between clouds and mud

Chapter 20 The Wind Changsha Cloud Old Habits ([-])
Zhou Song asked the teacher for leave in the afternoon and walked around Changsha City with his parents, accompanied by Zhang Chengnian.

The city is changing with each passing day. Zhou Song wanted to accompany his father to visit the place where he lived when he was a child. Zhou Lao Liu waved his hand and said no.

Probably because people are getting old and don't want to think about the past.

Zhou Song looked at his father's aging back and felt infinitely lonely.

She took the initiative to go up and hold his hand: "Father, let's take a family portrait."

The family found a small photo studio in the alley, and the plastic signboard of the photo studio was a little torn by the wind and rain.

The area is less than ten square meters, and the boss rolled down a curtain behind the back with a picture of blue sky and white clouds. The price of the photo studio is as affordable as its decoration.

This is the first family portrait of the Zhou family. Zhou Song is wearing a blue and white school uniform, and the clothes of the old couple are also very clean and tidy.

But the couple had never been photographed before, and their bodies were a little stiff. The owner of the photo studio adjusted their poses a few times, and the wrinkles on their faces became more conspicuous when they smiled.

"It's okay, just smile." The owner of the photo studio took more than ten photos, and finally picked out a satisfactory one.

Father and mother thought it was a good shot, and Zhang Chengnian sat quietly by the side and waited, carrying the little luggage of Lao Liu and his wife in his hands.

"Take a picture of you two too." Zhou Lao Liu said and called the two children over.

Zhou Song and Zhang Chengnian walked into the camera, and the boss was dissatisfied that the two were too far apart.

"You brothers and sisters get closer, you can hold hands."

Zhou Song took the initiative to move over, not forgetting to emphasize: "We are not brother and sister."

She took the initiative to wrap her arms around Zhang Chengnian's arm, and held his hand openly and tightly interlocking her fingers, the smile in her eyes spilled out uncontrollably.

Zhang Chengnian looked down at her, the corners of his lips raised uncontrollably, and he slowly looked back at the camera.

The boss pressed the shutter a few times, and he glanced at the photo on the camera screen and said it was all right.

Zhou Song felt that the time was too short, so he could change the posture again, such as letting Zhang Chengnian hug her, and wanted to ask the boss to help take two more pictures.

But she felt the eyes of her parents shooting like machine guns, so she could only let go of her hands reluctantly.

Zhang Chengnian's palm tightly wrapped her, and secretly contracted with strength.

Zhou Song subconsciously glanced at Father, her heart was beating uncontrollably and her face turned red.

"The young man is really photogenic and looks like a star." The boss never forgets to praise him.

Zhou Song glanced at him, and blamed you for being too good-looking, if you were ugly, you could hold him for a while.

"Boss, my daughter is also very young." Zhou Laoliu emphasized as he paid for it.

"Yes, the girl looks pretty too." The boss accepted the money and was very cooperative.

Zhou Song wanted to rush back to school for evening self-study, and had no way to see his parents off, so Zhang Chengnian sent the couple all the way to the station.

Before leaving, Lao Liu patted him on the shoulder and said earnestly, "Brother Cheng, thank you for your hard work."

Zhang Chengnian knew in his heart: "This is my job."

Zhang Fang rode a bicycle to the station after get off work. She bought fruits and snacks in a comprehensive manner to make the couple more comfortable on the way.

The husband and wife hadn't traveled far for many years, and it was very uncomfortable on the way here. This time, they sat in the car on the way home.

The couple snuggled together, covered with plush blankets, warming their bodies and hearts.

"Fannier is still thoughtful." Outside the window are the shadows of trees passing by, and the bright moon in the sky is also extraordinarily clear.

Listening to his wife's words, Lao Liu sighed, "We have more than one child."

Two elderly people who are over half a century old, they walked through the wind and rain together for half a lifetime, cuddled each other in the rickety carriage, and slowly fell asleep.

The couple, who once regretted not having children, no longer have to worry about the bleak future because no one will sweep the grave in a hundred years.

Jiang Lele's procedures for going abroad have been completed a long time ago, but she still insisted on taking the college entrance examination with her good friend.

After all, as a Chinese student, life is incomplete without taking the college entrance examination.

In fact, Jiang Lele's grades are not very bad, and there is no big problem with the ordinary second book.

After the college entrance examination, Zhou Song and Jiang Lele began to plan their summer vacation.

This is Jiang Lele's last vacation in China, so the two girls always stick together, sometimes Zhou Song often sleeps at Jiang Lele's house.

