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Dongxiang Autonomous County is located on the Loess Plateau, is a state-level poverty-stricken county, the local natural environment is harsh, and educational resources are scarce. Since the beginning of this year, Country Garden has donated 17 million yuan to help Dongxiang Longquan School build a new school building and improve teaching conditions.
On an ordinary day in winter, the children of Longquan School draw their dreams in the new classroom, and the sun hits their faces and illuminates the appearance of children. The wish depicted on the paper is particularly poignant – "I hope to be reunited with my parents."
I grew up
Zhao Xiaxia, a fourth-year (second) class, stood at the door of the teaching building after school and waited for her cousin to go home together.
The 10-year-old child lives with her 70-year-old father and 60-year-old aunt, and the grumpy elder let Zhao Xiaxia learn to observe words and colors from an early age. Dad's long beard often made her want to reach out and touch it, but she was always severely refused. Usually, Dad did farm work at home, growing corn and potatoes.
The aunt plays the role of a mother at home, sometimes very fierce to Zhao Xiaxia, cooking is not delicious, and will only cook one kind of rice every day, but Zhao Xiaxia still loves her very much.
Her aunt's care soothed Zhao Xiaxia, who lacked maternal love, but her thoughts of her mother were never satisfied. Listening to the adults, my mother went to a far, far place. She had never seen her mother or what she looked like, but she never stopped imagining what her mother looked like. Thinking of my mother when I sing, my mother when I see the mother of other children, my mother when I am bullied by other children... There is envy in the miss, and this envy is not alleviated until after the age of 9.
"Because I'm older and can't envy others anymore. But I still cry when I think about my mother, I don't know what she looks like, I just think of her. I dreamed of my mother's appearance, and I hope that one day we can take a family portrait like other children's families. ”
I prefer school
Min Juhua is Zhao Xiaxia's classmate, and she has visited the Min family twice this semester. Compared with the Zhao family, which is thin and thin, the Min family is much more noisy. Min Juhua is 11 years old this year and has 5 older sisters, 1 younger sister and 1 younger brother.
Min Juhua's eldest sister works in Qinghai, the second sister married her uncle's son, but her husband accidentally drowned, and now works in Linxia, and the third sister helps cook at her uncle's house. The fourth sister, the fifth sister and the younger siblings all attend longquan school. "The fourth sister is particularly good at learning, and Chinese is the first in the seventh grade." Talking about the fourth sister, Min Juhua relaxed, and a little arrogance flashed on her face.
"Prefer school", asked whether she liked school or home, Min Juhua's answer did not hesitate. After a half silence, Min Juhua said that her father was an imam in the temple (hui Muslims call the religious affairs staff who presided over the mosque, meaning teacher or scholar), and returned home once every 5 days.
Mom, is a topic that Min Juhua does not want to touch, "She sometimes gets sick, she will shout, tear her clothes, and sometimes vomit blood." "Whenever this happens, Dad will rush home from the temple, and several children will be temporarily called out.
In these disturbing and sad times, she often hid herself in school. "Sometimes I meet classmates to play with, and sometimes I just walk around the school alone."
Min Juhua said her dream is to go to college, become a teacher, and reduce the burden on her family. She hopes that one day, her sisters who are on the run can go home and reunite with the family.
"I miss Mom and Dad"
When Min Chrysanthemum was painting, Ma Guojun and Ma Xiaohu were watching from the sidelines, changing their angles to spy on the side. After some "cross-examination", it was known that behind the laughter of the troublemakers was sadness.
"What is your wish?"
"I want to live a happy life with my family."
Behind the seemingly cookie-cutter answers, Ma Xiaohu has his own different story. When he was 5 years old, Ma Xiaohu's father was accidentally injured and died while transporting wood.
According to the customs of Dongxiang, women are not allowed to go out to work, but can only take children at home and cultivate land. But in order to maintain the family's livelihood, Ma Xiaohu's mother shouldered the burden of life, worked as a help cook in a restaurant in Lanzhou, returned home every two months, and after a brief reunion with the elderly and children, she returned to the back kitchen of the restaurant without stopping.
"When I think about my parents, I secretly cry in the quilt." Ma Xiaohu said: "My brother sometimes gives me 2 yuan to buy snacks", on weekdays, his brother who also attends Longquan School is his closest person.
Ma Xiaohu's grandfather is 69 years old, and his grandmother is 70 years old, and when he comes home on weekends, he will help with some farm work.
"What kind of person do you want to be in the future?"
"To be a kind person, I want to be a policeman."
"I want to make 100,000 yuan"
Compared with his good brother Ma Xiaohu, Ma Guojun was much luckier, but his thoughts about his father did not diminish in the slightest.
