Every big holiday, Ah Jie would return to the village from the county town with her parents on vacation. Born in 2002, she attended a sophomore high school in the county seat, and when she was tired of reading, she usually walked alone in the fields around her house. Although she was born in this village, she knew very little about the people and things in the village, and never asked questions, especially she was not interested in the topics that her grandmothers talked about, and even had some disgust in her heart. She doesn't like to hear grandmas talk about having a son, in the grandmother's concept, a woman, no matter how capable you are, must have a son, even if you have given birth to ten daughters, you must continue to have children, until you have a son is not perfect. If a woman has not had children after two years of marriage and family, she will be the focus of discussion among the surrounding grandmothers after tea and dinner.
There is a primary school in the village, and when Ah Jie studied here six years ago, there were nearly a hundred students. Her classmates and her situation are basically the same, her parents have been working outside for many years, living with their elderly grandparents every day, and can only spend about a week with their parents during the New Year. Nowadays, most of the young people who go out to work will take their children to the city where they work to try their best to study, they do not believe in the teaching quality of the village primary school, after all, for more than ten years, the village primary school only has Chinese and mathematics teachers, a large number of students outflow caused the current village primary school to have only one to three grades less than ten students, after the fourth grade, if you want to continue to study, either to the primary school five kilometers away, or to the county town more than twenty kilometers away.
On weekdays, it is difficult to see young people in the village where Ah Jie lives, and only on major holidays, especially in the days during the Spring Festival holiday, can you see people working in various places returning to the village for the festival. After the holidays, the hustle and bustle of the village returned to silence, and most of the residents who stayed at home were old, weak, sick and disabled. For Ah Jie, when she was a child, she and now she belong to the authentic left-behind children, and it is possible that in the future, she will repeat the old way of her parents going to the city to work.
In her free time, Ah Jie likes to sit alone on the field and look at her mobile phone. In Ah Jie's eyes, in order to earn money, parents can only leave their hometowns and go to the city to work, and the children who lack the attention and companionship of their parents belong to the state of being "free-ranged". Ah Jie also has a younger sister and a younger brother, the younger sister is in junior high school, and the younger brother with congenital disability is in elementary school. Ah Jie understood what her parents and grandparents thought, girls are not from their own families, sooner or later they have to marry, only sons are their own families, so they would rather be fined and have a son. Because his brother was born with a disability, in order to treat him, for so many years, the family has been saving money and borrowing money everywhere, and the tears of his parents have dried up.
The three sisters and brothers did not spend much time with their parents since they were young, and basically only got along for ten and a half days and a half of their parents' holidays every year, and most of the time, they were taken care of by their grandparents. But my grandparents couldn't read, especially after the third grade of elementary school, and they had to shed tears when they encountered homework that they didn't understand. Ah Jie, who is currently in high school, has a good academic performance, and for the grandmother who takes care of her, they don't know whether the child's grades are good or bad, and they won't ask about it, as long as they are fed and clothed, they will complete the task. Ah Jie likes to look at mobile phones, grandparents will not say much, as long as they do not find trouble with them, it does not matter if they look at mobile phones casually.
In January 2020, under the impact of the new crown epidemic, Ah Jie and her parents stayed in their hometown and could not go out. For the first time in so many years, Ah Jie spent so long with her parents, unfortunately, the family still rarely communicates and is cold, she wants to take the initiative to talk to her parents, but finds that she and her parents have nothing to say. For a long time, the parents who have not returned to work for a long time are about to go crazy, they have not worked for three months, there is no income, their brother wants to see a doctor, the family wants to eat and drink, they don't know what to do.
Due to the epidemic situation, Ah Jie can only take online lessons through mobile phones in her rural hometown, but there is no network cable at home, the mobile phone signal is not good and the traffic is not enough, so she has to rub the network everywhere. Originally like to play with mobile phones, she really saw enough mobile phones, and she saw back pain and dizzy eyes. Ah Jie is difficult to hate his brother, because he is not good at reading, and all day long holding the mobile phone, looking down at videos, playing games, the doctor told his brother many times, to eat a full meal to exercise more, only more exercise, the legs can walk normally, but the younger brother just does not listen to the doctor's words, and does not listen to the grandmother's words, the small age, the weight will soon exceed ninety pounds.
In Ah Jie's world, only the grandmother who took care of her from childhood to adulthood was the person she was closest to. But Grandma is also old, and the life of taking care of her brother and sister has made Grandma obviously feel that she is not physically strong, and the younger brother needs Grandma to carry her back to school and school every day, and the younger brother has bent Grandma's waist even more, and Grandma, who is tired every day, does not talk much. She also wants to share more housework, but she is also very busy with her studies, eating and living in school from Monday to Friday, and can only come back on weekends to help her grandmother.
Ah Jie, who is now in high school, needs close to eight hundred yuan per month for living expenses, and the tuition fee for each semester also needs about two thousand yuan. Every time Ah Jie asked for money from her grandmother, she was afraid to see her grandmother sighing, and her grandmother's favorite was her brother. Even sometimes, Grandma wanted her not to study, to go out early to work to earn money to subsidize the family, and to see her brother. Nowadays, grandma is most afraid that in another year, Ah Jie will take the college entrance examination, in case she is admitted to college, tens of thousands of tuition and living expenses a year, it is really difficult for the family to take out.......