CCTV News (Reporter Wang Jingyuan): When his father left, he became everywhere, this courtyard, this wall brick, and these words are all fathers.
Look for Zhang Fuqing
On an afternoon in late April 2024, Zhang Yulin sat as usual on the old sofa cushion in front of the Zhaobi in the west of the village, basking in the sun and chatting about family life. There were still 2 hours before sunset, and it was still early, and the old people in the row, including him, had no intention of going home.
A black sedan drove up. Several young people got out of the car and were walking towards this side, Zhang Yulin raised his eyes and saw that he was a fresh face, and without waiting for the other party to speak, Zhang Yulin pointed in the southeast direction, "Everyone is there."
Zhang Yulin refers to the location of Zhang Fuqing's house. In the past month, some strangers have suddenly appeared in the village, without exception, all of them have come to ask Zhang Fuqing.
85-year-old Zhang Yulin and Fuqing are in the same village, and they have known each other since they were young. Before Fuqing died, he came to sit in front of Zhaobi almost every afternoon. Unlike others, Fuqing sat here and didn't speak, and the parents who talked to others were short, and he didn't answer a word. Fuqing loves to listen to operas, especially Shanxi Bangzi, and always carries a drama box with him. After a long time, everyone got used to it, they talked about them, and Fuqing guarded his drama box alone, closing his eyes, tilting his head, and only listening to the play.
Zhang Fuqing is a native of Shanggaoling Village, Ekou Town, Dai County, Shanxi Province. On March 31, photographer Cai Shanhai passed by Shanggaoling Village on his way to Yanmen Pass and saw a family holding a funeral. That day was the fifth day of Fuqing's departure, and according to the village custom, after the person left, the coffin should be placed at home for seven days.
Cai Shanhai walked into the courtyard, the word "Fu" was inlaid on the wall in front of him, and four lines of calligraphy were written on the wall tiles, and the last line read: "How big is the universe?" The surface temperature of the sun is 6000 degrees...... The Moon is one-forty-eighth the volume of the Earth and has 200 billion stars......"
Intrigued, he continued to walk inside, which was a courtyard-style courtyard facing south, with a small one-story bungalow built with brick walls. In the center of the courtyard is a large piece of land used for farming, and under the south wall, two apricot trees are planted. Facing the apricot tree is the main hall, where Fuqing and his wife Du Zhongxiu live in the west room. For most of the last years of their lives, they were the only two of them in the courtyard. His wife is mentally ill and needs to recuperate, and the doors of the hospital are almost no longer open to the public.
On the wall tiles, eaves, and thresholds, Cai Shanhai looked around and was full of calligraphy. After obtaining the consent of his family, he took a picture of the text in the hospital, sorted it out and posted it on social platforms, hoping to pay tribute to the old man he had never met.
To the surprise of Cai Shanhai and the family members of the elderly, Fuqing and his courtyard became popular on the Internet. Netizens were moved, surprised, or curious, some said "This is a realistic version of my father's prose poem", and some sighed that "only words can take on this role and declare that life was once present". An operation to find Zhang Fuqing began.
The courtyard full of thoughts taken by CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan
Compared with the empathy of netizens, in Zhang Yulin's eyes, the words on the wall are useless and strange. Zhang Yulin is illiterate, when he went to Fuqing's house, he looked at the dense words on the wall, and didn't know what the use of writing this was, "educated people are strange", he pouted, "educated people have more tricks than uneducated."
Zhang Yulin said that Fuqing has been different since he was young. He studied in a private school when he was a child, with a high level of education, loves to read, and loves to buy books, the east room of the family is specially used to put books, and the bookshelves on the fourth floor can not be placed, and the extra books have to be stacked on two floors and lined up along the corner of the wall, "He is the person with the most books in the village."
