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Zhen gu published an article "Children Abandoned by Their Parents", which tells the story of two orphans being rescued by the well-wisher Wang Xueli.
Not every child who has ever been on the streets can be so lucky. One of the volunteers in the story, Hou Chuanxi, helped the two orphans when they were most rebellious, and he was also an orphan. Hou Chuanxi did not meet an aunt named Wang Xueli in his childhood, but after suffering, he became the good person.
Later, Hou Chuanxi died, and Wang Dang was his close friend before his death, telling us about Hou Chuanxi's experience of being rescued from prison and turning into a volunteer.
Hou Chuanxi's funeral was arranged in the Mahayana Temple. At that time, it was just summer, the temperature was gradually rising, about 20 degrees, and the weather was comfortable. If it is winter, it is too cold and too long in Qiqihar.
There are many people who go to mourn, Uncle Li and Uncle Liu of the Fularki District Love and Poverty Relief Association, and Aunt Cai, who often brings food to Hou Chuanxi. I'm here too. I had been expelled from school for almost two years, and at school, the teacher annoyed me and once hit me with a stool, and I drew a machete from my desk and slashed him six times in the back.
My name is Wang Gan, and I used to be a jerk. Later, I followed Hou Chuanxi to do good deeds and do public welfare, and I was confused and turned from evil to righteousness, and I did not encounter any more stumbling blocks. My parents only said that I had grown up.
Hou Chuanxi was my brother, 22 years old when he died. He was an orphan, a third of his life at the age of 22, and he was in prison, suffering so much that you can never imagine.
I used to try to save him, but it turned out he saved me.
When we were looking for the two orphans, Zhang Long and Zhang Xin, for the public welfare organization, we were in danger of life.
When I was a volunteer, some orphans who would be rescued by the poor would run away by themselves because they couldn't stand the constraints of the school, Zhang Long and Zhang Xin were like this, two little bastards, and ran away again. It is also pitiful to say that their mother gave birth to the eldest Zhang Long at the age of 17, and gave birth to the second eldest two years later, after which the mother did not quit, the father also disappeared, and the remaining eighty-year-old grandfather had a difficult life, and the brothers began to live on the street.
Wang Xueli found the two men in a deserted shantytown, some of the low bungalows had collapsed and few people lived. Neighbors around them said that when these street children had no money, they would go to the supermarket to steal some when they were hungry, and when they took it, they would scatter the guns, and the tuition fee was to rob the pocket money of their classmates, and when they had savings, they would go to the Internet café to spend it.
Children like this need not only help in survival, but also someone to correct their lives, so Wang Xueli decided to send them to a caring institution to raise them. Like Zhang Long Zhang Xin, Hou Chuanxi and I were also children living on the streets when we were young, but we were not as lucky as them, so we inevitably took a crooked road, and later Hou Chuanxi volunteered and worked hard to be a good person by himself.
Volunteers searched through the nearby Internet cafes, the abandoned cars they had hidden, or disappeared, Hou Chuanxi and I scattered their little brothers, got the news that the two of them were in an Internet café in Tiexi, Fu district, the messenger said that the boss may be transporting things through the two children, doing some illegal things.
I followed Hou Chuanxi to the Internet café to find someone. It was a dim Internet café everywhere, and the Internet café was probably the most common occasion for us young people, and the gap between the Internet and the reality of the city was too big, and it was normal for people not to come out.
Hou Chuanxi was ready to go straight in, and I left a heart eye and brought the guy with me.
We found my brother on the second floor who was playing a game with headphones on. The owner of the Internet café found that something was wrong, followed up and yelled at me, I did not take a word, Hou Chuanxi followed and found his brother again. When I was about to pull the two children back, the light suddenly went black, and when it was bright again, the forty-centimeter flat-headed watermelon knife split over and went straight to me, and the boss wore a mask and held up the knife, unable to see his face clearly, only showing his eyes.
Although I have not committed any major crimes, I often use knives to fight, and this is what kills me. I was about to pull out my knife and fight with the other side.
Suddenly a hand held my hand, "Don't hurt anyone. It was Hou Chuanxi's voice. There was no time to react, I could only raise my arm for a block, the other party's knife cut through the skin, and the muffled sound of "poof" stopped on the bone, leaving about six or seven centimeters of marks, and warm blood flowed out.
