On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in 1975, in Xu Bingshui Village deep in the northwest Loess Plateau, a baby was born in the heavy snow and named Xiao Yang.
This is a forgotten corner of the world - there are no roads or electricity. The villagers live in cave dwellings dug into the mountains and rely on the sky for their food. Xiao Yang began his growth on this barren land.
As a child, he ran around in the ravines with bare feet, digging out bird's nests, catching loaches, and picking wild fruits; as a teenager, he traveled over the mountains and ridges every day to go to school more than ten miles away, determined to get out of the mountains. After failing the college entrance examination, he bid farewell to his father in tears, took the copper coins inherited from his father, and set foot on the train to go out to work.
From moving bricks on the construction site to contracting projects, from setting up a company to starting a business and getting rich... A boy from a northwest rural area used his life's struggle to explain what perseverance is, what gratitude is, and what it means to not forget one's roots.
This is the growth history of a child in rural areas of northwest China, and it is also a microcosm of an era.
