Lao Niang soil is a handful of red soil that people in the mountains carry in their arms when they leave their hometown. The earth is my mother. With this handful of earth in my arms, I can know my way home even if I walk to the edge of the sky.
In 1993, Chen Wangshan, an orphan from the mountains of Yunnan and Guizhou, walked out of the mountains with the tuition collected by the whole village and a handful of old mother's soil. In college, he met Su Xiangwan, a girl from the provincial capital - clean and bright, like the moonlight in the mountains. He avoided her because he knew he was going back.
The year he graduated, he was diagnosed with stage II mesothelioma. The secret agency from the provincial capital said: Come with us, the disease can be cured, but you must remain anonymous for ten years. On the day she signed the agreement, she snatched his pen and cut the signature line in half. He didn't listen to her.
On the seventh day after he left, she buried the mother's soil he left behind under the old camphor tree. Ten years, four photos, two letters, sixty-one dolls. She poured the dregs of medicine she had boiled every day into the roots of the tree, and spent her days waiting.
In the eleventh year of the Jingzhe, a person walked on the mountain road. The temples are white, there are scars at the corners of the mouth, and the left leg is slightly lame. She looked at him, and the first thing she said wasn't "You're back" - it was "It's broken."
He said: "Took it."
