Reborn to Strive

  In his previous life, Shi Zhen would head to Anshan Town four years from now. The difference between Anshan Town of today and what it would become then was immense.

    Shi Zhen observed the place and thought the little town looked somewhat strange. Meanwhile, he was being sized up.

    He was wearing clothing that had been common 10 years ago, his skin had been tanned bronze in the sun, and his long hair fell messily down the back of his neck. Even so, his face was handsome. His eyebrows were dark and thick, with a tall and slightly unruly arch, while his straight nose and strong profile added to the harmonious composition. But his eyes were his most striking feature. They were like a pair of twin pools on a distant mountain side. Still and deep, you could gaze for ages without being able to see the bottom.

    Running across someone so handsome, one couldn’t be blamed for wanting to sneak a few extra peeks.

    Shi Zhen couldn’t care less about those people looking at him. He glanced around to decide which direction to go before continuing on his journey.

    Guan Baiyu was three years younger than him, and had just turned 15 this year. His father had long ago passed away, his mother was unwilling to raise him, and his foster parents did not like him. He had no money, so although he had passed the entrance exam for high school, after only one year of study, he would have to drop out. After that, he would try all kinds of manual labor to support himself, and would eventually pass the self-study exam. At present . . . the fifteen year old Guan Baiyu should be in his final year of junior high.

    Anshan Town was a large and prosperous town, and was home to three of Changxi District’s top elementary and junior high schools. There was even a high school. 

    But Guan Baiyu did not attend school in town. He studied in the countryside. 

    The quality of the schools in town was very good, while the quality of education in the countryside was rather lacking. In this area, teachers were in short supply. When he had gone to school previously, the teacher didn’t even speak Mandarin well, and often taught the students incorrectly. Although J City was relatively prosperous, the schools in the rural areas were still not up to par. So even if Guan Baiyu studied well and was successful at school, he would ultimately only be able to attend an average high school.

    In the present, there was no public bus route going from Anshan Town to the countryside, but there were a variety of pedicabs you could hire, and many people in town relied on their pedicabs to earn a living.

    It wasn’t expensive to take this kind of pedicad, and would only cost a few yuan to get where he was headed. But right now, Shi Zhen had just ¥71.50 left and begrudged spending a single dime of it.

    Instead, he took Shi Xinghuo and started walking toward the hamlet where Guan Baiyu lived.

    Guan Baiyu’s hamlet was not far from Anshan Town. From the bus station, going by foot, it would only take 40 minutes. In his last life, around 2008, the old houses in the hamlet would be torn down.

    Shi Zhen walked ever westward. Exiting Anshan Town, the road narrowed immensely, and the cement pavement was not a single hair over 1 meter. It wasn’t even wide enough to drive a car. But right now, none of the households owned a car. Even owning a motorbike was an accomplishment.

    The cement road meandered along the south side of the river, and the top of the bank was sparsely dotted with wild mulberry trees. On the north side of the river, bamboo fences encircled each and every little courtyard, which were packed with vegetables. On the north side of each courtyard lay a cement patio, and to the north of that rose a two story house. All the houses looked pretty much the same – with white walls and black roof tiles. Once in a while, a family would have a mosaic covered wall, perhaps covered in green glass squares cut from bottles arranged in a decorative pattern, looking particularly distinctive.

    Anshan Town’s population was large, and the countryside was also quite populous. Sitting on the patio of each house were the elderly who watched over children of various ages, chatting and gossiping. 

    In his previous life, Shi Zhen accompanied Guan Baiyu when he had returned to this place. Though the landscape at that time was substantially different from today, the road was much the same so he was still able to recognize it.

    Straight ahead sat a hut. Seeing it, Shi Zhen stopped dead in his tracks.

    All along the way, the houses had been mostly tile and brick buildings. But this structure’s walls were actually constructed from tamped earth, and it was only one story high. Looking at the style, it was clearly built ages ago. This structure also did not sit in the same line as the other houses. It was closer to the cement road, sitting there lonely and isolated.

    This was Guan Baiyu’s residence.

    Come to speak of it, Guan Baiyu’s life was quite pitiful.

