After Returning to the Village, I Led Everyone to Prosperity

Chen Shu spent five years in the provincial capital. In the end, he returned to his village with a crumpled termination agreement in his pocket. His mother had broken her leg. Her first words were not a cry of pain, but a question: had he lost his job? The village was still the same. The muddy road had not changed in ten years. The young people had all left, leaving only the elderly and children to keep watch over empty houses. But the people were unchanged. Auntie Li’s herbal medicine was still just as bitter, Auntie Wang’s silver needles were still just as precise, and the ointment Su Wan handed him still smelled of Chinese honey locust pods. He had only meant to stay for two days before leaving. But when the first basket of wild mushrooms sold for three thousand yuan, he hesitated. When his first short video got five hundred thousand views, he hesitated. When Dazhuang rode his three-wheeler, taking a whole load of elderly villagers to the polling station, and shouted through the rain, “We trust this young man,” he could no longer leave. The “failure” who had returned from the city became the youngest village Party secretary in the whole area. He built roads and greenhouses, set up a cooperative, and turned barren hills into a treasure trove. He and the proud young woman selected for a government post went from arguing to holding hands, from cold wars to embraces. At last, he understood what his father had meant by “There’s something in the mountains” before he died. Some roads are taken away from home so we can find our way back. Some people have to leave before they understand how to love. Qingshangou is small, but it can hold his whole life.