Wind Over Aigezhuang: Our Dust and Grass

The Wind Across Aigezhuang: Our Dust and Grass is a rural coming-of-age epic set in Aigezhuang Middle School, a junior high in the northern countryside. It vividly depicts the turbulent growth of the protagonist, Xiaoyu, and his friends, including Xiaobai, Xiaoqi, Xiaocheng, and Qiubo, over the three years around the turn of the century.

The story begins when Xiaoyu returns a test admission ticket during the entrance exams for junior high, bringing him and Xiaobai together. In their first year, sunlight streamed through the window-side seats onto the lush spring grass, and time seemed to stand still in a moment of beauty. But the storms of adolescence soon swept in. A teacher's teasing remark, “Good guys find good guys, and donkey droppings find dung balls,” broke up the innocent friendship between deskmates. Xiaoyu became “famous overnight” after a horribly off-key history-class rendition of “Two Little Mice.” Muffled groans in a disused classroom caused an uproar. Boys brawled on the riverbank over the title of “boss.” A classroom provocation by local troublemakers ignited the whole class's collective fury. And there were plenty of other ridiculous yet heartbreaking episodes, from climbing into the girls' restroom to write a love letter to students developing crushes on female teachers.

In air filled with the smell of earth, sweat, and cheap popsicles, they experienced growing pains and cracking voices. They knew the purity of friendship, from the joy of sharing snacks bought with found money to a blood-brother oath in a cornfield, as well as the sting of betrayal. They tentatively explored the boundaries of sex and emotion, while struggling under the weight of schoolwork and the uncertainty of the future.