Every day is a good day -- an essay by a student of the Western Development Scholarship Project

Every day is a good day -- an essay by a student of the Western Development Scholarship Project

Cold load

At five o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by the thunder, the lightning pierced the faint sky and slashed to the earth, the wind whistled through Tianmen Mountain, and a subsequent explosion shook the heavens and the earth, and the rapid wind and rain hit the floor-to-ceiling windows, and hit my heart with a crackle.

Without hesitation, I got up and got out of bed, grabbed a purple coat and put it on. Then quietly walked into the room of the two children, the son and daughter slept quietly on the soft bed, sleeping so sweetly, the sound of breathing seemed extraordinarily clear, as if it was the most tender picture in life. I gently covered them with quilts and kissed their foreheads, and the warmth I had never felt before surrounded me. In the 20 years since I accepted the Western Development Student Aid, I have never been so easy, and I have a lot of words to write, and I want to record it, to the thunder, to the raindrops, and to the Western Development Student Aid Project......

When I was a child, I was most afraid of thunder and rain.

Three small, dilapidated stone houses, living in a family of seven, are airy on all sides and leak rain everywhere. At that time, grandparents lived in one room. At night, my mom and sister squeezed into a slightly larger bed, while my brother and father squeezed into a small bed. Crowded and damp, it was my deepest impression of the house. On rainy days, our whole family had to use all the pots and pans to catch the rain dripping from the roof. The only two beds were covered with a large plastic sheet, and when I couldn't hold it anymore, my mother and I scooped it out in a basin.

The floor is not hardened, and it is slippery when it rains. The youngest sister always wrestled, but she never cried, laughed when she got up, and her little hands were dirty. When the weather cleared, my father climbed on the roof to pick up the tiles to fix the leaks, and the three of us children were responsible for the tiles. My father's handwriting is beautiful, and the couplets are also very well written, and I feel like a layman when I do farm work. I don't know if the technology is not up to par, but there are still too many tiles to be filled, and when it rains next time, we are still in a hurry to receive the rainwater. Don't rain on the most extravagant night, at least you can sleep peacefully.

Leaking rain is a trivial matter, the house is built on the bank of the river, there is an irrigation channel behind the house, and a flash flood floodway on the left. When it comes to the rainy season, there is water on three sides. Centipedes, earthworms, locusts, crabs, and sometimes snakes often crawl into the house. My brother and I were timid and screamed when we saw a centipede, while my little sister thought it was funny and grabbed the earthworm and played with it without the adults paying attention. I remember one time, when I was taking the pot to cook, I touched something cold and cold, and my hand quickly retracted, and I called out to my father to see that there was a pit viper coiled on the side, so the fear of snakes continued until adulthood.

During the 1998 flood, the water level soared at night, and the river overflowed the embankment and slowly poured into my family's sun-drying tower. Grandpa insisted on not getting up, saying that life and death are fate, and the flood entered the house many years ago and did not wash away the house. At that time, my father was working in the county seat, and my mother and I used a flashlight to build a ladder to put a few beds of cotton wool in the attic, and repeatedly discussed when to escape with our three babies through the back door and climb the wall. At the age of 14, I became an adult in my mother's heart to discuss things. The flood eventually receded, and the next day I heard that the county was flooded, and I began to worry about my father, who had never been able to be contacted. A month later, my father returned, and the family's hanging hearts finally landed.

The summer nights by the river in the countryside are the hardest, full of mosquitoes, around the light bulbs that are not bright, and blatantly lying in all the corners of the house. One day on a whim, I took a basin of water and put it under the lamp. The stupid mosquito thought that there was also a light bulb in the water, and threw itself into the basin, and after a while, it floated a thick layer, poured it out and replaced it with new water, and so on, and so on, and this was the only thing my family praised me for being smart and clever. At that time, there was no money to buy mosquito coils, and I was always tossing and turning in the buzzing sound and sweltering weather, and I couldn't sleep, and I was so sleepy that I let mosquitoes bite my bare skin at the foot of the bed.

