"Distant Sunflower Field" is a collection of essays by writer Li Juan, first published in 2017, still in the Altay region, where Li Juan's mother began renting land to cultivate sunflowers.
Li Juan said that she had a dream of farming, but she was never able to put it into reality, so she started writing.
Writing is also her cultivation, writing down the seeds of doubt in her heart and waiting for them to grow answers.
She was to write "about the earth, about all things, about vanishing and never disappearing, and especially about man—man's will and man's pride, man's innocence and man's greed." ”
In this book, the sunflowers are not only brilliant and golden, but also those unspeakable ins and outs.
With focused, lonely and detached eyes, Li Juan records the stories that happened in this sunflower field, recording those waiting, enduring and parting.
Although Li Juan tries to downplay the difficulties in life, those difficulties cannot be concealed, especially in this book.
In "My Altay" and "Altay's Corner", Li Juan's family runs a grocery store and a tailor shop, is self-sufficient, and although they don't make much money, their lives are basically certain.
In this book, Mom begins to farm in the wilderness, tending to the crops as if on thin ice, waiting for them to grow from seeds to food, and everything is full of uncertainty.
The beginning is a disaster year, a great drought, 90 acres of sunflower land, gnawed clean by the goose-throated antelope overnight, replanted four sunflowers, and finally survived only a dozen acres.
Sowing, watering, fertilizing, spraying pesticides, beating branches, and cutting flower trays are not only labor-intensive, but also time-grabbing. A delay of several days may affect the final sunflower harvest.
The worries, anxieties, gains and losses were conveyed to me through words.
Grandma, who is in her nineties, cannot adapt to the life of a nest in the wilderness, "Grandma has been displaced all her life, and she has started from scratch several times, but it is still difficult to accept the desolation now";
At that time, Li Juan was far away from her family in the northern pastoral area, and she couldn't be contacted on the phone, either there was no signal or her mobile phone was out of power, so she could only be anxious;
The water for eating has to go to a far place to fetch, and for three days, two ends are desperate to grab water to water the ground and people;
When the sandstorm came, the whole house was buried......
There is also a postscript written in the afterword, what happened in the third year of farming, my mother and stepfather finally waited for the long-awaited harvest, but after selling sunflower seeds, my stepfather suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, suffered a stroke and was paralyzed, unable to take care of himself and unable to speak.
Since then, the family has never farmed again.
The hardest part for me was the frequent moves, and for someone who likes to settle down and hates change, moving means breaking and rebuilding.
Li Juan's family has moved from village to village, from village to village, from village to village, from village to yurt, and from yurt to another house in another village, or from village to mountain pasture.
It seems to me that they are constantly going through a process of fragmentation and rebuilding.
The home of the future only protects us in the future. And at this moment, the home at this moment is full of chaos, and the hardship and embarrassment at this moment will always occupy this moment.
Li Juan used "sloppy and embarrassed" to describe her life after every first move, and she couldn't always be with her mother and grandmother.
On the ninth day I left.
I abandoned my mom, my grandmother, and the puppy in the depths of the wilderness for a whole summer.
It felt like abandoning them until now.
It seems that all these years they are still toiling lonely and hard under that vast sky, while the seeds are still sleeping under the empty earth.
Li Juan has always had a knot in her heart, and she didn't accompany her grandmother well.
When she was working in Altay City, her grandmother lived with her, only the dog Saihu accompanied her grandmother, and when she went home every day, as soon as she entered the community, she saw a person and a dog lying on the balcony from a distance, looking at her eyes, she wrote, "I think my grandmother did not die of illness and old age, but died of waiting." ”
After resigning from the city of Altay, she went to the northern mountain pastures and left her grandmother to her mother, but her mother was too busy to spend time with her.
She wrote, "At that time, I hated myself for not having time, for hating my poverty. ”
My grandmother, who is in her nineties, is already a bit of Alzheimer's, often getting lost, can't remember things clearly, and has lost the concept of time.
The stubborn and weak grandmother, all her strength is only enough to live. And about grandma, there are too many regretful things.
My grandmother had carried a shroud with her for more than 20 years, but she couldn't wear it when she left;
My grandmother had no household registration all her life, traveled to Xinjiang and Sichuan, and never returned to her hometown after the age of 88;
promised to take his grandmother back to his hometown of Sichuan, but finally broke his promise;
At the funeral, my grandmother was mourned by strangers with "Li Qin's", and no one knew her real name Qin Yuzhen......
Grandma died, like a drop of water disappearing into the sea, as if it had never existed in the world.
Li Juan and her grandmother once wandered together, and they felt helpless and helpless together, and now she is the only one left to continue to wander, and there is no grandmother anymore.
Although there are many embarrassments, they are generally optimistic and happy, full of strength, and have repeatedly failed, and they never seem to be afraid of the changes and turmoil of their lives, especially their mothers.
In order to cultivate sunflowers, my mother moved her family to the wilderness and lived in a yurt, and everyone else lived in a nest, and my mother couldn't stand it (the first year of farming was the nest), so she spent a lot of money to buy a yurt in the second year.
There are also chicken coops, rabbit hutches, ducks, pots of green plants that are about to bloom, and two dogs, Saihu and Chou.
Li Juan's family planted the least land, the disaster was the worst, and the life was the most decent.
The sunflowers grow thick and noisy, the flower plates are full of golden light, and the yurt is the only firm uplift on the empty earth.
Mom goes out to work, starts the motorcycle, and will go back to arrange work: "Saihu looks after the house." Ugly and ugly. Chickens lay eggs well. Then he was gone.
Mom, she hoes, seedlings, shoots, sprays all day long, and is extremely patient.
Mom's mantra is, "What am I inferior to?" ”
Mom firmly believes that what others can get, she also has the ability to get, and she is not afraid to lose what others lose.
Mom is alone most of the time, and when she is lonely, she sings to Saihu, to rabbits, and to all living things around her.
When she went to work in the fields, her mother was followed by a beautiful rabbit, and the toil and sorrow of her life in the world were temporarily retreated.
During the sunflower harvest season, every day after dinner, my mother will lead the family out for a walk, cats, two dogs, a bold rabbit, chickens will follow, and a team of people will hula and walk under the full moon, in the long wind.
There are many such moments in the book, which make people nostalgic, "quiet, relaxed, full of heart to bloom, light feet to fly." The hope was much grander than usual. "