Unintentionally planted willows and willows
In the cold wind of January 2010, Nanchang Railway Station came and went, and passengers were in a hurry. The young reporter Zhou Ke held a camera and looked around, hoping to capture some interesting shots.
At this moment, a figure caught his attention.
A young mother carries a heavy burden on her shoulders and holds an infant baby in her arms, moving forward step by step with difficulty and slowness. Her bag was almost as tall as herself, crushing her frame into a twist.
In his left hand, he carried an old school bag that was bulging, and his fingers and wrists were bruised by the exertion. However, she carefully hugged the baby in her arms with her right hand, for fear that one would fall if she was not careful.
In the cold wind, the skin on the young mother's face has been cracked by the wind, but her eyes are resolute, and her steps never stop. She struggled to move forward in the sea of people, revealing a determination and persistence to go home.
Zhou Ke pressed the shutter, and his mother's face engraved with hard work and expectation was frozen in the camera. This photo taken by chance made Zhou Ke stand out in the photojournalism contest and won the gold medal in one fell swoop.
The mother in the photo also became the "Spring Festival Mother" hotly discussed by netizens during the Spring Festival in 2011, which touched countless people.
Recalling this classic photo many years later, Zhou Ke still remembers that he did not leave any contact information about this mother at that time, and has always regretted it. So, he made up his mind to find the "Spring Festival Mother" in the photo, and began an 11-year journey to find his person.
Joys and sorrows, life and death
It turned out that the "Spring Festival Mother" was named Bamu Yubumu, and the baby in the photo was her two-year-old young daughter. In order to treat his sick daughter, Bamu Yubumu left the construction site in Nanchang alone with the child and began the journey back to his hometown for treatment.
She carried too much luggage and was too heavy, and she had to hold the child, and the three days and two nights of running made Bamu Yubumu exhausted. However, his daughter's condition did not improve at all, and the high fever did not go away, and Bamu Yubumu was anxious.
In remote and poor hometowns, medical conditions are too poor to treat emergencies. Even though she immediately rushed to the county hospital with her daughter in her arms, she was still one step too late. Her daughter gradually stopped breathing in her arms and passed away.
Bamu Yubumu was grief-stricken, and she resented that if she hadn't taken her daughter out of Nanchang, maybe the child wouldn't have died of illness. This became an indelible shadow in her heart.
In 2011, she gave birth to her third daughter, but this little life died after only 10 days in the world, which made her pain even more unbearable.
Bamu Yubumu numbized herself with work, and she vowed to give her eldest daughter a better life and give birth to more healthy children. The implementation of the national poverty alleviation policy in 2014 has become an important opportunity for her to change her fate, which gives her hope.
The determination and hope to get rid of poverty and become well-off
In 2014, the national poverty alleviation policy was extended to the remote Daliang Mountain area in Bamu Yubumu's hometown. With the help of village officials, she learned that she could get rid of poverty by growing flue-cured tobacco.
At first, Bamu Yubumu had no concept of the unfamiliar cultivation of flue-cured tobacco, but under the guidance of professional technicians, she quickly mastered the skills.
Bamu Yubumu resolutely used more than 6 acres of her family's fields for flue-cured tobacco planting, and her harvest in the first year was more than what she earned by going out to work. This fully inspired her determination to get rid of poverty and become rich.
On weekends, Bamu Yubumu and her husband reclaimed the barren mountains and expanded the planting land little by little. They carried a large number of rocks with their bare hands, overcoming obstacles and obstacles, with difficulties but full of hope.
By 2018, Bamu Yubumu and his wife already had 15 acres of plantations, earning hundreds of thousands of yuan from flue-cured tobacco. She finally fulfilled her long-cherished wish and used state subsidies and her own savings to build a two-story small house in her hometown! When she walked into her new house, Bamu Yubumu was so excited that she burst into tears.