Since I was a child, I have been frail and sickly, my skin is the most allergic, in the words of the old man, I am too delicate, and my feet are most afraid of spring water. Most of the family's fields are on the other side of the river, especially the family's vegetables are planted on the other side of the river. At that time, there were no rolling dams, and farming work had to be carried out by wading water across the river. As soon as I step on the spring water, the toes of my feet will definitely rot. The adults taught me to pick the leaves of the Tsubaki tree by the river and hammer them between my toes, and the effect was very good. In order to make it easier for the people to cross the river without flowing water, my grandfather and several uncles often built stone piers. The stone pier is naturally not a stone pier in the real sense, that is, the larger stones are picked up and piled together at intervals of about one meter. My father was especially active about this, and when the water level dropped slightly, he began to pry the stones with thick steel bars to move them to a fixed position. It's a pity that when the flood came, all the previous efforts were wasted, and my feet were healed and rotten in half a year, and rotten and cured, and I was used to this repeatedly. Until the arrival of autumn, the water flows thinner and the amount of water becomes smaller, revealing riverbeds and stone piers of various sizes.

When I was a child, I didn't know what a scar constitution was, only that other children had wounds that healed quickly, and I recovered very slowly, and even if I recovered, I still had scars. As soon as I went to the mountains to chop wood, my whole body was allergic and itchy. What's even more terrifying is that when I touch the sumac tree, my face is immediately red and swollen like an ugly thing. Fortunately, whether it is a tea cut on the mountain or a car accident, there are many scars on the hands and legs, but the face has never been injured, even the thatch has never hurt the not beautiful face.

At that time, I thought that since the land could not accommodate me to do farm work, I had to go to university and get out of this mountain. Although my talent is mediocre, I study hard, basically I am the first in my grade, and the school holds a commendation meeting, and I become a child of someone else's family, and I speak on stage as a student representative every year. One afternoon before graduating from junior high school, I waited at the school gate for the principal. I remember that it was also raining heavily that day, and by dusk, the rain had stopped, and the principal had returned from a business trip. I bravely said to him, "Principal Wang, I want to go to high school, I want to go to college." The principal is an extremely kind and knowledgeable leader, and after learning about my family situation, he definitely told me to study hard, and in a few days the teachers of the fourth middle school will come to pick the best students. In a mock test that followed, I scored 686 out of a total of 700 points.

After graduating from junior high school, I entered the fourth middle school with a score of more than 50 points in the first middle school, and the school promised to waive the tuition and miscellaneous fees for three years, and gave me a scholarship of 600 yuan per semester as living expenses. When I was in high school, I was basically the first in my grade, and only once I ranked third, but I was hospitalized for more than half a month because of illness. may be clumsy, study hard, can't keep up with nutrition, and his physical condition is sometimes good and bad. In my third year of high school, ureteral stones recurred, and when the pain was severe, I went to class while hanging water. I stumbled through high school like this, occasionally taking some living expenses from my parents.

When I was 18 years old, I joined the Communist Party and was successfully admitted to a key university in the province. Considering my poor family, the school recommended me to become one of the four students of the city's western development student aid project that year. The leader of the Civilization Office of the county party committee later told me that after the home visit, he learned that I was the most difficult of all the students.

When I was in college, I was afraid of thunder and rain. My family was so difficult that on the day I went to report to university, I only carried four sets of clothes, a pair of shoes, and 1,000 yuan of living expenses given to me by my parents. At that time, the policy of the western development student aid project was implemented in our city since 2002, and most of them were key universities outside the province, and our school did not have such students. By the time the bursary came down, it was already November. At that time, the state gave me 5,000 yuan for living expenses, and after deducting 2,300 yuan for tuition and miscellaneous expenses, it was my annual living expenses. I didn't dare to call my parents, nor did I ask anyone to borrow money, so I survived so hard until early winter. My cousin came to see me at school and saw that I was thinly dressed, so he bought me a gray fleece sweatshirt for 100 yuan, which was the most expensive coat I had in college, and I am reluctant to throw it away to this day. I applied for a work-study opportunity and worked as an English tutor. These difficulties did not affect my enthusiasm for knowledge. I joined a lot of clubs, became a freshman teaching assistant, and became a class president in my senior year.

The Fortress apartment is far away from the school building, and I am destined to get soaked when it rains, and I am most afraid that the only pair of shoes will get wet, so I will be cold for a few days. Because of the difficult conditions, I often catch colds, rarely take medicine, and basically rely on self-healing. Soon, by the second semester of my sophomore year, I was vomiting blood every day. At the beginning of the first semester of my junior year, I became a teaching assistant in a freshman class. The weather was hot, and one day after finishing military training with the freshmen, I fainted on the road, and only after an examination did I know that I had advanced tuberculosis, and there were 28 clearly visible perforations on the film, which made me think that I had reached the advanced stage of lung cancer. I sat in the hospital hallway and cried. The sky was clear outside, but it was raining heavily in my world.

