Source: Yangguang Military and People's Liberation Army News and Communication Center Rong Media
Author: Yang Hong, Yuan Mengting
The Huanshui River flows quietly, crossing the wilderness valley in the Hengdong Mountains of Hunan Province to the Xiang River. For decades, a warm and sad true story has been widely circulated on both sides of the Huan River. On March 31, 2020, the 91-year-old Guo Jigui of Chawang Village, Nanwan Township, Hengdong County, Hengyang City, Hunan Province, passed away, and the elderly have been living with his daughter-in-law Li Faying since the heroic death of his only son, Tao Ronghua, in a 1984 border battle. Before dying, the old man tightly held Li Faying's hand and said, "After so many years, you have worked hard!" ”
Li Faying: My mother-in-law told me that I am a good daughter-in-law, and I have supported this family. Without me, the family would have been scattered. My mother-in-law said that I not only sent her and my father-in-law to the mountain, but also brought up my son and grandson together. My mother-in-law told me to continue to carry this burden and not to live up to her hopes. I said okay, you can rest assured.
A photograph of the martyr Tao Ronghua in the battlefield before his sacrifice
The love affair between Li Faying and Tao Ronghua in this life began with a beautiful love story. They grew up in two groups of villagers in Chawang Village. When he went to school, Li Faying had to pass by Tao Ronghua's house every day. Over time, they slowly changed from strange to familiar, and then to the beginning of the love sinus, and they developed a love for each other. In the fall of 1979, after graduating from high school, Tao Ronghua, who was already working as an accountant in the village, signed up for the army and went to the army located in the southern border of the motherland. In the barracks, he wrote a letter to Li Faying, broke the "window paper", and the two officially fell in love.
Li Faying: Soon after he arrived at the army, he wrote me a letter, and I also wrote him back. In this way, we wrote letters to each other and slowly fell in love.
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 1983, Tao Ronghua, who had become a squad leader, returned from visiting relatives in the army and held a simple marriage ceremony with Li Faying in the village, becoming a husband and wife. Near the end of the family visit leave, Tao Ronghua took his newlywed wife back to the army, and by the time Li Faying returned from the army to his hometown, she was already pregnant.
Li Faying: He was going back to the army on the third day of the first lunar month, and asked me to go with him, so I followed him to the army. After the family visit, I became pregnant with the child. In October 1983, a son was born.
After the death of her husband, Li Faying stayed in the old house and took good care of the martyr's family
Just when his son was about to be born, Tao Ronghua went to the front line with the troops. Although he was unable to accompany his wife during childbirth, Tao Ronghua was full of expectations for children he had not yet met. He named his son Tao Kai and asked his wife and children to wait for the day when he would triumph from the battlefield. However, he did not have a chance to see his son after all.
In April 1984, during a fierce battle to seize a certain height, Tao Ronghua led the whole class of fighters to brave the artillery fire to attack multiple enemy fire points in succession, and assisted in interspersing the company to capture 7 enemies. Seeing that victory was in sight, suddenly, a shuttle of bullets from the enemy came over, Tao Ronghua was unfortunately shot in the chest, and at the age of 23, he died heroically and fell only a dozen meters away from the highlands. At this time, the family letter sent by the wife containing the photo of her son was still lying quietly in the mailroom of the rear camp, waiting for him to open.
Li Faying: When I gave birth to my son, he didn't come back. The father and son had never met, not even seen a picture. When my son was 3 months old, I sent him a picture, which he didn't receive either, and the letter was always inside the barracks.
Li Faying works in a bamboo factory, carrying stout nan bamboo over the mountains
After the birth of her son, Li Faying would look at the door of her home almost every day, waiting for her husband to return from the battlefield and hug her and her infant son. But when I waited, I waited for the news of my husband's sacrifice. The moment the bad news came, she felt the whole world collapse. Half a year after her husband's sacrifice, Li Faying carried her son on her back and accompanied her mother-in-law to the Malipo Martyrs' Cemetery. In front of her husband's grave, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law fell to the ground crying.
Li Faying: We cried for a long time, and my mother-in-law had fainted from crying, and she couldn't shout. While I wanted to persuade my mother-in-law, I also wanted to carry my son. At that time, my son couldn't walk, I still had a package in my hand, and I was really going to collapse.
However, looking at the elderly mother-in-law and young son, Li Faying understood in his heart: in the future life, he must be strong, and he must support the family for her husband. Because this is the promise she made to her husband when she was separated from her husband in the army.
Li Faying: At that time, he said to me, you have to take good care of your parents when you go back, sometimes they don't have a good temper, you have to be patient. I said okay, you can rest assured.
In this low kitchen, Li Faying continues the fireworks of the world for her husband's family (Photo by Yang Hong)
The old man only had two children of Tao Ronghua's brothers and sisters, and his sister was also married at that time, and only Li Faying was guarding the old man's side. After her husband's sacrifice, Li Faying dried her tears and took on the heavy responsibility of the whole family with her thin shoulders. The family has six or seven acres of rice fields and 70 acres of mountain forests, li Faying in addition to planting seedlings and harvesting rice in the busy season of farming, usually also has to go up the mountain to dig bamboo shoots, cut moso bamboo to subsidize the family, all the hardships are swallowed by her stomach.
Li Faying: I want to plant seedlings, beat rice, and go to the mountains to cut moso bamboo. After cutting down from the mountain, they had to be dragged by car to sell. All the burden of the family is on me, so much farm work, sometimes I really can't do it, but also with children, those days, I was really hard. For a while, due to overwork and grief, Li Faying developed a mental trance. Once, when planting seedlings, she did not know the boundaries of her own responsible field, and actually spent most of the day in someone else's rice field, until the other party found out and reminded her, she did not know that she had made a mistake.