Many people in the village described Fuqing as "like a literati". After his father left, the eldest son Zhang Honggang dug out his father's diary many years ago and found that his father had set an ambition: "It would be better to do some endless profitable undertakings for the country and society, and then to be able to seek happiness for the world!" I have achieved my life's ambition! If not, even though life is still death, will it not be in vain to come to life? Is it in vain to waste the country's rice grain. Is it enough to be an intellectual! ”
But in reality, forced by the family's livelihood, Fuqing didn't even finish high school. In Zhang Honggang's impression, the earliest text on the wall appeared around 1998, and most of them were related to the construction of houses. Zhang Honggang said that his father was strong in his bones, and if he couldn't learn from school, he would learn it at home, and writing was his habit for many years. Unlike other old people in the village, my father was "a little arrogant", and even if I wrote it, I wrote it in a notebook, and my father wrote it on the wall, which seemed like showing off to outsiders.
The old people who stayed in Shanggaoling Village were all farmers who had farmed all their lives. However, when he was young, he only worked for the crops for five or six years, and then, due to health reasons, his son asked him to take out all the land.
Not only does he not farm, but Fuqing is also very particular. Shanggaoling Village is located at the junction of Dai County and Fanzhi County, which belongs to Dai County and is closer to Fanzhi County. Fuqing will ride the 28 bicycle to the hotel in Fanzhi County every month to take a bath, and then spend 20 yuan to let the master rub him in the bath, "Go every month, Fuqing loves to be clean." An old man said.
In order to give visitors a more accurate idea of how unusual Fuqing's behavior is, Xu Aijun explained that some elderly people in the village do not take a bath once a year, but at most wipe them with towels at home. Xu Aijun is the secretary of the party branch of Shanggaoling Village, 53 years old this year, and this age is still a junior in the village.
Once, when Fuqing went to the county seat to take a bath, he also did a good deed. He was very happy that day, and wrote on the wall after returning home: On the twelfth day of the first month of 2017, 71-year-old Fuqing and Maochuan went to Fanzhi Xinglong Hotel to take a bath and found a gold necklace worth 5,800 yuan.
In addition to bathing, Fuqing is also particular about eating. Every spring, when the temperature warms up, he often rides his bicycle to Ekou Town to buy fresh vegetables in season.
As the sun set, the old people got up and left one after another. The wall at the entrance of the village witnesses the more frequent departures in this northern Jin village. The old people are used to it, "These are all dying people." Zhang Yulin pointed to himself and his surroundings, and said calmly.
The village entrance is an important "stronghold" for the elderly, taken by CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan
"Will Fuqing be able to go and have a look?"
After Fuqing's departure, the courtyard he regarded as a treasure during his lifetime spread quickly on the Internet, and the thoughts in it also spread to Kashgar, Xinjiang, 3,800 kilometers away. Kashgar is mentioned at least 6 times in his text:
After 2026, Kashgar City, Xinjiang, will become a population of 3 billion in Asia, Europe and Africa, and the world's largest logistics market of 100,000 mu. I hope that my two sons, Honggang and Hongying, will settle down, make great achievements, and attract many villagers to develop together.
Ask the two sons to go to Kashgar City, Xinjiang, to find a way out for future development.
……
Zhang Honggang remembered that as early as the 70s of the last century, his father had noticed Kashgar on the map. In the early years, the youngest son of Zhang Changshou, an old man in the same village, went to Kashgar to develop. His son told him on the phone, "This place is not bad" and that it will become an international market in the future.
Zhang Changshou is 76 years old this year, he studied in a private school with Fuqing when he was a child, and the two were classmates for eight years. Xu Aijun said that Zhang Changshou is the most compatible person in the village who can get along with Fuqing, and Fuqing likes to chat with him the most, and the two of them resonate spiritually.
They both participated in the latest revision of the genealogy of the Zhang family in Yanmen, and Fu Qing was the general adviser of the genealogy renewal committee, and the two went to Daixian Mazhan together to do the compilation and data collection work. Fuqing is an upright person, and when he encounters bad things, he dares to criticize no matter who the other party is, and he is not afraid of offending people, "I won't say it, I'm relieved." Zhang Changshou said.
