Dear Reader:
What is written in this book is my water town, Bay Village.
The village is not big, with only 11 households. There are three brothers, Zhou Laoguan, Zhou Dahui, and Jian Aizi, Secretary Chen, Xu Dawei, Liu Dashao, Li Daqiang, Chen Fumin, Xiang Guangming, and Sun Degui, a bachelor.
I write about how they farm, how they raise pigs, how they educate their children, and how they struggle to survive in the changing times.
I wrote about how my eldest sister struggled to study in a patriarchal family, how Yingzi repeated her studies for one year and was admitted to the normal school, and how Wujuan went to the construction site to carry bricks to provide for her brothers and sisters before finishing elementary school.
I wrote about how poisonous the sun was on the day when the public rations were handed over, how the wooden stakes were inserted into the field ridges on the day when the fields were distributed to households, and how the whole village crowded together to watch "Fearless Fearless" when the first TV was brought into the village.
There are no earth-shattering stories in this book, only pots and pans, spring plowing and autumn harvest, birth, old age, illness and death.
But I believe you will see your own reflection in it.
——A child who came out of Shuixiangwan Village
