Zhu Keming (Nong Jian, Liang Shuyi/Photo)
The 38-year-old Shang Lishan has dark skin, has been herding sheep on the mountain for a long time, and has been exposed to the sun. On the evening of December 17, 2021, he appeared in front of Southern Weekend reporters and had just left work. For the shepherd of Changsheng Village in Chengtai County, Baiyin City, Gansu Province, the most familiar life is to get up early in the morning, drive the sheep up the mountain, take a nap in the cave in the mountains, and then take the sheep home.
But after the "5.22 Yellow River Stone Forest Cross-country Race", this life changed. Shang Lishan came out of the mountains and went into the city to find a job. After a month of insomnia, he wanted to change the environment, perhaps to erase the memories of the victims in his mind.
Looking back now, Shang Lishan himself was surprised, "How did I not know that I was tired that night?" As one of the people who are most familiar with mountain roads, he was involved in the rescue throughout the whole process and was busy all night.
Rescuing runners in distress is an instinctive choice of the shepherds of Changsheng Village. But after that night, how to get out of the inner haze became their long lesson.
"It's all very ordinary." On the afternoon of December 22, southern weekend reporters met Zhu Keming, who was herding sheep and returning to the circle, in Changsheng Village, whose cave sheltered 6 runners on the day of the cross-country race. After months of praise and attention, he appeared polite and low-key, "There is no need to mention [the situation] at that time." ”
At the temperature of minus zero, Shang Lishan was wearing a black cotton suit, the same as when he saved people 7 months ago.
Fast forward to the morning of May 22, when 172 runners set off from the entrance of the Yellow River Stone Forest Scenic Area and ran deep into the mountains, most wearing only short-sleeved shorts. Subsequently, the temperature plummeted. In the investigation report released afterwards, from 10:30 to 15:00, the somatosensory temperature of the stage from the No. 2 punching point to the No. 3 punching point was lower than 0 degrees. In the midst of high winds and rains, some runners lost their temperature acutely, and 21 runners were unfortunately killed in the race.
The No. 2 punch point of this 100-kilometer cross-country race is near Changsheng Village, and the next No. 3 punch point is located at the top of the mountain, which is the highest point in the whole process. This section of the road, which needs to climb about 1,000 meters, is the place where most of the runners are in distress, and it is also the only way for the villagers of Changsheng Village to herd sheep on weekdays.
After the accident, many villagers participated in the rescue operation, contributing their own warm materials, water and space free of charge. "The leader shouted, all of us went to help, and my son also went up the mountain to save people." Madeleine, a 68-year-old villager, told Southern Weekend that the village had built a greenhouse, supported two large cauldrons, and gathered dozens of women to cook for the rescue team. I was also involved and didn't go home until 2 a.m.
It was a chaotic day, several runners were missing, and the race was still not stopped. At 4 p.m., Zhu Wanwen, a 50-year-old villager, prepared two cotton suits and several wind-insulated fertilizer bags from his home and rode a motorcycle to the foot of the mountain, "What we think is that the weather is very cold, and the athletes are frozen to the point of not being able to walk, or running inappropriately and falling, I didn't expect it to be so serious." ”
Faster than them were shepherds familiar with the terrain. At one o'clock in the afternoon, Shang Lishan woke up, saw the message in the WeChat group, and immediately ran to the mountain. Zhu Keming, a 49-year-old shepherd, took a nap in a mountain cave, and at two o'clock in the afternoon, he found frozen runners nearby and took them back to the cave, making a fire to warm up and massaging his hands and feet.
Zhu Keming raised about fifty sheep, the mountain is high above sea level, the sheep eat grass on the mountain all year round, eat medicinal herbs, and the meat is tender. Shang Lishan described sheep breeding as a lonely job, "You don't have time to talk to people, you can't play poker with people in the commissary, you just take care of your sheep." ”
In Shang Lishan's impression, Zhu Keming was very attentive to the sheep. In April and May, just after shearing the wool, afraid of the sheep being frozen after the rain, Zhu Keming took off his clothes and covered the sheep, "as a result, he himself froze."
After rescuing people, Zhu Keming and Shang Lishan received the task of leading the way for firefighters, and at 9 o'clock in the evening, the Baiyin City SWAT team and the police dog search and rescue team also went up the mountain, and Shang Lishan changed to a SWAT team to lead the way, and stayed up all night. "I brought 8 of them, we looked for them one last time, and when we finished finding and counting them at dawn, we gave them to the rest of the people the next day."
