Educated Youth Years: The Two Girls at Dongxi Grain Depot

This is a tale of life in Dongxi spanning nearly half a century. In 1981, Xiao He, a tall, pretty young woman sent to the countryside as an educated youth, was assigned from the county seat to the remote Dongxi Grain Depot. Her bright, ringing voice and brisk personality broke the dull routine of five men guarding the granary. In 1984, Xiao Yang, a petite girl with a ready smile, arrived as well. Side by side in their blue work uniforms, the two young women stood in the drying yard, weaving the best years of their youth into the soft rustle of rice grains.

They ran along mountain paths paved with bluestone to collect grain from the villages, bit kernels to determine grain grades, and gathered beneath kerosene lamps to knit sweaters. When trouble arose, their coworkers stood in front of them with cleavers to keep them safe. Together, they turned the hard life in a remote mountain hollow into warm days filled with the fragrance of rice blossoms. Later, they were transferred to the county seat one after another, but Dongxi's wind, the leaves of the old camphor trees, and the golden grain in the drying yard had already left their mark deep in their bones.

In 2026, a group of retired and soon-to-retire grain workers gathered around a table at a little restaurant on the lane. Over the aroma of pork trotter stewed with kelp, they brought out one embarrassing story after another, things they had kept hidden for decades. When the cap came off a bottle of Red Star Erguotou, treasured for thirty years, its fragrance mingled with their laugh lines. They all knew that anyone who had come out of the Dongxi Grain Depot carried the warmth of rice ears in their bones. Wherever they went, they would always be true sons and daughters of Dongxi.