Poor and happy childhood

The world was small as a child. When you sit in a chair, your feet will hang high and you won't be able to touch the ground. The sky is so high, the streets are so wide, the pond is the sea, and the sand dunes are the mountains.

I can't remember what day it was, but that little world was shattered. A fresh book, a fashionable outfit, an insight from a distant relative...... Let's make a "wow" sound and discover that the world is so vast, that the real sea is boundless, and that few people can climb the real mountains.

But it was then that the childish eyes began to look forward to it, and they had the most beautiful desire - to see the big world.

When I was a child, I came into contact with the largest disposable funds with a face value of 10 yuan, and most children will get 10 yuan to buy snacks during the spring outing.

At that time, I thought that 10 yuan was too much, and I could buy snacks, jelly, and a bottle of drink full of coloring for 5 cents. So I seriously think that earning 300 yuan a month is considered to be financial freedom - how happy it is to be able to spend 10 yuan a day.

Until one summer vacation, I went from the town to my aunt's house in the county seat, and my aunt took me to the county department store to buy me a pair of sneakers. When I saw that a pair of Nikes were hundreds of dollars, the worldview collapsed, and they refused to try it no matter what they said, dragging the adults out.

That was the first time I realized that the outside world was so big and so expensive.

    thump 

I was born at the foot of Mount Tai, the "Five Peaks Alone", and grew up listening to the legend of Mount Tai in the mouth of the elderly, and I could look up at the majestic posture of the mountains from the window of my home. In my mind, Mount Tai is the highest mountain in the world, and I suspect that those who climb to the top without taking a ropeway actually fly to the top.

Later, when I was in elementary school, my father gave me a beautiful notebook with a snow-capped mountain printed on it. I asked my dad if this was Mount Tai, and he said it was the highest mountain in the world, the Himalayas. I immediately burst into tears, because I had always been proud that I was born at the foot of the highest mountain in the world, and now this title of hero has been taken away by another mountain.

My father saw that I was so serious and cute, and bought me a picture book about the Himalayas, which became my favorite book at that time. Every time I look at it, I make a wish: to grow up and play in the snow on Mount Everest. Now, I'm 23 years old, and I've made a bunch of friends who love mountaineering, and maybe one day, I'll be able to make my wish come true.

   Children

Author's picture|In Mount Tai

I spent my childhood in the countryside, and the nearest commissary was more than ten kilometers away from home, so I always sucked the nectar of canna planted by my grandmother in front of my door to drink. Bees eat this, so I can eat it too, and I'm a little jealous, why are such good things eaten by bees. At that time, I didn't think I was a human cub, I felt like I was like a bee. For a long time, nectar was the best thing I could eat. Until one time I had a high fever, my grandfather took me to the county town late at night to see a doctor, and I wanted a spanking injection, and I heard the doctor say that I wanted to reduce the fever and began to cry wildly. At this time, a nurse sister took out an aluminum box from a drawer and opened it to a pink ball. "If you get an injection and be a brave baby, I'll reward you with another one. I peeled off the plastic paper and took it in, I swear it was the sweetest thing I've ever tasted. I never grabbed nectar from the bees again.

    Malala

Author's picture|The age of eating nectar

Growing up in the mountains, I always had an unwilling heart to know what was outside the endless mountains, so I became obsessed with writing when I was in elementary school. In the fourth grade, I saw an essay call for papers published in a magazine for elementary school students, with any restrictions on the subject and genre, and it was required to reflect a positive and healthy outlook on the world, life, and ideology. I didn't understand what these three views meant, so I ran to find a Chinese teacher. He was already in his sixties, and after a while he said that he was doing what Chairman Mao wanted. I didn't seem to understand, so I threw out an essay about cutting wild vegetables when I was herding cattle.

A few months later, I received an award and for the first time in my life, I was recognized for my writing. I still remember the thrill of my heart pounding when I received the letter.