Since he can remember, Ma Guojun's father has been working outside the home and will only come home until the New Year. "I don't know where he works, I just know he's demolishing buildings, which is dangerous."
Usually, Ma Guojun lives in the school, and on Friday after school, he takes a half-hour car and then walks half an hour mountain road home. Coming home over the weekend to call Dad was when he was happiest. "Every time I call, I cry, I miss my dad, I don't know how my dad is doing outside."
When he was at school, he would fantasize about his father's work, worry that his father was lonely outside, worry that his father was not safe outside, worry that his father was not used to eating outside... Because dad went out to work for many years, the heavy responsibility of taking care of the family stayed with mom, who had to farm, cook, and take care of her two little brothers every day.
When Ma Guojun returned home on weekends, he would take the initiative to help wash dishes and clean the table, and strive to reduce the burden on his mother. "My mother makes potatoes grown at home every day, and she eats them every day and eats them every day, which is very delicious. My dad had never cooked, but I wanted to eat the food he made, and I ate it no matter how hard it was. ”
The long-term separation of his parents made Ma Guojun hope that he would grow up quickly, and he took his mother to the place where his father worked and reunited with the family.
"My dream is to make a lot of money so that my father doesn't have to work, I take my mother and sister and brother with him, and we are a family." 」
"How much money is it to make a lot of money?"
"One hundred thousand pieces."
"I don't cry"
Talking about Yang Yaxing, who is in the fifth class, the first impression of Vice Principal Shen Wenpei is that he studies well, his grades are among the best in the class, and his name is always on the school's honor list. His class teacher, Wang Jing, evaluated him as having good grades, but his family situation was relatively special, and he was the most difficult student in the class.
A car accident in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, in 2017 completely changed Yang Yaxing's family.
Yang's father, who went out to work, was injured by an accident and could not walk normally on his legs. Yang Yaxing, who learned the news of the car accident from his classmates, was stunned, his head was blank, and he thought that his classmates were joking. It wasn't until he repeatedly confirmed with his family that he slowly accepted this fact.
The car accident occurred 800 kilometers away, when he was only in the fourth grade, he had no way to visit his father in Jiuquan, and only waited until a few months later when his father was discharged from the hospital and came home to see his "changed" father for the first time. When he saw his father, he kept holding back tears and didn't let himself cry.
"I'm so uncomfortable, I can't let my dad see me crying, I want to be strong." A year later, when talking about this matter, Yang Yaxing's eyes were still full of tears, and he tried not to let himself cry.
The little man's tears, which he held on hard, finally couldn't hold back before the guilt of not being able to take care of his family. "Now I miss home every day, I want to go home, I want to cry." Yang Yaxing lives in school, but his wish is to change schools, go to school closer to home, and come home to take care of his father and help his mother with housework.
Every week when he comes home, he will take 20 yuan for living expenses, and the round-trip fare will cost 10 yuan. Every week he would bring a full week's worth of steamed buns from home, usually eating steamed buns and occasionally eating instant noodles, but never going to the school cafeteria to eat. "The instant noodles in the school commissary are very expensive, and they are not delicious in a five-one package."
Yang's father is slowly recovering and is beginning to be able to walk, but there is still no way to go out to work. Yang Yaxing wanted to wait for his father to get well and take him to Lanzhou. One summer before his father's accident, he went to Lanzhou with his father and brother to play, and the new building, zoo, library, everything made him feel fresh. What he missed most was the healthy dad. "No matter what, I'm going to take my dad to Lanzhou again."
"What is your dream?"
"If I don't have to think about anything, I want to play basketball and drive a car."
"Never have to walk three hours a day on the mountain"
At Longquan School, there are many, many such students.
Tang Bin, principal of Longquan School, said in his acceptance that the school has a total of 1129 students, 353 students from poor households who have set up a file and a card, and about 200-300 students with special hardship.
Previously, due to the limitations of material conditions, the school's classrooms and dormitories were in a state of damage and shortage for a long time. Once it rains, the classroom becomes a "water curtain hole"; due to the lack of beds in the dormitory, two people have to be arranged to share a bed, and the lower school students can't even arrange accommodation...
In June this year, Country Garden donated 17 million yuan to build a teaching building and a dormitory building for Longquan School, and renovated the original building. Today, children can read and study in spacious and bright classrooms. Shen Wenpei sighed, "In the past, the school could only accommodate more than 300 students, but now it can accommodate more than 500 students, and the problem of classrooms and accommodation has been solved." ”
"With the new dormitory, I no longer have to get up every day before dawn and walk 5 kilometers to school." Yang Huahua, who used to walk an hour and a half mountain road to the school every day, said happily that the school has undergone earth-shaking changes, and with heating, the school is no longer cold, and the dormitory building is more beautiful than before.