Sun Shaoping's study in this field is really too difficult. His seventeen or eight-year-old offspring are exactly the age at which they can eat and drink. But he can only chew two buns of sorghum flour for each meal. He had heard his father say that in the old society, landlords did not feed livestock with sorghum, which was the least nutritious food. But now he is not enough for sorghum noodles. According to his meals, he needs at least four or five such black guys at a meal.

Now this point of eating is just not to starve people to death. If sitting in the classroom all day is still barely able to sustain, but this year, "open the door to run schools", students in addition to a group of East and West to study, work and farmers, in school is also half-day study, half-day labor. As for learning, in fact, there are no textbooks at all. They are all printed textbooks issued by regions. In class, they mainly read editorials in newspapers. Since the beginning of school these days, we haven't had any serious lessons. Every day, the whole class is studying and discussing the theory of proletarian dictatorship in the classroom. Of course, most of the students who spoke were from the city, and no one from the countryside dared to speak except for a few brave people.

Every day's work is unshakable, from two o'clock in the afternoon to dinner. Sun Shaoping suffered the most during this period. Whenever he took a load of rubbish from the bottom of the slope outside the school gate and sent it to the mountain behind the school, he only felt his eyes flashing and spinning, and his mind completely disappeared. He just crawled along the mountain road with his two trembling legs, laboriously and mechanically.

But for Sun Shaoping, these may be tolerable. What he feels most painful now is the damage to his self-esteem caused by poverty. He was seventeen years old, with a sensitive and shy heart beating in his chest. He longed to stand in front of his female classmates in respectable clothes; he would like to stand in the line of buying food every day, and also receive a second dish like others, and each meal could be accompanied by a white steamed bun or yellow steamed bun. It's not just for greed, it's for dignity. He did not expect to have the superior conditions of the students in the city, but to be as satisfied as most of the students from the countryside.

But it's absolutely impossible. It's not easy for a young student like him to go to high school in the county town without earning a living. In order to let him and his sister go to school, my eldest brother graduated at the age of thirteen and did not even take a junior high school exam, so he went home to work in the farm. As for my eldest sister, I haven't read a book for a day from childhood to Dalian. How can he ask for any additional help from these loved ones, except that he is deeply grateful to them now?

Shaoping knows that the family scene is now nearing collapse. Old grandmother is nearly eighty years old, half paralyzed in the kang; parents are also a lot of years old, old arms and legs, can not earn a few jobs; sister into the commune junior high school, the cost of food and clothing has increased; sister also found a husband who is not engaged in business, a person pulling two young children, eating up and down, but also their family. He often helps with a little food to save his life - his parents love their two little grandchildren, and often bring them home to feed.

In fact, there is only one full-time worker in the family - but he is only twenty-three years old. My dear eldest brother has shouldered the burden of family life since he was thirteen years old; without him, the family would not know what kind of situation they would fall into.

It is said that for such a few people, father and brother, who work, their lives should be able to be maintained. But over the years, farmers have suffered a lot, but they are often empty-handed every year. The team is poor, can the family be endless? Besides, parents are honest and incompetent all their lives, and the old roots are already poor to the bone. Every year is vacant, every year is poorer, and there seems to be no hope of any improvement... Under such circumstances, he can go to high school. What else can he say? In other words, even if the family is a little delicious and wearable, we should first consider the elderly grandmother and the young sister, let alone the sister's two small life waiting to be fed!

He is inferior in the present environment. Although he is the tallest in his class, he feels that he is a head lower than everyone else.

Poverty, in turn, made him overpride. He often feels that others are laughing at his sadness, so there is a perverse antagonism in the heart of all the students with good family. Let's just say now, he has had a strong feeling of opposition to that well-groomed monitor, Gu Yangmin. Whenever he saw him standing on the platform, dressed in stylish style, graceful place names, while raising his wrist to look at the watch, an unknown anger burned in his chest and could not be suppressed. When you call the roll, whoever you call will answer it. At one point when he arrived, he was deliberately silent. The monitor glared at him and shouted his name again, but he did not say a word. If this happens in junior high school, it may immediately lead to a violent conflict. Perhaps because everyone just entered high school and did not know each other's situation, the monitor took a restrained attitude towards his insulting contempt, and then went to call someone else's name.

After the roll call, he walked out of the classroom with Jinbo from their village. The fellow gave him a quiet thumb with a happy face and said, "OK!" "I'm afraid this kid will fight with me." Sun Shaoping regretted what he had just done.

"He dares!" Jinbo stared at a pair of big flower eyes, and his fist shook in the air.

Jinbo is his age, but he is a head shorter than him. He has white skin, beautiful eyebrows and looks like a girl. But this person's heart is stiff, and he is very sharp in what he does. Peace is like a girl, and action is like a tiger.

Jinbo's father is a driver of a regional transportation company. His family situation is better than Sun Shaoping's, and his life belongs to a higher level in his class. Shaoping has a very good relationship with the rich man. He played with him from an early age, and he was very agreeable. I've been going to school together ever since. In the village, Jinbo's father works outside the door. His family has some strength and energy, and often Shaoping's father or brother goes to help. In addition, Kimber's sister went to school with his sister, and the two children were inseparable.

