Stories from Around the Village

To scrape together tuition money, his mother meekly accepted a "loan" from a village bully, who cornered her in a dim alley. Young Li Xiang grabbed a cleaver, but his mother held him back and turned to the benefactor who had come to their aid. She dropped to her knees, tears streaming down her face as she begged, "Please don't call the police. Xiang'er's father can't go without his medicine..." Back then, Li Xiang couldn't understand why his mother had knelt. Only when he reached middle age, after exhausting himself smiling through drinks with clients in the city and pouring his heart and soul into the fields back home, did he finally realize: his mother's kneeling had shattered her dignity, but kept their family standing. The countless people of the countryside, bowing and standing tall, crawling and striving forward, together wrote a weighty tale of the land and people of Huaxia.