Follow in your father's footsteps

Bao Jiakui

Bao Xia (Bao Jiakui's daughter)

To tell the truth, when I was young, my understanding of my father Bao Jiakui was superficial, and my feelings for my father were ignorant.

In the fall of 1988, I lost touch with the university, and with the boom in recruitment, I did not repeat my studies and went directly to a well-known enterprise in Yinchuan to become a textile worker. The good times did not last long, enterprises went out of business, and laid-off workers were unemployed. In July 1998, I carried my father's Dun Dun teachings that "women are economically independent, personality can be independent; a person without a diploma is not terrible, but must learn a strong skill", went to the Red Rose Vocational and Technical School in Yinchuan City to learn beauty salons, and opened shops one after another to do business. As a wife and mother, after experiencing the vicissitudes of life and the ups and downs of life, after more than half a hundred years, I deeply realized the foresight of loving my father and felt the true meaning of my father's love like a mountain.

This year, my father has been away from us for almost 5 years, and sometimes, looking at the medals, certificates, and relics left by my father, listening to the greetings, praises, and sighs of relatives and friends, I have aroused endless thoughts about my father, and my thoughts can't help but return to the rich and beautiful land of Zhongning, back to the memories of childhood, back to my father's embrace, back to that warm childhood. Because of my feelings, I was inspired to search for my father's former friends and villagers, follow my father's footsteps, recall the years of passionate struggle, and the inseparable family affection, in order to comfort my father's spirit in heaven and thank my relatives and friends for their love.

In the winter of 2020, I returned to Zhongning County to check my father's file at the Education Bureau. I heard my father say that when he first arrived in Zhongning, he and Tianjin were two worlds, the main street was all dirt roads, from south to north there were only 2 miles of road, from east to west there were only 2 miles of road, all of which were rural areas, and there was no building. More than 60 years have passed, and the county seat of Zhongning has become full of high-rise buildings, busy traffic, shops, and bustling.

Coming to East Street, the county government building is magnificent, and in front of the square stands a billboard for "China's Best Habitat Demonstration City". Walking into the 5th floor building of the County Education Bureau, I was received by Zhang Weibin, a graduate of the 84-level liberal arts class of the former Mingsha Middle School, who was the head of the county's liberal arts department and returned to Mingsha Middle School to teach for more than 20 years after graduating from the History Department of Shaanxi Normal University. This former father's student and colleague's hometown, who befriended his father when he was in Mingsha Middle School, used to grow vegetables and raise chickens together in the school's family home, drank and chatted in his spare time, and is now responsible for the file management of the education system. Teacher Zhang was very happy about my arrival, and at half past eight I had not yet arrived from Yinchuan at the agreed time, and Teacher Zhang had already found out the serial number of his father's file and waited for me. I looked at my father's file, carefully recorded and searched, and collected relevant information.

Teacher Zhang, who graduated from the history major, had a clear grasp of the history of education in Zhongning County, and was even more familiar with the experience of those old teachers, and told me the contact information and addresses of Ma Lishun (retired teacher of Mingsha Primary School), Bi Deqing (who had taught in Zhongning Erquan Primary School for two years), Wang Chunxiang, Ren Tianci, Zhu Wancang, Wan Changnian, Yuan Hongtao, etc., saying that I could get more information about my father from them. (To be continued)

(Special thanks to Alumni Chen Xuefeng for revising this article!) ）