Today, Bamu Yubumu has been successfully lifted out of poverty, his living conditions have improved significantly, and his home is bustling. She will continue to work hard to earn money and save more for the future of her 4 healthy children.
Every time she thinks of her two deceased daughters, Bamu Yubumu still can't help but feel a dull pain, but she doesn't give up, but cherishes everything she has now.
The warmth of a bumpy fate
In 1989, Bamu Yubumu was born in an extremely barren mountain village in Sichuan. She never went to school, and when she was a child, she obeyed her parents' arrangements and took care of her younger siblings while doing heavy farm work.
When she was 12 years old, Bamu Yubumu went down the mountain alone to harvest firewood, covered with cold and hard pine needle buds, which scratched her delicate skin. That's when she understood that girls don't have easy jobs.
At the age of 17, Bamu Yubumu was forced to give up her studies and marry a man several years older than her in a neighboring village. The following year, she gave birth to her first daughter, and in order to change the current situation of poverty, 19-year-old Bamu Yubumu began to take her daughter out to work.
However, life has never been kind to her, and the pain of the death of her two daughters almost broke her. If it weren't for the fact that she still had her eldest daughter by her side, she really didn't have the courage to continue living.
Fortunately, the national poverty alleviation policy has brought her hope and given her the opportunity to get rich by growing flue-cured tobacco. Now her family has improved a lot, and she is once again a mother.
For Bamu Yubumu, what gratifies her the most is that her two daughters have achieved outstanding academic results and have a lot of hobbies. She always reminds herself to work hard to make money, so that children can change their fate by reading, get out of the deep mountains and old forests, and not repeat her mistakes.
The mental journey of the Spring Festival mother
For many years, Bamu Yubumu never realized that he had been popular on the Internet. When he heard that a reporter had spent 11 years looking for her, Bamu Yubumu was so surprised that he couldn't keep his mouth shut.
It wasn't until Zhou Ke personally stood in front of her that Bamu Yubumu realized that this was true.
Zhou Ke saw Bamu Yubumu himself more vividly than in the photo, with openness between his eyebrows and capableness in his gestures. He couldn't hide his excitement, and hurriedly took out the old photo that connected the two strangers and reviewed it with Bamu Yubumu.
Bamu Yubumu slowly talked about the various things back then.
Scenes reproduced in Bamu Yubumu's mind. She calmly told Zhou Ke about her experience and history of struggle, but it made Zhou Ke have mixed feelings. The weight of fate carried by this ordinary peasant woman was beyond his imagination.
It is the tenacious and hard-working Chinese women like Bamu Yubumu who have laid the cornerstone of social development and stability.
Now the Spring Festival mother has successfully stood up and lifted herself out of poverty and become well-off. And Zhou Ke is determined to carry forward her story and let more people understand and respect the difficulties of ordinary working women.
The fate of the two people involved in this photo will continue to continue.
epilogue
Bamu Yubumu's life experience reflects the life of countless rural women in China. They struggle with poverty and helplessness, but they still choose to grit their teeth and persevere; They are tormented by the loss of flesh and blood, but they still survive by a mother's love; They staggered forward under the tricks of fate, but they still had the hope of the future.
At the same time, the story of Bamu Yubumu also shows us hope. With the help of the national poverty alleviation policy and her unremitting efforts, she successfully reversed her fate and let the children live in food, clothing and books.
This stems from her tenacious and optimistic character and her spirit of self-improvement. This is exactly what everyone who is struggling with a difficult situation should have.
Looking back, we can't help but shed tears of emotion for the Spring Festival mother; Looking to the future, we must not let this kind of thing continue to happen, but promote the further development of society, so that more people can live a happy life.
Only when we truly breathe and share the same fate with ordinary working women can the society be truly harmonious and beautiful.
The story of the Spring Festival Mother has brought Zhou Ke closer to the ordinary people. And his dedication to spending 11 years searching for it has also resonated with us in the Internet age.
This friendship will be turned into the strength of our joint efforts to illuminate the path of everyone's life.