Over the years, whenever I received a phone call from home, I was sure to get a loud scolding from there: “You still want to learn from your Sixth Uncle after all! Don’t you want to be an adult anymore?” The tone of hatred, so I can not argue.
Occasionally, when I went back to my hometown, the elders, who were usually mild-mannered, would remind me in a serious way: “You must not become the second Luk Luk! If you don’t marry a wife, if you don’t have children, you won’t be able to enter the ancestral grave when you die!”
30 years ago, people did not say that.
1
Uncle Liuliu is the son of my grandfather’s uncle, born in 1966, was named “Liuliu”.
In 1985, three college students were admitted to the village at once: Uncle Liuliu was admitted to Tsinghua University with the top score in the county, a cousin of the family went to Xiangtan Normal College (now Hunan University of Science and Technology), and a candidate surnamed Tian was admitted to Central South University of Technology (now Central South University).
The small mountain valley, which had not produced any scholars since the liberation, suddenly raised its eyebrows. For many days, the village was banging gongs and drums, the trees on both sides of the road were full of banners, the county leaders and town leaders came to congratulate us personally, and open-air movies were shown for several days in a row.
People in the village said that our house was backed by the Sun Mountain, head rested on the Overlook Cloud Peak, facing the winding river, “this is the feng shui of the big man”. Some people even went to our family’s ancestral tomb, pretending to survey it, and then came back and said, “That’s the terrain where the dragon crouching tiger is hidden”.
Everyone educates their own children, just one sentence: “You want to wear straw shoes or leather shoes in the future? If you want to wear leather shoes, you have to look like a model, later as long as half of the success of six six, our family will be burning incense.”
Although Uncle Liu Liu’s appearance is not satisfactory – only 1.6 meters tall, small eyes, thinning hair, and do not like to talk, walking with an octagon, the shoulders are also high and low – but in the eyes of outsiders, this does not affect his ambitious future. “Who does not know that the small man has a lot of energy? He doesn’t have to pick dung and chop wood.
On the day Uncle Liuliu left for Beijing, the crowd of senders was said to be even more scenic than when his grandfather went to be the head of the Sichuan Ciguang Bureau. Later, when the family rebuilt the genealogy, the word “Qinghua” was added in parentheses after his name.
At that time I was not yet born, but for a long time after that, I and all the children in the village, like living in the “shadow” of Uncle Liu Liu, no matter how I run, he seems to be always standing in front.
I was also considered the most likely to “become Uncle Luk Luk” in the eyes of the elders. But no matter how hard I tried, I could only barely rank third in my class on every exam. My grandfather shook his head after reading the report card: “In our family, talents like your Uncle Luk Luk are hard to find. From elementary school to high school, there was never a time when he didn’t get first place!”
Every time I learned a new text, my grandfather only allowed me to read it twice and then I had to recite it, and if I couldn’t recite it, I was beaten. He said that he taught the same thing to Uncle Luk Luk, and he could memorize it in two times. Every time I took the award back, the adults just glanced at it and then tossed it aside, not even a word of praise. The discussion they had at the dinner table was always about the god-like presence of Uncle Luk Luk.
The village open-air movies were always my favorite, and whenever I happily picked up a stool and rushed outside, my grandfather would sigh: “Where’s all the fun to be had? I’ve never seen your Uncle Luk Luk see a movie. I had to put down the stool and go upstairs to open my book to wander. In my mind, I wondered: He had gone to Beijing, what did I have to do with it?
After I went to school in the county, the older teachers would ask as soon as they saw my name: “Where are you from? Do you know Cai XX?” At first I answered honestly, “He’s my uncle,” and then, without exception, they would talk about how great Uncle Liuliu was in school and how “you can’t lose face with him!”
Later, I simply said I did not know.
2
Grandfather said that in April 1989, he and his uncle and grandfather went to Beijing to visit Tsinghua Park and took Uncle Liu Liu home for a while. This was the only time after Liuliu went to college that he returned to his hometown with his clothes on.
Everyone in the village knew that in a few months Uncle Liuliu would graduate, and at that time, the job was still assigned by the state, so it goes without saying that he would definitely be rehired – as soon as he returned home, relatives sent eggs, sugar and bacon one after another, all saying that they would have the opportunity to go to Beijing in the future, and asked him to take care of him. And Uncle Liu Liu couldn’t tell who was who.
