When He Woke Up, the Bamboo Horse Turned into a Little Girl

At the 100-day swearing-in ceremony of Qingcheng High School, Chen Yu, a repeat student, wrote down on a piece of paper the ideal of his mother Su Wan: I want to take the exam for the Chinese Department of Lake Normal University and finish the unfinished books for her. This was an obsession she had hidden for sixteen years: Seventeen years ago, in the floods in western Hunan, Su Wan gave her the chance to give birth to her as a baby. Father Chen, who raised her, was seriously ill and gave her an old silver ring left by Su Wan, so she carried this half-unknown concern and gritted her teeth and endured the cold shoulder year after year. Until she met Lu Zhiheng sitting in the front row. He was the number one seed player in his grade. He would quietly help her sort out the scattered papers, walk laps with her on the playground and count the stars after evening self-study, and save up her pocket money for three months to re-brighten the old silver ring and put it on the red string around her neck. When the first snow fell on Weiming Lake, he held her hand, which was red from the cold, and said, "You fulfill your aunt's dream, and I will accompany you to fulfill your dream. Let's go to Changsha together." On the day when the college entrance examination results were released, the names of two people appeared one after another on the admission list of Lake Normal University. When the camphor trees on Lushan South Road turned green again, Chen Yu hugged the blue-covered notebook that her mother had left in the archives, and finally stood in front of the graduation message from the Grade 77 Chinese Department. The phrase "I wish to cultivate peaches and plums all over Lushan Mountain" that had been suppressed for forty years finally took hold in her twenty-year-old life. From the dim table lamps in Qingcheng Mountain City to the loud sound of books by Taozi Lake, an old silver ring connects the youth and dreams of two generations. She walked her mother's unfinished journey for her; he carried her unspoken fears with her.