Hou Changliang always remembered the evening he left school.
The children followed the car, repeatedly singing the song "Goodbye" that they taught them, and the song circled around the car and fell into Hou Changliang's heart, and the children cried, and he also cried.
As the car drove farther and farther away, Hou Changliang looked back, and the lights of the distant mountain village began to turn bright and dim, and his heart dimmed little by little.
Ah Xiang also can't forget the afternoon when she cried and took the bus back to her hometown after her father died. In such a hurry, she even forgot to lock the door of the rental house, and later, many things were stolen from the house.
Ah Xiang suddenly felt that most of his life had also been "stolen".
Li Qihang always recalled later, the day when grandma asked if he could take a "posthumous photo" of her, the sun was obliquely projected from behind grandma, and he really felt that grandma was old.
At that time, none of them could have imagined that that moment would become a fork in their lives and change the direction of their future lives.
They did not expect that in their stories, return and departure would appear at the same time, and giving up would also mean gain.
It's a bit strange.
After hou Changliang, a volunteer teacher, decided to go home for the Chinese New Year, his students began to get a little strange.
At this Xiangyang Primary School in Haizi Town, Yiliang County, Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, the children are closest to Hou Changliang. No matter what happened in the family, they couldn't wait to share it with him first.
On these two days, the children often get together to discuss things, but every time they appear, they will immediately disperse.
Hou Changliang was keenly aware that the children must have something to hide from themselves.
Because he wanted to go home, Hou Changliang needed to buy some door locks and locks in the dormitory, but he ran several commissaries in the village continuously, and the answer he got was without exception - the locks were sold out.
One strange thing after another, the mystery in Hou Changliang's heart grew bigger and bigger.
The answer was revealed early in the morning he left.
Just after six o'clock, Hou Changliang was carrying a large bag and a small bag to go down the mountain to catch the car, and when he passed a mountain path, his students suddenly ran out from behind the stones and shouted for him not to go any further.
Hou Changliang found that the place where he was going to go was paved with a layer of glass beads and corn cobs by the children, and if he stepped on it, he would definitely fall on this path.
Hou Changliang was a little angry, and he asked the children: "What if someone else steps on these glass beads?" Looking at the children's frozen red faces and helpless little hands, his heart softened.
He understood that the children were reluctant to go on their own.
In the end, Hou Changliang decided to spend another Year with his children.
Did not succeed, the mother's phone call came one after another, the end of the phone was full of complaints: "Said that I only taught for two years, now it has dragged on for so long, your brother found you a job, after the year to join, you think about it yourself." ”
Hanging up the phone, Liang Liang looked at the pictures of the children posted on the wall and fell into thought.
Suddenly there was a sound coming from the door, and when he turned his head, a small boy who lived in the school leaned his little head out of the curtain and asked him softly, "Teacher Liangliang, can I sleep with you?" ”
Liang Liang smiled at the child, touched his head, and let him sleep on the inside of the bed.
For the children of Xiangyang Primary School, when their parents are not at home, Liang Liang is their teacher and their family.
As the children's parents returned from the city to the mountain village, red lanterns of all sizes were hung in the village, and children wore new clothes and ran around the front of the house in a circle.
The small mountain village suddenly became lively and crowded.
Such a moment is not much for children, after all, all year round, parents can only accompany them at this time, Hou Changliang looked at their smiling faces, held up his mobile phone to record this moment, and posted it to the Douyin account "Mountain Village Branch Teaching Liang Liang Teacher".
The children's smiles infected many people, and someone asked Liang Liang in the comments under the video, what are the requirements for coming to support the teaching, Liang Liang thought for a long time, and typed a reply:
"Understand, care, accompany, persevere."
Hou Changliang's real experience, as well as his story with children, was adapted into a series of douyin creators' micro-films "Respect Yourself".
At the end of this micro-film, there is also a video material of the students at the beginning of the article singing "Goodbye" and saying goodbye to Hou Changliang.
Looking back, the eight words that Hou Changliang replied to the Douyin netizens are also the abbreviations of his volunteer teaching career.
When Hou Changliang graduated from university in 2011, when other classmates were running around looking for jobs, he packed up his bedding and pots and pans and took a bus to teach in the DashiShan District of Hechi, Guangxi.
The rock desertification in the Dashi Mountain Area was serious, sitting on the bus, Hou Changliang looked out through the glass, only to see that on both sides of the curved mountain road, one stone mountain after another was rapidly crossing.
The school environment and Hou Changliang expected to be as bad as expected, but compared to the living environment, Hou Changliang cared more about the students in the school.
In school, children often "suddenly disappear" – some are still in school today and will decide to drop out tomorrow for various reasons.
