My father has been collecting waste in Tongshui County for more than 20 years. I have always found this job embarrassing since I was a child, and I never dared to let my classmates know about it when I went to school. It wasn't until midnight on the Great Summer Day when he opened the door to his house covered in blood and holding an old black pottery bowl in his arms that I realized that what he collected was never junk. The old copper scale with its polished rod and the blue ledger that has been locked for more than ten years hide secrets that no one in this small county knows.