In fact, those four years in Beijing, six six uncle mixed more or less wretched.
Not long after entering Tsinghua, he found that the pride soaked in his bones for more than a decade, all at once was knocked to the ground. Others do not understand his Mandarin, he speaks English also has a strange smell; shabby looks and strange walking posture, it is difficult to please girls; introversion, low self-esteem, so he did not have a few friends in the four years of college.
After graduation, he was assigned to an electronics factory in Xi’an as an engineer. After the village found out, a pot exploded, saying “how to be a prefect to do, how to mix the factory to go?” Of course, it didn’t take long to get the news that the young man who got into Zhongnan University of Technology, surnamed Tian, didn’t even have a job after graduation – he committed a crime and was arrested and locked up for a while before he was released, and he didn’t know where he was.
Some people in the village began to question the matter of studying, especially some of the older youths who dropped out of school in the middle of the year, touting the “heroes who turned in a blank book”, saying that studying is useless except for the brain to read badly. At that time, the village elders also came out to angrily rebuke them, “they do not compete, but also presume to stir up the village pandemonium”.
A year later, Uncle Liuliu quit his job in Xi’an and immediately enrolled in a graduate program at Jinan University, becoming the village’s first master’s degree. After graduation, he was assigned to the Guangdong Provincial Government and was once again in a great position.
In the early 1990s, some of the village’s laborers went to Guangdong to work one after another, and on the train, they would brag to everyone that they had a backstage in the provincial government, and that they had “extraordinary connections”. When some relatives arrived at the train station, they had to carry snake skin bags to the entrance of the provincial government for a turn.
At first, Uncle Luk Luk was in the way, even if not familiar will come out to receive a little. Later, there were more things to do, and can not care so much. But there are always people who have all sorts of things to help him, but not see him scolded him for his big frame, white-eyed wolf, forgetting his ancestors, a phone call to solve the matter, leaving them out all day.
The infamous Tsinghua student in the village
In a few years, the negative news about Uncle Liu Liu more and more: that he did not make a little contribution to the hometown; that he invited people to dinner and asked the table in a small plate of peanuts, radish strips want money; that the aunt took her grandson to see him, he was so high salary only to send people two hundred dollars; excessive point, also said he was getting ugly, early thirties on the top, living a little old man, even a hat can not afford to buy to wear.
In fact, in the unit, six six uncle is just a section member. As a result of unsociable, he was kicked around by various departments, watching colleagues around one by one became leaders, but only himself forgotten in the corner.
In October 1995, he sent a letter to his uncle and grandfather, saying that he had left the system and intended to go to a company to make some money before starting his own business. Uncle grandfather received the news and was furious, rushed back home from Huaihua to discuss countermeasures with his grandfather. Grandfather said, although six six uncle listened to him most, but he did not want to interfere with the young people, “children are not by people, let him go!”
Soon the village also knew the news, an uproar – “not a good family member, run to become a wage earner?
3
In 1998, the chorus of Faye Wong and Na Ying was playing everywhere in the streets and alleys. At the age of 32, Uncle Liuliu seemed to be infected by the song, and he started a software development business with all his savings.
It sounds as if Uncle Luk Luk seems to ride on the first wave of the Chinese Internet, but there is no strong capital, no lobbying others’ eloquence, and no luck to turn bad luck into good luck, and after a year or two of hard work, he finally failed to wait for the “venture capital” straw, and was busy for nothing, but also owed a lot of money. From the former credit mechanism is not sound, someone gave him a tip, as long as you can loan the bank’s money, it is the same as their own earnings, but six six uncle insisted that it is against the rules.
From childhood all the way to smooth sailing Uncle Liu Liu, for the first time felt what is Huagai Fengkong. In the millennium, his classmates either flew around in the sky, or in the field of scientific research achieved large and small achievements, only he, carrying a broken suitcase, wallet only a few hundred dollars, in the crowded green train stand more than ten hours, exhausted back to Huaihua.
Uncle grandfather has long not expected him to make much of a splash in his career, the second best, he just six six uncle to start a family, even if it preserves his face.
Although his own physical condition is worrisome, but has its own criteria for choosing a spouse – in the current fashionable language, he does not settle. After returning home, uncle grandfather helped him to arrange a number of blind dates, six six uncle only said that “do not see the right”. Uncle grandfather angry, the third day after the New Year, gave an ultimatum: “If you do not want to become a family, do not come back.”