Every time Fuqing comes to the house, he always asks Zhang Changshou about the recent situation of his youngest son in Kashgar, "he pays special attention to it, and asks me this every time he comes." Zhang Changshou said that when Fuqing talked about what he was interested in, he also opened the chatterbox and talked non-stop, and what he liked to talk about most was where the roads were built and opened to traffic, where the development was good, and where he could make a fortune by doing business there.
The last time Zhang Changshou saw Fuqing was three or four days before he died, and that day Fuqing came to talk to him about making a living, and said that he was going back to Kashgar, "If he doesn't die, he wants to take them to see this year", Zhang Changshou sat on the kang with his back hunched, "I can't go now." ”
For many nights, in this aging, lonely, and inconspicuous northern village, two septuagenarians sat around the kang, chatting all over the world, Shanxi Bangzi, ancient buildings, highways, high-speed railways, bridge repairs, spaceship launches, and national development ...... Zhang Changshou likes to chat with Fuqing, Fuqing knows everything and has all knowledge, "he sees the world bigger than us."
In 1962, 15-year-old Zhang Fuqing and 13-year-old Zhang Changshou each spent two yuan in Ekou Town to buy the first world map in their lives, which was a booklet as big as the palm of their hands, introducing the seven continents and eight oceans, as well as the general situation of the world's major countries. At that time, a bowl of noodles was only two cents, but Fuqing told Zhang Changshou that the money was well spent, and he could understand the population density, customs, and development prospects of other countries. Zhang Changshou's map has long been missing, and Fuqing's is still intact at home.
Fuqing marked a number of railways on the map Photo by CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan
From then on, Fuqing seemed to be fascinated and began to buy maps more frequently. For as long as Zhang Honggang can remember, a few new maps have popped up in his home from time to time, as if they had grown on his own. After his father left, he flipped out a map book of his father in the east room, the new edition was revised in January 2018, and the county Xinhua Bookstore had not yet been updated.
The price is printed on the cover is 88 yuan, and there is a line of small print next to it, "Actual payment of 74 yuan 4 jiao 8 points online ordering price". Zhang Honggang speculated that it should be a neighbor's child who came back from other places, and his father specially asked the other party to help buy it from the Internet, "I am really reluctant to ask others."
In Zhang Honggang's eyes, his father would rather eat steamed buns and pickles for the whole family today, but the money for study and education must be spent. When he was 5 years old, his father spent five yuan to buy him a pair of poker cards printed with Tang poems and Song lyrics, which were five times more expensive than the price of ordinary poker. When he was in junior high school, other people's children were studying in the village, and his father insisted that he be sent to school in the county. As soon as Zhang Honggang was homesick, his father went to lobby his good friends and persuaded them to send their children to the county to be Zhang Honggang's companion.
The home of Zhang Fuqing, an old man in Shanxi, is pasted with a map of Beijing's Sixth Ring Road, a tourist map of Ordos, a map of Guangxi transportation and tourism, and a map of the landform of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Everywhere Fuqing went, he would go to Xinhua Bookstore to buy a local map, but Zhang Honggang couldn't figure out why his father bought the same map every year.
From 2010 to 2015, Fuqing bought a copy of "Highway Mileage in Shanxi and Surrounding Areas" every year. In the five atlases, the content of each page is fixed, and the Fuqing Association will compare maps with the same page number in different years, observe which roads have been built, and check whether the unbuilt and under construction marked last year have become built this year.
The railway lines of Fuqing are all over the country and even the world, such as the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, the Harbin-Suifenhe, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway and so on. Fuqing felt that the subtleties of the map hid important national codes, "He was a small ordinary person who could not communicate directly with the national leaders, but he could feel the direction of national construction from the map." Zhang Honggang said.
Earlier, when Fuqing had not yet installed a heart stent, he often rode a bicycle to Fanzhi County alone to see the construction of roads and bridges. He was very concerned about the progress of the construction, and went when he had time.
Shuai Xiuping is Zhang Honggang's classmate, in the early years, their father once set off from Shanggaoling together, riding a bicycle to Taiyuan to sell Dai County's specialty peppers, nearly 300 miles, all dirt roads, the road had to spend two whole days, encountered the rain and muddy, so not embarrassed.
