Mothers busy in the kitchen behind the steamed dumpling shop
The steamed dumpling shop is filled with children's handmade creations
Wang Chunzhi and her son Hong Xu are in the shop
Pengfei painted a picture for everyone
Here, while filling some people's stomachs, they finally opened a hole in their lives and drilled out, so that care and work could be balanced. In addition to survival, this is also an exploration and experiment of the mothers of mentally handicapped children about life and even themselves.
Tear a hole in life and drill it out
There is a steamed dumpling shop in the north of Changchun City, near a residential area. Once inside, you can look into the back kitchen at a glance – the women are fast-moving, the filling is stuffed into the dough, the dumplings are kneaded, the steaming drawers are quickly filled, one by one, and the steamers are steaming hot.
There are ten tables in the 80-square-meter store, and at the table in the left-hand corner of the entrance door, there are always children peeling potatoes, choosing leeks, and loading garlic boxes. It was a special workbench. Sometimes they are also responsible for cleaning the table, sweeping the floor, and occasionally taking care of the guests' meals, and their words are intermittent and ambiguous.
The youngest of these children is 14 years old, and some are older, 22 years old. They suffer from varying degrees of mental disorders such as autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc. After the special education school is out, they will come here to help. More work is done by the women in the back kitchen, the service and hygiene in the front hall, and all the small pieces of work in the back kitchen.
The women in the back kitchen are the mothers of the children.
On June 30, 2021, under the leadership of Xu Xu, a public welfare person in Changchun, this special steamed dumpling shop opened, and 11 mothers of mentally handicapped children joined the store to make the steamed dumpling shop run. Previously, some of them had been unemployed for more than a decade in order to take care of their children, and some had to do some piece-by-piece manual work at night. They were teachers, tailors, self-employed, salesmen... Moms and moms are different. After becoming the mothers of mentally handicapped children, they had to say goodbye to work and become 24-hour personal escorts, and their lives were slowly lost in their children's lives.
Here every mother can be tolerated
In the eyes of the guests, the day at the steamed dumpling shop starts at 9:30 a.m. But at 7 a.m., Wang Chunzhi was in the store, and she was the manager. The roller shutter door was half pulled up, and she took her son Hong Xu to stock up in the store. The dishes to be used for the day had been delivered, and she prepared them in the back kitchen, and Hong Xu sat in the front hall to choose leeks and put the garlic paste into a small box. Hong Xu, 14 years old, suffers from Down syndrome and was once the "not long-lived" child that doctors called it. Now, he put the garlic paste into the box with a spoonful, wiped the residue of the edges with his hands, and pressed the small box with both hands until he heard a "click" sound, and then he put them down and put them into the storage box in rows.
For the next two hours, the shop gradually became lively. The kitchen waste collection and water delivery trucks have all come, and the mothers of the early shift have also come to the store to work.
Working hours coincide with the school hours of special education schools. Before coming to work, they send their children to school, and at 2:30 p.m., the first class ends, just in time for the children to leave school. The evening shift came back to the top of the relay, and the children who had finished school also came to help.
At 1:30 p.m., Wang Chunzhi shouted in the back kitchen, "Pick up the child's quick meal." After eating, three or five people walked two kilometers together to go to the special education school.
Here, every mother's time can be maximized. Wang Xue, who works the night shift, works from 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. She was 38 years old, the youngest in the store. Before the birth of the child, she divorced her husband and became a single mother. When his son Ruichen was two years old, he was diagnosed with autism in Beijing. Rui Chen rarely spoke, nor was he able to utter complete sentences. He can flatten his tongue, but he can't make a curled tongue sound. When the mother and son were at home, Wang Xue always talked to herself, and sometimes Rui Chen suddenly came up with a word, and she was very happy to be able to match her, but when she asked again, she could not get a response.
In the morning, Wang Xue came to the store after delivering the child, and in the afternoon, he sent his son to his grandmother's house and then came back to work.
Wang Chunzhi was a tailor who loved clothing tailoring when she was young, and after the birth of her son, she gave up the fabrics of different colors and her own craftsmanship. Now 49 years old, she has not worked for more than a decade because she cannot balance work and care for children.