Jiang Lele asked her: "Zhou Song, is there anything you really want to do?"

"Yes." Zhou Song squeezed the quilt: "When the results are out, the first thing I plan to do."

Looking at the girl's shy expression, Jiang Lele felt that she was hopeless: "There are many more interesting things in this world than men, do you know?"

Zhou Song continued to smile: "Then what do you want to do?"

"I want to go on a trip with you, a graduation trip." Jiang Lele emphasized the last four words.

Zhou Song nodded, then shook his head: "But I want to be with him, even if I don't travel."

Jiang Lele stopped talking completely, and she turned around.

Zhou Song continued: "Lele, I haven't met him more than three times in the third year of high school, and I count on my fingers every day."

"Then go find it." Jiang Lele gritted her teeth.

"No results, I dare not."

It turned out that she was worried about this, and Jiang Lele still felt uncomfortable after tossing and turning in the middle of the night, so she secretly kicked the girl next to her off, so that she could dream about Duke Zhou with peace of mind.

Before the scores of the college entrance examination came out, Feng Yi had already received a call from the admissions office overnight, and hung up without saying a word.In the middle of the night, Zhou Huaiming looked at his wife without thinking: "Who is calling?"

"Scam call." Feng Yi turned off the phone: "What kind of eyes do you have, don't you think I'm still wearing a hat for you at such an old age?"

Feng Yi's phone couldn't get through, and after a while Zhou Huaiming's phone rang too.

As soon as the call was connected, Zhou Huaiming jumped up from the bed with a happy expression on his face.

The old fox rolled his eyes and asked embarrassingly: "We don't dare to apply for your school, what if we don't get admitted, we have to know the grades before we dare to decide."

"Okay, okay, thank you teacher, we will consider it."

Zhou Huaiming hung up the phone with an excited expression: "Peking University's phone number."

"I know, Tsinghua University also called me just now." Feng Yi realized later: "Isn't it a scam call?"

"I don't know the score yet, but the top six in the province are definitely stable." Zhou Huaiming told his wife what he had said.

After a while, his cell phone rang again, and Zhou Huaiming answered the phone with a happy face: "Hello, which school is it?"

In the past two days, Zhou Huaiming likes to open the door of the office at work.

He sat at his desk and answered the phone with a loud voice: "Hello, you're a teacher from the Admissions Office of Tsinghua University, right?"

The gossiping colleague heard it and asked, "Your child just passed the college entrance examination?"

"My niece didn't get her college entrance examination results yet, and these schools are calling one by one to snatch her up." Zhou Huaiming rubbed his temples, and the corners of his mouth rose and fell.

On the day when the results were announced, Zhou Song topped the list with a score of 729.The No. 2 provincial champion in liberal arts in Hunan College Entrance Examination is only two points away from her.

Zhou Song calculated in her heart that if there were no extra points for the English speech contest, she should be No. 5 in the province.

Teacher Wen didn't expect that she could add such a record in her career before retirement. This is a very impressive stroke in her more than 50 years of teaching career.

Among the top ten in the province, they have three places in their class.

According to visual inspection, two-thirds of the students were able to record 985 and 211, and she was proud of the children's grades.

In the last class meeting, while praising and encouraging Teacher Wen, he also did not forget to comfort the students who did not perform well.

The children huddled together, and most of them couldn't hold back their tears.

They have gone through 12 years of schooling and sprinted for three years. This is the first answer sheet given to life.

Mr. Wen stood on the podium, his voice choked up: "After that, you still have a long way to go, and the road is long and difficult. The students accompany you on this journey, and I hope you have a bright future in the future."

This teacher, who has been teaching for more than fifty years, has long been full of peaches and plums.

She has always adhered to her original aspirations, and what makes her most proud is not that a certain student has achieved good results, but that all the children have forged ahead.

With such teachers in the school and such torches in the nation, the ideas and civilization of New China will burn like a prairie fire.

Our 90s generation is probably the first batch of people bathed in the spring breeze.

The last class reunion was very lively. Instead of Sprite and Coke on the coffee table in KTV, there were dozens of beers.

Except for a few students who were singing, most of the students gathered around to throw dice and play cards.

Some students came in with a bouquet of fiery red roses, and confessed their love amidst the booing of teachers and classmates.

Most of the youth ends like this, I only think it was normal at that time.

We all thought that the future would be long, but we didn't know that it would be difficult to see each other after parting.

Zhou Song also drank some wine. She was not used to such a noisy environment, so she stood alone on the balcony and stared at the night.