When I returned to school in the afternoon, I immediately told my class to ask more than 40 students in my class to go to the hospital for examination, and also told the classmates in the class who were in frequent contact with me to go for examination, for fear that they would be infected. Thankfully, everyone is fine. The next day, he went to Changsha CDC Hospital for isolation and treatment, but the subsidy for that year did not come down. I didn't tell my parents because my younger brother chose medicine and the tuition was high, and my sister was in her third year of high school, and the family was already in debt. The first time I asked my classmates to borrow money, I was grateful for their generosity and lent me more than 5,000 yuan to tide over the difficulties. I spent more than 40 days alone in the CDC hospital, getting injections, getting meals, and signing for all kinds of risk treatments. The pain of circumferential puncture now reminds me of palpitations, and when it is no longer contagious, I was discharged from the hospital and went back to school to recuperate.

At that time, everyone was very taboo about this disease. I had to rent a house by myself, and by November, when the grant came down, I paid all my debts and chose to take a leave of absence. For a whole year, I barely spoke to anyone, writing for a year. At that time, I published many articles under the pen name of Leng He, and became the annual "Top Ten Literary and Art Stars" and "Top Ten Propaganda Stars" on campus. I was very afraid of the rain, and when it rained, I coughed, and my cough was often bloodshot, and I always smelled the end of my life inexplicably.

Later, my younger siblings were admitted to university under my guidance, and now they are all staying in Changsha to start a family and work in the jobs they like. The younger brother loves traditional Chinese medicine and often lectures on traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese studies all over the country. Sometimes I laugh at him, there are four or five hundred people below, so many expert directors, don't you panic? He always replied in the affirmative, it is my social responsibility to let more people love Chinese medicine. Perhaps because of the fear of rain leakage in the house, the three of us are unprecedentedly enthusiastic about buying a house: don't buy the top floor, afraid of rain leakage, and don't buy the first floor, afraid of mosquitoes. The younger brother bought an apartment to keep his book collection. My sister likes the big flat floor and likes the empty room without clutter. Perhaps, when I was a child, I was too crowded to like a large space, and I desperately wanted to have a desk of my own, so that I could write my yearning for a better life.

After graduating from college, I gave up my high-paying job as a tea art trainer. At that time, the students of the Western Development and Scholarship Project all chose to serve in the western region as volunteers, or chose to return to their hometowns to work. Some people have been admitted to graduate school for two years after serving in the western region, some have become surgeons after returning from studying at Harvard, some have returned to the grassroots level and slowly become bank presidents, some have graduated from Beihang University and become engineers, some have become people's teachers, and some have become auditors and accountants...... Because my mother was in a car accident in 2007, I had difficulty moving and a long recovery time, so I chose to take the civil service exam and return to my hometown. In 2008, I was admitted to the township selection with excellent results. After several post experiences, at the age of 31, I stepped into the main leadership position of the township and enthusiastically devoted myself to the battle against poverty.

After working at the grassroots level, I was most afraid of heavy rain. As soon as the weather changes, they are on call 24 hours a day, afraid of reservoir dam failure, fear of river flooding ashore, fear of geological disasters and landslides, fear that the safe drinking water project will not be able to keep up with the progress, fear that the people's wooden houses will fall down and hurt people, fear that the crops of the masses will be damaged, and afraid that the mountain roads will be too slippery and vehicle accidents. After pregnancy, I am afraid that the baby in my belly is not strong enough...... In the "7.6" flood in 2020, because of the collapse of the road, I walked for several hours in the rain late at night to urgently evacuate 63 people, which happened to be the target of Xinhua News Agency's report, and I spent 13 years of township life so anxiously and extremely fulfilling.

I think of the many people who work in the township, always hitting the softest place at the bottom of the center, and when I turn around, I see the way I came. Under the leadership of party committees and governments at all levels, we have led the cadres and masses to seize the opportunity of the country's poverty alleviation, build bridges, roads, houses, attract water, develop industries, and strive not to let a poor child drop out of school...... In those years, he fought the battle of poverty alleviation, flood prevention and disaster relief, and the war of new crown epidemic prevention and control. Occasionally so thrilling, challenge all your impossibilities, hone your mind, temper your tenacity, make people unforgettable, and leave a piece of no regrets. My daughter was born on the night of her leave, and on the second day of her caesarean section, she struggled to get up and sign a lot of road construction contracts. The child is less than 100 days old and returns to work. No matter what position I was in, I always remember that I was a member of the Communist Party who raised his right hand and swore an oath to the party flag at the age of 18 as a child who completed college with the support of the Western Development Project.

