In 1983, at Zhuxi Rock Beach, the mute uncle Chen Zhusheng picked up the baby girl Nianzhu and used bamboo strips to weave her childhood: a wooden hairpin carved with a bamboo knife, a kite tied with bamboo strips, a warm bamboo bed, and a bookshelf for reading...
She is his mouth, and he is her heaven, hiding all the pain to love her and hold up a sky for her.
When I was 16 years old, my biological parents came to pick me up. He secretly signed an adoption agreement, gave her the money he got from selling a bamboo knife passed down from her ancestors for three generations, and watched her run towards a "good life" before turning around and weaving bamboo utensils all over the drafty bamboo house, with tiny "thoughts" engraved on the bottom of each basket.
But what he didn't want to get in exchange was her hatred, and he hadn't returned home once in ten years.
Ten years later, Nian Zhu became a white-collar worker in the city. When he returned to his hometown to sort out his belongings, he found the truth in the bamboo knots: he was not born deaf and mute, his throat was broken by thieves to protect the sprawling forest behind him, and he was beaten deaf by traffickers to protect the abducted children. When he signed the agreement, he had terminal brain cancer. The blood coughed on the handkerchief, the bamboo weaving shaking, and the unsent letter were all unspeakable love.
She shouted "Dad" to the diabolo house, and only the echo of the valley was left. I am learning to weave bamboo strips, but I can no longer weave the warmth in his palm - some love, missing it will last a lifetime, and I can't even say "I'm sorry" to it.
