I grew up at countryside along the Hanjiang River, a main branch of Yangtzi River at Hubei, China. My parents met each other under an arranged date. Dad bought a single apple as a first-date gift for mom. Mom often said that it was kinda embarrassing since the unmentionable poverty in both families. But I see it a pretty precious and romantic memory for them: He only can afforded one apple and he chose to give it to his first love. I always admire that. They decided to constitute a family soon after the early meetings. The outcomes is definitely two noisy kids, my younger brother and me while nothing else.
The clock-around farming couldn’t even paid us a registration fee of my kindergarten and of course of the primary school. I was put into the primary school earlier than the rules luckily since my ant was a teacher in that school. I suddenly realized that everyone else was two years older than that tiny me. I had to use shared textbooks from my desk mates, making me firstly taste the delightful experience with some companies although with a little bit embarrassment.
Dad wanted change. He then decided to take some business to increase the economic incomes of the weather-shaken family, basically raising the two little brothers.
Cooking and selling braised food (中式卤菜) on a bicycle. I could not tell how he learned the expertise but he seemed to suddenly harvest the cooking experience. Then a joyful and lousy young man started to cycle around the village every afternoon with the farm-work finished.
Yo-heave-ho: Fresh braised food!
The food was so welcome, he was back early home all the time. The villagers whispered ‘This good looking young man must have a very kind wife. The always-pure-white shirts tells’. Mom saw it a kind compromise and alway felt proud of it. She is a perfect wife to my father.
We normally count the business money he got at nightfalls. It was so happy whether it was a profit or loss in the end, at least for brother and me. Interestingly, the amazing memories seems to always be in the summer, followed by the off power but so starry nights in the bamboo bed.
I sometimes felt dizzy and being moved into our own bed in the house, in their arms. The nights were peaceful and even the frogs might were sleep.
Time flies.
As I intended to middle school, the higher fee pushed my parents to change again.
Six neighbors decided to initiated a ‘military band’, even without any professional music training before. They were basically farmers, with part-time driver, carpenter, wireman, etc. As for dad, he carried nothing about music except a little knowledge from the flute of mine. I clearly recalled that they collected the startup money for the first instruments. They went to WH for that totally new instruments and uniforms for the members. It was heavily rained that day. They were so excited to try their uniforms on!
Thereafter, I ultimately understood how they chose their core members of the band. The startup package money only could afford the major compartments of the sound system. So it was the time that the carpenter and the wireman showed up. Without any expertise or even a lesson in engineering, they just built a self-organized sound system at my home!
The next challenge was they needed a basic training for the distinct instruments, including the three trumpets, one trombone, one horn, one keyboard and one jazz drum! Seven instruments with only six men. They all thought the keyboard could be the hardest to learn, but it was the coolest. So they finally achieved an agreement that they competed for the keyboard position. The wireman got a huge loudspeaker at his home-normally a equipment belonging to village government, to inform the band members to be together for practicing the play. The second floor of our home was named the practice center. Dad got an incredible benefit, touching the instruments whenever he wanted.
Like everyone else, he chose the trombone and also thought the keyboard was the coolest. I still remember he spend uncounted nights, candles and batteries (the village often stop the power supply during the night) for that thing although mom actually did not understand him until he gave the first show and earned an extra money for the family.
Some day I got informed that the band would give a show around the home for the employer’s marriage ceremony. So I walked to the place and secretly saw they played. That is the first time that I understood that he just loved it.
I mean the music and the band. He did it not just for payment. From now, it could be the first time he found himself something belonging to his heart but not just the families.
Time went on. The tuition of the brothers became larger as the our middle-school age.
Dad decided to go outside to find a living, selling soybean curd in the northeast, basically in the hope of raising and educating the two little brothers further. I clearly remembered dad told me,
“When I got off the train at DL alone, the taxi driver asked me where to. I didn’t know what to say, but just took me somewhere I can rent a cheap place to live.”
I was the one witnessed that mom got through the days without a backbone at home. She was expecting the monthly phone calls from dad and strongly faced the upset situation in the village alone. Once in a while, I happened to know some suicides did occurred around because of the hopeless life. Dad barley posted some money although he desperately wished.
He grew up a lot at DL and he even encouraged and led some relatives to explore the same business the next year. Some of them could not bear the crazy freezing weather there and chose to give up soon. Only dad knew the business opening needed patience and courage.
Dad and mom lived there in the most of the years. They came back home and we stayed together for four weeks near Chinese New Year, making us probably the first generation of stay-at-home children(留守儿童) in modern China.
We did not even get a chance to fight with the parents in our adolescent rebellion. Some of my classmates dropped the school and got training to be tailors since the poverty, while the parents did actually think the education was useless and the payment was so real. Some of them fight with the teachers in class, ultimately forced to leave the school. I supposed that maybe we can just find some derivation on these upset trajectory because the lack of parents’ supervision.
My brothers and I didn’t go that way probably since dad and mom already built a righteous framework of our personal characters, which will never been trained from the book or even a early teacher. We were indeed naughty from time to time in the benefit of parents’ absence. Such as stealing sugar canes, fishing and unprotected swimming… Some of them were pretty dangerous but we did feel so damn happy with our little companies.
They were there for a living in the next ten years until I entered the college.
They changed again. This time I guess probably because they really missed the weather in hometown. They were opening a scrap yard at WH for years until he got very sick.
Like the other families in the similar situation, mom and we never accepted his unhealthily until he got two huge surgeries. The chemotherapy ultimately crunched his last hope. We four stayed together at our home until he finally released himself in that peaceful afternoon.
The real life made him a true adventurer and fighter. He shouldered the families and his own little hope.
You’ve been a great father, dad. Miss you much and happy new year.
Fan
Fan Zhou's Blog Site 
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