I rarely suffer losses in my daily fights, and I am not afraid to fight head-on. I was mad and wanted to fight back, but Hou Chuanxi pulled me and said, "Go first." I followed him out with two soft feet, and the boss did not stop him anymore, watching us leave with the child. In the meantime, I heard my brother, who was playing the game, glance at me and say, "Cut another one." ”
On the way to the hospital, I figured out that it was Hou Chuanxi who saved me. He knows that if we do something radical, we may go back in time and be gone for the rest of our lives. If I had gone alone at that time, I wouldn't have stopped. Hou Chuanxi stayed in prison, know what impulsiveness means, this knife I have to take, do not take this knife, I may be gone in this life, it was Hou Chuanxi who saved me.
Later, Zhang Long Zhang Xin was sent to a welfare home, and had a good life, with a clean quilt, but did not provide computer games. They are like dandelion seeds, when blown apart, they are collected by well-wishers and grow in the right land, and some seeds are not so lucky.
I didn't move the knife again after that, I just thought about it, and I couldn't help but feel a little absurd—how I had volunteered with my brother and listened to him so much.
Figure | courtesy of respondents
Hou Chuanxi, like me, lives in the Fularki district of Qiqihar on the nen River, and in the Daur language, Fularki means red riverbank. Someone asked me if the prototype of the Red Bank base in the novel "The Three-Body Problem" was the Fularki District. To be honest I don't know. But about 50 years on, we are the most cattle industrial town here.
At that time, the "First Heavy Group" of the machinery factory built with the assistance of Soviet experts was in the Fularki district. It is said that the old people said that it was the largest in Asia, and the workshop was so large that it was impossible to see the head, but there was not a single load-bearing column. As soon as the old people talked about it, their eyebrows fluttered, presumably because they were much more beautiful and comfortable than they are now.
In Fularki, time goes a little slower than outside, and many places are as unchanged as in the last century. In an abandoned dance hall, the red lanterns have not faded, and I heard that at most they can accommodate more than ninety people, which used to be the favorite place for workers at a nearby thermal power station to go after work. Some restaurants are decorated with wall calendars and photographs, crumpled by the sun, and printed on Beijing's Tiananmen Square and the Summer Palace, whereas now There is a high-speed train bound for Beijing every two days.
People here often wander around Red Bank Park, which has no radar peaks, no extra-long deep-space antennas, no monuments, only ordinary pavilions and walks along the river, occasionally revealing a few sections of abandoned railroad tracks and roads running parallel. There's also a zoo inside, and there's a bear that's been inside since I can remember. Now it was as thin as a skin and bone, motionless, its eyes were stunned, and the circle that raised it was also buried.
At that time, I did not know Hou Chuanxi, although we both lived in Fularki, he was a few years older than me, but his experience with Zhang Long and Zhang Xin was very similar.
Hou Chuanxi's father always liked to drink big wine, and when Hou Chuanxi was a child, his father beat him and his mother when he drank big. After his parents divorced, Hou Chuanxi followed his father, and when he reached school age, his father did not send him to school, Hou Chuanxi played with ducks at the junction of urban and rural areas, and had to take care of his drunken father when he returned home. Later, his remarried mother took him back to his side, and he finally went to school at the age of 8. But after two years of good life, his biological father and mother died of illness, and Hou Chuanxi dropped out of school and re-mixed with the streets, occasionally working as an apprentice in a restaurant.
At that time, Fularki, who was already becoming increasingly lonely, was filled with a sense of depression in which the glory was gradually cooling. Our parents always had problems adapting to this depression. And our generation encounters rebellious and decadent adolescence, if there is no elder help, it is easy to be pushed to the street by the collusion of adolescence and decadent society.
At the age of 13, he was ready to go outside Fularki and want to work in the south. Young people here, it is only natural that such a thought should be. Few people are willing to nestle in their hometown early, a glorious city that stayed nearly half a century ago. The previous generation can still inherit their father's business and enter the factory to take an iron rice bowl, and in our generation, they can only support themselves. But looking for a job also found that there is no job that can be done, and at most I can earn ten thousand blocks a year.
Those "old bastards" who have gone to other places to break in and come back will choose to make a deal and open a barbecue shop. They are actually very young, at the age of normal college graduation, they may have walked around the world, and the work and experience they have done are much richer than ordinary people. When you can't do a small business, you must go out and break in. Otherwise, you may be famous, just like Hegang, 600 kilometers away, because you are poor - cheap house prices are remembered.