Shuai Xiuping pondered, was it because the road they had traveled at that time was too bad and they had suffered too much, so they would care so much about whether the road was repaired well when they were old? Zhang Honggang nodded thoughtfully.
Photo by Fuqing and his wife CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan
"When will the Western Wall be built?"
In Zhang Hongying's impression, his father can't be idle, loves tossing, and is always researching to make a living. In 1997, when he was 6 years old, he and his father pulled a cart to Fanzhi to sell watermelons. The family has raised bees and 50 sheep, and my father has hired a shepherd to herd the sheep and a big dog to come to the door.
Once, when Fuqing went to Taiyuan to do business, he passed by a place where he was recruiting students to teach braised pork, and he was immediately moved, and Zhang Honggang paid for him to register. The tin cart parked in the main house was prepared by Fuqing for selling braised pork, and there is still a secret recipe for braised pork that he summarized at home. Fuqing returned to the village after learning and showed his skills at home, but Hongying's expression was not good after tasting it, "My father's seasoning is a little heavy", Fuqing had to invite the master back to the village from Taiyuan to make up for one-on-one lessons. After some diligent study, he still couldn't grasp the strength of the materials, and the braised meat shop didn't open after all.
"What year is this?" Zhang Hongying blurted out: "That's when the house was built." He pointed to the house where his parents lived to the west. When talking about their father's past, many times, the brothers couldn't tell the specific year and date at once, and the small family's perception of the time scale almost came from the progress of the father's house.
Built by Fuqing's great-grandfather, this ancestral courtyard is at least 150 years old and has gone through five generations. When Zhang Honggang was still young, he felt that his grandparents had the desire to repair the house, but there were many children in the family, and the economic conditions were limited, so he was powerless.
After his father's death, when Zhang Honggang was sorting out his belongings, he dug out the diary written by his father 59 years ago for the first time. One of them was written on the 24th day of the first month of 1966, when Fuqing probably realized that he could no longer study, and Fuqing's father said to him, "You have to study for more than 40 days this year, and when you reach more than 50 days, you have to work in the fields, otherwise you will not be able to get all the food for three people throughout the year."
In the "Essay on Remembering My Wife" written by Fuqing in his later years, several places mentioned the situation of being coerced by reality after leaving the campus: the situation forced me to cook and work in the field. Because life forced me to sell my only fifty sheep, I was able to survive the hardships of life.
Holding up the whole family, crossing the thousands of ravines along the way from youth to middle age, at the age of 50, Fuqing finally fulfilled his long-term wish and began to build the only courtyard of the family. In his later years, Fuqing once mentioned to Zhang Hongying that if the house could be repaired a few years earlier, Fuqing's parents would not have to live in this dilapidated house for the rest of their lives. Most of the words in the courtyard originally revolved around the cost of building a house, the summary of experience, and the precautions for maintenance:
On April 23, 2005, Fuqing only spent 24 days to renovate the house, spending 8,000 yuan.
Zhang Fuqing began to build such a brick house four times when he was 50 years old, and now he is 64 years old, which is really not easy.
After 16 years to build, with 100,000 red bricks and an expenditure of more than 70,000 yuan, it is 71 years old!
At the age of 77, Fuqing built a house to be perfect.
This past spring, Fuqing wrote the last text in the courtyard on the stone platform of the east wall, "At the age of 78, I sprayed all the colored copper tiles with red paint...... Also heightened to shine on the wall...... When was the Western Wall built? ……”
Shanxi ancestral hall culture is strong, attaches great importance to building houses, and in the years when my father first started to repair houses, every household in the village began to rebuild the old houses. It was around 2008 that young people began to leave their villages and land and move to the county seat and even farther into the city, leaving behind almost all of them over the age of 50. It was also in this year that Fuqing was diagnosed with coronary heart disease and installed the first heart stent.
