Back to 1978: While Others Head to the Coast, I Go into the Mountains

In 1978, the first whispers of reform and opening-up reached the mountain village. Young people returning from the cities loudly proclaimed that fortunes awaited anyone who headed to town and went into business. Young and restless, Yang Fan was swept up by dreams of getting rich. Ignoring his wife and daughter’s pleas, he left for distant lands with a head full of ambition.

For three whole years, he scrimped and saved, risking everything to amass a fortune of twenty thousand yuan, enough to build a new house and establish a prosperous household. He bought his ticket home, filled with hope for a family reunion. Then a long-distance phone call shattered all his dreams: four-year-old Nuonuo had been playing alone by the river when she fell in and drowned. Xu Xiaoxiao, who had endured years of loneliness and now lost her child, could bear no more and hanged herself.

With his family destroyed, Yang Fan returned home and hastily buried his wife and daughter. He set fire to their earthen house and wandered the world without a home. During the 1983 crackdown, he was caught up in a dispute for no reason and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. When he was released in 1998, the world had changed beyond recognition. Completely cut off from society, he could only scrape by doing odd jobs and relying on welfare, drowning his soul-crushing regret in alcohol day after day.

Forty years of torment passed in a flash. On a bitterly cold winter’s day in 2018, Yang Fan, now over sixty, collapsed drunk beneath an overpass. The driving snow froze his broken body. In his final moments, as he closed his eyes, only one thought remained: If he could live his life over, he would never leave again. He would stay by his wife and daughter’s side every moment.