Six six uncle still did not agree, uncle grandfather then threw his broken suitcase from the second floor, followed by smashed, and several thousand dollars. Since then, Uncle Liu Liu never dared to return home until his grandfather died.
The personal problems of Uncle Luk Luk began to become the talk of the village after dinner. In the past, the village two quarrels, the man scolded the woman is “but but, you do not want to marry six six? He will not look at you seriously?” The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public.
And not long after that, the last piece of shame of Uncle Liuliu, was also ripped off.
In the past, although the village people know that the six-six uncle resigned from public office, but how to say it should also be a boss of people, money or have, only as a high not low not just. I do not know, six six uncle this boss is really not as good as a wage earner, he has opened software companies, logistics companies, advertising companies, consulting companies, and even labor companies, but in the end all failed, nothing left.
In the six six uncle business failed to return, when the village by his influence to work in the south a few young people, gradually mixed up a little fame, they began to solicit their own projects, earn some money. After a chance encounter in Guangzhou, they resumed contact with Uncle Liu Liu. Youth several times to six six uncle said, are not outsiders, if the financial difficulties, just ask, culture they do not have, but the money can still come out.
Uncle Liu Liu is determined to start a business, the shortage of funds is a big problem, since someone is willing to help, he is naturally happy, so he borrowed from them more than 100,000 yuan.
The next day the news spread back to the village. It is normal for ordinary people to be short of money, but Liuliu is a Tsinghua student, a big boss, the pride of eight villages, how can he be short of money? The country does not care about him? How could he borrow money from an elementary school graduate who came from a hard-working background?
So, in the eyes of the village people, Uncle Liu Liu in the year of 39 years old, completely fallen from the altar. For his ordinariness meant shame.
4
In those years, there were more and more rich people in the village, especially those few site bosses, claiming to have assets of hundreds of millions.
People see their necklaces thicker and thicker, more and more keys on the waist of their pants, talking more and more confidence, “this society capital is everything, study is just a means of self-hypnosis for some people who are not capable, what about people who graduated from Tsinghua University? Still shrink up to borrow money from us!”
By 2003, the South Central University of Technology, the candidate surnamed Tian returned to his hometown to open a pig farm, living is a farmer. On the way to the slaughterhouse, he drove a tractor overturned, was blinded in one eye, within a few days, his wife ran away; and the same year to Xiangtan teacher’s cousin, in order to have a son, resigned from the bank, the village people laugh at him, “study is not to pass on to the next generation”.
Those bosses met in Guangzhou again six six uncle, but also long ago no longer polite, always teasing him: “you are almost 40, still not a family, no wife, outside love but a lot of children?” Uncle Liuliu then replied, “Not as romantic as you!”
This scene has been used as a comic, from time to time in the village, and also added additional lines interpretation – “you do not romantic, prostitutes will always be?” — “No, no, there are no women in the red light district who have graduated from Tsinghua, it’s bad for my status!”
What’s even more terrible is that the village’s “useless theory of studying” is once again in full swing. But this time, no one came out to argue. Everyone felt that only those with money had the right to speak.
Later, a cousin in the yard graduated from Nankai and enrolled in a graduate program at Peking University, the construction bosses came to the limelight again and patted him on the shoulder and said, “Study hard and come to help the company when the time comes, we have a lot of talented students under our hands.”
Compared with more than a decade ago, more children began to drop out of school to work in Guangdong before graduating from junior high school. Their idols are also no longer people who study, but people who have money. For example, there is a boss in the village, 8 years old to learn the gomer, 12 years old to go out and become a rich man at the age of 40, the village people are talking about his inspirational story, while shamelessly studying people.
I also suffered from it. After my grandfather’s death, my mother started tearing up my books and often defaulted on school fees – reading became an original sin in my mother’s eyes. She said our family has been a scholar for several generations, but did not save any wealth, grandfather taught all his life, not even a large house for his children to build a. My father was also a scholar, but he had to go out and do engineering work, and eventually took his life.
Even my uncle, who had studied, came to me and advised me that my cousins had left home at the age of 13 and were working outside for hundreds of dollars a month, “Studying is a waste of food! Look at your sixth uncle, who studied at the best university in China, and now he’s mixed up with no one, he has proved that studying is not a viable path.”