    His biological parents were townspeople. [They are not surnamed Guan. Keep this in mind while reading the following.]

    Years earlier, if people in town had a child and didn’t have a grandparent to help care for them, they would send them to the countryside and give a little money to a nanny to look after the child. Guan Baiyu’s biological father was born in the ’50s, and was sent to the countryside by his father to be raised by the same granny who later raised Guan Baiyu. Guan Baiyu’s paternal grandmother died in childbirth, and sometime later, his paternal grandfather remarried. Father Guan had almost been completely forgotten in the countryside, and wasn’t brought back to town until he was more than 10 years old. 

    After returning to his family, Father Guan was not used to life with his biological father’s family, and ran away to his countryside nanny’s home from time to time. Later, his dad became angry and sent him to join a construction brigade that repaired roads and bridges.

    Father Guan worked constantly until he was almost 30 years old. Then, while repairing a water tower, he fell off and died. When he died, his wife ran off, leaving their unweaned baby behind, and his father was not interested in raising the child.

    That was 1979, and Father Guan’s paternal family had already moved to Changxi District. For the Guan family living in the countryside near Anshan Town, Changxi District was extremely far. But when Granny Guan found out that the child she had raised was dead, she made the long journey to bring back the grandchild that nobody wanted, giving him the name Guan Baiyu and adding him to the Guan family hukou. [Hukou is the legal family register linked to your residence in a city or rural area, and determines what resources you have legal right to access, such as schools, etc.]

    Granny Guan’s biological son was one year older than Father Guan. He was married but had no child. Granny Guan brought Guan Baiyu back so her son would have an heir.

    But Granny Guan’s son didn’t want to raise him. More importantly, not long after Guan Baiyu had entered the Guan family, his foster mother got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.

    Some other people value boys and neglect girls, thinking that because boys inherit and continue the family name, they’re better than girls, but Guan Baiyu’s foster parents preferred their own flesh and blood and were unwilling to acknowledge Guan Baiyu.

    So Guan Baiyu was raised by old lady Guan. Although he called his foster parents ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ the couple were never close to him. They had always been very poor, and never had money on hand. They never had anything extra to give Guan Baiyu, and were indifferent toward him, so he had to drop out of high school.

    Those same couple years, Guan Baiyu’s foster father had borrowed money to buy chickens to raise, hoping to earn some profit. Unfortunately, the chickens all fell ill and died, leaving him with nothing to show for his pains. He himself had to tighten his waistband, how could he care for Guan Baiyu?

   Guan Baiyu’s dwelling was tiny, adding up to 60-70 meters square of outdated construction. Behind it stood the small two story building where his foster parents lived.

    That house was built with bricks and tiles, but only took up about 80 square meters. The bottom floor front and rear were each divided into two rooms while the top floor only had two rooms at the front of the house. The rear two rooms were originally built, but because of lack of money, they had no roof, and had only been plastered as a terrace.

    Guan Baiyu’s foster parents and their daughter lived in the two upstairs rooms. Of the four downstairs rooms, the front two were filled with food and supplies for raising silkworms, while water often leaked into the back two rooms, because the ceiling was a terrace that hadn’t been tiled. Since they were unsuitable for people to live, they housed pigs in them. Because of this arrangement, even from the start they hadn’t been able to give Guan Baiyu a place to stay.

    Guan Baiyu had always lived with Granny Guan in the aging earthen walled house, but she passed away two years ago, and he had lived alone ever since.

    Shi Zhen had learned these things long long ago, but as he was recalling them just now, he found they had unexpectedly remained fresh in his mind.

    The door of the earthen house was tightly shut, and it seemed that no one was home. Shi Zhen absent mindedly sat down on a large stone by the side of the road.

    Before, at the bus stop, he had asked for today’s date, and found out it was National Tree Planting Day, and a Saturday. [It’s March 12th, if you’ve forgotten after all this backstory.] Because students didn’t need to go to school on Saturday, he had hurried over just to catch a glimpse of Guan Baiyu. But he had forgotten that in this era Saturday mornings were a study period. It was around midday right now, and Guan Baiyu might not have gotten out of class yet.

