Zhi He
Synopsis
Her name is Lin Zhihe. She is eighteen, a normal-school graduate, wearing a white T-shirt with a bare face.
A wealthy man in the city takes a fancy to her and offers her a luxury car, a house, and a monthly allowance, as long as she agrees. She doesn’t.
She returns to the mountains, to the village without even a proper road, to work as a substitute teacher for a meager monthly salary.
The school building is unsafe, and the latch on her dormitory door is broken. At night, a shadow moves outside the window. She props a desk against the door, grips a wooden stick, and sits there until dawn. She says nothing. No one would help even if she told them, and she wouldn’t be able to stay if she did. If she couldn’t stay, the children would have no teacher.
She picks up rotten vegetable leaves that others have thrown away by the pond, cuts off the blackened parts, washes them again and again, then boils and eats them. She saves her wages to buy the children frostbite cream, exercise books, and chalk.
The money isn’t enough. She starts livestreaming, showing her face, singing folk songs, and performing ethnic dances. Half the people who tip her praise her, and half insult her. She records every single payment in a ledger and spends it all on the children.
Later, she receives a diagnosis: terminal. She doesn’t have much time left.
She does the math: 80,000 yuan to repair the school, 20,000 for winter clothes and medicine, and 30,000 for the long-term medication of children with chronic illnesses. She needs 130,000 yuan. She can’t save that much.
She makes a phone call.
“Does your offer from before still stand?”
At twenty-five, she collapses at the lectern.
After her death, her ledger is opened. The final expense: two boxes of chalk, 48 yuan.
This is a story so painfully real that you may not dare to finish reading it. It’s about an ordinary person and how she gave herself up in exchange for another possibility.