Hou Chuanxi did not succeed in the end. He was in trouble and went to jail.
Before leaving for the South, he set up a stall at the park's beer festival to sell barbecues and made thousands of dollars. But it was immediately spent with the brothers on the street. He couldn't do without those friends, and the accident was also related to these friends.
What happened that day, Hou Chuanxi told me and Uncle Li a different version. In the version I heard, he was there to give his brother a head start. A brother who harassed a strange girl was taught a lesson, and he rushed up with a chain. For the rest of us, like me, my parents are alive, I usually do some business, a little money, and the small groups on the street are just the bored and rebellious dispatches of adolescence. Hou Chuanxi was very righteous, for him, these brothers were all he had, and he had long since lost his home.
Later, when Uncle Li talked about the version that Hou Chuanxi told him, I found that it was completely different. It was the story of a group of unruly children who had no money and did not follow the right path. In the process, Hou Chuanxi, the leader, hurt a lady. I don't know which version is true, and it's possible that it's all fake.
But the hurtful scene, we all listened the same, Hou Chuanxi untied a chain from his pants- the most common ornament on our bodies at that time, jumped up and pumped at the girl, and when the end of the chain flew out, he threw one eye at the girl, snapped, and the girl was blind.
Hou Chuanxi paid the price for seven years and ultimately failed to become a southerner.
Pictured| stills from the movie "New World"
Hou Chuanxi told me about the days I went to prison several times, and I felt pain in my body.
At first he stayed in a juvenile detention center. It was the turf of the sixteen or seventeen-year-old boys, he was only 13 at the time, and others bullied him like a chicken. He was the boss on the outside, and since he was a child, no one cared, and no one obeyed after he went in, and at first he was able to resist. Less care about all eight rooms, sixteen rooms, each room has a boss. Some bosses are earned with their fists, and other bosses are in good conditions at home and often bring some food outside to share with their brothers. Hou Chuanxi had no money and no fists, as if he had been swept into a dustpan of light and fluttering paper, and he could not be the boss in it.
From time to time, there will be "bosses" who want to teach people like Hou Chuanxi, but the wounds cannot be seen. It didn't take long for him to be beaten in the chest by four people, and as in the movie, everyone had to fight for their own presence, everyone had to participate, and the collective atrocity was only suffered by the weakest one.
There is a powerful method in the prison called "dripping water", filling a small basin with cold water, dripping into the head, pouring water on the middle of the head, and pouring four or five basins little by little. It's a long time, but in it, the most important thing is time. The next day Hou Chuanxi collapsed on the bed and could not get up. Hou Chuanxi and I said this when I talked about it the same thing as talking about other people's things, I couldn't imagine how painful this method was, but I just felt a chill in my back.
At first, Hou Chuanxi was still being held up and resisted, but then he squatted on the ground, leaning against the wall, with his back straight, and someone standing on it dripped water. He was beaten, had a low-grade fever, worked, and then got tuberculosis, often lying in the infirmary.
Later, he went to an adult prison, and he couldn't do heavy work because he was sick, but his life was better. I heard that there was a big brother who liked him very much and often took care of him, and then the big brother went out, and the brothers he came in with also went out, leaving him for the next few years. Later, when he was released from prison, he went to find his relatives on his father's side, but no one recognized him.
These statements were contrasted with Hou Chuanxi, whom I later knew, and often made me feel trance-like, and I felt that the Hou Chuanxi I knew later had perfect preferences.
In 2014, Uncle Li of the Poverty Relief Association heard that the community had accepted a newly adult released person who was not in good health and needed help, so he decided to go and see.
In December 2014, it snowed intermittently in Qiqihar, covering the road layer after layer, and people were wrapped in buildings and hibernating. One day at minus twenty degrees, in a rental house, Uncle Li saw Hou Chuanxi.
Uncle Li said that at that time, there was only a slab bed, and a thin man of about one meter and seven meters was lying down, and his face was very white. The man's thighs were not as thick as the adult man's upper arms, glued to the flesh, the head was small, and the back of the head was pointed, as if the body could only support so much weight.
