Author | Lights
Ten point character chronicle original
I don't know if you have found that in the past two years, more and more young people are leaving first-tier cities and returning to remote counties and rural life.
Once upon a time, "fleeing from the north to Guangzhou" was almost synonymous with the frustrated, a helpless compromise of reality. But now, working in a big city is just one of many life options.
The "Respect Yourself" creators series micro-film filmed by Douyin at the end of 2021 tells the true story of three young people who have returned to their hometowns: some people gave up their jobs with an annual salary of 500,000 yuan and returned to the villages to spread national culture; some people quit their stable and idle system jobs and returned to the countryside as free photographers; and some people volunteered to teach in the mountains, teaching for more than ten years...
Their stories let us see another possibility of life: as long as they are willing to endure hardships and do not give up, persistent people can shine everywhere.
Look for the light
When Ah Xiang decided to give up his job in Guangzhou, which earned 500,000 yuan a year, and returned to work and live in the village of Liping, Guizhou, his hometown, the voice that appeared most in his ears was "This girl is crazy."
Ah Xiang, whose real name is Zhang Guodan, is a native Dong girl. At the age of 18, Ah Xiang left dashan, went to other provinces to study at university as desired, and after graduation, went to Guangzhou to do foreign trade business, with a surplus of more than 200,000 yuan all year round, his parents were proud, and his clan was envious.
Douyin creators' micro-film "In Pursuit of Zhang Xuecheng" recorded the reasons why Ah Xiang insisted on returning to his hometown. In the winter of 2015, Ah Xiang's father, Zhang Xue, became a firewood for the winter to warm up, and was hit while cutting down a tree on the mountain, and unfortunately died. Ah Xiang went home to mourn, and in his father's computer, he accidentally found a large number of Dong Ge video materials that he had taken in the past ten years.
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Douyin creator micro-film "In Pursuit of Zhang Xuecheng"
Dong song is an ancient singing art of the Dong people and the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage. Ah Xiang's father was a barefoot doctor who loved music, and when he was young, he always went to different villages to teach Dong songs, and his grandmother was also an old singer who was deeply respected by the clan. From the time she remembered, Ah Xiang often heard her father and grandmother worrying about the inheritance of Dong songs: "When we are gone, who will these 3,000 Dong songs be passed on?" ”
Ah Xiang decided to stay in his hometown and collect Dong songs and spread Dong culture instead of his father. She spent 70,000 or 80,000 yuan of savings to transform five acres of farmland into fish ponds, and earned 30,000 or 40,000 yuan a year to survive. The rest of the time, she visited and filmed in various villages, accumulating a large number of Dong song videos and Dong life materials.
At first, Ah Xiang's decision was not understood by those around him. As soon as the neighbors saw Ah Xiang filming in the village, they shook their heads and accused her of studying in vain, "doing these useless things as soon as I come back." The mother also did not understand why her daughter "self-destructed her future", three days and two ends persuaded her to return to Guangzhou to make money, and when the quarrel was the fiercest, she once threatened Ah Xiang to break off the mother-daughter relationship. But Ah Xiang did not waver, still buried his head in filming, and also gritted his teeth to buy a professional camera and taught himself photography techniques.
At the end of 2018, Ah Xiang began to upload works on Douyin, named "Village Girl Ah Xiang". Videos of her singing, cooking, and doing farm work in national costumes have attracted many fans. Many people are curious about the Dong culture, and have asked her in the message area, "is the pickled fish delicious", "is there a tutorial on panfa", and some people are attracted by the simple rural life, sighing "I really want to go to you as a guest".
The bigger turnaround came six months later. On June 18, 2019, a Douyin video uploaded by Ah Xiang about stepping on a stone mortar to make chili sauce suddenly caught fire. Chili sauce was originally a gift prepared by Ah Xiang for old fans, after the video was sent, there was a steady stream of people sending private messages asking, can this pepper be sold? That time, Ah Xiang sold 3,000 catties of chili peppers, and sold out the peppers of villagers in several neighboring villages.
This unexpected gain allowed Ah Xiang to find a way to create short videos that combine content and e-commerce. After that, she published a video of growing rice and sold six or seven kilos of rice for her uncle's family; the flat shoulders, baskets and stools that appeared in the daily videos also aroused the interest of fans - her uncle, who was seriously ill and unable to do manual work, found a job to make handicrafts.