Hou Changliang felt that it was a pity that he also came out of the countryside, and he knew the importance of learning. Therefore, in order to let the children complete their studies, he often personally walked more than ten kilometers of mountain roads to visit the students' homes and encourage them not to give up easily.
Eventually, at his insistence, none of the first students he brought dropped out.
In the process, he also had struggles.
The income of volunteer teachers is low, only 880 yuan per month subsidy, with the continuous extension of the volunteer teaching time, the pressure of life is layered down, Hou Changliang also once had the idea of giving up volunteer teaching.
After the struggle, he made the decision: "I am willing to stay as long as the children need it." ”
Since 2018, Hou Changliang began to film the clips of his volunteer teaching life and children's growth, posted them to his Douyin account, and in just 3 years, he released nearly 100 videos.
Hou Changliang hopes to attract more good teachers to teach in the countryside through his videos, and he firmly believes:
"Let the children in the mountain village have one more good teacher, which must be the best help for them."
This year is the 11th year of Hou Changliang's volunteer teaching.
In recent years, he has successively gone to Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan to support teaching, and while accompanying groups of children to grow up, Hou Changliang also gained his own company.
In November 2020, Hou Changliang registered his marriage with Teacher Lei, who also loves volunteer teaching, and because of his busy work, the two chose to take a special set of wedding photos at Xiangyang Primary School, where they jointly supported teaching.
On the day of the shooting, the sun in Haizi Town was very good, Hou Changliang and Teacher Lei stood on the playground, and the students held hands to surround the two.
Hou Changliang suddenly remembered that the afternoon when he first came to Xiangyang Primary School, the weather was very bad that day, and there were scattered raindrops falling in the air.
And now, the sun is shining and the kids are fine.
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"Peak Plan" of the Vibrato Creator Series Micro Film "Respect Yourself"
For Hou Changliang, a volunteer teacher, helping children get out of the mountains is his wish, while for Ah Xiang, who has already gone out, "returning" has become a more meaningful thing.
On the day of receiving the news of his father's death, Ah Xiang was sitting in the office, on the phone, his sister's cries came through the sound tube, and at that moment, Ah Xiang's life was changed forever.
Because there is no direct transportation in the village where his home is located, Ah Xiang can only take a bus for more than ten hours to the county, then change to a motorcycle, and pass through one long ridge after another to get home.
It was the afternoon of the next day when she arrived, standing at the door of the house, Ah Xiang had a momentary trance, she knew that pushing the door open, the father who was always smiling would not wait for her any longer.
Looking at it now, if it were not for the sudden death of his father, the theme of Ah Xiang's life might have always been related to "far away".
Looking back, Ah Xiang was an ordinary country girl.
She went to college in Hunan, and after graduation, she went to Guangzhou alone to start a foreign trade business, and when the business was good, she would have an income of more than 500,000 yuan a year.
If the story continues like this, maybe she will get married and have children in the city, and in a few years she will take her parents with her. However, with the death of his father, everything changed.
The death of Ah Xiang's father stemmed from an accident.
At that time, my father was chopping wood on the mountain for use in winter, when a tree suddenly fell and pressed on him, and my father's life also fell.
After my father's death, my mother burned most of my father's belongings, leaving behind a computer, a video camera, and a few songbooks.
Ah Xiang's hometown is a gathering place for the Dong ethnic group, there are 1100 households in the whole village, almost every family will sing a few Dong songs, and his father is no exception.
In Ah Xiang's memory, his favorite thing is to sing the great song of the Dong people, and one of the words he often said at that time was: "People living in the world without singing are also living in vain."
Thinking about this, Ah Xiang opened her father's computer, and after trying the password dozens of times in a row, she finally logged in, and the computer desktop, quietly lying in a folder, filled with Dong songs that her father had shot with DV machines over the years.
Opening the songbook, above is the wish written by my father: "I have filmed a lot of Dong songs, and there are many that have not been filmed, and I am worried that my generation is gone, and these songs will be lost." ”
Looking at the songbooks and videos left by his father, Ah Xiang made a decision - to stay and realize his dreams for his father.
The next day, she submitted her resignation to the company and bought a camera. In the days that followed, she began to visit nearby villages with her camera, and where someone would sing a big Song of the Dong people, she went to shoot it.
At that time, filming Dong Ge could not bring additional income to Ah Xiang, in order to maintain his life, Ah Xiang took out a part of his savings and transformed his family's five acres of farmland into a fish pond, relying on fish farming for a living.
Ah Xiang's decision, the mother did not understand.
She didn't understand why everyone else was busy walking out, but her own daughter was going to come back. During that time, "not doing the right thing" became the most rewarding evaluation for her.