In the old villages, most of the old houses are left to fend for themselves, but Fuqing, who is riddled with diseases and needs lifelong medication, is still building houses. Everything is becoming more and more overwhelming. On the afternoon we met Zhang Runen, he was watering the cornfield, he is 62 years old, and he calls Fuqing uncle. In the countryside, in his 60s, he still has to work, Zhang Runen has to farm and work, and his own affairs are too busy, and Fuqing still asks him for help in three days.
"He can't finish the work in his house", climbing the roof, sweeping corrugated, clearing snow, and digging thatched pits, Zhang Runen wondered why there were so many things in his family. Zhang Runen stood in the irrigation field where water was diverted, turning the soil with a shovel to water the ground, "This time he is buried in the ground, and there is no need to trouble me anymore." Not far behind him were the graves of other old people in the same village.
Complaining is complaining, Zhang Runen is willing to associate with Fuqing, he is not bad-eyed, he does not gossip, every time he helps, Fuqing always buys a cigarette or sends some Inner Mongolian wine to this nephew. At the beginning of this year, Zhang Runen looked for a "god woman" fortune teller, and the other party asked him not to participate in white affairs as much as possible, Zhang Runen was a little taboo, and he didn't go to his father's grave on Qingming Day, but when Fuqing was funeral, he was one of the coffin bearers.
Zhang Runen is watering the ground Photo by CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan
Fuqing has been building a house for 28 years, and the money is all Zhang Honggang, he quickly pulled the chat page with his father, and looked at the past, except for the call record is the transfer record. He is 15 years older than his younger brother, and in his junior year of high school, he barely finished his studies with the donations of his classmates, and entered the society as soon as he graduated from high school. After leaving his hometown, Zhang Honggang went to Ordos to develop, did medical device business, and settled down in a foreign land with a wife and children.
Faced with his father's obsession with repairing the house, Zhang Honggang had a complicated mood after becoming a family. "The nature of a businessman is to seek profits", there is no room for value-added houses in rural areas, he roughly calculated, as early as many years ago, when his father's house construction cost was enough to buy a house in Ordos, "now it can be 30 times more". In order to fulfill his father's wish, he went to Ordos for more than 30 years, and now he still lives in a rented house.
On the cart that Fuqing planned to use to sell braised pork, the last sentence reads, "When will you take a family photo?" Zhang Honggang's wife had quite an opinion on his father's construction of a house, and whenever his father mentioned it, Zhang Honggang had to hurriedly fool him over.
To say that there are no complaints is false. His wife has no job, three children to raise at home, his parents have to take medicine all year round, and his younger brother has not yet started a family, so he has to worry about many things. When he can't bear it, Zhang Honggang will comfort himself and think about Sun Shaoping in "Ordinary World", which is his spiritual idol.
In 2017, Zhang Honggang's mother-in-law, who was only in her 50s, died of a sudden illness, and his father went to Ordos to help with family affairs.
The spring of the recovery of all things is a hurdle for my father. Since the illness in 2008, from the end of March to the beginning of April every year, my father always felt flustered and tightened in his chest, and accompanied his father to be hospitalized in Taiyuan for a reexamination, which has become Zhang Hongying's memory in the past ten springs.
The most anxious was in 2018, when his parents fell ill at the same time, and Zhang Honggang's wife suffered from depression due to the death of his mother. It was also from this time that the text on the wall became more and more dense. In addition to repairing the house, new records of Fuqing and his wife's medication, his educational instructions for his sons, and the coffin and aftermath that Zhang Hongying avoided mentioning the most.
"Fuqing was 72 years old, that is, on September 27, 2018, he bought two life materials from the gate for 4,600 yuan and one for 2,300 yuan."
"After the death of your father, please pay attention to your mother's thoughts and fluctuations, and after burying your father, you can find someone who serves her as a companion, or send your mother to live in a nursing home...... When your parents were alive, they were satisfied with the filial piety of your brothers, and I hope that you two brothers will walk together and unite as the Lord. ”
The two sons gradually realized that their father had written these words for them to read.