At that time, I was still in junior high school, and I saw that all my friends had gone out to work one by one. I especially miss my grandfather, who never said a word against Uncle Luk Luk, even though Uncle Luk Luk never came back to see him once from work, nor did he make a phone call, but my grandfather still told me that even if studying was “useless”, he hoped that his descendants would pass on this uselessness.
After graduating from junior high school, my mother was determined not to let me go to high school. I couldn’t resist, so I did nothing at home, fishing for frogs in the fields all day, and hanging out with some unemployed youths older than me at night in the town’s dance halls.
Until one day, my uncle and aunt who worked in the court suddenly returned to the village, I learned that my grandfather in the six months before his death, dragged his sick body to visit them, said one thing, must ensure that I finished college.
There were only three of us in a class of 50 in elementary school who ended up in high school and college, plus me. We had even fewer studying in the next class. As for the girls, none of them have gone to college so far.
I don’t know if it’s Uncle Luk Luk’s fault.
5
Uncle Liu Liu is getting older and older, and my grandfather is getting older and older. The year I graduated from college, his health was already very poor, more than a few steps will be out of breath. For a long time, Uncle Luk Luk was the person he disliked the most, more than 40 years old still refused to start a family, uncle grandfather always said, his face would have no place to rest, and now also humiliated the ancestors.
Uncle grandfather is determined to return to his roots, several times back home to prepare their own afterlife, his own old house in Huaihua before the sale, temporarily living in my house. When he was asked if his son had a family, he pointed to his ear and said loudly, “I can’t hear you!” Then he faltered and walked out of the sight of the people.
Once I went back to visit him and helped him take a walk. When I saw that he was struggling to walk, I casually said, “Second grandpa, slow down! He immediately said with a stern face, “Call me grandpa! What second grandfather?”
Uncle grandfather found the best craftsmen to make two good coffins for himself and uncle grandmother, afraid that I do not mind, and I said: “Your six-six uncle that sinful son, failed to give me a home in the old home, I now have to beg you, the coffin put you upstairs okay? You have to help me look after, after grandfather will live in our own mountain, you have to give me kowtow.” I said, “You can put it, I don’t care about that.”
A few days later, my grandfather sent me to Huaihua, wanting me to pass on to his family, and if I agreed, the ceremony was scheduled for three days later, and even the succession papers were written, so that I could “inherit the ancestral rituals, and take charge of the family”, and I was given an additional property in my hometown. I refused his request on the grounds that my father had only one son, saying that Uncle Luk Luk would have a family, so he could rest assured.
The uncle grandfather did not give me a hard time, but just took the cane and hit the door frame hard: “That beast! That beast …… I will never let him into the house!”
In 2011, my grandfather passed away in Huaihua. Before he died, he still tried to tell Uncle Liu Liu to “get out” of the ward.
The old family members went to Huaihua to offer their condolences and told Uncle Luk Luk that his father’s last wish was to be transported back home for burial. But Uncle Liu Liu said that is a feudal superstition, and insisted on choosing cremation.
Six months later, six six uncle unprecedented trip back home, said his father dreamed to him, or to come back to the burial, he first came to see the grave mountain.
I did not go back. Listen to some of the village elders said, this time back home, six six uncle is completely “infamous”.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services, such as the following
One of the elders could not stand it and angrily reprimanded him to his face: “Not to mention building bridges and paving roads, making contributions to the hometown, your uncle (my grandfather) treats you like his own son, and you? Whether it’s the New Year’s Eve or the birthday, when have you ever said a word? You didn’t even show up when he passed away, and you didn’t come back to pay your respects at the grave. Now the people in the village are not studying, and at a young age they are learning to buy Mark Six, hoping to make a fortune. It’s not because you’re a Tsinghua student who hasn’t made a mark, and you don’t talk about loyalty, filial piety, and brotherhood, who wants to believe that studying is useful?”
Sixth Uncle feel that they are unreasonable, and feng shui gentleman in the mountains after a few rounds, said what “You time in A Xu, ten days in the empty”, anyway, is the funeral can not be done. And did not say to invite those relatives who help to organize the funeral to eat a meal, just relayed a few words of the feng shui gentleman’s meaning, turned his head and went straight back to Guangzhou.
