Shazhong Village, a down and out hamlet.
There was no electricity and road.
The only mode of transport were donkeys and handcarts.
The nearest road was seven kilometers away, and from that road, it was about another 20 kilometers away from other villagers.
The young villagers had gone away to work, leaving only the elderly and the children.
The children wanted to attend school. There had been volunteer teachers that came in about eight years ago, but since then, no more had been allocated to this village. There was only a 63-year-old man who took over the role. This ‘teacher’, however, had just also learned to write for a year or so.
The slightly senile ‘teacher’ only knew about 200 words. The only textbooks that the volunteer teachers had given him were all torn and tattered.
His lisp, coupled with a little hysteria, made all the teachings he could impart limited.
In fact, he couldn’t even recognize some punctuation marks and phonetics.
There were at least 20 children in the village and half of them were orphans, mostly because their parents went away to work and left them behind. A majority of the parents never came back since.
The elderly could only console them with a ‘maybe next year’.
Of course, children were naive and they were never really beaten down by their plight.
The elderly were simply waiting for the children to grow up and follow in their parents’ footsteps.
The village was set to fall into ruin eventually.
Why not let the children work the land when they grow up?
The village was limited in size and the seven elderly shared everything.
The children slept in seven respective houses that belonged to the elderly.
The produce from four pieces of wasteland was barely enough to support these elderly and children.
There was a mountain spring to supply them with water, but the water was no longer as sweet as when the village was thriving. That was mainly because there hasn’t been anyone to clear the bamboo pipelines for years.
And the elderly were okay with just getting by.
As for poultry, there were always mountain chickens running about.
The young and strong chickens were difficult to catch. Since none of the children could get to them, the villagers only ate the old ones.
Old, as in, unable to move at all, so the villagers had to steel themselves to slaughter and cook them.
They ate one chicken each month and occasionally get a few eggs to go along with it.
The children ate first, then the elderly.
Seven years ago, the government visited the village once.
The government deemed that it wasn’t practical to stretch electricity cables for over 20 kilometers just for a handful of people.
The officials talked about relocating the people to a nearby village with electricity, but the elderly declined without hesitation.
The elderly refused to leave and thus were gradually forgotten.
They already knew what to expect and they were ready. They would wait for all the children to leave for the city before they dig graves and wait to be buried in the place they were born.
…
12 children: 7 boys and 5 girls.
My name is Goudan, the fastest runner in the village.
There was a burly kid that bullied the four of us often, pointing out that we had no parents.
But I knew that his parents didn’t want him either.
Whenever we brought that fact up, he would start whacking us.
I ran the fastest, but the other three weren’t as quick and they couldn’t overrun Burly.
Burly and gang, eight in total, had parents whereas the four of us were orphans.
Because of that, even though none of the elderly gave us labels, the 12 of us were still unofficially split into two groups.
This was the reason why I absolutely hated Burly. He was mean to the core.
Whenever we had boiled vegetables and cornbread, Burly and gang would take most of them away, leaving us orphans with only a little.
While Burly wasn’t exceptionally burly, he was still half a head taller than us.
As such, we could only let him bully us because we were unable to fight back.
Plus, they outnumbered us so we would just inevitably lose.
We were the happiest at the end of each month because then we would have meat to eat, even though the four of us were only given the leftovers.
Even the rarely seen eggs would end up in Burly’s stomach. We had no share.
Yet, we were happy.
We were eager to learn and our teacher was the oldest grandfather in the village.
He said that the little knowledge he was imparting would help us lead better lives outside.
Somehow, the boys didn’t enjoy listening to him teach.
The girls, however, often paid full attention.
While I started to enjoy writing, I couldn’t understand how it would aid my future.
Plus, whenever that grandfather taught me, he would have to put on his glasses and spend a long time reading the textbooks.
The pace of his class was alright but what he taught wasn’t necessarily correct.
Of course, I only found that out after, because whenever I asked him about a word, he would give different pronunciations and meanings each time.
This was the reason why I disliked studying.
The boys would be distracted in class while the girls listen on with keen interest.
No one dared to doze off, however, except for Burly.
Because of that, Burly was always caned by the grandfather.
Grandfather’s language was bad but his math was good.
I heard that he used to do business in the village. However, there were only two abacuses.
He used one to teach while the rest of us shared the other.
Unsurprisingly, despite his lack of interest, Burley never let the four of us use it.
Nevertheless, we studied seriously. Much more so than during language classes.
We would even compare ourselves to Burly. We were weaker but we didn’t want to be dumber as well.
We grew up gradually but Burly’s abuse intensified.
He shifted his focus from the two of us guys onto the two other girls.
Because among us four, the two girls grew up well and were relatively beautiful.
We would try to obstruct Burly but we weren’t his match.
Initially, he would only tease them but he eventually started to get fresh with them.
We made it known to the elderly but the abuse did not stop.
One night, Burly dragged Xiaohong into the forest
I ran after them at top speed but I was knocked down by one of his friends.
My buddy, Dahai, the other guy in our clique, chased after them.
He managed to prevent a disaster but he paid a heavy price.
Burly called it a truce by breaking Dahai’s leg.
When we found out about that the next day, Xiaohong slit her wrist with a tile.
Her wound wasn’t deep but it was infected nevertheless.
We wrapped her hand but she was in a bad shape.
We used the only handcart that we had to take her to the hospital. It took two days.
Xiaohong was saved and Burly learned his lesson.
The local leader was made aware of the fact that our village had no money to pay the bills.
Dahai wrapped his leg and said it was from a minor fall.
The local leader visited our forgotten village and after some investigations, he reprimanded his subordinates.
He apologized to us and expressed his wish to relocate us to another village.
The elderly were still against the idea and showed the leader their ready-made graves. They hoped that he would just take us along with him to give us better futures.
The leader agreed immediately and sent the boys, excluding Dahai, to the army.
I did not know where Dahai and the girls were sent to.
We stayed in the armed forces for over 10 days before we were allocated to respective districts.
Unfortunately, Burly and I got on the same train that ferried the soldiers.
I started plotting revenge on behalf of Dahai and Xiaohong.
