"In the Field" tells the story of a rural child who lost his father and became dependent on his mother. He eventually died of a high fever for which he had no money to treat. Years later, his mother became a picture frame on the wall, and was gently taken down and hung up by his grandchildren. Three generations, three sentences "in the ground", describe how in the poor years, the living people placed the dead in the land, in their memories, and in a quiet smiling face on the wall.
Purpose: On the surface, it is about the suffering history of a rural family: the father died of exhaustion, the grandfather died early, the child died of high fever and no money for medical treatment, and the mother eventually died on the field. But on a deeper level, it writes about the almost cruel dependence between people and the land in Chinese rural society - to live, to eat in the land; to die, to rest in the land. The phrase "in the fields" is not only the most common place for farmers to work, but also the most gentle way for living people to conceal and accommodate their deceased relatives.
The mother used "being in the field" to deceive her child's questioning, and also used "being in the field" to deceive her own grief. The land swallows up generations of people, and the living people can only continue to walk on this land from generation to generation.
Therefore, "In the Ground" is not about death, but how people live death as a silent daily life in the land.