In the Winter of 1984, She Only Took Away a Sewing Machine

In the twelfth lunar month of 1984, Shen Qinghe died on a hospital bed. White gray walls, a lamp, people standing beside the bed, coming in and out, no one looked at her face. She was fifty years old that year. When she opened her eyes again, the flames in the stove were licking the bottom of the pot, and she was holding a wet firewood in her hand. In the hall, her parents were deciding to swap her out in exchange for a gift of 300 yuan to give her younger brother a wife. This time, she carried a spatula into the main room and opened the bride price box in public. Cleanse yourself and leave home. Three acres of thin farmland, a pair of tailoring scissors wrapped with red thread, and the Bee sewing machine at home—the only things she was willing to take away. From an individual license on the cross street to one machine, ten machines, eight looms; from the self-employed Zhenliang, to the sound of looms in township enterprises, to the snow of orders after joining the WTO - she sewed for forty-two years, until the year when AI could draw pictures and tailor clothes. When the technician at the agricultural machinery station saw her for the first time, what he recognized was not her face, but the origin of the machine - "This machine is well maintained. It must be your mother's craftsmanship." Forty-two years ago, someone else recognized her family name for her. Forty-two years later, she handed the scissors to her apprentice and said only one sentence: "The stitches must be straight and the people's hearts must be calm."