A month later, he called back and said he still wanted to send his father back for burial. For the sake of his uncle, the family had to start making arrangements again, but a few days later, he said, “Don’t prepare, I won’t come back for now.
Three months later, he said he was coming back, but after a week he said, “I’m busy with work, so I’m not coming back, so I’ll store the ashes first.
Six months later, Uncle Luk Luk suddenly sneaked back one night, without saying hello to anyone, rented a truck, broke the lock on the door of the old house, and carried away the two coffins that my uncle and grandfather had bought before he died.
The next morning everyone was talking about it, and if someone hadn’t seen it was him, they would have thought they had been robbed. That day, many people at home called and asked me if I knew. I had to say that the key was brought out by me, I let Uncle Six Six pick the lock.
As I said that, tears came out – I really did not know what to say about him.
6
After the coffin was removed, Uncle Luk Luk buried his grandfather in his sister’s mother-in-law’s house, and from then on there was no longer any connection with the village. The village will also be six six uncle removed from the name, “the less this scribe scum the better, people read more is to find the north”.
Later, some educators came to the village to study the problem of out-of-school children, the village people look indifferent, saying how much it costs to train a college student out now? After graduation, what can they do with a monthly salary of two to three thousand dollars? We have Tsinghua and Peking University here, but the two richest people did not go to high school, who are you to say anything to us?
Waiting until 2013, Uncle Luk Luk finally got married and gave birth to a daughter the following year. Of course, the village people are not interested in this, his peers are already full of children and grandchildren, in their eyes, the village as long as the family, who are better than six six uncle.
Gradually, Uncle Liu Liu in the village, only when the “older youth” is urged to marry, will appear as the opposite of the teaching material, “you want to learn that Liu Liu?” The youngsters didn’t know who this person was, they just felt like a monster from the far mountains.
Waiting for today, the only person who is often dumbfounded by this phrase is me.
The family has been on tenterhooks, fearing that I have become the second six six uncles. I am also a little worried that I can not be as fearless as six six uncle, but also afraid that I let those poor family conditions but also want to study, no reason to persist in the end.
So every time I go back home, I see people on the smile to greet, take money to send gifts are not ambiguous, but also from time to time bragged that their houses and cars are earned by studying. I was only slightly relieved when they half-heartedly said “this is what a scholar should look like”.
In the Spring Festival of 2017, I paid a visit to my aunt and grandmother, and finally got on the phone with Uncle Luk Luk.
Although Uncle Liuliu spoke Mandarin, he spoke with a strong country accent, sounding more like a village person than me. He said: “You are studying law, huh? Many of my classmates have served in the Central and High Courts. Do you want to go to the Academy of Social Sciences in the future? I have an old countryman who is a member of the academic department there, go and search online.”
I didn’t take his words and just asked how he was doing out there.
“It’s okay.” He said.
I didn’t tell him that I knew all the students he was talking about. Once we talked about him, the scene was once a bit awkward – the worst mixed in their class belonged to Uncle Luk Luk. The original words are probably, “who, the top student in our class, he can not mix ah! This society, just study is useless, to mix away.”
My aunt called me again after Uncle Luk Luk returned to Guangzhou, and she asked me to contact Uncle Luk Luk more often, saying that he was now living in a difficult situation. Uncle Liu Liu’s wife was introduced by his aunt, and the couple was still at odds, with his aunt caught in the middle. The aunt said six six uncle has no savings, has been renting a room to live, for several years did not go out to work, spend all day staring at the computer speculation, the aunt so much resentment, raising a family to raise a daughter, the pressure is all on her alone. The aunt asked me if I knew how to speculate and let us both look after each other.
I said Uncle Luk Luk has never given me contact information. Besides, after all, 51 years old, out to find a job may not have the right, even to do programmers from scratch, but also can not spell young people.
A minute after my aunt hung up the phone, she dialed back: “You do not go to the old home to say these ah, give your uncle some face.”
I said I wouldn’t.
Aunt grandmother does not know yet, six six uncle in the village has long been no face to speak of.
Uncle Liuliu has no house, no car, no academic work, no more fame, no more hometown, but I still hope that he will not drift in his old age and will get what he wants.
In the flood of the times, readers sometimes don’t know how to maneuver around and are inevitably dizzy, but reading is always a decent thing to do. Life is unpredictable, I dare not say that I will not live like him, but in this life, I will never admit that “reading is useless”.
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