As for Jinbo's help to him, let alone that. When they were in junior high school in the commune, they were ten miles away from the village. In order to save food and money, they all ate at home. They went back in the evening and came to school the next morning with a lunch by the way. Twenty miles back and forth every day, Jinbo, who went to school with him, and Runsheng, the son of Tian Futang, the Secretary of the brigade, had bicycles. He was the only one who walked on two legs. Jinbo rode a bike with him. Two years later, Runsheng's car is still new, and Jinbo's car is worn out. His father had to buy him a new one. Now to the county, six or seventy miles away from home, every Saturday home, he can not do without Jinbo's bicycle. In addition, after coming here, Jinbo stuffed him with white face tickets several times. Nevertheless, he refused to ask for it because nobody had enough white money these days, and besides, a few white bread would spoil his appetite. Alas, although it is so difficult to go to school, Sun Shaoping still has an indescribable pleasure in his heart. He has now come to a big world from the hilly country. For the son of a poor peasant, what a great thing it is in itself!

Every day, as long as there is nothing wrong with the school, Sun Shaoping goes out to all kinds of places in the city: streets and alleys, outside the city, corners, anyway, where he has never been. With the exception of several awesome organs, such as the county reform committee, the county Armed Forces Department and the county public security bureau, he has almost turned around in the courtyards of many organs, mostly by pretending to go to the toilet and coaxing the porter in.

Because of his unfamiliar place of life, he did not feel the shabbiness of his ragged clothes in public places and was free to wander around the city. In the meantime, he gained countless new impressions, and even felt that the smell of soot pervading the city was unique. Of course, many new ideas and insights were not fully understood by him, but all of them undoubtedly had an impact on his spirit. Through the mirror of city life, he seems to have seen more clearly the villages where he has lived for more than ten years. In the old world he is familiar with, many meaningful things seem to be a little dull now. Many of the important things there had not been noticed in the past, but now suddenly came to his heart so vividly.

In addition to this aimless wandering, he has now developed a habit of reading after-school books. This habit started in the last year of junior high school. Once he went to Runsheng's home and found a thick book with the shape of a fucking shoe clipped on the lid of his box. Its name was How Steel Was Made. At first he didn't care - what's the point of a steel-making book? He flipped over and felt wrong again. Clearly, it is a book on steelmaking, but there is no mention of steelmaking and ironmaking. It is all about the length of a Soviet named Paul Korchakin. Suddenly he had a strong curiosity about the strange book. He wanted to see what the book was all about. Runsheng said that this book was his sister's - Runsheng his sister teaches in the county town and seldom comes home; this book is Runsheng's mother took it back from the city to clip shoes.

After Runsheng's mother agreed, he rushed home with the book and looked at it immediately.

He was fascinated by the book at once. I remember that the next day was Sunday, when he used to go out to cut a bunch of firewood for his family, but that day he went nowhere, hiding behind the haystack of the village wheat threshing farm, greedily rushing to finish the book before dark. Paul Korchagin, the story of an ordinary foreigner, shocked his young heart.

He hasn't come home yet after dark. He sat alone on the edge of the barnyard, looking at the stars in the sky, listening to the sound of the river's flowing water, and fell into an indescribable mind. This thought is scattered and floating, but also deep and unpredictable. He suddenly felt that there was a vast world outside Shuangshui Village surrounded by their mountains. More importantly, he now dimly realizes how good a person can live, no matter what kind of situation he is in.

At that moment, the poetry of life filled his chest at the age of sixteen. From time to time, Paul's thin cheeks and vigorous body appeared before his eyes. His eyes were not blind, and he looked at him brotherly in the distant place forever, blue and translucent. Of course, he can never forget Donia, the daughter of the lovely rich man. She's so kind. She used to love Paul, the son of the poor. Shaoping did not hate Donia until the end. He was tearful about the final breakup between Donia and Paul. He thought: How nice it would be if he met a Donia, too!

On that day, he forgot to eat and didn't hear his family calling him. He forgot everything around him until he came home, heard his father's complaints and saw his brother's reproachful eyes, and held up a bowl of cold sorghum rice porridge on the pot stand, before he returned to the cold reality of his life... From then on, he became fascinated with novels, especially Soviet books. Before he came to high school, he had seen The Story of Zoya and Shula.

Now, he is searching for books in the library of the school and the county cultural library. He did not like the books he was reading at the moment, because he had read several Soviet novels, and these new Chinese books were no longer interesting to him. He only searched for foreign books and Chinese books before the Cultural Revolution.

Gradually, he became addicted to reading every day. When it was all right, he would lie in his pile of ragged bedding and watch it endlessly. Even when you wander outside the school, you have a copy in your arm's nest - if you wander enough, you'll find a secluded place to look at it. Later, when it came to class meetings or political studies, he secretly hid his books under his desk.

