The Fool Awakens the Eye of Foresight, and the Village Woman Treats Me Like a Treasure

I’m the village guardian of Dali Village, a fool in everyone’s eyes.

Three years ago, I was the county’s top college-entrance-exam scorer, but Wang Laohu’s son stole my place. My mother died of illness, and I went mad. Every day, I sat at the village entrance clutching my textbooks, becoming the village’s new guardian.

Only two people didn’t look down on me: Mr. Lan, who taught at the village primary school, and Liu Yan, the widow next door.

One day, Liu Yan slipped me a steamed bun. The moment I took a bite, the world changed.

I could see what would happen over the next hour. Like the fire at Wang Laohu’s house, or the vehicle Cuifen was about to ride in flipping over.

I saved her, but exposed myself.

Liu Yan was the first to discover that I was pretending to be a fool. She kept quiet and became my eyes and voice. Later, Qin Huairu, the women’s director, joined us too. The three of us, together with the village women whose men had died in the mines, leaving them to struggle through life at home, quietly began changing everything.

Using my power of foresight, we escaped the mine disaster, the torrential rains, and every other deadly catastrophe. I used “the village guardian has shown his power” as a cover, leading them to grow shiitake mushrooms, set up a cooperative, and fight the middlemen who bullied us.

In the countryside of the 1980s, women who put themselves in the public eye were liable to be condemned behind their backs. But we were determined to make something of our lives.

Mr. Lan told me that village guardians weren’t born that way. They chose to protect others. He passed on the true art of feng shui to me: not reading the land, but reading people’s hearts and the ways of the world, and seeing through the fortunes of this land.

They asked me, what exactly is a village guardian?

I said, a village guardian watches over this land, the people who live on it, and their hopes and future.