Zhang Hongying (left) and Zhang Honggang (right) discuss the text on the wall Photo by Liu Qibao
From 30% to 90% understanding
Fuqing is old and can't ride a bicycle anymore, so he has to rely on buses to get medicine, take a bath, and buy a map in Fanzhi. Zhongxiu is sick, and he can't do without people around him every day, Fuqing doesn't dare to go too far, even if he goes to Zhaobi at the entrance of the village, he has to count the time to go home and cook.
In 2010, Fuqing was fitted with a second heart stent, and his sons gave more and more orders, and Fuqing, who was idle, had fewer and fewer places to go. Life is trapped in a small courtyard, and the sparse daily life of the past is becoming unattainable, until Han Baocang, who has a car, returns from Beijing.
Han Baocang is 72 years old this year, went to Beijing to work as a railway soldier at the age of 20, repaired the Second Ring Metro, has a household registration in Chaoyang District, Beijing, and has a house in Beijing. In 2010, Han Baocang retired and returned to Shanggaoling from Beijing.
Baocang is not interested in Kashgar and the universe, but like Fuqing, he likes to listen to operas. In the popular words, if Zhang Changshou is Fuqing's spiritual partner, Baocang is closer to Fuqing's "theater partner" and "travel partner".
There are stages in the nearby villages, which village is new to the play, will send a notice in Kuaishou, the time is right, and Baocang will drive with his wife and Fuqing and his wife. The farthest place the four old men have been to watch a play is Jiulong Village, Dai County, 50 kilometers away. Two years ago, the construction of the western section of the Xiongxin high-speed railway began, and Baocang drove Fuqing to see the high-speed rail and the cave. On the way back, Fuqing gave Baocang 200 yuan, invited him to dinner, and bought him cigarettes, "never taking advantage of others, quite a good person".
Baocang said that Fuqing is happiest when he watches the play, he only watches the good plays with high actors, does not watch Lai plays, and likes to watch Zhan Lihua's plays the most, "I am very excited and focused". Baocang leaned on the hanging chair in the courtyard, smiling, shaking his hands and feet and imitating Fuqing's appearance when he watched the play.
A few days before Fuqing died, he had a severe cold, and in the last two days of his life, Baocang drove him to the hospital for an infusion and stayed by his side, "He wasn't ready to die, he didn't look like that." The two once agreed that when the weather warms up, they will go to Zhan Lihua's hometown Dingxiang County together, but now it has become a pity. In the lonely Baocang house, half of the wine on the table was left, and the garbage cans were full of wine bottles, "they (Fuqing and his wife) were in too much hurry."
Fuqing's late friend Han Baocang CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan photographed
This is the longest time Zhang Hongying has been at home since she left home for nine years. During this time, he took care of his mother's food, clothing, and daily life, and took care of his mother's emotions.
When I was in Beijing, the pressure of these burdens was not transmitted directly to me. When her mother was emotionally unstable, her father would sometimes send messages to Zhang Hongying: Your mother has stopped eating recently, and your mother does not drink hot water, so she has to eat cold rice. Father's tone was a bit like a complaint, Zhang Hongying was a catering, and he was too busy to reply during the day, so he could only wait for his father to call back after work in the evening to comfort him.
"Now the burden is a lot heavier." Soon after his father left, Zhang Hongying installed a camera at home, and when he encountered the occasional situation where he had to go out, he was worried that his mother would bump into him at home.
At first, Zhang Hongying was a little resistant to the media that followed, and his private territory was intruded, and he needed enough time to digest it. But he also felt that the comments of netizens and the media's questioning pushed him to understand his father more deeply.
There was a problem with the water coming out of the washing machine at home, and every time I washed clothes, my father had to take a small bucket, fill it with water from the faucet on the east side of the courtyard, and transport it over again. Zhang Hongying asked him to make a hole in the wall and connect a water pipe, but his father ignored it, he didn't want to destroy the integrity of the house, "people can't communicate when they're old."
One evening after his father left, Zhang Hongying sat on a small bench next to the washing machine, thinking that perhaps his father's stubbornness in his eyes was precisely his father's pride, and it was also the reason why he attracted so much attention after his death.
