Small Town LiteratureSour and Slow Heat
Meng Xun, who ranked first in Yunling County, entered a key high school in the provincial capital and only passed the 187th grade.
In 2012, at the age of seventeen, she came to Jiangzhou from Qingshi Town.
She is the "hope of the whole family" provided by her father who repairs the carport and her mother who works on the farm and sews clothes for others. But the school put her in Class 7, Grade 1; her classmates in the city could understand English materials she had never seen before, and they could also afford the materials she was reluctant to ask for.
After staying at her uncle's house, she slept on a folding bed in the living room without a key to the house. She had to put her life away before 6:30 every morning.
Meng Xun once thought that as long as he read well enough, he could change his and his family's destiny.
Only after arriving in Jiangzhou did she realize that grades were just the ticket.
There was someone standing under the national flag, clean and decent, a world she dared not approach.
Someone climbed down from the school wall, carrying injuries and punishments, which frightened her and made her misunderstand him again and again.
There were also people who held the voice of the whole school and taught her how to be heard, but they almost made her most unwilling secrets public.
From Class 7, Grade 1, working part-time in the old city, to the bigger world, Meng Xun gradually learned to make money, choose and express himself, and also learned to no longer regard other people's help as a debt that must be repaid.
She comes from a small town.
Later, those prejudices caused by her poverty, origin and silence all bowed their heads.
And those teenagers who once thought that they would not change for anyone have also lost their sense of proportion because of her.
