I heard that people who have become parents don't dare to watch this film: they run all the way, but forget to look at the road under their feet 

Mi Li's mother loves to share

2024-05-21 15:03Posted in Beijing, creators in the field of parenting

Text | Mi Li's mother

There is an old documentary from many years ago, which won the Documentary of the Year Award in the Handbook of Young Cinema and the VPRO IDFA Award at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival.

It tells the ordinary story of a couple from rural Sichuan who went out to work, just to let a son and a daughter stay in their hometown study hard.

The documentary has long shots, and the suffocating scenes of the Spring Festival instantly pull people back to more than ten years ago.

The film does not have a moving narrative from beginning to end, just a story of the daily life of a rural family. But when I look at it whole, it is shocking, like a fish in the throat.

This film is called "The Way Home", when the couple worked day after day in a factory in Guangzhou, returned to the rental house and were so tired that they had no strength to speak.

Mi Li's mother felt powerless through the screen.

I only have one pair of hands, and I can't hold you when I move bricks

The protagonists in the film, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin, are from Huilong Village, Guang'an District, Sichuan. In order to let their two children get ahead in the future, the couple no longer follow their old path, and almost try their best to work to make money, just so that the siblings can receive a good education.

They work in Guangzhou all year round, send the hard-earned money back to their hometown, and only after a few years can they go back to reunite with their families for a year.

The sisters and brothers who stayed in their hometown lived with their grandmother, and the intersection with their parents was only the pale greetings on the phone.

The couple has no culture, and they can't communicate with their children. They don't know what else to talk about on the phone except how they study.

finally went back to my hometown for the New Year, and at the dinner table, I would only repeat "Mom and Dad worked so hard to make money for you, you must study hard, and you must not do anything that is not beneficial to learning." ”

Daughter Zhang Qin is the age of youth ignorance and lack of love, she is sentimental, sensitive and rebellious like many girls of the same age.

Because her academic performance is not good, her parents, who have not seen her for a long time, only talk about her studies, but they don't care about any psychological dynamics other than her studies, which makes her more and more disgusted.

The relationship with his parents is cold and alienated, and he is far less emotionally close to his grandmother than he is next generation. The more parents are afraid that their children will repeat their mistakes, and the more they emphasize studying hard, the more rebellious Zhang Qin becomes.

When this rebellion reached its peak, Zhang Qin decided to drop out of school and work in Guangdong. And that's what parents are most afraid of.

When the couple learned the news, their mother was so worried that she didn't sleep for several nights. They don't know what went wrong, and their daughter wants to do this to them.

Lao Zhang, the father who is not good at words, can only sigh again and again, the couple really can't watch their daughter go their own way, so a few days later, Lao Zhang asked for leave and came to the factory where his daughter worked.

This is the first time in more than a decade that the father and daughter have sat down alone to talk. However, after a simple greeting, only rustiness and embarrassment remained in the air.

Father and daughter are actually not familiar with each other at all.

The advice was unsuccessful, and the cautious Lao Zhang did not say that he would move his daughter back to school. When he returned to the factory, he wanted his wife to persuade his daughter by phone, but she didn't know what to say, she said:

"Oh, she doesn't want to talk to me, just forget it."

Although she was very worried about communicating with her emotionally unfamiliar daughter, she still took the phone and persuaded her again and again. After the couple's turns, the daughter decided to discuss the matter at the end of the year when she went home for the New Year.

Parents and children do not share their joys and sorrows

At the end of the year, the three of them came to the train station together, ready to go back to their hometown together. Because of the huge flow of people and the snowstorm, they were stranded at the train station with a large number of passengers, unable to return home.

Facing the crowded waiting hall, some people sighed, and some people cried in a hurry, but Zhang Qin showed an excited look. Because the world is new to her.

At this time, the mother began her sermon again:

"You still think it's funny? We can't go home, everyone thinks it's a pity, you still haven't suffered. If you think about your dad, you don't think it's funny. ”

Zhang Qin was extremely disgusted when she heard this, and the expression on her face was overflowing.

After five days of waiting, the family of three finally waited for the train home. After a few rounds, they returned home. As soon as she saw her grandmother, Zhang Qin hugged her happily. When the parents saw their younger brother, they opened their mouths and closed their mouths to ask about their academic performance.

Although his younger brother has a good academic performance, he is also the same as Zhang Qin, and he has a rebellious and resistant mood. He was reluctant to talk about the topic, and the atmosphere became very depressing.

His feelings are similar to Zhang Qin's: the lack of long-term companionship, should not only care about learning when they meet.

The younger brother said:

"I just don't want to try."

Mom went on to say:

"Children in rural areas just have to work hard, otherwise they have to go out to work."

At this time, Zhang Qin began to be yin and yang beside him, and his words were not very good. Seeing that his daughter's attitude towards her mother was very contemptuous, her father, Lao Zhang, couldn't help but start teaching her daughter a lesson, and the contradictions that had been backlogged for many years finally broke out at this moment.

During the dispute, the daughter blurted out a dirty word, Lao Zhang rushed up and beat her, and the father and daughter tore together.