That night, Shang Lishan's most vivid feelings were "cold" and "hunger". "It was in the ravine, it was too cold. If you want to roast the fire, the wood can't be lit, and it was wet at the time. "There were only four bottles of water and a few loaves of bread around them, and each of them ate one bite at a time.
"We can save one is one, we can grab one is one, I am this mentality." Zhu Wanwen was responsible for leading the way for the rescue team and looking for people on the mountain, "We went back and forth like this, tossing and turning until more than four o'clock in the morning." ”
In the early morning of May 23, fire rescue personnel searched for and rescued missing people. (Xinhua News Agency, Yellow River Stone Forest Mountain Marathon 100 km cross-country race lost rescue headquarters photo / photo)
Cross-country events bring this small village on the west bank of the Yellow River, at the northern foot of Dushan Mountain, into the public eye.
Changsheng Village is more than 60 kilometers away from the county seat of Jingtai County, and the village is hidden behind a series of hills. The sun is blazing and yellow, winding along a 25-kilometer-long country road to the banks of the Yellow River, is a series of adobe low houses, inhabited by about 1,300 people. At noon on December 22, a peasant woman who had been waiting for a 50-minute bus to fail waved at the side of the country road and asked for a ride. Buses between Jingtai County and Changsheng Village only run once a day. Limited by its remote location, the villagers have less access to the outside world.
"I've never seen anything out there." Shang Lishan still remembers the novelty of the first Yellow River Stone Forest Cross-country Race, "There are so many celebrities and foreigners, we are looking fresh, seeing people's skin is dark and tall." "Every time we approach the event, the village always organizes health.
After that tragedy, Shang Lishan experienced insomnia for a long time, and lying on the bed with his eyes closed, his mind could not help but think back to the situation of the day.
He thought the runners must have lost their way. At noon that day, after the rain, it was foggy. Shang Lishan stood in the village, looking toward the top of the mountain, hazy and blurry vision. "There is water mist on the mountain, and when we see the fog, we don't dare to go." For shepherds who often go up the mountain, judging the weather is particularly important. Foggy, if the north wind blows, the fog will soon disperse, the most feared is to blow the south wind, "the fog has been pressed in the mountains, can press a day or two." ”
In bad weather, familiar roads can change their appearance. That night, the six of them were responsible for carrying the bodies, moving the three victims from the track into the caves, "just a little distance, we carried for more than two hours". Shang Lishan was also muttering in his heart, not knowing whether the day was "unfamiliar with people, unfamiliar with the road, or whether everyone had pressure in their hearts."
What lingered in his mind were the location of the runners falling, the marks on the ground and the surrounding environment. Based on his familiarity with the line, he would repeatedly simulate the trajectory of the runner's movements before he was killed. He thought that maybe the stronger the will to survive, some runners would be able to live.
Shang Lishan talked to other rescuers, only to find that everyone had similar shadows in their hearts.
"The more people want to forget, the less likely they are to forget." After returning home, Zhu Wanwen did not allow his children to drink milk and soy milk within his line of sight, which would make him think of the remains of those who were killed - most of them spitting white foam. "My whole reaction didn't work during that time." Zhu Wanwen remembered that a reporter introduced him to a Beijing psychologist, and the two of them were relieved by phone.
The mountain behind the village is the place where Zhu Wanwen collected firewood, let livestock go, and ran crazy when he was a child. After the cross-country race, he never took the initiative to go except to take the reporter up the mountain to explore the route.
Shang Lishan also asked his partner at the time, Zhu Keming, "He can't sleep either." But people don't deliberately think, people don't guess. Unlike me, I also have to simulate how the scene takes this route. ”
Over time, Zhu Keming returned to normal life, but added a new schedule, which will be broadcast live every week, fixed at 8 pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Sell apples first. When their apples were sold out, they sold lamb, walnuts and dried apples made by relatives. On the evening of December 16, he chewed a piece of dry cake, appeared in the camera, and repeated: "Apple dry 25 yuan four packs of free shipping, now the live broadcast room launched a preferential activity, buy five packs get one pack"; "Lamb 55 yuan free shipping, big sheep 50 yuan free shipping, need to buy the whole shipment." ”
"Live streaming is more tiring than work." He read the questions of netizens, replied one by one, and sighed with the Southern Weekend reporter afterwards, the live broadcast is not so easy to think, and he can not find the topic.
That live broadcast was watched by a maximum of 70 people, with an average of thirty or forty people online. Zhang Xiaotao, the runner who was saved by him, was the second in the list, listening silently and praising from time to time. Some people call him "Zhu Hero", some people propose that he be an image spokesperson, and some people suggest that he divide the lamb and sell it independently in different parts, with their own pricing. He refused, "We don't specialize in selling lamb, the division must be specialized and cooperative, we can't do it." ”
For about an hour and a half, he muttered in dialect, "I can't sit here and sit down," and quickly got off the line.