On May 13, 2021, the rain that day was a little melancholy, and I had prepared lines for a long time, wanting to say goodbye to the comrades who worked together in that hot land one by one, but I wasted time in packing my luggage and sorting out documents. From the grassroots to the municipal, from the party to the business, we have made a very challenging choice. In the past three years, the empty cup has been cleared, and it has always been born to the sun. I work in economics and write all kinds of reports, which are fortunately in line with the economics majors I studied in college and graduate school. Sometimes I feel that the mental exhaustion is very serious, even if I am accompanied by relatives and friends, I have to endure the chaos of a person. In order to hone my temperament, I began to minor in college to learn tea art and tea ceremony, from the national intermediate in 2007, the senior in 2015, and then to the first-level technician of the national senior tea artist in 2023, the assessment standards and certification units are changing, but I have persisted for 18 years, because I have too many concerns, I have never made an axe, let alone self-defeating.

……

Today's thunder is very loud, the rain is coming quickly, and it is going fast. I don't know how to describe today's hesitation in words, from seven o'clock in the morning, for more than 8 hours, I only did one thing, sorted out the clothes for the change of season, bored more than 50 shirts, tried to distinguish the various colors according to the labels written before, and then matched the skirt and pants, so that the color matching of the clothes when I went out every day was not wrong. When I was in college, my philosophy teacher asked us, "Are you sure that tree you see is that tree?" At that time, I was inexplicably sad, because what I saw was not necessarily that tree. When I was in high school, I was good at science, but I knew earlier that I had a family genetic disease, and my color was weak, and my ability to distinguish colors was extremely low, so I had to choose liberal arts. Perhaps because of this, I tried my best to hide this weakness and tried to dress appropriately.

Maybe over the years, I never minded growing up in poverty, but I denied the fact that I was completely weak, and I got my driver's license for six years, and I never dared to drive on the road. After hitting the south wall with all his might, he accepted his imperfections, accepted his incompleteness, and accepted that he was just an ordinary person, an ordinary mother, and a woman who loved life and loved learning. I never know why I have been working hard for so many years, and I have never stopped, and today I finally know the answer, in order to meet a better self, in order to better repay the society.

Every day is a good day, and one period is only one time. When I first learned the tea ceremony, my teacher used to say that heavy things should be put down gently, and light things should be put down heavily. Perhaps as the years go by, there is nothing that cannot be done, there is nothing that must be done, and there is no dissatisfaction mentality. Be 100% satisfied and live in the moment. After the smoke and fire, he still maintains a kind and beautiful temperament, and is calm. After walking through those trivial and tense days, looking back, I climbed a hillside full of sycamores, brilliant is a fragrance, withering is also colorful. Those days when I was in a hurry with my head down, I always neglected too much of the scenery under my feet. In the wilderness of life, every minute and second, bit by bit, all imprinted the crooked footprints that I had walked, soaked in the joys, sorrows, sorrows and joys of the experience, and when I looked up, I could see the warm touching given to me by the party and the state......

Note: The "Project for Aiding Students in the Development of the Western Region" was decided by the Central Steering Committee for the Construction of Spiritual Civilization to be organized and implemented by the Central Propaganda Department, the Central Civilization Office, and the Ministry of Education with the approval and consent of the relevant leading comrades of the Central Committee in order to implement the central strategic policy decision on the development of the western region and to help the western region train qualified personnel. Beginning in 2000, every year, 1,100 extremely poor students with excellent character and academic performance were selected from among the undergraduates admitted to key institutions of higher learning under the ministry and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps from the 12 western provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and each of them was subsidized with 20,000 yuan, which was successively allocated in four academic years, with 5,000 yuan per year to help them complete their university studies. Beginning in 2002, the scope of funding for the "Western Development Aid Project" was expanded from 12 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) in the western region and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to Hebei, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, and other provinces with relatively large poverty areas. The total number of subsidized university students has been increased from 1,200 to 2,080 per year, and tuition fees are waived.