Soon after, his behavior of not caring about proletarian politics and merely reading "reactionary books" was exposed to the head teacher. The informer was Hou Yuying, a lame woman not far from his seat. This is a female student who cares about other people's private affairs. Physical defects seem to bring about some psychological defects: in life, she is most concerned about the shortcomings of others, as if trying to prove that all the people in the world are incomplete - your legs are better than me, but other places may not be as good as me! Hou Yuying is often the first person to speak during the discussion. Like cadres, she is the first person to explain the theory of proletarian dictatorship. Work in spite of bad legs, always rush to do. Of course, he also likes to do good things and good things; at the same time, like the Secretary of the Disciplinary Supervision Committee, he supervises all the activities in his class that do not meet the requirements of the revolution.

On that day, the class learned the article of People's Daily editorial "Leading Cadres Take the Lead in Learning Well", which was presided over by the head teacher. The head teacher, Gu Yangmin, read the newspaper. Sun Shaoping didn't listen to a word and quietly read the novel under the table with his head down. He did not find that the lame woman signaled his irregularities to the head teacher. It was not until the teacher came up to him and snatched the book from his hand that he was shocked. The whole class burst into laughter. Gu Yangmin did not read the newspaper. He seemed to be an outsider, but Sun Shaoping felt that the monitor had a clear attitude of rejoicing in disaster and how the teacher handled him.

The head teacher put the confiscated books on the desk and said nothing at first. He let Gu Yangmin read on.

After learning, the teacher called him to the dormitory, accidentally returned the book to him, and said: "Red Rock is a good book, but you should not read it in class later. Go ahead...

Sun Shaoping withdrew from the teacher's house with gratitude. He did not see a trace of condemnation in his teacher's eyes, but was full of kindness and enthusiasm. This little thing made him more precious of books. Yes, what else did he have except a few black sorghum buns a day? Only these books can make him feel alive or very meaningful, and his spirit can get some comfort, and arouse some kind of good yearning for his future life - without this, he can not survive the hard and painful day in front of him. And in his present life, there is actually another small thing that he can't express, which brings a little warmth and pleasure to his heart. In fact, we already know this fact, that is, every day at meals, when the crowd is scattered and he goes to pick up his own two black steamed buns alone - whenever such a time, he can always see another person doing the same thing.

Of course, at first, he and the girl named Hao Hongmei took their own steamed bun and left irrespective.

I don't know which day she looked at him when she came over. He also looked at her. Although nobody said anything, they actually said it. People often have a language without language in their life. Since then, the "conversation" of these eyes has increased.

Sun Shaoping found that Hao Hongmei was actually the most beautiful girl in the class. It was only because of her ragged clothes and dish colour that no one noticed this. Young men and women of this age, who have just acquired a little culture, often like to show courtesy to some "foreign girls". Especially the boys who have just come from the countryside, in their eyes, the daughters of the cadres in the city seem to be the fairies of the world. Of course, young men and women of this age can not be said to be in serious love, but they undoubtedly have superficially understood this kind of thing, and because they just know, they have greater passion than those who have experienced it. Alas, who hasn't passed this age? In this turbulent age of Witt style, any small emotions between the opposite sex may set off a storm in the heart of a teenager!

Sun Shaoping has not reached such a point yet. He just felt that in such a poor life, there was a girl who looked at him with such kind and kind eyes, which made him feel infinitely warm. Her poor, thin cheeks, her slender neck, her ragged clothes, which just covered the shame and ugliness, all rippled like spring water in his heart.

After a few days of "talking" with their eyes, one day, after taking out the two black buns, she hesitated to come up to him and whispered, "What's the name of the book your teacher confiscated that day?"

"Red Rock". I borrowed it from the County Culture Museum. He answered with a slight tremor of his Black-faced hand. She is so close to him that he never dares to see her again. He lowered his head uncomfortably and looked at the two black things in his hands. "There's a sister Jiang in there..." She wasn't nervous, but he was uncomfortable and her voice was a little unnatural.

He said quickly, "Yes. Later, at the expense of... It's tragic!" He added a word that he thought was excellent, and his head was still bowed.

"There's a double-shot old lady." She added.

'You've read the book, too?' He dared to raise his eyelids to look at her now. "I haven't seen it. I used to listen to my dad's stories."

"Your father? Did your father see it?"

"Well."

"Is your father there?..." Shaoping was apparently a little surprised that the girl in ragged clothes had seen Red Rock by her father, so she couldn't understand what her father was doing. "My father is a farmer, the ingredient is not good, is the landlord, no, my grandfather is the landlord, so..."

"So your father went to school?"

"My dad hasn't. My father did. My father taught me the words. My father died long ago... I haven't read the novel "Red Rock", but I can sing the song in the opera "Red Rock". My name was taken from the lyrics by my father. There is a lyric in that opera: On the red rock, red plum blossoms open..."

She spoke so softly and slowly that he listened dully.

Suddenly she blushed and said, "Have you returned your book yet?"

He said, "Not yet."

"Can you lend me a look?"

"Yes!" He answered briskly.

So the next day he handed the book to her.

After that, as long as Sun Shaoping had read the book, he would lend it to Hao Hongmei. Whether he lent her books or she returned them to him, both of them went on quietly by coincidence. They all know what kind of repercussions a boy and a girl will have if they are found out by their classmates - they don't want to live in peace either!