Sixty-year-old Li Xiulian has never been out of the village in her life. Jars after jars of wheat kernel sauce are marinated on the stove. The jars are sealed not only with the sour aroma, but also with the scattered shadows of her four children: Wang Jianjun, the boss from Shanghai, said "business is stable", Wang Xiang, the second child from France, said "life is sweet", Wang Hua, the third child from Beijing, said "the paintings are selling well", and Wang Xiaoguang, the fourth child from the provincial capital, said "I will come back after I finish my work."
But on the day of her sixtieth birthday, a stage was set up in the courtyard, Mairenjiang was opened, and four red cloth-wrapped insoles were placed again and again, but none of the children came.
His wife, Wang Shoutian, squatted beside the wheat straw and took out the wrinkled old theater troupe ticket stub. When he was young, he followed the theater troupe to the regional capital and saw roads wider than the wheat fields. However, later he guarded the fields and home, and suppressed the thought of "going out" into ashes in his tobacco bag. That night, he said to Li Xiulian: "Don't wait, let's go find them."
This is not a visit to relatives to urge marriage, but a "run away" for two old people: they don't understand the "pressure" in their children's words, but they understand that "life is not just about guarding the home, but also looking at the sun outside"; they have not read many books, but they understand that "when children grow up, they are like kites, and the string is in the heart, and people have to move forward on their own."
From the minibus at the entrance of the village to the subway in the provincial capital, from the office building in Shanghai to the studio in Beijing, the old couple stepped on the tenacity of the wheat straw and walked out of the familiar field ridge step by step. The sour aroma of wheat kernel paste floats in the wind of a foreign land and becomes their compass - it turns out that the best freedom is not having children around your knees, but taking the warmth of home and living your life in your own way.
