Chen Mu died in 2024 while serving as county party secretary.
What he regretted most before his death was not that he didn't take another step forward, but that summer of 1998 - when his mother was lying in the corridor of the county hospital, he couldn't raise the 800 yuan for the surgery.
When he opened his eyes, he went back to July 16, 1998, the first day of reporting in Riverbend Township.
He was twenty-two years old this year and was a clerk in the township party and government office writing materials. He was not even ranked in serving tea and water for the leaders. This year the Asian financial crisis was raging, and the brick factory was in arrears with wages and surrounded the township government door.
He remembers everything that will happen in the next thirty years: which company will collapse, which road will need to be repaired, which person will have an accident.
But when a small official said, "The crisis will last until the end of the year," no one believed him; when he said, "The county is going to build a secondary road," he was regarded as a lunatic.
So he learned one thing - to speak what he knew into the leader's own mouth.
"I heard it." "I figured it out." "I found it through research."
From the restructuring of the brick factory to the rerouting of secondary roads, from Hewan Township to Songshan County, every step he took was not what he wanted to do.
"Director Chen, you take the lead on this project."
"Mayor Chen, the county party committee has called your name."
"Secretary Chen, the provincial party committee wants to talk to you."
He just wanted to save his mother and guard the small courtyard.
But he remembered everything in the future, except how he was pushed step by step to the position he didn't want to sit in.