Midday, Xiaqiu Township
    Xiaqiu Township was a rural area a level beneath Anshan Town. In the township there was an elementary school, a junior high, and also a large health clinic. Several years prior, if one was giving birth, they would head to the rural clinic, but now, they went to the hospital in town instead.

    Various and sundry shops lined Xiaqiu Township’s main street. Whether you wanted to buy seasonings, groceries, or seafood and pork, they all could be found here. 

    Xiaqiu Junior High and Xiaqiu Elementary School stood at the end of the street.

   The elementary school classes were over, and the students had already been dismissed. A large crowd of children carrying schoolbags rushed out of the school building. Family members were waiting to take some of the students home, while the remaining students headed home on their own. Some rode bicycles, some walked home in groups of twos and threes.

    The junior high next door, however, didn’t end classes until 20 minutes later.

Class One of the third year
    20 years in the future, though more than half the students at Xiaqiu Junior High wouldn’t pass the regular high school entrance exam, they could still continue on to study at vocational schools.1 Many people would go on to earn a professional degree after that. [As opposed to a university degree.]
   But as for the current Xiaqiu Junior High students,  basically none of them would continue their studies. Many didn’t even complete their third year of junior high, but instead headed out to the factories to work.

    The school was still divided into two tracks — the fast track and the slow track. The fast track covered the entire curriculum of the third year, and prepared students to continue on with their studies. Their teacher had to pay close attention and guide the students firmly. The slow track was unlikely to finish studying at junior high and continue on, so their teacher didn’t need to be strict about things, nor did those students want a strict teacher.

    Class One is precisely that advanced studies classroom. Even so, it was nearly time for school to let out, and the students were restless. They had long ago stealthily packed up their schoolbags, and were merely waiting for the school bell to ring. As soon as the teacher left, they would rush out. 

    Guan Baiyu had risen along with the rest of the class when his deskmate suddenly stepped on his school bag that was sitting on his stool, then stepped on his desk, and then leapt off the desk leaving behind a peal of mocking laughter. Guan Baiyu’s textbook was still laying on his desk, and now had a giant footprint marring the cover. 

    Seating in the classroom had recently changed from two person desks to single person desks arranged in pairs in four rows in the classroom. The first row and the fourth row were pushed against the walls. In other words, the deskmate next to the wall needed to wait for their deskmate next to the aisle to move out before leaving.

   Every week, the students shifted one row to the left, and the fourth row would move to the first row. All students would sit beside a wall at some point, and have to defer to their deskmate at that point.

   This shouldn’t have been an issue, but Guan Baiyu’s desk mate Yan Jiangtao truly despised him. When sitting beside the wall, if Guan Baiyu wanted to leave to go to the toilet, Yan Jiantao would sit motionless and refuse to let him out. However, when Yan Jiantao was seated beside the wall, and wanted to leave, if Guan Baiyu didn’t move quickly enough, he’d kick Guan Baiyu’s stool, or simply step on Guan Baiyu’s desk to get out.

   “Yan Jiangtao is too much!” the girl sitting behind Yan Jiangtao muttered to herself resentfully. Previously, when Guan Baiyu had sat beside the wall, and Yan Jiangtao refused to let him out to use the toilet, this girl and her desk mate would move their desks back so Guan Baiyu could get out.

   Guan Baiyu smiled at her, and wiped his book with a cloth, before putting it in his schoolbag and departing.

   In the classroom, some people were indignant, others were indifferent, and still others found joy in his misfortune.

Chapter Notes:

1 – China’s education system considers high school as prep for college, while vocational school is prep for working life without a university degree. If you want to read more, try the following link. The section “Education System” is the most relevant part to this novel.

It may also be of interest to you to know that at the time the novel is set, the compulsory education law was still fairly recent, having passed under Deng Xiaoping in July of 1986. It was titled The Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education (中华人民共和国义务教育法) and in the novel it’s pretty clear that the country was still dealing with a shortage of teachers to fulfill the requirements of the law, let alone for higher grade levels, especially in rural areas. Rural students heading to work instead of going on to high school was the norm, not the exception, in the mid ‘90s.