Ah Xiang felt dissatisfied, and she and her mother made a "90-day covenant": "If there is no income for 90 days, I will return to Guangzhou to work." ”
In the days that followed, while managing the fish pond, Ah Xiang continued to visit the mountain villages and record the great songs of the Dong people. In the process, she also began to edit the videos she shot and post them on Douyin.
At first, her videos only shared the great songs of the Dong people, but gradually, she began to share the architecture, culture and festivals of the Dong people, and also began to record her life through vibrato.
Under the camera, Ah Xiang and her friends touch fish in the fish pond, marinate a jar of crisp bamboo shoots with millet spicy, and occasionally wear their own tie-dye Dong costumes to walk on winding paths, with empty mountains in the background and long songs in the distance.
The videos were uploaded to Douyin one by one by Ah Xiang, and more and more people learned about Dong culture through this girl in the mountains of Guizhou, and at the same time, Ah Xiang's rural life also healed many people.
But on the other hand, the income of the fish pond is still far less than Ah Xiang's income in the city. Seeing that the 90-day covenant with his mother was about to expire, Ah Xiang's heart hung up day by day.
The turnaround came quickly.
One day, Ah Xiang uploaded a video of herself stepping on a stone mortar to make chili sauce, and below the video, many fans began to ask her if she could buy chili sauce online.
Ah Xiang happily called out to the sisters from the same village to collect all the nearby chili peppers to make chili sauce, and in just a few days, they sold 3,000 pounds of chili peppers.
This incident allowed Ah Xiang to find some new outlets, and she began to think that perhaps the villagers' agricultural products could be sold through videos, on the one hand, it could help everyone get rich, and on the other hand, it could also promote the Dong culture.
After that, she helped her uncle's family sell nearly 7,000 catties of rice, deducting packaging and freight, and each order could earn five yuan.
While helping the villagers, the videos she created were also recognized by more and more people, and in recognition of Ah Xiang's promotion of Dong culture, the county cultural and tourism bureau also awarded her the Outstanding Folk Artist Award.
In this process, the mother gradually understood Ah Xiang's determination and persistence, and also decided to accept and support her choice.
On the day she was understood by her mother, Ah Xiang fell asleep holding the camera left by her father, the best sleep she had slept in months.
In the spring, Ah Xiang went to see her father with her mother, and she gently pulled out some weeds from the side of his father's grave and said to him:
"Dad, I have collected and sorted out more than 2,000 Dong songs, you can rest assured."
The wind blew through the forest in the distance, rustling like a father's response.
In December 2021, Ah Xiang was identified as the non-hereditary heir of the Dong Great Song.
Her experience was adapted into a micro-film "In Pursuit of Zhang Xuecheng", which recorded Ah Xiang's perseverance and love, unwillingness and sincerity.
And this micro-film has also become one of the micro-films "Respect Yourself" in the douyin creators' series.
Douyin Creator Series Micro Film "Respect Yourself" "Pursuit of Zhang Xuecheng"
Somewhat similar to Ah Xiang's story, the inflection point of Li Qihang's life is also related to death.
In his sophomore year of high school, Li Qihang fell in love with photography, and his parents bought him the first digital camera, and from then on, whenever he had time, he would hold up his camera and shoot through the streets of the city.
He was fascinated by the charm of light and picture, and his biggest dream at that time was to become a photographer.
However, love and reality often diverge.
Growing up, Li Qihang found a job in a city near his hometown, and the job was relatively leisurely, but it had nothing to do with the photography he loved.
The days were not salty or light, and looking back, Li Qihang only felt like a boiled frog in warm water.
Because his grandmother grew up in the countryside of Zhaoqing, Li Qihang and his grandmother had a very close relationship.
After work, Grandma would occasionally come to his rental house to help him cook and clean up the house, and every time she left, she would pull Li Qihang to tell him what food was left in the refrigerator and tell him that he remembered to eat on time.
Before the Dragon Boat Festival, Grandma came to cook for him again, but this time, she suddenly did not say goodbye, leaving only a note, and hurried back to Zhaoqing.
Grandma's good friend Axiba died.
"Without any warning, when I went down the field, I suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and the person was gone all at once."
Two days before her death, Ah Xi Po also called Grandma Li Qihang and asked her when she would return to Zhaoqing: "The Dragon Boat Festival is coming, let's wrap rice dumplings together." ”
Today, the rice dumpling leaves have not yet been picked, but Ah Xi Po is lying in the soil.
Grandma's death touched Grandma a lot, and she called Li Qihang and asked him to come back and take a picture of herself. Li Qihang felt strange, after all, Grandma had never invited herself to take pictures of her.
When he got home with the camera on his back, he realized that what grandma wanted was a posthumous photo.