At that time, Hou Chuanxi was 20 years old, and he no longer had the vigor he had when he was mixed on the streets in his early years. His tuberculosis often occurred, and his bones were twisted together when it hurt. He kept his head down and squinted his eyes at the strangers, a little frightened—the long beating in prison had also changed him, and he didn't dare to look directly at others, and he was used to only sneaking a look.
Uncle Li brought Hou Chuanxi back to the association and treated Hou Chuanxi like his own son. However, he did not know that Hou Chuanxi would secretly smoke when he carried volunteers on his back.
In fact, his illness did not allow him to do so. When he first came out of prison, Hou Chuanxi almost died, and after being treated by Uncle Li's volunteer association, he went to the hospital twice to see the disease and used good medicine. The doctor and Uncle Li said that the child's left lung was gone, and one-third of the right side could work, and he could live for a few more years after taking good care of him. Later, we also seem to forget that he had a countdown to life.
He prefers to do some "extreme sports", such as driving away Uncle Li's red motorcycle, using a lot of force to kick the bracket up when starting, he holds the heavy handlebar, takes me for a ride along the nen river, and he floats like a kite.
In fact, in addition to me, he also knew a group of little brothers, who often helped to collect donations, organize supplies, organize activities, and go to the homes of the disabled to help. He kept himself very busy, he was more likable to adults than I was, obedient, sweet-mouthed, smiling at everyone, and no one disliked him.
The people in the association had their own jobs and did not receive a salary, and Hou Chuanxi, who was rescued, became a non-staff volunteer here. In the spring, he left the small room he rented and moved to the office of the association. He can't carry heavy objects or exercise, but he can run errands and help enter lists on the computer.
Hou Chuanxi rarely mentioned this to anyone other than me, as if he wanted to hide that experience, and was eager to start a new life in the association.
I just met Hou Chuanxi, more than half a year after he was released from prison, in a health product store, he sometimes helped the uncles of the association to watch the store, behind the Tiexi Stadium.
He was very thin. At first glance, he reminded me of a skinny, exaggerated skinny monkey in xiangsheng, with long bangs covering half of his face, a small plaid shirt with a yellow T-shirt underneath, wearing jeans, and especially smiling. It is sometimes secretly squinting at me, unconsciously forming habits in prison, and meeting strangers like me is still subconsciously revealed.
I didn't take him to heart. I like the strong and shouldn't be friends with such a guy who squints at people.
During the small talk, my little dagger fell out of my pocket, not long, it was an ornament I carried with me, also for self-defense. Hou Chuanxi helped me pick it up, and then took out his own one, put it together, polished, and I smiled. This thin man, who looked weak and unfettered, less than one meter and seven meters, turned out to be a "road" with me. Weapons are not just self-defense, they are sometimes a status symbol. Later, I found that Hou Chuanxi liked to fiddle with various weapons more than I did, always taking selfies with various knives in his hand, making cool expressions, and sometimes pouting, and putting fruit knives on the lips.
The here always look fierce, and I always feel that it is necessary to be fierce to calm others, and I feel that others are hostile to themselves. But Hou Chuanxi didn't have to be fierce, and he naturally became the leader of our group with a smile.
When Hou Chuanxi was the boss of the street, the scope of activities was right near my house, and I even suspected that this little man might have bullied me before.
Hou Chuanxi felt that it was normal for me to drop out of school. I told him that when I was sleeping in class, the teacher threw a chalk head, and I threw it back, and then a bench came at me, and when I flew, I thought, "I don't hide, but you have to pay the price." "The bench landed on the ground, and I drew a knife from my desk and chased the teacher six times.
Every generation is like this, the lower grades learn the upper grades, unlike these years, they all go to play games, there are many fewer jianghu people, the students are much less, he understands me. I think we're the same, we're a lot of people like me, but like him, very few.
When Hou Chuanxi first went to the association, the association rescued two little girls, and Hou Chuanxi volunteered to rush back to the office every day at noon to cook for them.
Following the big brother Hou Chuanxi, I was a small, and inexplicably became a volunteer. I was not far from the association office, which was Hou Chuanxi's home, and every day I opened my eyes and ran to play with him, leading a group of small in the eyes of adults, and Hou Chuanxi told us to do whatever we wanted us to do--he let us sort old clothes in the underground garage of the community and bag them in the warehouse. I don't think these are interesting, but because the boss Hou Chuanxi is doing it, we must help. Hou Chuanxi always smiled and packed up and chatted with him, he smiled at everyone, his emaciated face had extra big eyes, and his mouth kept rising.
