Huai River Past Events River Bed

In the winter of 1958, my father vomited blood and became paralyzed during a dispute over river workers. The beam in the Wang family was broken. The eldest brother, Rufan, was admitted to the Normal University and moved away, becoming a "respectable person" who remits money on a monthly basis. The mother was shrewd in her calculations, and her daughters were married off early, leaving only cheap gifts and loud cries when they returned to their parents' homes. Eleven-year-old Shouren became a silent riverbed. From then on, his life was framed in front of his father's hospital bed. The dream of college entrance examination was shattered by reality. He picked up the ax and chisel, and the flying shavings were a silent struggle. He married Xiulan, who didn't want a bride price, and got married in a leaky shack. When his father was critically ill, he begged his sister for help, but she only borrowed humiliation and two yuan. In the end, it was Xiulan who sold her only silver bracelet. After his father left, he squeezed onto the green train heading north. Dust, sweat, and green money orders constitute his entire life. He coughed up blood, built three bungalows brick by brick, paid off all his debts, and was finally coughed back to his homeland by fate like a lamp that had been boiled dry. Then, her mother fell, and the last dignity of the family was completely torn apart. Xiulan still took over everything. During the Spring Festival of 2018, the house was full of children and grandchildren. He was lying in the house he built, holding Xiulan's hand, and in his palm were a few cold copper coins that his father had hidden in the cracks in the wall before he died. The Huai River flows silently outside the window, taking away calculations, illness and death, leaving only him - the riverbed as silent as an ink line that holds everything up.