My hometown is in Jiaocheng, Shanxi, and that piece of yellow earth selflessly raised my grandparents. On December 23, 1988, I was born in that hot land and grew up in her arms. In the summer of 2007, when I was admitted to university, on the last afternoon before I left her, I put a thousand words into a glass bottle and buried them deep next to the ancient pagoda of Tianjiashan, and at the same time wrapped a handful of loess and carried it with me, leaving a memory for each other. After graduating from graduate school and joining the workforce in 2013, I had fewer opportunities and time to return to her. It seems that because I have been absent from her nourishment for a long time, in the face of difficulties in life and work, I am a little overwhelmed, I don't know what to do, and I can't find the way for a while.
In 2021, on December 23, I came to Jingning, Gansu Province for a temporary job after being selected by the company. This is also a yellow earth, and at a critical moment in my life, she once again stretched out her arms and embraced me, as if to say to me: "Come back, come back!" So, I was reborn in this yellow earth, like a baby, touching, observing, adapting to everything around me, gradually growing, and clearly seeing the road to the future.
Maybe it's because I've been away from her for a long time, and when I first arrived in Jingning, I didn't adapt to it for a while, and I also encountered a lot of difficulties. But she can always use her thick mind to nurture my wisdom and strength, and inspire me to cut through the waves.
One is at work. Jingning is located in Longdong, which belongs to the northern dialect and the northwest dialect area, and the local dialect is quite different from the Jin language and state system in my hometown. In the process of communicating with local cadres, especially the grassroots masses, I felt very difficult. Later, I came up with a way to sit in a restaurant on the street whenever I had time and listen to the diners communicate in dialects. After half a month, I was gradually able to understand Jingning's dialect and proceeded smoothly with my work. The pace of work in the local area is also relatively slow, so I set aside buffer time to closely coordinate the work between the company and the local area.
The second is in life. Once a person stays in a comfortable place for a long time, he becomes delicate. When I first arrived in Jingning, it was winter, the air was very dry, especially when the house was heated, and the next day I woke up with bloody scabs in my nostrils. The villagers taught me to wash and hang my thick clothes in the house while I slept, and I used this method to gradually adapt to the dry climate. Jingning's diet is heavy on oil and salt, and the locals have a soft spot for oily spicy seeds, and I also couldn't eat spicy food at the beginning, but in the end I was not happy with spicy, especially for the bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles with a big spoonful of oily spicy noodles. Get up early and come to a bowl, and take a bite of hot soup, like a long drought and a rainstorm.
The third is emotionally. Away from family and friends to the northwest border, food, housing and work are in the office, every night in the quiet of night, it is inevitable to feel lonely. At first, I was not used to it and didn't know what to do. Later, I was accompanied by books, and I no longer felt lonely. During this period, I studied Fei Xiaotong's "Rural China" to understand the logic of rural operation at the theoretical level, and better guide me to carry out assistance work. As a young man in the new era, the greatest influence on me is the books that recall the history of the struggle of the educated youth, from the memories of these educated youths and the villagers who eat, live and work with them, as if I saw that in the long night, under a dim kerosene lamp, a young man who was full of tiredness but was hungry to read and study, and they also raised their heads from time to time to think. Through the faint, beating flames of the kerosene lamps, I seemed to see the power of these figures, and this power has always inspired me.
Since I took up my post, I have been fighting side by side with the company's leaders and colleagues on the front line and local cadres and masses to jointly promote rural revitalization. I once joked: "It took half a catty of liquor to write it." "Actually, I drank the fragrant wine that I had made with the wind that blew her, the rain that blew her, the snow that covered her, and the deep love she gave me. There are four sentences in this song that I want to say the most, and they are also my most unforgettable feelings.
- "Treat your fellow villagers as teachers and other towns as your hometown" Jingning's leading industry is apples, and at the beginning, I didn't know much about apples. In order to grasp the actual situation of the development of the local industry, I went to the villager's house to chat and work hard in the fields whenever I had the opportunity. I gradually made friends who can tell the truth, learned that each fruit tree has to go through 20 procedures of management every year, and each apple has to go through 12 touches of the fruit farmer's hands from childhood to adulthood, and also understood the difficulties in the development of Jingning's apple industry, providing first-hand information for the scientific planning of apple industry assistance projects, and really responding to the sentence: "The people are the best teachers." "I treat the masses as relatives in my work. In an activity to care for special children, there was a child with cerebral palsy who could not stand and walk due to atrophy of his leg muscles, and could only move on the kang, but the moment he saw me smiling and stretching out his hand to him, he was so happy that he trembled and pounced. At that time, my eyes were moist, and I was also very shocked, and I further realized the importance of consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation, and not leaving anyone behind on the road of pursuing a better and happier life.