Han Yixian is also 49 years old. She was a former teacher. After graduating from secondary school, she opened a kindergarten with her father, who was also a teacher. His son Pengfei suffers from autism, is 22 years old, has a height of more than one meter and seven meters, weighs more than two hundred pounds, and is a strong man.
At a very young age, he showed a talent for painting. In kindergarten, when the child asked him to draw a tiger, he could draw a tiger. Han Yixian once wanted to send him to a special painting class to study, but several of them were rejected, "for fear of affecting other children." At that time, he could not express, did not like to communicate, and always talked to himself. Pengfei, who is gentle and honest in kindergarten, is often bullied, but he never says a word or fights back.
Until the age of elementary school, a principal told Han Yixian that Pengfei's performance was typical of autism. At that time, Han Yixian had already closed the kindergarten, and the only income in the family came from her husband. Pengfei's abnormality made her never go out of the house to work again.
At the steamed dumpling shop, an adventure begins.
Steamed dumpling shop back kitchen "black pressure is all people"
The adventure begins, but everything is so hard. In order to let these mothers come out, Xu Xu thought of many ways. She is a teacher at Changchun University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and in 2012 she began to focus on children with mental disabilities and the families behind them, leading parents to start businesses. Before that, Xu Xu had led his mothers to set up stalls to sell toilet paper, flowers, and children's handicrafts. But this time it was too bold: the catering industry was cold under the epidemic, and the shops were closed one after another. But she took out 200,000 herself and gave the mothers a bottom. Earned, everyone divided, lost, she came to carry. She realized early on that entrepreneurship must be united, the family and the family must be united, and the mother and the child cannot be separated, and here the two unions are unified. Steamed dumplings are reliable after Xu Xu's evaluation, and she finds businessmen who do public welfare to join in to add confidence to these mothers.
Xu Xu let Wang Chunzhi serve as the store manager, feeling that she could take on this responsibility. Wang Chunzhi did not hesitate, "If you think I can do it, then I will come." Xu Xu said that Wang Chunzhi is a pay-giving type. Before the steamed dumpling shop, parents took their children to set up stalls in the night market, And Wang Chunzhi always arrived first, organizing everyone to stay until more than 9 p.m., when the night market ended.
A few days before the opening, Xu Xu saw the back kitchen on the monitoring, "the pressure is all people." Other restaurants usually have enough hands of three or four people, but most of the time in steamed dumpling shops there are seven or eight people, and labor costs have increased. But Xu Xu was reluctant to let anyone leave. She understands that for mothers of mentally handicapped children, they need a job that takes care of their children.
For Wang Xue, this job carries the meaning of survival. This woman, who named her WeChat "Snow Bold", never worried about money and life when she was young. She opened her own shop and helped her father run jobs to install anti-theft nets. But since he suddenly stopped talking when he was two and a half years old, his life suddenly seemed to turn over, and Wang Xue became a person who reached out for money.
In order to have time to take care of her son, she has done many kinds of work, mostly at night. She has almost done the work of courier sorting, night shift attendant in the hotel, selling insurance, and free time. But he still couldn't coordinate the time to take care of his son.
At the steamed dumpling shop, Wang Xue can pick up her son to school and work on her own, and she finally doesn't have to reach out to her mother. "No matter how much I earn, I know that I can at least make money, and I don't have to ask my family for everything." That feeling of comfort saved her.
The "ideal place" for mother and child
The problems encountered by other restaurants are only a lot more here. At the beginning, the efficiency was low, three people wrapped dumplings, not for sale, some guests waited in a hurry, did not eat. People don't realize that this is a business that may lose money today and tomorrow. Later, Xu Xu encouraged everyone to compete, and at the beginning, a cage of 10 dumplings, the slowest person took 7 minutes. In the end, the time was shortened to 1 minute and 43 seconds.