For the villagers of Changsheng Village, apples are the main source of income.
Although the apples here have not formed their own brand, they are better than the soil is suitable, the sunshine is abundant, and the fruit is sweet and crisp. In the past three years, fruit trees have been frozen under hail, dry freeze and strong winds, and have not borne fruit, in the words of Zhu Wanwen, "frozen for four or five consecutive years without income." Apples in 2021 were originally the most anticipated, growing on schedule and expecting a bumper harvest.
Late-ripening red Fuji is best picked from October 25 to November 15. However, during the 2021 harvest period, fruit growers still suffered from frost damage crisis. Shang Lishan saw that after the change of day on November 5, the fruits hanging on the trees were smoked into "small black balls".
Compared with previous years, this situation is more costly. "2021 is ripe, and there is no time (picking)." Zhu Keming told the Southern Weekend reporter, "When the flowers are frozen, we can not fertilize, do not spray, and now (the villagers) are all invested, no income." ”
Zhu Keming's family planted more than a dozen acres of fruit trees, he moved quickly, the bagged fruit had just been harvested, and the next day the cold wave came. There were more than two thousand pounds of apples that had not been harvested in time, all of which were light fruits without bags, "You see the trees in our village, they are still full of fruit, all frozen." The village has no other income, but relies on fruit. ”
Villager Liu Xingping is a large fruit grower in Changsheng Village, with 30 acres of fruit land and serious damage. He said that the cost of an acre of land is at least 2,000 yuan, pesticides, fertilizers, water costs, if you count the labor costs, hire six or seven people to pick fruit, each person 100 yuan per day, the cost of four or five thousand yuan. These are now adrift.
He led the Southern Weekend reporter to see the fruit tree behind the mountain, full of apples, frozen into a persimmon-like dark orange, the skin was wrinkled, the flesh was soft, and the juice flowed down the crack. When the sky changed on November 5, his family still had more than a dozen acres of fruit trees that had not had time to harvest, and more than 30,000 kilograms of fruit were frozen. The villagers signed a contract with the insurance company, but they could not reach a consensus on the compensation standard, and the two sides are still pulling.
Changsheng Village is inconvenient to traffic, apples and mutton mainly rely on merchants to buy door-to-door, the variables are larger.
For the Zhu family, the situation has turned around due to the arrival of runner Zhang Xiaotao. He was the only survivor of the top six athletes before the accident. On the day of the cross-country race, he lost his temperature and was rescued by Zhu Keming. After a five-month absence, on October 19, Zhang Xiaotao returned to Changsheng Village and brought the way of live e-commerce.
"He wants to help the village sell apples that are not sold." On the 11th day of Changsheng Village, Zhang Xiaotao said happily in the Douyin video that the uncle's apples have all been sold, and will help other villagers sell them next. Zhu Wanwen said, "Zhang Xiaotao is a person who knows how to be grateful and has helped my family sell more than three thousand catties." ”
Zhu Keming had a good impression of this young man, he stayed in the village for 20 days, sold more than 20,000 kilograms of apples through vibrato, and sold more than 10,000 kilograms through runners. When he left Jingtai County on November 9, Zhang Xiaotao's trunk was filled with walnuts, dates and apples given by villagers.
At the beginning of saving people, Zhu Keming was not familiar with this runner from Henan. In this time together, the two picked apples, did live broadcasts, and ran a morning run in the mountains to establish a friendship.
Zhang Xiaotao knew this time that Zhu Keming, who likes to run, almost participated in the "5.22 Yellow River Stone Forest Cross-country Race", but the registration fee was 1,000 yuan, which restricted the action. In a year-end video from Xinhua News Agency, he said he would help the uncle realize his wishes, and had made a training plan to impart running knowledge and plan to take him to the March 2022 marathon.
Some traces of cross-country racing remain in the mountains. Zhu Keming often herded sheep on the mountain, and Zhang Xiaotao also followed him that day. They came down the track and touched (suspected) Liang Jing's glasses, so they sent a video to Liang Jing's wife to confirm. Zhu Wanwen said that the pair of glasses himself had encountered on the track, but he didn't know who they belonged to, "We still think about other people's." The place where Liang Jing's glasses fell, and the place where he was killed, were still more than two kilometers away. ”
It was indeed the glasses of contestant M001 Liang Jing, which was picked up and sent to his wife.
Southern Weekend reporter Gao Yichen Southern Weekend intern Huang Mengqi