In March this year, Ah Xiang contracted a 200-acre piece of mountain in the village, planted fruit trees and vegetables, raised fish and ducks, and invited the neighbors in the village to start a business together. In Ah Xiang's conception, this orchard can not only provide agricultural products to generate income, but also build a Dong cultural tourism base, and Dong culture can also be inherited in this process.
At the end of the douyin creators' micro-film "In Pursuit of Zhang Xuecheng", the mother finally understood Ah Xiang's decision and gave her daughter a deep hug. In reality, this is also the case, the mother who once resolutely opposed Ah Xiang's video has now become a regular customer in Ah Xiang's video, and is also responsible for presiding over the planting of orchard crops, and Ah Xiang's younger siblings have also participated in the construction and operation of the orchard.
Nowadays, the Ah Xiang family is in a kind of happiness with a head and something to do, and the entire Dong village has also seen a new hope for life because of the red fire of short videos. Ah Xiang said that if her father had a spirit in heaven, he should be proud of her.
Feel the Light
Like Ah Xiang, Li Qihang, 24, chose to leave the city and return to his hometown, a small mountain village in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, because of his family.
In the douyin creators' micro-film "Ama's Photo", the protagonist Li Qihang is an ordinary white-collar worker in Guangzhou, who loves photography, works busy on weekdays, and rarely spends time with his family. The sudden death of his old friend made Grandma feel sad, so she called Li Qihang, hoping that he could return to his hometown to take a set of photos of himself.
In the process of taking pictures of his grandmother, Li Qihang discovered the shocking lens expression of his grandmother. The unexpected popularity of this group of photos in Douyin also allowed Li Qihang to find a new career direction and realize the importance of accompanying his family, and finally decided to resign and return to his hometown to become a freelance photographer.
Douyin creator micro-movie "Grandma's Album"
Slightly different from the plot in the film, the real Li Qihang, who used to be a picture manager in a scenic spot in Zhaoqing, has a stable income, but complex interpersonal relationships, and rarely goes home to accompany his grandmother who lives in the countryside. A trip in distress made Li Qihang realize that everything he was doing was not what he wanted. So he resigned from the unit, returned to the countryside, set up his own photography studio, and lived with his grandparents.
In the vast countryside, Li Qihang felt a long-lost freedom. The blue sky and rice paddies are the background, and Grandma is his best model. Li Qihang took tens of thousands of photos of his grandmother, and in his shots, the thin, wrinkled old lady wore a red sweater, with short hair, and a blue sky that was pure to the point of no impurity, and really collided with a rough sense of fashion.
Li Qihang uploaded the photo of his grandmother to his douyin number "Li Qihang", which caused a lot of attention, and the 68-year-old grandmother became a "senior face supermodel" in the mouth of netizens, and some people praised Li Qihang's composition and color matching are very exquisite, and there is a rough vitality.
Along with the praise of netizens, there are also media interview invitations and business cooperation invitations. Li Qihang's income has more than tripled, and those relatives and friends who initially questioned him as a nibbler have also been silent, because Li Qihang has proved with practical actions that although he returned to a small place, he is still learning, making progress, and has not wasted time.
Li Qihang said that he will take more photos and continue to explore different forms of creation. His biggest wish now is to hold a photography exhibition for his grandmother, "one is that she is worth it, and the other is that I don't know when she will leave and I will leave."
Become the light
Young people return home, some to find themselves, others to illuminate others.
The vibrato creator's micro-film "Peak Project" tells a warm and poignant story: Teacher Liang Liang, who came to teach in the mountains, has completed his teaching period and is about to return to the city, and the four children have formulated a careful "obstruction" plan, and set up a lot of organs on the way down the mountain of Teacher Liang Liang, just to let the teacher stay...
Douyin creators micro-movie "Peak Project"
It's a true story. The liangliang teacher in the film is named Hou Changliang, who is 35 years old this year. More than ten years ago, Hou Changliang was a senior in the Computer Science Department of Hunan College of Arts and Sciences, and accidentally learned that the state has a "western plan" that every year will recruit fresh graduates to go to the western mountainous areas to engage in one to three years of education and poverty alleviation volunteer work.
