her mental state was extremely fragile.
When she saw the three characters "Zhao Chunni" saved on the phone, her first reaction was to turn the phone face down and stop it from ringing.
Ha Yue doesn't consider herself to have an avoidant personality, but even before answering the phone, she already imagined the scolding she was about to face.
Zhao Chunni had no sympathy for Ha Yue's plight in Jicheng. After graduation, she should have been supporting her family. If Ha Yue dared to tell the truth, she would only say, "Who told you to go to the big city to study? And you want to start your own big business? You have the mind of a young lady but the fate of a maid. All these bad consequences are your own fault for being disobedient and self-righteous."
The phone rang twice before Ha Yue took a deep breath, raised the phone with both hands, and carefully pressed the answer button as if she were holding a bomb.
But the voice on the other end of the phone wasn't her mother's harsh and cold tone.
Zhao Chunni was taken to the police station by the police for wandering around the highway intersection in her pajamas late at night. However, she was questioned for two whole hours and could not remember where she lived. At one moment she said she lived in a rural area a thousand kilometers away and had two pigs. At another moment she said she lived in the city and had a small shop across from the primary school. Her logic was confused and her narration was unclear.
In the end, the police used facial recognition to unlock her phone and called the people she had recently called to find out her identity.
The person who was recently contacted was Siqintoya, whom Ha Yue called Auntie.
Unlike Zhao Chunni, who is Han Chinese and married to a man from an ethnic minority, Siqin Tuoya is a Mongolian woman who married a Han Chinese man. Although the two women, who are neighbors, do not share the same lifestyle, they become close because they both lack husbands.
Zhao Chunni's husband, Ha Jianguo, ran off with another woman, while Siqin Tuoya's husband died of illness the year after their son was born.
Over the years, the two women have supported each other. They are not related by blood, but they share a revolutionary bond of mutual respect and camaraderie.
It's similar to single mothers joining forces to fight against the whole world.
So after this happened, Siqin Tuoya took it upon herself to make this phone call to Ha Yue, telling her to make up with Zhao Chunni no matter what.
Don't wait until it's too late to regret it.
Ha Yue lived up to expectations. That same day, she called her landlord to cancel the lease on the cramped shared apartment in Jicheng. She then packed her belongings, mailed her luggage, and returned to her hometown of Suicheng the following month.
Aunt Siqin had praised Ha Yue to Zhao Chunni more than once for being kind and righteous, willing to give up her glamorous life in Jicheng for the sake of mother-daughter affection. Little did she know that Ha Yue herself knew that the years she spent in Jicheng were far from glamorous. On the contrary, she had been in financial and emotional distress for a long time. The reason she returned home, apart from her mother's illness, was ultimately because she, as a drifter in Jicheng, could no longer make it.
"Filial piety" has become a convenient excuse for giving up.
But this doesn't mean she doesn't care about her mother's illness. Over the past two years, with her insistence, Zhao Chunni has been actively taking medication. The brain lesions cannot be reversed, but the rate of progression has been well controlled.
But given the current situation, how can we convince her mother to go to the big city for another checkup? It will probably be another verbal battle.
When Zhao Chunni was healthy, she was a very principled person. On a small scale, she disliked smartphones and hated online shopping. Conversely, she never yielded to the changing times. This stubborn person, when she got sick, became the kind of patient doctors disliked the most. She didn't believe in modern medicine and imaging technology; she only believed in herself.
The doctor in Jicheng initially told her that her condition required real-time follow-up, but she immediately accused the doctor of trying to trick her into undergoing more tests.
However, Ha Yue's thoughts were quickly interrupted by a smoking van on the road ahead.
In this small town, everyone in the neighborhood knows each other. She immediately spotted the license plate of the car involved in the accident; it was the car that her neighbor's son, Jin Zhenliang, drove every day.
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