Looking up at the bright moon in the sky, she seemed to see the young man standing under the willow tree in the night, his eyes were as bright as stars, and his tone was firm: "You can't herd cattle if you study."

Her schooling path followed the footsteps of a teenager step by step, and her heart was also honed and tenacious.

Teacher Wen came to her side at some point, and the two of them chatted quietly while blowing the night breeze.

"Teacher, you are very beautiful both when you were young and now." Zhou Song held the railing: "When I was young, I heard my father mention that the teachers in Changsha are very beautiful."

Teacher Wen listened quietly on the side. This conversation seemed to be blowing into her heart slowly in the evening wind of summer night.

Zhou Song recalled the small characters carved on his father's pen, and said slowly: "Do you remember that student who was lying on the window decades ago?"

"Mr. Wen, that's my father, and I'm his daughter."

Teacher Wen was in a trance for a moment, but when she recalled it, she couldn't help but smile.

Fate is such a wonderful thing.

In the early years, she taught in elementary school, and she was always the first teacher to remember the names of all the students every time the school started, including the student outside the window.

She has always commented: "That is the hardest student I have ever taught."

Later, when graduation was approaching, Little Saturday did not come for half a month, and the teacher waited for her students for half a month.

That day, the little boy was wearing a tight long-sleeved shirt in summer, and there were bruises on the torn skirt. He also limped slightly when he walked, but it was not obvious.

"I'm sorry, I was lazy." Little Saturday bowed his head in the face of the teacher's question.

"It's okay." Teacher Wen didn't expose his clumsy lies, and rewarded the pen in her teaching plan as a graduation gift to her hardest-working students: "When you have a pen in the future, don't forget to study."

My father has suffered a lot, but every time he only said that he was a child who grew up eating a hundred kinds of food and wearing a hundred kinds of clothes.

When the clumsy and demented Zhou Song walked in front of him.

He probably knew that this child came suddenly and would leave suddenly one day.

But still gave her a happy childhood and a stable home.

It turns out that all causes and effects in the world can be traced. He is an educated farmer.

In that era of feudal thought, he did not discriminate because of gender, nor was he too harsh because of physical defects.He is tolerant, kind, intelligent, and hardworking.

He is an ordinary farmer, but also a torch to spread ideas, which is exactly the meaning of education.

The Zhou family seldom engage in extravagant ostentation. This time, they held a bustling school entrance banquet in a big hotel. The guests were entertained, and the dinner was staggered.

Zhou Song greeted and sent off with her parents, and had no time to take care of the friends present. Faced with such a straightforward compliment, she was somewhat vain in her heart.

When the crowd was almost gone, Zhou Song noticed that the table of Zhang Fang and Zhang Chengnian was also empty at some point.

There was only a family of four sitting in the auditorium. Zhou Huaiming drank a lot of wine today, a little drunk, but still sober: "Xiao Song, when will your father hold a school entrance banquet?"

Zhou Song was a little surprised, Zhou Huaiming asked her about the school entrance banquet in her hometown, and also called her father.

Feng Yi smiled all over his face, patted his son's head in his arms and said softly, "Let's all go there."

This time, the family of four drove to Dengxinqiao Township.

Zhou Huaiming followed Zhou Laoliu to stand in the endless rice fields, occasionally leaning over to observe the growth of seedlings, meeting a few villagers who also talked about the harvest in recent years, and would frown with their hands behind their backs if they heard that drought or flood had affected their growth.

Several times when Zhou Huaiming wanted to pick up a hoe, he was stopped by Zhou Laoliu.

So he borrowed a hoe from next door, and he was very skillful in wielding a hoe. He had a lot of experience at first glance, and explained: "We often go to the countryside for inspections, and the party educates our party members and cadres to go deep into the grassroots and integrate with the masses."

Holding the old-fashioned enamel mug, Feng Yi took a sip of the tea, and the fragrance turned into sweetness, rippling in his throat.

The prejudice in her heart gradually disintegrated in the constant argumentation of facts. Prejudice is a negative cognition and attitude towards people, things and things established out of objective facts.

Zhou Song has not only the shadow of Zhang Chengnian, but also the shadow of Zhang Fang, and the shadow of Dengxinqiao Township.
Zhou Song is the son and daughter of Dengxinqiao Township. She can distinguish right from wrong like Zhou Laoliu, diligent and studious like Zhang Chengnian, brave and unyielding like Zhang Fang.

What is the difference between cloud and mud in this world?
Some people are born noble, but narrow-minded.Some people are dressed in common clothes, but their souls are pure.

(End of this chapter)