Hou Changliang was moved. His hometown is in a remote mountain village in Shaoyang, Hunan Province, and his family is poor, and the family of five relies on his father to go out to work to earn money. Hou Changliang grew up accustomed to seeing his peers drop out of school due to poverty, and he knew how difficult it was to go to school in the countryside, and he always wanted to contribute to rural education.
In this way, Hou Changliang walked into the Dashi Mountain District of Hechi, Guangxi Province, and became a teacher in a rural primary school.
Two years later, the volunteer teaching period expired, and Hou Changliang was forced by economic pressure to return to Shenzhen to find a job in online sales. But that summer, he kept receiving text messages from students: "Teacher Liangliang, when are you going back to class?" Hou Changliang turned out the video of the children saying goodbye to him, and watched it many times, and the way the children sang "Goodbye" and waved at him for a long time. He found that he still wanted to be with the kids.
In the following ten years, rural education became Hou Changliang's most important cause. He successively taught in Bijie, Guizhou, Zhaotong, Yunnan and other places, still taking 800 yuan of subsidies every month, living an extremely simple life. In 2017, Hou Changliang fell in love with Teacher Lei Yudan, who also came to support the teaching, and the like-minded two decided to take root in the countryside, registered their marriage in 2020, and took a simple wedding photo with the students.
At the end of the douyin creators' micro-film "Peak Project", Teacher Liang Liang finally stayed with the children for the New Year, and used Douyin to photograph their mountain village life, so that the outside world can understand the education situation here.
The same is true in real life. From 2018 to now, Hou Changliang has released a total of 600 videos with the Douyin number "Mountain Village Volunteer Teacher Liangliang" and gained 280,000 fans. In the video, the couple not only led the students to sing in the snow, played the pottery flute on the hillside, danced bamboo pole dance on the bare playground, but also went to the students' homes to help the elderly fetch water, hoe the ground, and do farm work. Although the conditions are difficult, the exuberant vitality and positive and optimistic mentality displayed by teachers and students have touched countless people.
Many enthusiastic netizens left messages to Hou Changliang and wanted to donate materials to them. But Hou Changliang was worried that the students would rely on donations from the outside world, and most of them declined. Hou Changliang believes that there is a shortage of teachers in remote mountainous areas than materials, so he recorded a douyin video and asked the children to each hold a piece of paper with the words "Teacher, where are you" and "We are waiting for you to come to class." Later, several teachers contacted him through Douyin and came to Zhaotong, Yunnan Province, to teach.
After the vibrato video has improved, Hou Changliang also began to find ways to increase an additional income for students and parents. In his spare time, he would take his children up the mountain to dig bamboo shoots, collect honey, and then sell them to people in need through vibrato.
Self-media entrepreneurship has given Hou Changliang a new understanding of rural education, "We have been encouraging children to read good books and go out, but at the same time, shouldn't we teach them to learn to use local resources to promote the development of their hometown with what they have learned?" ”
The famous educator Tao Xingzhi once said that the school is the center of the village, the teacher is the soul of the school and the village, and the fate of the whole nation is in the hands of the primary school teachers. Hou Changliang felt that he was doing something meaningful, "If our country can train a million outstanding rural teachers, then the fate of a million villages will also change."
epilogue
The stories of Ah Xiang, Li Qihang and Hou Changliang are not unique.
In 2020, scholar Xiang Biao mentioned in "Using Yourself as a Method" that "decentralization" is becoming a new trend in China's social development.
The development of the Internet has shortened the distance between people, and the popularity of short video platforms has made every ordinary person in the north and south of the world have the possibility of being seen.
In Douyin, there are countless young creators living their favorite lives at their doorstep, in every ordinary town and village. And the daily bits and pieces they recorded have been loved by tens of thousands of netizens, so that they can influence more people and shine in the vast rural fields.
In the days and nights of rural volunteer teaching, Hou Changliang would always think of Mr. Lu Xun's words: Those who can do things, those who can make sounds, there is a heat, a light, just like fireworks, you can also send a little light in the dark.
Young people who seek the light will eventually become the light of others.
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