In the autumn of 1974, in a mountain village in southern Gansu, the seventeen-year-old me (Chen Qinghe) returned home after graduating from high school and became the mainstay of a family of six. My parents were deployed to build railways, and the burden on my shoulders suddenly increased. Aunt Zhang, a widow with three children in the village, has been a widow for many years. She has a strong and fierce personality and is feared and respected by the villagers.
By chance, she fell down in the field and I carried her home. From then on, there was an indescribable affection between us. She taught me the secrets of life, and I became her only support when she was most helpless. The bachelors and scoundrels in the village coveted her beauty. She used softness to overcome toughness and outsmarted them, but I stepped forward time and time again to protect her.
For four years, we have been together through thick and thin. She is a touch of warm sunshine in my life and a flower of emotion that blooms in a barren land. When the spring breeze of the resumption of the college entrance examination blew, I left the village and went to the larger world, but she stayed in the village after the autumn harvest and became a dream that I will never forget in my life.