At the end of the beating, the family gathered around the table to eat Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, and there was silence for a long time, and no one spoke.

The younger brother was silent, the grandmother silently shed tears, and after a long time, the mother finally said that her daughter could do whatever she wanted, and she would not force it.

Early the next morning, the mother came to the temple alone to pray for her daughter. And Zhang Qin stepped on the train away from home and came to the bright lights of Shenzhen, where she got a job as a bar waiter.

She has completely become a working girl, and the fate waiting for her can be imagined.

When he returned to the Guangzhou factory, Lao Zhang and his wife seemed to be several years old in an instant, and the battered Lao Zhang was sick for several days in a row, while his wife was full of motivation and could continue to work overtime every day, but at this time it was easy to feel tired and just wanted to finish work early and go back to the dormitory to rest.

They suddenly lose their energy, they have no motivation to work hard for their children, everything is meaningless, and all the efforts are no longer meaningful.

At this point in the film, the depressing atmosphere has reached the extreme. The silent father who is not good at words, the emotionally alienated father-daughter relationship, the rebellious child and the hopeless future, and the incomprehension of each other, Mi Li's mother really feels the powerlessness of the extinction.

Just like at the station on the way home, the couple was irritable about being stranded, but the daughter was inexplicably excited. Parents and children do not share their joys and sorrows.

Their preaching made the already precarious family relationship even worse, they refused to understand the inner world of their children, and only cared about running all the way, but forgot to look at the road under their feet.

And in a child's life, there is really more than just learning. When the couple felt that the most important thing was worthless in the eyes of the child, and the family affection that the child longed for, the couple also disagreed, and the situation became irreconcilable.

For Zhang Qin, what her parents gave her and her younger brother was nothing but an estranged relationship, a morally kidnapping sermon when they met for a short time, and violence when they disagreed.

Wet feathers and unable to take off

The reason why this movie is heavy is because we all know that for Zhang Qin's sisters and brothers, reading is indeed the best way to change their lives against the sky, and the plan arranged for them by their parents is also correct, but because of communication problems and emotional alienation, it just failed to materialize.

watched a girl of the same age as a flower once again embark on the old road of working for her parents, and she could no longer take off.

Sometimes educating children is really like this, when you feel that the right way, the child just doesn't follow it, no matter what you say, soft, hard, she won't eat your set, it will really feel very powerless.

But just like thousands of migrant workers who go out to work, Lao Zhang and his wife have almost no choice but to use their limited ability to make as much money as possible for their children, and the lack of childhood companionship is almost destined for some left-behind children, like migratory birds with wet wings, because they are burdened with too heavy depression, and stay on the shallows forever.

Mi Li's mother also recommended a good-looking documentary to everyone before: "The Story of the Three Sisters".

It also tells the story of a few girls in Sichuan, who went out to work and went through ups and downs.

Some of them went to Tibet with their husbands to open restaurants, and they were so tired that they had severe rheumatism. Some left the children in their hometown for the grandparents to take them, but the grandfather didn't watch the children, and directly let the children get lost, and they were never found again.

Some children are naturally sensitive, crying and crying every day, and have various psychological problems. There are also those who died in boarding school, worked hard to change their lives, and finally got admitted to university.

The common problem faced by these children is that they have not been able to see their parents for a long time and stay in the countryside with the elderly. And they are like a flock of fledgling migratory birds, only a few of them can really soar in the sky, and the rest of them can't fly after all.

Zhang Qin is such a child.

When his parents went out to work and the camera cut back to Zhang Qin in his hometown, there was a scene that particularly touched Mi Li's mother.

In the village, she slashed the wild vegetables that were fed to the pigs, like a cage beast. She didn't know anything about the outside world, no one around her to explain to her, and no one listened to her. The only information she could get was a pale sentence from her parents:

"You must study hard, we are so tired, it's all for you."

And teenagers' already confused hearts, once they lack the necessary communication and psychological counseling, they will easily be pointed at by others and embark on a road of no return.

When her daughter embarked on the road of part-time work, her mother's physical condition deteriorated day by day. Her eyesight deteriorated seriously and her physical strength could not keep up, so she decided to go home to accompany her son, take care of the elderly, and leave Lao Zhang alone to make money in Guangzhou.

Presumably, with the company's companionship and attention, the son's psychology will not be as distorted as his sister, and the potential contradictions will be slowly bridged.

As the cost of trial and error in education, Zhang Qin paid for her whole life.

Education is never just a pale preaching, when we only focus on academic performance, children will definitely feel neglected, and this feeling is very easy to shape a loveless personality.

Whether they are poor or not, please give them enough love and attention. Because when rebellion and impulse reach their peak, the contradictions cannot be reconciled, and the resulting mistakes are irreversible.

Personal profile: @米粒妈频道 (welcome to follow), Mi Li's mother, American returnee, Haidian parent, the author of "Parent-Child English Books That Affect Children's Lives" ranked first on the Dangdang New Book List. Focus on learning dry goods, educational experience sharing, education and further education for children aged 5-12, English, mathematics, science enlightenment, and new and good things from all over the world, welcome to pay attention! (0~5 years old, please pay attention: @米粒妈爱分享)

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