Zhang Hongying goes home four or five times a year, mostly in the middle of the night, and every time he comes back, there is always new text on the wall, but he always glances at it and looks at it casually. Now that he has a lot of time and patience, he begins to look down and speculate on the situation in which his father wrote this sentence, and figure out what his father really wants to express, "It used to be 30% understanding, but now it is 90% understanding." When my father left, he became everywhere, this courtyard, this wall brick, these words are my father.
In the past, Zhang Honggang thought that he could read his father's spiritual world, and he had frequent contact with his father on weekdays, chatting about family life, chatting about news, and discussing things that were not accurate in business, sometimes a phone call could be made for nearly an hour. During these days, he, like the media, was digging up and piecing together his father's world like a treasure hunt. He suddenly found that in some ways, he didn't even know as much about his father as his classmate Shuai Xiuping.
Is Father Lonely? In Zhang Honggang's impression, his father never talked about his loneliness, an old man who cares about the distance, Antarctica, and the universe, and his world will not be confined to courtyards and villages. But the words on the wall clearly tell the troubles and helplessness of an old man in the countryside who has been abandoned by modern technology. "I'm 71 years old, I won't pay for the old man's mobile phone", "Every year in March and July, I find young people in the village to brush their faces with their mobile phones for Fuqing and Zhongxiu, and they can only receive pension money once each"...... In his father's notebook, he recorded specific operation processes such as mobile phone payment, video calls, cleaning up garbage, and sending pictures.
After his father passed away, Zhang Honggang found a piece of paper in the card sleeve containing his parents' chronic illness card:
Du Zhongxiu, female, second-class mentally disabled
Zhang Fuqing's wife: 183XXXXXXXX. Please contact me by phone, and I will be thanked when I receive it.
Zhang Honggang felt sad in his heart, he didn't know what kind of anxiety his father was writing these words. "My father wants to take my mother with me wherever he goes, and I feel like I carry it in my pocket," Zhang Honggang seems to suddenly understand his father's walls full of words and piles of maps, "and he also knows that he can't get out." ”
Every year on the eighteenth day of March of the lunar calendar, it is the annual ancient temple fair in Ekou Town, and the gray village suddenly becomes bright on this day. At half past five in the morning, before the sky was clear, people who lived in Fanzhi County and got up early heard the sound of fireworks in the distance. At eight o'clock in the morning, the old people sat in three jumpers, took small horses, carried incense, and flocked to the direction of the grandmother's temple in groups. Just after nine o'clock, the road from the entrance of the temple fair to the temple was blocked.
Zhang Hongying remembers that in the past, his father would ride a bicycle to take his mother to the theater at the temple fair, and he was worried that there would be too many people, so he always parked his bicycle at a nearby relative's house, and then led his mother to walk to the temple.
The first ancient temple fair after his father left, the two brothers accompanied their mother to listen to the play, taken by CCTV reporter Wang Jingyuan
Zhang Honggang hasn't seen this battle for more than ten years. Directly opposite the stage is the temple's incense burner, and the incense ashes flying in the sky stick to the old people. He complained that the incense was unsafe and "it has not improved for more than ten years", but his eyes revealed a long-lost warmth in the face of his hometown.
Zhang Honggang hadn't thought about what to do next, and he and his younger brother would most likely not return to the village, and they were even more worried about leaving their mother here alone. He didn't know when the next time he would come to the ancient temple fair, and his father's departure was not only the loss of a loved one, but also the loss of his hometown for the wanderer who left home.
At ten o'clock in the morning, the performance began, and the first play was "Hitting the Golden Branch", Du Zhongxiu said that this is one of the old man's favorite plays. Zhang Yulin was sitting in the second row, listening intently, and Han Baocang, who had just finished watching the performance of the Scratching Pavilion, was also hurrying to the stage in a hurry.
Her mother hadn't been out for many days, and she listened attentively in the audience, and Zhang Hongying squatted next to her, pinching her arms and legs from time to time. "In a while, Zhan Lihua will appear." The mother turned to her son.