——"No matter how difficult it is, take root in the front line and do not retreat" grassroots work, thousands of things, intricate, the busiest day, I coordinated 33 things, received 74 phone calls. There is not only this kind of daily busyness, but also the torment of major projects. At the beginning of 2022, I was entrusted by the county government to register the industrial fund, because it is a new business, the comrades of the registration center are not very familiar, I keep watch from morning to night every day, ask them to contact many parties, actively prepare, prepare a total of 23 materials, run to Lanzhou twice, and finally complete the registration. During this period, there was the guidance of the company, the liaison and docking in the county, and the remote support of the comrades-in-arms who had ended their temporary posts, and the yellow earth vividly taught me that "unity is strength". Over the years, the projects I have participated in the implementation of "insurance + futures", beef cattle cold chain slaughtering and other projects have blossomed and have been effective, making me feel that all the hardships and hardships I have experienced are worth it.
——"Write your thesis in the land and read your degree in the countryside" For more than two years, I have traveled to all the project sites that the company has helped implement. These projects that land on the quiet earth are like seeds, sown in her fertile soil, like flowers, blooming in her beautiful clothes, and like fruits, stacked in her sturdy baskets. I marked their locations on the map, and it was a thriving scene. I am just an ordinary member of the temporary cadres, looking back at the monuments on the road of help, recording the hardships of the predecessors: some comrades have traveled all over the 333 villages in Jingning, some comrades have taken their children from Beijing to the county to go to school in order to work with peace of mind, and some comrades have resolutely returned to the front line of poverty alleviation even if their children are still in the incubator...... They not only gave me great spiritual encouragement, but also "passed on the help" to me at all times, so that I could stand on the shoulders of my predecessors and forge ahead. Since taking up my post, I have promoted more than 3,900 work items, formed a work report of more than 500 pages and more than 200,000 words, and the rural revitalization information I wrote was selected to be reported to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the Gansu Provincial Party Committee, and was invited to accompany the Deputy Secretary-General of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference for field research. The loess made me deeply understand that only by working hard can we really produce real performance and real performance. In the process of "shedding a few layers of skin, sweating a few times, and gray hair", I improved my ability and was recognized, and won 8 provincial, municipal and county honorary titles.
- "My most beloved Jingning, my youthful true feelings" When I was in my thirties, it was the yellow earth of Jingning that selflessly accepted me and helped me solve the confusion of work and life. I was determined to repay her kindness with all I could, with all I could learn, and I touched my heartstrings many times during this process. This feeling is even more pronounced in the last period. In the early morning of the day of the event, the invited doctors and friends made PPT in the interval of heavy surgery, just to share medical knowledge with the old folks, which made me awe-inspired. That day, I was eating in the cafeteria, thinking about the script of the MV for "True Love" for temporary cadres, and when I designed various scenes of leaving Jingning, I suddenly burst into tears and couldn't let go. The comrade across the table asked me, "Are you homesick?" and I choked up and replied, "I am homesick." And the "home" I am talking about is not the "home" he said, I have taken the yellow earth that I love deeply, leaving my youth and true love, as my home. I also have a deeper understanding of "why do I always have tears in my eyes?" because I love this land so much.
I recall that before I left, I made a special trip back to my hometown and dug up the glass bottle that had been buried for many years next to the ancient pagoda in Tianjia Mountain. After opening it, it was as if I heard the words of the young and stubborn young man 14 years ago, "I want to go out and have a look." I put in the troubles I had been searching for again and buried them in my place. Now, I don't have to open this glass bottle anymore, because I have left everything I want to say in the yellow earth, and she silently told me the answer I was seeking: returning to my original intention and serving the people wholeheartedly is the way forward.
I love the yellow earth deeply, and she gave birth to me twice: the first time in the body and the second time in the soul. In her arms, I tempered the quality of sticking to my original intention, tempered my belief in serving the people, exercised my ability to overcome difficulties, and understood the book "China's Reality". After leaving her, I will set sail again with the fullest enthusiasm, the most pragmatic style, and the most rigorous attitude, and forge ahead on a new journey!
Text/Sixing