For his grandmother's request, Li Qihang's first reaction was to refuse. He felt a little unlucky, and he was even more reluctant to associate death with his grandmother.
In the face of Li Qihang's refusal, Grandma was a little angry: "No one can say whether he is alive or dead, if he doesn't shoot, he won't shoot, and if I die one day, I won't be able to stay anything." ”
That night, grandma's words were repeated in Li Qihang's mind.
After getting up the next day, Li Qihang saw grandma washing clothes in the yard, and the neighbor's children were playing around her, looking at the children, and grandma showed a happy smile.
Li Qihang grabbed the camera to capture this scene, and almost at that moment, he suddenly figured it out, and he looked at his grandmother and said to her: "I am willing to take pictures of you." ”
That day, Li Qihang took nearly 100 photos of his grandmother, and in the process of pressing the shutter again and again, he suddenly felt that something had awakened in his heart.
After taking the photos, he posted these photos to Douyin, and unexpectedly, these photos were very popular with netizens.
In the comments, everyone praised Grandma for being "so beautiful and cool": "Every wrinkle reveals a sense of luxury." ”
Someone, knowing the story behind the photo, commented: "Taking pictures is for a better life, remembering good moments, not preparing for leaving." ”
The comments of netizens made Li Qihang begin to re-examine his life. After taking the photo that day, he sat with his grandmother on the beach in his hometown.
Looking at the twinkling lights of the city in the distance, listening to the waves crashing on the reef roll after roll, and eating the rice dumplings of his grandmother's bag, he suddenly remembered many past moments:
When he was young, he and his friends fished for frogs and yellow eels in the fields, and when he was a teenager, he took his camera to walk in the rice fields, photographing the mountains and the sea in the distance...
Li Qihang suddenly sighed that when he was a child, he always wanted to go outside to see the world, and when he grew up, he found that the best world was around.
Almost at that moment, Li Qihang made up his mind to pick up his dream of photography again. In this way, in July 2020, Li Qihang officially resigned and returned home to become a Douyin creator.
He began to photograph his grandmother with a camera, and under his design and composition, the grandmother appeared in different images and fashion styles.
Every scenery in his hometown has become Li Qihang's photo studio, the firewood pile in front of his home, the white roof of his grandmother's house, and the old house in the village, all of which have left his figure taking pictures of his grandmother.
When not taking pictures, Li Qihang would follow behind grandma and help her clean up the weeds in the yard together, dragging a broom to clean up the fallen leaves at the door.
Just like when he was young.
These moments were recorded by Li Qihang with video and posted on Douyin, more and more people paid attention to him, and his attitude towards life also gave many people courage to dare to chase the life and life they yearn for.
Someone once asked Li Qihang what plans he had for the future, and Li Qihang's answer was simple:
"I want to spend my best time on the things I love and the people I love."
These experiences of Li Qihang were adapted into the micro-film "Mama's Photos". This is one of the micro-films "Respect Yourself" in the Douyin creator series.
This micro-film recreates Li Qihang's growth and also witnesses his changes.
Douyin Creator Series Micro Film "Respect Yourself" of "Grandma's Photo"
Everything is moving in a better direction.
Not long ago, Xiangyang Primary School ushered in the end of the term, Liang Liang rewarded a small piglet to a student with excellent results, and on the day of the piglet, the school gate was crowded with many parents, and the laughter filled the entire primary school.
Liang Liang said that he hopes that these little pigs can not only encourage students to read, but also practically help students' families.
Ah Xiang had just spent the Dong New Year, and on the day of the Lapa Festival, she and her family grabbed a basket of fish in the fish pond to prepare for the New Year.
Looking at the fish pond in front of him and the orchard he contracted not far away, Ah Xiang is full of expectations for the coming year.
Li Qihang ushered in the third year of his hometown, accompanied by his family, he had his own photography studio, in the process, he took dozens of different styles of photos for his grandmother.
"Going home" became the happiest thing in his 25-year-old life.
Real life Li Qihang with grandma
Whether it is Liang Liang, Ah Xiang, or Li Qihang, their life circumstances may be very different, but their stories show another life choice -
A model of life that is not bound by reality and insists on following the heart.
Maybe they all had their own predicaments, maybe they had all walked through darkness, but now, after returning to the mountain village, they have become the light and created the light.
If "rural life" is being rediscovered and redefined in the videos of Liang Liang, Ah Xiang, and Li Qihang, then in Douyin, more life possibilities are also being extended.
Those stories may have something to do with perseverance in creation, perhaps with breakthroughs in change, and perhaps with failure and confusion, but what matters is that—
Those who create stories, and the courage they always keep moving forward.
#Girl gives up 500,000 annual salary to return to her hometown to complete her father's last wish# #2021抖音创作者系列微电影温情上线 #