There have also been conflicts between employees. Wang Xue is straight, when ordering at the front desk and managing takeaways, which link is slow, she will grin and urge. Sometimes I can't cope with it later, and I complain that she has a bad attitude. But the problem can't always hide the light here. Here, the child and the mother are able to temporarily untie and achieve another balance.
The original 24 hours a day, Wang Chunzhi stared at the child, and had little contact with other people. Back in society, "it seems that people are not all the way", others are talking about the latest smart phones, but all she knows is the children's business. She can stay at home for the rest of her life, but not the child. When he grows up, he always has to go into society, and he has to come out with a hard scalp.
Hong Xu was obsessed with everything round, and sometimes he walked up to the door of the store and ran around in front of the door with a plastic circle. Wang Chunzhi stood in the shop to check out, and when she looked up, she saw her son.
The steamed dumpling shop also became the "ideal place" for Yu Chunfang. She works in the same shop as her daughter, and Yu Chunfang is in charge of the small stove that makes soup and noodles, and also manages the pickles in the shop. Xu Qiang, a 22-year-old daughter, cleans up the table and sets up drinks.
Yu Chunfang is the only one in her mother who has experience in the catering industry. In order to be able to work with Xu Qiang in the future, she opened her own breakfast restaurant. But soon, the exhaustion of going it alone almost overwhelmed her, and she closed the breakfast shop and worked only in the supermarket.
After birth until adulthood, Xu Qiang spent most of his time with his grandparents. When Yu Chunfang went out to work in the morning, she had not woken up, and when she returned at night, her daughter had already gone to sleep. The consequence of neglecting companionship is that Xu Qiang's temper is getting bigger and bigger, and he loves to cry more.
She made a difficult choice, quit her job at the supermarket and worked with Xu Qiang at the steamed dumpling shop. This is not easy, she has been working in the supermarket for 13 years, after retirement can receive at least 3,000 yuan a month pension, she has long been accustomed to that side of the world.
But in the steamed dumpling shop, she can see Xu Qiang changing. No longer crying easily, she was willing to stay in the shop when she was not in class, and when she didn't need to clean up the table, she put the drink into the freezer, moved the cold inside to the outside, and then put the new one into the innermost part. Yu Chunfang sometimes looked up at her in the back kitchen, she was doing things silently, and when she was done, she quietly stood at the front desk, waiting for someone to need her. She also loses her temper less and is more patient. She was very active in her studies and joined Xu Xu's newly opened pinyin class. She used to pause once to read the message for four words, but now she can read a long sentence.
After work at 8:30 p.m., the mother and daughter walked together to the bus stop and took the 40-minute bus home. This is the precious time between mother and daughter, and Xu Qiang will take the initiative to tell her about what happened at school. Who had an awkward fight with which friend, who blocked whose WeChat. Sometimes she spoke eagerly, and the louder she spoke, the stranger the person on the bus cast a strange look. But Yu Chunfang didn't seem to care so much, she listened to her daughter silently, occasionally talking.
It's like carrying some kind of original sin
Xu Xu has been in contact with too many mothers of mentally handicapped children, who seem to be carrying some kind of original sin, "Many mothers feel that I have given birth to such a child, as if I have done something wrong to this family." Shame always comes suddenly, just like the strange gaze that Yu Chunfang felt in the bus.
Han Yixian spent a lot of time dealing with the shame that children brought to her husband. Many years ago, my husband worked as a plumber in the market and also did welding, earning up to 1400 yuan a month. That's the expense of the whole family. After her son Pengfei entered the special education school, she threw herself on the child, and sometimes her husband complained to her, "You are nothing." Idle, the pain swooped over like a dense mass of little bugs.
The husband began to have a certain "hostility" towards his son. He never took him out of the house, and sometimes Pengfei made a fuss and moved his hands, and he also did it. She could actually understand her husband's shame, but there was nothing she could do.
In 2014, Han Yixian, a Beijing-based institution focused on the art creation of children with mental disabilities, contacted Han Yixian, who took 14-year-old Pengfei and her 4-year-old daughter to Beijing as if they were an escape from her husband. In that school, Pengfei studied painting, and she worked as a life teacher, taking care of children who were thirteen or fourteen years old and a little older.