Later, I helped Hou Chuanxi to help with the charity sale in Red Bank Park. In fact, I don't understand, I am only responsible for calling people, handing over the little brother who has been subdued to him, moving things, reading things, listening to his explanations, and then doing propaganda. He knew the price of each item, and everyone could chat for two sentences, looking directly into the eyes of the people who came, and the uncles and aunts were kind. I felt that he was very happy and very good during that time. You think, a person who just went to the prison for 7 years at the age of 13, the average person has long been abolished, and he still wants to integrate into society, and he can also deal with others, and his adaptability is too strong.
He was a little luckier than the Zhang Long brothers, and after taking a crooked path, he was rescued by the people of the association. But then things got better, and with the help of the people in the association, his body began to improve, and he stopped mixing on the streets. Then he volunteered, started helping teenagers who were living on the streets like he used to be, and later in that Internet café, he rescued the Zhang Long brothers, and actually fished me out.
Hou Chuanxi did not go to the restaurant much, and always ate his own cold noodles. Instant noodles cooked without seasoning, mixed with dipping sauce, vinegar, ham sausages, squeezed vegetables, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, he was apprenticed in a restaurant and knew how to make the most economical and delicious.
Hou Chuanxi, who goes out to eat, does not like to take advantage of others, always rushes to check out, and the posture of grabbing orders is more intense than any northeasterner I have ever seen. Everyone knows that he only has a few hundred yuan of low insurance money, and the medical expenses for medical treatment are still donated, but they will not refute his face. Sometimes I will make it up somewhere else, after all, although I am mixed, I still have my parents.
Only when the association was fine did I pull Hou Chuanxi to bring some snacks to my brother who was in junior high school. My brother was very bearish and was bullied from time to time, so we helped him "solve" it and recreate the majesty of street fighters. Hou Chuanxi was less than one meter seven, sometimes wearing a pair of sunglasses, like a military division.
The two of us also discussed a partnership to do a business, and my family decided to fund me. I said to Hou Chuanxi, you are responsible for collecting money and placing goods in the house, I am responsible for going out to deliver goods and pulling business, heavy work I do, light you come. I want to buy it directly in the store when I open the spring next year, and the decoration will be finished.
In autumn, Hou Chuanxi's face sometimes becomes very poor, and his lips are very white. In the year and a half after his release from prison, he was hospitalized twice for tuberculosis and had to take medicine every day. In fact, people around him rarely feel that he is a patient with little time, he volunteers with a smile like a perpetual motion machine, and he says that he is repaying well-wishers. When they went to the park bazaar, some people questioned their legitimacy, and Hou Chuanxi immediately changed his face, and he did not allow others to slander the "family" of the association.
Most of the time, I think Hou Chuanxi is being a kind and happy young man, but once when we were soaking in the bathhouse, he sat still, as if thinking about his heart, and said to himself, "It's not interesting, so it's better to die." ”
"Hold on, it's better to be over for a while, it's time to get an injection and take the medicine." I was presumptuous, knowing that the pain was still tormenting him, just trying not to show it to others as much as possible, but I didn't want to think about it.
When Hou Chuanxi died in my arms, my mind went blank, as if inexplicably fast-forwarding to the end. A few minutes ago, I also told him that he had a lot of phlegm these two days and that it was time to go to the hospital to see. Hou Chuanxi responded absently.
He gulped blood, and I turned him over, face down so as not to choke, and carried him to the bed, floating lightly. I now feel that the red of that day was an unreal color.
I hit 120 and rushed out to find the rest of the association, and within minutes I ran back and found the face facing up again in pain, and I held him and told him to hold on. Hou Chuanxi was speechless.
Then 120 came, separated us, and there were many more machines in the room, so I maintained that posture of holding and was driven out, so as not to delay the rescue, like a bloody man.
That orphan,, released from prison, volunteer, my brother Hou Chuanxi died of tuberculosis.
One day I dreamed that Hou Chuanxi still kept smiling and smiling, and dreamed that he told me, you still have to go out, brother, what we wanted to do before I was born, open a shop, you still have to do it for me.
The days are getting better, and you didn't get to that time.
*In order to protect privacy, this article Wang dares to be a pseudonym.
- END -
Written by | Zhang Feng
Edit | Wen Lihong