Li Faying: I don't know what's wrong, I was confused, I couldn't even figure out where my own field was, and I ran to someone else's field for an afternoon. The neighbor of the next door tian said: "Sister-in-law, sister-in-law, this is not yours, how do you help others plant seedlings?" I reacted, "Oh, I'm confused." ”
In those years, due to the remote location and single industry of Chawang Village, in addition to growing rice, the family income mainly relied on cutting the nan bamboo on the mountain to sell money. Originally, Li Faying's family owned 70 acres of mountain forests, and they could increase their income by selling bamboo shoots and bamboo every year. However, in 1996, when the father-in-law lit a fire on the side of his rice field and burned the straw stacks, he accidentally caused a mountain fire and burned down the neighbor's mountain forest. Afterwards, he had to exchange his own mountain forest for the other party, and after more than 20 years, the family no longer had the income from the mountain forest.
Li Faying: When we were working in the fields, my father-in-law was burning blocks in the fields. He also did not expect that the fire would burn to the mountain at once, burning other people's mountains and forests. Later, there was no way, and our family lost their mountains and forests to others. The burned mountains were bare, nothing, and until now there was no income from bamboo.
The comrades-in-arms of that year came to visit the old mother and son of the martyr at home
From that year on, Li Faying handed over his children to the elderly after the annual agricultural busyness and went out to work on his own. She first worked as a bamboo harvester in a nearby bamboo processing factory, carrying thick nan bamboo back and forth more than a dozen times a day like a man. On rainy days, she slipped and fell on the muddy mountain path again and again. Later, she went to Zhuzhou to work, saving money outside and bringing home every penny she earned.
Li Faying: In those years, I was working outside, and my in-laws were at home to help me with my children. After working outside for two years, I came back with a little money because the kids were going to study.
During the Qingming Dynasty in 2019, Li Faying came to the Martyrs' Cemetery to pay tribute to her husband
In 1999, Li Faying used the savings saved from part-time work and a sum of money sent back from abroad by Uncle Tao to build four new large tile houses next to the original adobe houses, allowing two elderly people to move out of the dilapidated and low old houses and live in tall and spacious new houses. Since Tao Ronghua's sacrifice, the two old men, under the careful care of Li Faying, have gradually walked out of the sadness of losing their sons and spent their old age in a quiet mountain village. After her father-in-law died of a sudden illness at the age of 73, Li Faying gave more meticulous care and companionship to her widowed mother-in-law, and also carefully raised her son to grow up. In 2005, his son Tao Kai married and started a family, and the next year he gave birth to a grandchild. Li Faying's mother-in-law, after losing her son for 22 years, has the joy of four generations.
Li Faying searched for her husband's tombstone in the martyrs' tomb group
For more than 30 years, Li Faying has many words in his heart to pour out to her husband
Over the years, Li Faying has been eager to take his grown son to Yunnan to visit the grave. However, due to economic constraints, this has not been possible. On the 2019 Qingming Festival, accompanied by the Hengdong County Veterans Affairs Bureau and the staff of the civil affairs department, Li Faying finally took his son to the Malipo Martyrs Cemetery. Lying on her husband's grave, Li Faying lost her voice and cried bitterly, she told her husband that she had sent her old father to the end of her life, and her mother and son had a good life, and for more than 30 years, she kept her promise and kept this home.
Li Faying: I still remember what I said to him that day: "It's been 35 years, and your son has come to visit you." Your father has been buried, and the task you have given me, I have completed. As for your mother, you can rest assured that I will always accompany her, and I will arrange and take good care of her old man's home. ”
Li Faying took a photo in the place where her husband had fought in the past
After returning from the tomb sweep, Li Faying returned to Chawang Village and continued to take care of her mother-in-law. A year before going to Yunnan to visit the grave, the 89-year-old mother-in-law had suffered a stroke and was paralyzed, and Li Faying carefully served the elderly at the bedside until the spring two years later, when the old man passed away peacefully after his 91st birthday.
Li Faying: When my mother-in-law was sick in bed, I had to help her wipe her body every day, feed her food, wash her face, bathe her, and these things were the worst things to do. I gave her my 91st birthday last year, and it wasn't long before the old man died.
When her husband died, Li Faying was just 23 years old, just in the midst of prosperity. 38 years have passed, and now she is over sixty years old, with gray hair, and she still sticks to the Tao family in Chawang Village, bringing up her son and starting to bring her grandson again. The years have aged Li Faying's countenance, but they can't take away her thoughts. How many cold nights, the husband appeared in her dreams again, but the husband in the dream was still guarding the border gate, and the short stay was about to leave.
Li Faying: Many times, I dreamed that he was wearing a military uniform and asked me to open the door, and he said that he had returned from leave of absence, and he would have to go back in two or three days. I said why do others come home and you don't come home? Your mom and dad and your son are waiting for you, why don't you come back? Why stay in the army?
A lifetime of love, a lifetime of love, Li Faying has been in the old house in the mountain village for 38 years
Hengdong circulated a folk song called "A Pond of Clear Water and a Pond of Lotus", although there are only 4 lyrics, but the melodious and gentle singing voice sings the local people's yearning for beautiful love. In this life, although Li Faying and her husband only had a short 3-month time together after marriage, she spent her life at home watching over her husband. In this regard, Li Faying said that he did not regret it. Because, for her, love is like the clear water and lotus in the pond, once married to Tao Ronghua, it is a lifetime of love and a lifetime.
(Produced by the Central Broadcasting Military and People's Liberation Army News and Communication Center)