The organizer said that congratulations on winning the award, and the award-winning works will be published in a collection, and each student only needs to pay 100 yuan for the production cost. The letter was later crushed to the bottom of the bookcase because I had no money. When I grew up, I knew that it was mostly a scam, but then I was able to work as a media outlet in Beijing, and it had something to do with it.

    Futagi

I didn't ride an elevator until I was six years old. Once, my uncle invited us to a buffet at a fancy restaurant. The restaurant was on the 15th floor, and as I walked into the lobby, I was led by my cousin into an iron box with red buttons that opened and closed. After entering, everything was quiet, I was unaware of the elevator going up, I was always irritated why this tool did not move at all, how could I eat deliciously? I couldn't bear it anymore, I suddenly threw myself at the closed elevator door in front of me, yelled "It's broken, I'm going to go up", and then was pulled back by my cousin with an embarrassed face and held it down.

To this day, I still remember the crisp "ding" of the elevator when it reached the floor, and the glittering world of food that greeted me when the elevator doors opened, and the surprise of discovering a new world.

    Yu Ting 

As a child, I only saw KFC on TV. One year, my mother went to the city for training and came back and said that the hotel where she lived was next to a KFC. "It's really fragrant!" said Mom, "and the whole street is filled with the smell of fried chicken." "I can't imagine what kind of magical smell it is, and the fried chicken that my mother brought back with me was already cold and soft, and it was tasteless. Not long after this incident, the county town grandly opened a fast food restaurant, in the center of the most prosperous square, the signboard with white characters on a red background, with three big characters on it, "Kenxiang Chicken". Yes, the copycat version, you can't even smell the fragrance at the door of the store. That's when I felt compelled to stay in the big city, after all, the fried chicken in the big city was a kilometer away.

    NANA 

In the 90s, when the tide of migrant workers rose, almost all the young people in the village went to Guangdong, and we became left-behind children. The mountains are high and the sky is blue, and I can often see planes flying by with two white smokes, and sometimes I can even faintly see patterns, which is the only source of my imagination for the outside world.

When my uncle came back from Shenzhen during the Chinese New Year, I told him about the plane. He pretended to be mysterious and said that these planes were flying south to Guangdong, and some of them were parked near their factories, which could seat two or three hundred people and set up dozens of tables for banquets. I was simply stunned.

He taught me ABCDEFG and said that foreigners in the factory could use them to spell out airplane words. At that time, I had just finished learning pinyin, and I was shocked to find that the letters had another pronunciation.

Later I learned that it was all the alphabet that my uncle knew, after all, he didn't even graduate from elementary school.

   poplar

Author's Diagram | My hometown

When I was a child, my perception of the house was very narrow, and in the small county town in the 90s, everyone lived in an old house. Because of my mother's work, I went to Guangdong for a summer vacation after graduating from junior high school. I nested in a blue rental house in the factory area, and I also felt that it was no different from a small county town.

Unlike her mother, who is a working girl, her aunt works as a white-collar worker in the same city because she has studied in college, and her monthly salary is three times that of her mother. I still remember the first time I left the factory and went to my aunt's house. When I entered the community, I opened the door and saw the house in the TV: a double-storey four-bedroom and two living rooms, each room has a chandelier, and a marble table of five or six square meters in the living room. The warm yellow chandelier sets off the room so warmly, and no matter how cold the relationship is, in such a light, you will be reluctant to show your teeth and claws. In contrast, my parents were always arguing under the incandescent lamp, the wick was me, and I was burning silently all the time.

As soon as I entered the door, my tears kept rolling in my eyes, and I couldn't help but pour out. Before, I told my mother that it would be nice to be able to live in the house in the TV series, it looked super comfortable. The mother's answer was: "The TV series is all fake." "But I was on TV, satire.

I turned around and ran, and my mother followed me for a few streets. Finally we all got tired and sat on the edge of the flower bed. She also cried and said a lot: "Mom is uneducated, don't blame me, you have to study hard, so that you can live in a big house by yourself." "The flowers of the south bloom so brightly, they are all purple at night.

   Kim Sansan

-END-

This issue is planned | Yao Lu, Liu Qian