Zhang Yingcai had his breakfast at Principal Yu's. Not breakfast exactly: they ate leftover rice from the night before, boiled with some greens and a little salt and chilli for flavour. There was nothing else. Some children nibbled at pickled cabbage they had managed to scrape from a vat. Another child, too small to reach the bottom of the vat, was angry at being left empty-handed and threatened the others that he would tell Principal Yu that they had taken more than their fair share. Yingcai forced down a few mouthfuls, then went back to his room to prepare for class.
The mountain children were well-behaved and seldom asked questions. Yingcai copied what his teachers had asked him to do at school. From the lectern, he ran through the new words for the day and read the text out a few times. Then he explained the main point of each paragraph and the gist of the overall reading. Finally he asked them to make sentences with the new words, or write a short essay in the style of the text.
Principal Yu passed by his window several times. Deng Youmi came in on the pretext of borrowing chalk. As he left he said quietly, "You are truly following in your uncle's footsteps."
As class was finishing, Sun Sihai came back from the mountains covered head to foot in soil. Yingcai approached him and asked, "Director Sun, would you allow me to take my meals with you from now on?"
"You don't need to eat with someone else," Sun Sihai replied cooly. "Just build a stove in your own room."
"I don't know how to do that."
"I'll have a word with Ye Biqiu. She's in the fifth grade; her father's a stone mason. He'll come round and do it for you."
"Is that proper?"
"It'd be frowned on if you tried to build it yourself. If the parents found out they'd think you were looking down on them."
As they were speaking, a pretty girl had come in. Although the clothes she wore were old and had been mended many times, they were neat. She smiled pleasantly, then went to tend the fire on the stove.
"Who is that?" Yingcai asked.
"Her name is Li Zi. Her mother is Wang Xiaolan."
He knew about Sun Sihai and Wang Xiaolan from Deng Youmi, and Sun Sihai's frankness made Yingcai uncomfortable.
Yingcai thought he remembered seeing one of Li Zi's essays on the fifth grade's noticeboard so he wandered outside. There it was.
She had called it "My Mother" , which read as follows:
Every day, my mother washes the medicinal herbs myclassmates bring home and sets them out to dry in the sun. Then she sorts and stores them. When she has around fifty kilograms, she carries them down the mountain to sell them at the Purchasing Unit. The mountain tracks are so hard that by the time she gets home her shoulders are often scarred and bleeding.
My mother arranged with Teacher Sun that the money raised from the herbs the pupils collect is used to buy new books for my classmates every year. Because the weather has been bad this year, a lot of herbs spoiled and the people in the unit either fixed the scales or pushed the prices down, so by the start of semester my mother had not collected enough money for school books. She sold the coffin bought for my father and gave the money to Teacher Sun.
My mother is very sad. She worries that I will hate her for this one day. I have promised her I won't many times, but she doesn't believe me and just shakes her head. So I have made my mind up: I will work hard at school so that in the future she will have a better life. I want to thank my mother for the good start she has given me.
Yingcai did not go back in after reading the essay. When Sun Sihai called him in for dinner, he went into his room and emerged with his eight remaining eggs in a bowl. He told Li Zi to take them to her mother after school, and to pass on a greeting from the new teacher. Li Zi didn't want to accept the gift but Sun Sihai told her to take them. As Li Zi thanked him, Yingcai found himself patting her head.
It was maths in the afternoon. But instead of starting the class, Yingcai copied Li Zi's essay out on the blackboard and read it out, then asked the class to recite it together ten times. His intention was to show the younger children an example of good work by older pupils. The classrooms were old and shabby, the walls were full of holes and there was no soundproofing. It had been arranged that Chinese classes were in the morning, and maths in the afternoon, so as to avoid disturbing the peace and quiet required for maths by the noise of reading texts aloud. The noise in the third grade room annoyed the other classes, and Deng Youmi came running over to say something. When he caught sight of the essay, however, he left without saying a word. Principal Yu passed by a couple of times too, but didn't come in.
After school finished, the flutes started. Yingcai, recognising the familiar tune "Our Lives Are Filled With Sunshine" , tapped his foot along but still found it hard to follow the beat as it was played so frustratingly slowly. He could not understand why two teachers who quarrelled so much in private could cooperate so impeccably when it came to music. He decided to read out Li Zi's essay to the tune of the song. His unaccented Mandarin sounded particularly poignant in the evening air, and moved Sun Sihai to tears.
When the flag-lowering ceremony ended, Yingcai approached Deng Youmi. "Deputy Deng, what did you think of Li Zi's essay?"
Deng Youmi blinked. "Well, you read it very well. As for the writing, you're the Director of Academic Affairs Sun Sihai—what did you think?"
Sun Sihai's reply came with no hesitation. "In a word: it was excellent."
"Why is that?" asked Deng Youmi.
"It shows real feeling."
Principal Yu interrupted. "Director Sun, the ditch in your fuling field is still blocked. If it rains any more there's a risk that the fragrant wood might float away."
"The ground is too hard up here in the mountains, I can't dig it up. I was planning to ask some parents to help," Sun Sihai said.