Two years later, when the youngest daughter reached school age, she returned to Changchun with her children. It was also at that time that she participated in the activities organized by Xu Xu and met more children and mothers with mental disabilities. Her husband has also changed, perhaps because the family's separation has given him enough time to think. After returning to Changchun, he preferred to approach Pengfei. When participating in the event, if Han Yixian did not have time, her husband would be on top.
"Pengfei painted, painted us"
A while ago, Xu Xu accompanied Yu Chunfang to select a site for the new store and sign a contract. Yu Chunfang wanted to take Xu Qiang to open a shop by herself. As agreed, her shop would employ at least one mother with mentally handicapped children. This was Xu Xu's stipulation, and she had to make sure that after a good start, the fission could continue. The new store is 120 square meters, and there is also an activity room reserved for children. Now Xu Xu's family entrepreneurship program for children with mental disabilities has more than 50 families participating in it.
After becoming the mothers of mentally handicapped children, they change from themselves to so-and-so mothers, and the part about themselves is squeezed and gradually dissolved into the child's world. Before entering the steamed dumpling shop, they hid for more than ten years or more. Now they all walked out of the tearing hole. Mothers get together, there is always something to talk about, here to talk about children less taboo, unconsciously more words. The back kitchen is always lively.
Wang Xue's sense of depression was diluted by the crowded kitchen. Because of her son, she had broken off contact with almost all her former friends, but she could talk about anything to her mother here. Everyone has a similar encounter, there will be no sudden sweep of strange eyes, there will be no yin and yang strange tone, even if it is a kind pity. In the first month, the children got the first salary in their lives, and Wang Xue was happier than them, "That feeling can't be said, our children can earn money, they are not wasted, without us they will not be hungry."
The days don't seem to be big, but they seem to have changed dramatically.
Yu Chunfang took a step first, and everyone was planning the future consciously or unconsciously. Pengfei likes computers, and Han Yixian signed him up for a computer class organized by Xu Xu, hoping that he would study hard and have the opportunity to open a copy shop for him in the future.
Wang Xue was even more harsh on his son. She deliberately set rules for him and cultivated his habits. In order not to let her son vent his emotions at will, she moved her hands. She must let her son know that hurting herself and others is a bottom line that must not be touched. "I don't know how long I can stay with him, even if someone takes care of him, he has to be a child worthy of care."
Now Rui Chen can shop online on his own, and at the age of ten, Wang Xue let go of his hands and feet and let him learn to cook. Help him turn on the gas and let him wash and cut the vegetables himself. The first time I cooked the meal, it was half raw, but Wang Xue was very satisfied. Now he can peel the potatoes himself and fry the shredded potatoes. Sometimes Wang Xue didn't cook at home, so he would help her make a bowl of instant noodles.
At nearly 11:30, only the 24-hour convenience store on the opposite side of the street was still lit up. Wang Xue pressed the switch, the blue and white light sign went out, and the day of the steamed dumpling shop was over.
On September 19, Xu Xu organized everyone to celebrate the mothers' birthdays collectively at the steamed dumpling shop. She prepared a mask for them as a birthday present. "Women love beauty and want them to return to the normal life of women." The next day Xu Xu received a message from Han Yixian, "I have never been so happy in my life."
Wang Xue's birthday is also in September, and on that day, in front of the cake full of plum blossoms, Wang Xue made a birthday wish: two or three years later, he and his son have their own small shop.
After the steamed dumpling shop opened, Pengfei once painted a picture for these mothers. On the left is Wang Chunzhi, on the right is Yu Chunfang, she holds Xu Qiang's face, which means to take care. The glasses represent his mother Han Yixian, who is a teacher, and the one with long hair represents the other mothers.
"He may have painted blindly." Han Yixian said. But everyone likes it, and Wang Chunzhi always likes to show the painting to others, "Pengfei painted, painted us."
They had never thought that in the dark corridor with no end in sight, one day, they could come out with their children and support their lives together.
Reporter/Tong Xiaoyu