My Life in The Past 20 Years (Ⅰ)

When I was a kid, I never thought I would come to Shanghai so far away from my hometown village. It was a small village near Guangdong Province in south Hunan Province, central China. My grandfather’s father lived in that village for his whole life, and then my grandfather replayed the same destiny there, when it came to my father, I heard from my mother that there were several chances the family could move away from that place, but my father gave them up. I didn’t know why my father chose to stay in that village, but I gradually knew why my mother was so desired to move to other places. The village is on the top of the mountain, about 20 miles away from the central town, it’s very inconvenient to buy commodity or sell farm produce, there was only one bus run twice a day between the village and center town, and not every family could afford the bus ticket even they went to the town once a month.
I was so happy in the village with my friends. There were four other little kids, my brother, Zhou, and another couple of brothers Jin and Bo, we are all boys, and I am the youngest. We were so young at that time and the only thing our parents asked us to do was cooking, that took us one hour the most and we only cooked when busy time like harvest season. In other time, we did all things any little kid would try. When spring came, we went to forest to catch all kinds of insects to have fun. In summer, we built small dam in the stream to create pond and swim in it, although that was highly prohibited and severely punished by our parents, we did that every summer and the pond was bigger and bigger with our strength increased year by year. During the fall time, we would search the whole mountain around the village for wild nuts and fruits; those were much more delicious than anything sold in a fruit shop. Winter was the most interesting time and my favorite season, we fought with ice balls as our weapons and we also made snowman, there was another thing I loved so much, sitting beside the fire and listening elders telling us the history of the village or their own glorious time. There was an elementary school at the center of the village, and we finished our primary education to grade four. After that, we had to go to town for further education.
I was 10 when I started my grade 5 education in the town in fall 1996. There were five normal classed and one key class in grade 5, the key class have the most clever students and the most outstanding teachers. I was the only student in the key class from our village. All students from villages live in the school in weekdays, and go home when weekends. Each dormitory contained about 50 or more students from different classes and grades, there were only 20 students in my dormitory because we were key class students. Though key class students had better treatment, but the living condition was still bad, there was only enough room for each student to keep a bucket under their beds, the bed was double-layer and the higher layer was always preferable for its better air condition, the windows was broken most of the time even in winter. We ate in the school, but there were no dining room, each semester village students handed in about 100 kilograms rice and 20 Yuan cooking fee to the school, we had three meals a day, 8 in the morning, 12am, and 5pm, 10 students share a big plate of rice every meal, unfair could always happen when sharing, thus cause fight. According to Chinese diet custom, we don’t eat pure rice at dinner, some extra food like vegetables and meat are always needed. There was a little shop selling extra food cost half a Yuan at dinner time, but only students with extra money who may came from rich family could afford that, most students took extra food like cooked dry vegetables from home. I got one or two Yuan allowance from my parents every week, they told me to use it to pay the bus ticket back to home, but that money was seldom used that way, usually it went to the pocket of my headmaster, of whom all boys in my class though as a female monster. She set up lots of rules and regulations for us, once we break them, we would be punished with cleaning classroom or bathroom for weeks and paying her some money. The amount of punishment money depended on how seriously you break the rule, most of the time it would be one to five Yuan, with that money a person could have two meals in a regular restaurant at that time. The most disgusting rule I remember was the exam punishment, if we got less than 85 score in the Chinese Language exam she taught, money as much as the slack score must be turned in to her, and all the punishment money was never given back to us until our graduation from that school. I was such a naughty boy at that time that most of my allowance became punishment money, and I had to walk home alone every week, it was always dark in the night when I got home after 15 miles walking. I hated her so much and swore never contact her once graduated.
Although it seemed like two tragic years because of that disgusting headmaster, there was actually a lot fun and my study was also very good. After graduation from the center town school, I moved to the downtown of ChenZhou city and began my middle school life in NO.8 middle school. It was a key middle school reached its peak when we graduated from it, and I had three of the happiest years in my life there.