Youth in the Mud: Practical Notes of Yunxi Village

At 4:30 in the morning, college student Chen Mo boarded a minibus bound for Yunxi Village. He brought a notebook with a green cover and wanted to record something, but he didn't know that he was about to be rewritten by this land. Yunxi Village is hidden deep in the rolling hills, with gray tile roofs stacked on top of each other, and a sparkling stream running through the village. There are old people and children left behind in the village, and young people have gone out to work. Here Chen Mo met nine-year-old Chen Xiaoman, a little girl who had read all the books in the library. She was wearing an oversized pink T-shirt, squatting by the well to choose vegetables, and looking at every stranger who was about to leave with calm eyes. She said: "Water comes from the mountains and has seen everything on the mountains. If you can tell stories, tell the stories that Water has seen." During a summer vacation, a notebook gradually filled up, two green and yellow oranges, and a stream flowing day and night. Urban youth and country girl get closer to each other in silence, and also grow up in clumsiness. Chen Mo thought he was here to "record" the countryside, but found that what was really remembered were the things the land taught him that were not in the textbooks. This is a story about how youth takes root in the soil. There is no sensation, no pain, just the daily routine flowing quietly like a stream, and the warmth of a heart slowly coming to life in a strange land. Opening this book is like sitting on a bluestone by the stream and listening to the sound of the water telling a long story.