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Since I started elementary school, my father's job has undergone frequent changes. Perhaps it was to take better care of the family, but the overall trend was that he moved closer to home. This year, he was finally transferred to the Loess Mine, where he became the principal of the Commune Junior High School, located only about forty to fifty miles from home. With this proximity, transportation became much more convenient, and he returned home more often. To ease my mother's burden of looking after the children, he also brought my younger brother to study at the nearby elementary school.
One day, just before the end of the semester and the start of summer vacation, my father announced at home that he would take me to the Loess Mine and had arranged for me to have a week off from Osmanthus Primary School.
With lingering memories of previous visits to Miao Wan with my father, I felt a sense of anticipation and joy about this trip to the Loess Mine. I quickly packed my things: two textbooks and a few notebooks, and we set off on a cool morning.
This time, the road out of the mountain village was completely different from the last trip to Miaowan. The first segment was the path I took to school, a route I had walked nearly a thousand times. This time, retracing it brought a refreshing sense of lightness. As we passed the school gate, my father specifically took me inside to chat with my homeroom teacher, Zeng Guangbin. Watching my classmates reciting texts while shaking their heads and swaying, I stood outside breathing in the fresh air, pride radiating from my face. I almost wanted to jump onto the podium and loudly declare, "I am going to the Loess Mine!"
After leaving the school, we traveled three or four miles along a winding mountain path. It wasn't a grand mountain range, just a series of small hills. My father led me through them, with grass leaves brushing against my pant legs, and small trees occasionally brushing my face with their branches. The freshness and excitement chased away any fatigue from walking. The somewhat gloomy forest let in glimpses of sunlight, and I almost jogged to keep up with my father's pace as we traversed this small mountain path that seemed a bit intimidating to a child.
We arrived at a courtyard called Reverse Flow. My father entered a wooden house with four rows and three rooms and exchanged a few words with the owner before bringing out an old bicycle. Although the road ahead still wound alongside the mountains, it had become much wider. My father let me sit on the rear rack of the bicycle and pushed it forward slowly for a few steps before gradually picking up speed. He placed his left foot on the pedal, and when we reached a certain speed, he quickly lifted his right foot over the crossbar. The sound of wind rushing past my ears filled me immediately; this was my first ride on a bicycle, and the thrill of speed instantly filled my little head.
Even though I was so excited and happy, even though I was so naive and ignorant of the world, the difficulty of driving occasionally slowed down the journey of the father and son:
The country dirt road is not very smooth, potholes always appear inadvertently on the road ahead. In order to avoid them, the father rides the bike crookedly. Sometimes, he can't avoid them and either collides violently or has to get off the bike to push it over the obstacle before getting back on.
The bike is quite old, and the chain drive is not very smooth. Coupled with my weight, the feeling of the old cow pulling the broken cart is very obvious. Several times, the chain stopped working halfway, and my father had to push the bike to the side of the road and play the role of a repairman for a while.
Heaven wasn't very kind either, as a light rain began to fall along the way. The wet mud gradually accumulated, clogging the wheels and hindering our progress. Both my father and I were dressed in clothes that were damp one moment and dry the next.
Fortunately, the journey wasn't too long. After two or three hours of travel, I finally arrived at my dream destination, the Loess Mine.
I had originally thought that coming here with my father would allow me to play for a few days while occasionally learning something, putting my studies aside for a while. However, the next morning, my father called my brother and me together and took us to the Loess Mine Primary School, which was half a mile away from the junior high school. My younger brother was familiar with the place and disappeared as soon as we entered the school gate. I accompanied my father to meet the principal and a homeroom teacher before entering a classroom with the teacher to begin a week of temporary study.
I am a bit tired of the monotonous reading, and since the class pace in Suining is a bit slower than that in Dongkou, the lessons taught by the teacher are all things I have already learned, lacking any freshness. Besides showing off my superiority in front of the new classmates, I can't think of anything else to do.
Of course, this is a primary school located in the Commune, which is much stronger in Pinyin instruction compared to Osmanthus Primary School. The Mandarin spoken by the teachers sounds like heavenly music to me, and my classmates read aloud without sounding as rough as I do. Even my younger brother, who has just started school, speaks Mandarin quite well.
The teacher happened to be teaching "The Magic Paintbrush Ma Liang" and called on me to recite it. Back at Osmanthus Primary School, I could almost recite this text from memory. When I recited it, not only was my voice loud and clear, but there was also a sense of pride flowing through me like Ma Liang; I thought it was the best recitation I had done since starting elementary school. However, seeing the disdainful looks from my classmates made me realize that for children from the mountains, even coming to a small mountain village Commune, there are still many visible and invisible paths ahead that are long and challenging.
Born in the era of "Strength in Numbers," my classmates all came from large families with many siblings. In Suining, which is even more remote than Dongkou, this was especially evident. There was a classmate whose surname I can't quite remember; he was probably one of the most common surnames, either Su or Xiang, because he was the seventh child, and everyone called him "Old Seven." To add to that, his youngest sister had already reached "Old Eleven."
One day during math class, the teacher wrote an example on the blackboard, stating that on a certain day, Old Six and Old Five went shopping... Before the teacher could finish writing, this kid jumped up and quickly ran to the front of the class. He grabbed the blackboard eraser and swiftly wiped away the characters for Old Five and Old Six. Without waiting for the teacher's surprised inquiry, he shouted loudly, "You can't use my Fifth Brother and Sixth Sister as examples..."
The excitement of arriving in a new place and the helplessness of continuing school intertwined in my young heart. As I walked down the streets of Loess Mine, I felt somewhat lost in thought. I wandered into the middle of the road when suddenly a loud roar jolted me awake. It was my first time seeing a large tractor, its tires taller than I was, making a noise louder than the best cow from the production team. As it sped down the road, kicking up clouds of dust, I exerted all my strength to chase after it, but it quickly disappeared from sight.
Parked on the side of the road, I secretly thought to myself: one day in the future, I also want to ride in such a big car, and no longer have my father struggle to ride a bicycle to take me on long journeys.
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